hi all,
I know most of you will think that this is a newbie question. And it is actually, or almost ;)
I just renewed the electronic part of my setup buying a bargain Pioneer integrated amp + tuner + CD. everything plays very well, and I'm fully satisfied by those elements.
The only issue I have is the pretty poor quality of the phono entry, whereas it's supposed to be something like "audiophile" quality.
The amp is a A-A9-J (european name - I think it's known as Elite SX-A9-J on north american market...).
The table is a Rega P1 with a nagaoka MP-110 cartridge.
This table (with this cartridge) played very well on several other amps I tried recently, from quite good hardware to 40 or 30 years old vintage integrated amps!
On the brand new Pioneer, the sound is really poor, breathless, flat... awful! I tried to plug the TT to a Cambridge 640p pre-amp, itself plugged in the AUX line entry from the amplifier, it was quite good.
The Pioneer is supposed to also supports MC cartridges, which usually is sign of a certain quality, or at least a certain effort made on the phono stage by the manufacturer, but in this case, it's just not usable at all.
I can't imagine that this phono entry is that poor that I'd have to buy an external pre-amp to play my records with it!
Any advice???
Thanks!