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September 16, 2013 - 1:38pm
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Looking for 2nd turntable - As usual, I am confused as to what to do
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yes, it's often the case that the phono will be the quietest among the sources. Look/compare for higher output for the cartridges you are considering.
Some phono stages have different gain settings. I am running my phono into the "correct" gain settings; if I wanted 3 dB more volume, I could adjust it to the next step (but don't really need to, I just turn up my amp a bit more).
I strongly suggest that you put $200 into a Musical Fidelity V-LPS phono Stage, and feed that to an AUX or other channel on the amplifier.
The sound quality will be much better, and the gain will produce a louder output.
The Marantz phono stage is mediocre at best.
As you note, the Rega TT and cartridge into the Brio-R should be nice. For the other setup with the Marantz, if you want to add an external phono stage (although you said it sounds very good already), then the Musical Fidelity and others are good, but I think it's also safe to say that one of Rega phono preamps would be very well suited.