It's a great help to know your background, as well as the distance from which you're trying to get this made right. Neither aspect of that occurred to me until my last post.

It's really hard to tell how this could have been made easier. All I can think of is that when the phono signal didn't sound right, all attempts at progress should have been stopped until getting knowledgeable advice instead of trying to throw one component after another at it. The client's suggestion of a second amp made things more difficult, but I'm sure seemed at the moment like a good possibility.

The entire speaker switching thing was a decent attempt at a solution but it was based on an ignorant approach. I mean ignorant not as a damning thing, but just as the truth; not having a single clue as to the right thing to do.

It would be worthwhile to analyze what happened here because it was one wrong thing after another, and we who could help were called on quite a way down the road. I've run into problems like this and often catch them after one insane choice has been made, before we're trying to figure out how to do something quite complicated and ludicrous. Try to ask us at that point instead of here!

Best of luck with this. I'm sure you can get things simplified. I'll help as directly as I can if you wish. PM or email me.

If you want to find out where the warmer sound comes from, connect the turntable to the piece with a phono preamp, connect a stereo cable from its Rec Out to the Aux or Tape In of the receiver and play an album. If it sounds the way he wants and the level is adequate, leave it, but show him how to operate it RELIABLY and leave a cheat sheet- he will forget how to do it.

If it sounds good and he likes it, get a phono preamp with impedance and capacitance compensation. Connect the Rec Out from the piece with the phono preamp to the Sonos- connecting the output of a phono preamp to two pieces of equipment doesn't always work well because it's not necessarily designed to see that load.

Good points. Also, if you extend the wires (I'll call them RCA wires for the heck of it) coming from the cartridge, you will cut off the highs. Turntables and cartridges are made to use cables of the lengths provided with them.

A bit hard to follow, but...

If you use a phono preamp and send it to two different devices, one should NOT be going to a phono input. That stacks two phono preamps in a row, and you will get increased background noise and gross distortion at moderate to high input levels.

It's amazing that this thread started off so wrong and has continued to the point where it's not clear whether an equalized, amplified phono signal, which is now a line level signal, is plugged into a phono input.

Tom could have used less detail (I know, I'm the one to talk!) by saying that stacking two phono preamps will give you totally crap sound.

First, I appreciate everyone's feedback and willingness to help! Secondly, the reason I think this is a little confusing has to do with the fact that I wasn't out there and didn't do the troubleshooting. I understand that details make a difference in what we do and I shouldn't have posted anything until I know 100% of the situation.


I don't disagree that I (we) lack fully understanding what's required to best "optimize" the 2 channel stuff but I do understand why the phono signal is what it is and what's needed to convert it to a usable line level. But your right, I didn't grow up with turn tables. The ABS-1 was the wrong choice and we should have installed the SPK-1 and that was my mistake. But the automatic switching wasn't the big issue. It had to do with the white noise coming from the older amp. We didn't troubleshoot it because I told the homeowner that we were taking the amp out. It could have been the amp itself. Allowing the amp was my first and only (IMO) mistake made in the very beginning. Also not spec'ing the appropriate amp for the customer. I should have sold a better amp....

Here is a diagram of what happeded:


Here is where it ended up. It doesn't sound as good. I don't have the spec's on the vintage (garage sale) amp:

Oh, yeah another vintage fact: it used to be the case that when a signal went through a Y and one amp was turned off, the other amp sounded like crap.

This is because older amps fed the signal through a capacitor and (rarely) a resistor to a transistor. When the amp is on, no problem -- that looks like a 10kish value of resistance. But when that amp is off, and there are no voltages to make the transistor work, the input looks to the audio source like a resistor in series with a diode. The higher the output impedance of the source, the more this will f#ck up the audio signal... which means the other amp then sounds distorted. Turn on the old amp and the other amp cleans right up!

That Kenwood looks like it's from the days when this would happen. Nobody Y connected them back then. It was only when we decided we'd make two zones out of one, using the client's old amp and new one, that we ran into this.

Amps these days are more likely to have inputs to ICs, and typically do not screw up the signal in a Y case like this.

So there's a whole other effect here. I don't remember reading that when the old amp is off, the other one sounds like shite, but it's very likely to happen if your "analog Y adaptors" are just pieces of wire with RCA connectors.

Are you using a Sonos Connect or Connect:Amp? Your wiring diagram shows wiring as if it was a Connect but the image is a Connect:Amp. I ask because (if it is a Connect) what happens if you get rid of those Y's and go direct from the phono preamp to the Yamaha and then audio out of the Yamaha into Sonos?

If the signal comes from a phono preamp, NEITHER of the inputs should go to a phono input.

There's no reason to use Y cords, at all. The Kenwood has REC Out jacks, which are live whenever a source is being fed through the selector switch. The only time the source signal won't be sent to the REC Out is when the Tape 1 switch is flipped, although it probably has a 'Tape Copy 1-2' switch, as well. It may even have two sets of REC Out jacks and if it does, this is far better than using one with a Y cord because these sections are usually buffered, so there's no interaction with the other equipment. If it has only one set of REC Out jacks, THEN, you can use a Y cord. I wouldn't rely on a phono preamp to supply the signal to two pieces without degradation unless it was stated so, and if it has a level control.

Looks like a KA-5700 and if it is, it DOES have two sets of REC Out jacks. It also has a real phono preamp, so the other one isn't needed, at all (unless he's using a moving coil cartridge or the internal preamp has problems). The internal one may be more noisy, so you could try the AUX in to see if the new preamp is better- connect from the TT directly to the Kenwood for this and then through the preamp to the AUX IN to compare.

AND when the Kenwood is turned on. It's quite likely the assumption was made that the Kenwood would be able to be turned on when needed and turned off otherwise. It's reasonable to think that if you don't want to play the phono through the Kenwood, you'd leave it off. That's a reason not to have it occur to a person to use the Kenwood Tape Outs. The same goes for using the Kenwood's phono input as THE phono preamp.


Or the Kenwood's power is off.


If it has ANY set of REC OUT jacks, you don't need a Y cord because the Y was for sending the signal to the Kenwood and to the newer amp. Your suggestion feeds it to the Kenwood and REC OUT feeds it to the other amp, so no Y is needed.


Phono preamps are intended to convert a cartridge signal to a line level, and I've never heard of one with level controls.

You guys are seriously awesome! I have to laugh because I'm typically guilty of requiring exacting details in order to give an accurate answer.

I've mentioned in 3 or 4 posts that I don't know the amplifier....I simply pulled the Sonos image and the amp image off the world wide web. I don't know the amp that was used and we did use a Connect.

Also the problem is fixed and I'm not worried about that anymore. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to improve the sound of the Yamaha because the vintage amp was considerably better. I would love to throw separates in or put in a $3000 amp but that is not in the budget.

I thought you had included that model of amp because you had found out what it really was. You didn't label it "representative -- not actually this model." Our memories are long out here, you know!

Please characterize what is not high fidelity about the sound of the Yamaha. And be sure this is a description of the sound with the Yamaha in plain old stereo. Surround modes often sound like crap with material mixed for two channels. The exceptions are just about every record Fink Ployd ever made.

RE: phono preamp, that won't work when it's off, but it's possible that the switching for sources, volume and tone controls are passive and that's something I hadn't thought of before. I have a Sony ES integrated amp that has all passive switching/volume and tone controls. I had it modified so it would have preamp out and when I shut the power amp off, I was surprised by the fact that the sound didn't stop.

Look at Art Audio- IIRC, they have at least one with a level control and I'll find another brand in the next day, or so- I installed one, but don't remember what brand it is.

The sound didn't stop from the REC OUT or from the PRE OUT, or both? If the switching is passive, it could come out the REC out when power is off. But the volume control is after the switching in the circuit path, then there's the line level amp (of a preamp) that gives you the PREAMP OUT. If audio goes through with the power off, then it should be lower in level and distorted, because it's just leaking through powered-down circuitry.


By which you mean a preamp with one pair of inputs and one pair of outputs, intended to amplify and RIAA equalize the output of a phono cartridge. Right? That's what I was talking about.