Sonos Amp and Vinyl Journey

  • 7 June 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 756 views

Hello All,

Just a bit of background for the folks going the vinyl route. I started my Sonos journey recently with a Beam and 2 Ones connected to my TV - all good, sound is what is expected and no issue.

As it worked as expected I decided to add a Amp to the mix for my study - and here is where it gets interesting. Round one bought a pair of Dynaudio Emit 10s and hated the sound when playing anything on the amp, we not at vinyl yet - was just a very bright sound and was definitely not going to work for what I had planned. Did a bit of good old research and most forums recommended the Neat Iota's for a warmer sound in small spaces, so bough second speaker pair and love the sound - so we are off to a good start, basics should be fine as the digital content sounds great.

The bought a Pro-Ject Essential with build in phono stage, hooked it up to the analog in and let rip - the sound was not quite what I expected, played with gain from 2-10 but still wasnt to my liking, something on the Amps ADC was not behaving as I expected. Maybe time for a better turntable so bought a Project Debut Carbon DC as this was well reviewed and sounds great in a basic setup. Now needed a phono stage and as part of researching I found Project had one with both digital and anlog out and the digital could be set to 48Khz as per Sonos requirement - threw it into the order.

Setup now is Turntable to preamp - from there I take optical thtough a Beam supplied HDMI converter to the Amp, for the fun I also connected the Analog to the Amp to compare Line in vs. TV. The sound through the digital path using an external ADC is much more to my liking and paired with the Neats is plus minus what I expected from this price range, the analog path on the amp however is not my cup of Tea. The current config atleast allows for it to be streamed to other rooms as well as the TV input can not be streamed elsewhere - yes grouping an option but not ideal.

Any case just wanted to share have something that works for me now but had to go a completely different route.

Kind regards, Emil


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1 reply

Just one additional point for reference - not sure if Project issues - If volume turned full on Amp (TV or analog in) there is a slight humm, solved by adding earthwire to phono pre-amp from wall.