CD playback distortion

Question

Hi all, I wonder if you can help. I have a planar p1 record deck (into a preamp) and a marantz cd6007 going into an rca splitter, then the output goes to a port and then to all my other sonos speakers.  The output from the vinyl sounds great but the output from the cd player sounds ghastly - muffled and distorted.  I have swapped the connections over to every different combination but nothing changes.  Some of my CD’s sound good but the majority are not up to the job.  The CD player is new (the output from the headphone socket on the player is absolutely brilliant, so no problems there).  Do you think that I need a separate amplifier in between the CD player and the Port, or is there something darker afoot?

Ken_Griffiths · Accepted Answer

Have you tried adjusting the ‘Ports’ line-in ‘source-level’ in the Sonos App ‘Settings/System/[Port Room Name] between 1 and 10 to see if that makes a difference and reduces the distortion?

Airgetlam · Answer

A question. Is this a simple wire splitter, or is it a proper a/b switch? What happens when you disconnect the record player, and connect only the CD player to the line in?

And another; why are you using the headphone out? Shouldn’t there be a set of RCA outputs on this CD player? It’s conceivable that the line level being sent by one device doesn’t match the output of the other, and the line in is having trouble meeting the needs of both. You’re much better off going with a true line level output on the CD player, and not a headphone output.

You should never need an amplifier between a CD player and a Sonos line in.

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