Does A Built In Pre Amp Affect Vinyl Sound Quality

Unless that is the component you plan to connect to already has a phono preamp built in.

Does a built in pre amp affect vinyl sound quality.

Invest in a good preamp to make sure the sound quality stays high after the signal leaves the record player. If i were you i would sell that table and get a old school table to get you by for a while. But that does not mean that you will get the best improvement by changing your pre. Clear vinyl picture discs and glow in the dark pressings are more susceptible to poor playback.

However a preamp shapes the sound to a much lesser degree than one would think. There s likely going to demonstrably be some that could be picked up with precision instrumentation but it s generally way down the list of concerns with other parts of the chain making a much larger impact. Usually its sound character only becomes obvious at high gain settings or when you drive it into distortion. Some of these are rather cheap and can sound well rather cheap.

A few exceptions exist. Preamps play a big role in sound quality. Imo the pre amp has a major influence on the sound achieved but there are good sounding pre amps in both valve and ss formats and there are poor sounding pre amps in both valve and ss formats. The sound contribution of preamps is not so much in its frequency response but in the texture it imparts on the sound.

Lastly the higher output provided by ceramic cartridges lets the manufacturer cut costs by skipping out on a built in phono preamp a feature that also provides riaa equalization for accurate sound reproduction when playing lps. Even if you had an active preamp usually unless the design is terrible or not intended for audio or any precision use there s probably not going to be much of any less quality in that case either. I m running a carver c 1 preamp in mint condition as my main preamp and it s built in phono stages are excellent. A good article to guide the vinyl beginners and the pre amp is one major component of the vinyl music system.

Obviously i m biased being a rotel 1070 owner but unless you are willing to spend substantially more money than what you spent on the 1070 i doubt you ll get a worthwhile improvement in sound quality. It is more about the overall quality of the implementation of the technology rather than one technology is better that the other. A workaround solution is to use a quality phono preamplifier such as audio technica s at peq3 which sells for 60 on amazon.