Phono and line stage

You do not need a phono stage for a cdp and, if you choose your cdp and amp with a little care, you will not need a pre amp either. You may need a volume control if your cdp does not have one. It is basically a matter of matching impedances and signal/sensitivity of the cdp and amp.

In some systems some folks prefer to use a preamp.

A few things to read.

1) ✔ A Taste of Tubes (67 pages), a worthwhile read from the folks at Sonic Frontiers: http://home.zonnet.nl/horneman/data/taste.pdf
2) ✮ The National (British) Valve Museum This is a beautiful site. All of the articles are good but read the “Story of the Valve”, if nothing else, if you are new to tubes. http://www.r-type.org/static/.contents.htm
3) The Cool Sound of Tubes, E. Barbour: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/select/0898/tube.html
4) How A Vacuum Tube Works, E. Barbour: http://www.svetlana.com/docs/tubeworks.html
5) Vacuum Tube Valley FAXs, E. Barbour: http://www.vacuumtube.com/FAQ1.htm
6) Vacuum Tube FAX, H. Pasternack: http://home.earthlink.net/~busenitz/vac.html
7) A History of Tube Companies: http://vintagetubeservices.com/page8.html
8) Vacuum Tube Primer, R. Hamm: http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/faq/tubeprimer.html
9) Secrets of Home Theatre: Amplifiers. This is a really basic overview. http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_1_1/v1n1amps.html#TypesofTubes

Sincerely
I remain,

Pren, not to bore you with useless information, but the reason a pre-amp has an input designated as "Phono" is because a Turntable requires a differnt type of amplification than other sources.

Record companies began employing a type of equalization called the RIAA curve about forty years ago. What this did was increase the high frequencies recorded onto a record, and lowered the amount of bass found there. Bass signals require deeper grooves and therefore take up more space on an LP.

What the phonostage of a pre-amp does is reequalize the albums to sound like it was meant to sound. If a person were to listen to a record through an input jack other than one labeled as a Phono input, their record would sound terrible. The highend would be very tinny, and there would be no real bass to hear. On the other hand, if you were to listen to your CDP through the Phonostage, it would sound lousy, due to the equalization.

Purists may take exception to this explanation, but it was intended to be overly simplistic. The point is that unless you plan to buy a turntable you will never need a phonostage, and you will not be able to use that input for anything else.

Beware of Clueless, he is an absolute liar and a fraud. He is one of the more knowledgable people on AudiogoN, and anything but clueless!!!

Clueless, Once again your are in danger of dishonoring your hardwon Audiogon username by providing enough help to the rest of us that our snow-filled driveways go unshoveled while we try to read it all. Thanks for helping Pren, and showing why this site is so good - it's the posters (no, not that kind of poster!)

Thank you so much guys. I really appreciate your detailed information.