Budget and dinky amp recommendations

MarkW

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Jul 26, 2020
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Hi. Like many blokes of my age I decided recently that rather than disposing of my old vinyl collection (Punk and New Wave seeing as you ask) I'd buy something to play them on, not having had a 'record player' for 25 years or so. And I say 'record player' as I never got into hifi back in the day.

As I didn't want to spend over 600squids, and as the wife wanted something to fit in with the decor, and space was limited, I went for a Pro-Ject T1 Phono SB (built-in phono stage) + Jamo S801 PM Powered Monitor Speakers, both in white. I'm happy with performance although there isn't quite as much 'ooomph' even on full volume.

So the next step, I guess, is amplification, and as space is at a premium, the Pro-ject Stereo Box S2 Integrated Amplifier is what I'm looking at.

I have a few questions

1 - are there better options for a small integrated amp at this price point?

2 - I also bought off ebay a Tivoli Audio Model CD player (on account of it's size), which goes through the speakers ok but really doesn't give much depth or oomph - will this amp bring this cd player's sound up to scratch?

3 - or would I be better off with a Denon or somesuch CD player with an amp in it, and putting the turntable through this kit?

4 And finally, I see from the back of the Stereo Box S2 amp, it doesn't have a pair of RCA sockets to one speaker, but a L/R output x2, so presumably an amp feeds each speaker directly. Will this be ok with the Jamo speakers where the R speaker feeds the L speaker? (And what type of cable do I need as these outputs aren't RCA - are these banana outputs??

Thanks in anticipation

Mark
 

MarkW

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Jul 26, 2020
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You don't want to use an integrated amplifier with speakers that are powered.
If going down this route you need to get rid of those speakers as well, or you could stick with current set-up and upgrade those powered speakers.

Does "don't want to" mean "it's not possible to"... ? i.e. are powered speakers purely for connecting to turntables?
 
And is it possible to connect a 'power amplifier' to powered speakers. (Massive learning curve, this hifi stuff!!)
Basically no. The powered speakers are just that because they already have an amplifier built in.
It is possible to connect them to a preamplfier so you can connect other sources to that if the speakers do not have the ability to attach to more than one source.
You cannot put a power amplifier or an integrated amplifier in the set up.
If you're not getting enough 'ooomph' then the speakers were not a good choice.
Obviously, in your case, 24 wpc is not enough
 

MarkW

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Jul 26, 2020
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Basically no. The powered speakers are just that because they already have an amplifier built in.
It is possible to connect them to a preamplfier so you can connect other sources to that if the speakers do not have the ability to attach to more than one source.
You cannot put a power amplifier or an integrated amplifier in the set up.
If you're not getting enough 'ooomph' then the speakers were not a good choice.

Thx for this. One final thing - checking online is see my powered Jamo speakers are 40w whereas the unpowered version are 120w - will this be right, that unpowered speakers
Basically no. The powered speakers are just that because they already have an amplifier built in.
It is possible to connect them to a preamplfier so you can connect other sources to that if the speakers do not have the ability to attach to more than one source.
You cannot put a power amplifier or an integrated amplifier in the set up.
If you're not getting enough 'ooomph' then the speakers were not a good choice.
Obviously, in your case, 24 wpc is not enough

Thanks for this. One last thing - just checking online and I see that the unpowered version of the jamo speakers are 120w and my powered version are 40w. Is it the case that the unpowered version of the same speakers connected to an amplifier will outperform the powered ones quite substantially?
 

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