How to Connect a Turntable to the Aux Input on a Receiver

did you just buy a turntable and realize your receiver does not have a phono input did you try to hook up your turntable to the AUX input instead and not get any sound if so don't worry I'll show you two ways to connect your turntable to your receiver via the aux input right after this along with my YouTube channel here I also write articles on my blog where one of the most searched questions is how do I connect my turntable or record player to the AUX input a lot of newcomers to vinyl will buy a turntable and get home to realize that their receiver or amplifier doesn't have a phono input and instead they try to plug their turntable into the auxiliary input on that receiver amplifier and they can't hear any music the reason you're not hearing any sound is because you need a phono preamp the job of the phono preamp is to Simply amplify the tiny signal coming from the tiny needle on your turntable that's actually making contact with the vinyl record it needs to amplify that into a loud enough signal for you to actually hear so in order to actually hear music when you connect your turntable via the aux input you need a phono preamp you'll either need to buy an external phono preamp like this one or there's a chance if you have a more modern turntable that it has a built-in phono preamp that you can use instead so let me first show you how to connect your turntable using an external phono preamp like this one and then after that I'll show you how to look at your turntable to determine if there's already a built-in phono preamp and if there is I'll show you how to connect that to your receiver or amplifier as well so let's talk quickly about external phono preamps next so as I mentioned before that little needle on your turntable that is making contact with the vinyl record cannot produce a powerful enough sound to play back music without using a phono preamp now you can actually hear a very small sound when you use your turntable even when it's not plugged up to a receiver it's just kind of like this like me real like high pitched tiny sound that tiny sound is what an external phono preamp like this needs to amplify so external photo preamps can range anywhere from fifteen dollars to thousands of dollars if you're new to vinyl you will most likely not want to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in a phono preamp just yet and if that's the case I'm going to include in the description below a list of affiliate links to phono preamps that range again from fifteen dollars up to a couple hundred dollars that you can go through and shop and buy one if interested so once your phono preamp arrives you're going to need to connect it to your turntable and your receiver let me grab the camera and get up close and I'll show you how to make those connections next okay so you'll note that I have everything stacked up here which is obviously not how you would have this in your system you would have everything probably side by side and the little phono preamp here would probably be sitting either directly on the table or maybe on top of your amplifier obviously not on top of your record player where you can't open it close it but when I tried to shoot this side by side it was so far out that you couldn't see the inputs down here so I stacked it all up and got in a little bit closer so that's what we're working with here I'm using a vintage Pioneer receiver here so you'll note over here it says phono and tuner let's just pretend those don't exist for this example okay here my aux inputs on this so for this example we're pretending that we have an amplifier that doesn't have a phono input so I'm going to show you how to connect your turntable to the phono preamp and then the phono preamp 2 the receiver so the first thing you want to do is you want to take the cords the RCA cables that are coming from your turntable and you're going to locate the input here on your phono preamp it'll say input and you're going to connect the cables appropriately by color okay so you now have your turntable connected to your phono preamp the next thing you want to do is connect your phono preamp to the receiver you're going to need an extra set of cables when you do this so when you order a phono preamp if you order an external one like this you will probably want to order yourself a set of RCA cables as well unless you're like me and you buy them whenever you find them at estate sales or yard sales or you know thrift stores I just always pick them up because you never know when you might need a pair so I note that this is kind of in your way there so let's move that so again we're going to go from the output it will say output on your preamp so let's plug these in and these cables are now going to go from the output on the preamp into the auxiliary input see if I can get that right there which is right here on your receiver uh actually left there we go right there I uh I know that's picky but trust me someone will leave me a comment and tell me I put the wrong Cable in there so may as well get it right so there you have it this is how you set it up your turntable is now the easiest way to think about this is that your preamp is now in between your turntable and your amplifier and that's what's going to boost the sound so turntable chords are going into the preamp and then the uh output on the preamp is going into your receiver now if your turntable has a ground cable like this one does to eliminate buzz and hum you'll note there is a ground screw here on the amplifier so you can connect that there to eliminate any uh humming or a buzzing noise so there you go that's how you connect these two now there's a chance you may not need to buy this external phono preamp and that would be if your turntable has a built-in phono preamp I actually have one over there I'm going to pull it over here and show you how to figure out if yours has a built-in phono preamp that way we can eliminate this and then I'll show you how to connect a turntable with a built-in phono preamp to the auxiliary input on the amplifier let's do that next okay now there is a way that you can connect a turntable to a receiver or amplifier with auxiliary input without having to have an external phono preamp and that is because the turntable itself has a built-in phono preamp so I want to show you right here if you'll note right here this is what you're looking for if you turn your unit around and just look for this little switch here right this photo input and line input means that this turntable has a built-in phono preamp which means we can connect it directly to the amplifier over here without having to use an external funnel preamp okay so let me show you how to do that just a sec okay so for this example this turntable was not sitting well uh if I stack it on this amplifier here so I'm just going to do this side by side again let's pretend like that this is not phono tuner let's pretend like this isn't here just for this example we're going into this auxiliary so this is to show you how to hook up uh or how to connect your turntable using the internal phono preamp to the auxiliary input so first thing you want to do is you want to locate this switch on the rear of the unit you want to make sure that this switch is selected to line input it switches back and forth It's usually pretty easy one side will say photo input one will say line input we want to switch it to line input at that point we are using the internal phono preamp and then the connection is really easy we're just taking a pair of RCA cables like we did in the last video and we are plugging those into the auxiliary input on the amplifier or receiver should you have a receiver so that makes it a lot easier because you don't have to have the box on the middle most modern turntables not most what a lot of modern turntables have this built-in photo preamp so if you're a beginner and you just bought a brand new one turn it around look on the back if you have this phono input or line input switch it to line input and connect it that way if you ever upgrade your receiver or amplifier down the road and it has phono then you can switch this to phono input and then you would take this out from auxiliary and connect it to phono instead because then at that point you're using the internal phono preamp here but for this example not to be too repetitive but switch this to line input connect your cables from your turntable to the auxiliary on the turntable as I mentioned earlier in this video this is a commonly asked question that drives traffic back to an article I wrote on my blog therefore I'm going to include a link to that article in the description below so if you'd like to read further information or step-by-step guide with photos you can click that link and it'll take you there and maybe it'll help you also also help you solve this issue connecting your turntable to the AUX input if you found this video helpful please consider hitting the like button it simply helps spread the video around to others who may be having uh the same issue hopefully help them fix it as well I have other videos on my channel as well some of them will pop up here please click through if uh if you're interested in watching those in the meantime thanks for watching today

Channel: Forever Analog

Views: 58,663

Keywords: turntable, record player, turntables, record players, turntable setup, turntable connections, turntable to aux, record player to aux, phono preamp

Id: RlzUUbYmv8o

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022