[Jack in Wilmington]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

Your Sutherland phono stage is not very high gain. Combine that with the low output Goldring, the Cary, and your headphone amp, and you may just not have enough overall gain to drive your headphones effectively. You may need to consider a headphone amp with higher gain/more power, or a phone stage with higher gain.

Since the Sutherland has only one set of outputs, you can’t go direct to the headphone amp unless you want to switch plugs when you listen to headphones. You might try that though as an experiment: plug your Sutherland directly in to the Musical Fidelity and see how it sounds. If you still find you don’t get enough output then you need to consider alternatives: a higher output phono stage or higher gain headphone amp.

Could I use the line out on the headphone amp and run it into the AUX 1 on the preamp to complete the circuit?