I have connected a recently acquired Beogram 5500 turntable to my Beosound 3200 via the std B&O din (A-AUX).  Unfortunately the volume coming out of the system is very low. Any thoughts on the reason for this? How do I overcoem this? Thanks!

Good morning.

The Beogram 5500 was designed to work with the Beomaster 5500 which has a RIAA pre-amplifier built in.
The  3200 Aux connection doesn't, so you will need an easily available pre-amp like THIS

Andy T.

Basically, you bought the wrong deck!

You should have bought a Beogram 3500, 4500, 6500 or 7000, either of which would have worked perfectly, as they all have the RIAA pre-amp built in to the deck.

This is a much better solution to the problem giving better sound quality and less interference.

.........creeps away to put flak jacket on........

True, though these decks often attract a considerable premium. The external RIAA will work just fine - make sure the earth is attached - the 3200 has not got datalink so you cannot remotely control the turntable.

Sorry Peter but I disagree!!

The low cost external RIAA pre-amps are designed to operate with the output from "normal" moving magnet cartridges.

The B&O MMC design has a much lower output than "normal" resulting in much higher volume control settings being used on the output amplifier. This has a tendancy to increase the audible noise and hum to levels which, in my experience, are unacceptable. This is particularly true with mains driven pre-amps.

I have tried several designs from various suppliers and none sound as good as the built in designs.

Given the choice, I would pay the extra for a B&O deck with the built in pre-amp.

Although I am no expert, I find it hard to believe that there is not a phono preamp that one can buy that will not provide acceptable results.  Might have to spring for a decent one costing a few hundred, but these phono stages go up to the thousands of dollars, even 10s of thousands so I'm sure there is one out there.

Well, the components for a typical Beogram internal RIAA cost at most 20 euros at the corner shop and the one from, say, Beomaster 5500 would be even cheaper, so why not build a replica if that's the problem...

(In all truth, it isn't that trivial as following the schematic from the service manual - there are plenty of ways to construct it wrong and get a bad result. And the extra connections needed for a external box may well be somewhat of a problem themselves.)

By the way if you live in the UK Soundsheavenly.com can make you a kit.

macjonny1:

Although I am no expert, I find it hard to believe that there is not a phono preamp that one can buy that will not provide acceptable results.  Might have to spring for a decent one costing a few hundred, but these phono stages go up to the thousands of dollars, even 10s of thousands so I'm sure there is one out there.

The point is to keep the costs below the cost of a B&O deck with built in pre-amp and with satisfactory performance.

I am argueing that, at the moment, it can't be done. Throwing money at the problem is a different scenario!

Graham,

I did realize that , and obviously at the point of buying the phono stage you could just buy another deck for the same price!