Phono gain & Crack.

[JamieMcC]

Here's the thing I hooked the Crack up to the turntable today for the first time and with a little fiddling with the adjustable gain on the phono stage the sound coming out was absolutely can't stop jiggling about slamming fantastic. My other half was giving me some very strange looks but this was a seriously good sound through the headphones, T1's.

Normally I listen with the Cracks volume at about 7 o'clock which is just right 8 o'clock starting to be a little uncomfortable and never reaching 9 o'clock

My solid state phono stage has adjustable gain, playing around I adjusted it right down and the music I was listening to really came alive when the cracks volume knob started going round past 12 o'clock the position.
 
What's going on? Is there a way a simpleton like me can reproduce this result with a digital source . Or is this just a taste of the Vinyl thing that so many rave about and the penny is just dropping.

[mcandmar]

In my experience you generally want to stick to regular line out voltage/gain of about 2Vrms when feeding into an amp for best results.  Any more usually causes clipping and or distortion.  Let the amp do the amplification basically.

Having said that none of it may apply to a valve amp, cue the BH guys with a more technical explanation...

[Paul Joppa]

Most likely the phono preamp changes with the volume setting - it depends on how the volume is controlled inside that preamp. A few examples - perhaps the lower output corresponds to more feedback (lower distortion), or perhaps it eliminates some clipping (lower distortion of a different kind), or perhaps it passes less of the internal noise.