Hi, my name's Eric, I'm a writer here at Crutchfield, and today we're going to talk about the Cambridge
Duo phono pre-amplifier. So the Cambridge Duo has inputs for moving magnet and moving coil
cartridges, so it's a little more versatile, and it also has a headphone amplifier built in, so
you can do private listening, or perhaps everyone else in the house is asleep and you still want
to listen to records, you can continue with that. One thing you're always going to need when you're
using a turntable is a pre-amplifier to boost the very tiny signal that comes out of the cartridge,
and that can be built into the turntable. Sometimes it's built into your receiver or your amplifier,
your integrated amplifier, sometimes you might have a pair of powered speakers that has that built in.
So those built-in pre-amplifiers that might come in another component are fairly basic, and when
you go for a separate component like this you're going to get improved sound quality, and you also
get a lot more versatility. For instance, you get the opportunity with this one to use a moving
magnet or a moving coil cartridge, and that's something that is harder to come by in those
built-in pre-amplifiers. So I could choose from any number of phono pre-amplifiers to use in
my own system, but I own this piece myself, and I chose it for a very specific reason. My desk
at here at Crutchfield headquarters used to be fairly small. When we renovated in 2021 I got
a much larger desk and I saw an opportunity to start listening to my favorite records
while I'm working. So I didn't want to hook up to a set of speakers and blast it out and disturb my
co-workers, so I intentionally went looking for a great phono preamp that would give me that
versatility and allow me to listen privately. So that's where the headphone amplifier comes in
for me. So certainly for just convenient listening you could always stream some
of your favorite tracks, but I happen to be a big fan of jazz music and especially
some of the vintage labels like Impulse and Blue Note Records, and I have a lot of those,
and I just happen to think they sound a lot better in their original analog pressings, and I have some
of those at my desk and I'm able to listen to them and hear them really with spacious sound,
very warm, analog sound. That's something that we talk about a lot with vinyl, and I feel like
it's really important to be able to do that with a great pair of headphones and this wonderful piece,
to be able to to make them sound kind of the way that I want them to sound all the time.
Also, just since part of my job here at Crutchfield is to write about two-channel audio, I like having
the opportunity to have a system right there at my desk I can, while I'm doing my job, set up a
turntable. I can set up different headphones, I can try different pieces, I can swap them in and out
and actually do some of the auditioning and demoing that I need to do in my day-to-day work
right there at my desk. Now being able to listen on headphones at work was important for me because I
don't want to disturb other people, but most the time you're probably going to want to hook this
up to a sound system or a pair of powered speakers, something where you can listen out loud and really
enjoy filling the space with great music. And you can of course still do that with this, it does still
have RCA outputs so that you can connect to an integrated amplifier, or again, powered speakers,
something like that and listen out loud. So perhaps you don't need the headphone amplifier,
and maybe you're not planning on using moving coil cartridges at any point in the future.
If that's the case, there's a piece called the Cambridge Solo that just does the moving magnet
cartridge connection and does not have a headphone amplifier, and that will do the basic job for you.
You'll still get that wonderful Cambridge build quality, that look, and that wonderful, spacious
sound that you get out of any Cambridge piece, but you just don't need necessarily to have all
the extras that I find very useful about the Duo. So there are a lot of phono preamps on the
market; if you need a little help picking the one that works best for your system,
contact us here at Crutchfield and we will give you some expert advice. Thanks for watching today.