[marios_mar]

Hallo people,
I have the Senns HD 580 and I want to get a preamp for a turntable. Do preamps usually have headphone outs? And do they have enough power for the 580s? What other options do I have ?
Thanks in advance

 

[fewtch]

No, none that I know of have headphone out, and since they output a strictly line-level signal they're likely to drive even sensitive headphones very poorly. The main point of a phono preamp is to bring the low output level of the cartridge up to line level, and compensate for the RIAA equalization used on the records.

The best thing to do would be to run the output of the phono preamp either to the "line in" jacks of a regular amplifier (and use the headphone jack on that) or buy a separate headphone amplifier. Check the "mall-fi" section on this board for some examples of high quality headphone amps, or try a search on Ebay for "headphone amplifier" and "headphone amp."

 

[Hirsch]

It's necessary to distinguish between a phono preamp and a preamp with a phono stage. The former is what fewtch is talking about, and he's correct. However, some current preamps, and almost all preamps if you go back far enough, have a phono stage as part of the preamp. These preamps wouldn't need an outboard phono stage to hook up a turntable, as they would have the necessary circuitry built in. Some preamps will have both a phono stage and a decent headphone output. I've got an Adcom GFP-565 that has both. Line-level preamps, such as the Melos SHA-1, have a very good headphone output, but you'd need an outboard phono preamp to hook up your turntable. And, there are other preamps with phono stages that won't have headphone capability at all.

Note that headphone capability in a preamp is not always great. Sometimes it's just stuck in as a marketing afterthought, and will not let you get the best out of your headphones.

So, the answer to your original question is that there are no universal rules. For your options, you'd need to start with your budget, and go from there.