[minkstole]

Hello,
 
I am hoping someone can help me with an issue I'm having with the line-out connection from my 2nd gen iPod Nano.
 
I will soon be buying my first pair of audiophile grade headphones as an upgrade from my current pair and have spent hours and hours researching which ones to buy.  I will also be buying a headphone amp when I have more money further down the line but for now I will be using my old Technics SUV-500M2 stereo amp to drive the headphones.
 
My problem is: I don't want to use the headphone-out from the iPod to connect it to the amp and would rather use the line-out.  I bought a new Apple line-out dock to plug the iPod into and have a 3.5" to RCA cable to connect the dock to the amp.  However the volume level is rather quiet and I have to turn the volume on the amp up much further to get a reasonable listening level when using the iPod than when I am using my CD player through the amp.  When using the CD player the amp has sufficient power to easily drive the headphones to a very very loud level.  Not so with the iPod.
 
Also, when using the line-out from the dock the volume is only very marginally louder than when I connect my iPod directly to the amp through the headphone-out via the 3.5" to RCA cable.
 
Also, when I plug my headphones directly into the iPod headphone-out they again can be driven to a very acceptable volume.  However, as a lot of the headphones I am looking at buying require an amp I would really like to get this issue sorted.
 
So....not really sure where I am going wrong.
 
Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
 
Thanks

 

[mootookang]

The point of LOD is to bypass the amp that drives the headphone jack that has little power.
 
If you connect an amp to a headphone output, it would be amping the music twice, which makes little sense, and can also ruin the SQ of the music.

 

[minkstole]

Thanks very much for your reply. Any idea why the volume of the line out from the ipod is lower than the line out level from the cd player. I thought one line out was basically the same as the next and doesn't involve any amping but how then can they be different volume levels when both line outs are connected to the same amp?

 

[mootookang]

What's your CD player?

 

[minkstole]

It's a Technics SL-PG590.  I bought the amp and CD player (separates) quite a few years ago but have always liked the sound quality from it.

 

[mootookang]

That's why, you shouldn't expect a small portable player to output the same voltage as your desktop player.

 

[minkstole]

that explains it then. Thanks for your reples. I'm kind of new to some of this and thought i was maybe doing something wrong. Thanks