[bindibadgi]

I need to downsize all the equipment in my home stereo.

What I'd like to do is get some kind of integrated amp that has a good headphone out. That way I can have inputs from my CD player, my PC (probably only through a Chaintech AV-710 card), and my turntable, and also drive my stereo speakers. I'm no stereohpile here, just a noob who will probably not notice any great difference between systems.

Problem is, I don't have enough money for anything.

Is there something decent out there which I should look at, perhaps second hand?

I'm not expecting miracles here. I just want something semi-decent that doesn't cause a mess of components and cables.

 

[velogreg]

There are a number of options available, but a key factor is what is your price range?

 

[bindibadgi]

Embarassing.

I definitely would not escape with my life (or my wife - it's one or the other) if I spent more than $200 at the moment.

 

[hugz]

that makes it difficult. I suspect 2nd hand may be your way. alternatively maybe someone suggest a speaker amp which drives headphones through the speaker outputs well. that'd probably be my suggestion. with some resistors you can make it possible to power headphones with a speaker amp, assuming the amp allows shared grounds. some speaker amps will even be fine without the resistors

do you have a phono amp for your turntable? if not you'll need an integrated with a phono

 

[bindibadgi]

Yeah I'll need a phono input. I've currently got an old Goldring RS-10 (form memory) amp acting as a phono pre-amp but something is wrong in there. There are nasty cracks and sizzles which come through the headphone out whenever I move a slider, and even the line out at the back sounds a bit crackly (not to mention that the controls on the front, such as balance, affect the line out a bit - not good).

If I could fix that up, then I guess I'd be fine but I'm a real idiot when it comes to electronics so there's no use me even opening the box.

I suspect second hand is my best bet, seeing that I need the phono input. So is there anything I should look out for? Just looking on ebay there seem to be a few NAD 3020 amps going, but I have no idea whether they will be what I want or what else to look at.