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DJ & sound system

Connect a vinyl turntable to a speaker

4 min readL'équipe Fox Rider
Rear panel of a Pioneer DJM-800 mixer: For each channel, two pairs of red and white RCA jacks labeled PHONO and LINE, with the MASTER outputs as XLR and the BOOTH jacks on the bottom.
Photo: Fabexplosive — Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 3.0

The scenario is always the same. You get the turntable, you plug the red and white cable into the input of the active speaker, you put the record in - and there comes out a thin stream of sound, almost without bass, which you have to push all the way to hear. Nothing is broken. It's just missing a step that most PA speakers don't provide.

Know before you plan: DJ equipment cannot be shipped. He withdraws and goes in person to Lyon 3 (2 Impasse du Lutin, 69003 Lyon), by appointment. The excess of €200 is paid on site at the drop-off and returned to you on return.

Two black vinyl turntables seen from three quarters, with their S-arm and headshell

Why is the sound so weak

A DJ deck does not send an ordinary signal. It sends what the moving magnet cell placed on the groove produces: of the order of 5 millivolts, when a line level input expects more of a few hundred millivolts. The gap is closed with around 40 decibels of gain, provided by a phono preamplifier.

On the Technics SL-1210 MK2 , this preamp is not in the deck: it voluntarily outputs the raw signal, it is up to the following hardware to process it. It’s an accepted engineering choice, inherited from the hi-fi world, and it’s what most confuses people who plug in their first turntable.

The RIAA curve, the other half of the problem

Volume doesn't explain everything. When burning, all records undergo voluntary distortion: the bass is reduced, the treble is accentuated. Without it, a bass groove would be so wide that a 33 rpm record would only last a few minutes. This is the RIAA curve.

When reading, the opposite correction must be applied. This is exactly what a phono stage does, at the same time amplifying, and presenting the standard 47 kilohm load to the cartridge. This is why a turntable connected online doesn't just sound weak: it sounds thin. The bass was never returned.

Three montages that work

AssemblyWhat it takesFor whom
Turntable to DJ mixer, then speakersA table with PHONO entries and ground terminalOne evening, two decks, one sequence
Turntable to phono preamp, then speakersA small phono box and a pair of RCAs in additionListening to records, without mixing
Turntable to phono input speakerA speaker that explicitly announces a PHONO inputRare in sound systems, common in hi-fi

The classic trap is the second poorly executed case: a correct phono preamp, but connected after a volume adjustment, or powered by a noisy mains block placed against the cable. Place the preamp as close as possible to the turntable, and its power supply away from the audio cables.

Snoring: it’s the ground wire

There are two cables coming out of a SL-1210 MK2: the RCA pair, and a ground wire ending in a terminal. This wire is not decorative and is not used for electrical safety. It gives a unique path for ground currents, so they don't pass through the RCA connectors — that is, through the audio signal.

If you hear a low, continuous buzzing sound, check in this order: Is the ground lug screwed onto the dedicated terminal on the table? Is it tight? Are the turntable and the table plugged into the same power strip? A hum that persists after these three checks almost always comes from a ground loop elsewhere in the chain, not from the board.

The simplest solution for an evening

Rather than stacking boxes, put a machine in the center that already contains everything. The Pioneer XDJ-RX3 offers two PHONO RCA inputs — in addition to two LINE inputs — with a LINE/PHONO selector per channel. You plug the turntables directly into it, you switch the selector to PHONO, and both the level and the RIAA correction are assured.

The output to the speakers is then from the master, available in balanced XLR and RCA, with a 6.35 jack booth output for return. And if the room requires a title that you don't have on vinyl, the same machine reads a USB key prepared with rekordbox. This is the setup that we recommend to anyone who leaves with one or two Technics: a single box, a single mains cable, no preamp to look for at 10 p.m.

The takeaway summary

  • A DJ turntable outputs a phono level, not a line level: it always needs a phono stage.
  • The phono stage provides the gain and the RIAA correction: it is this which produces the bass.
  • The ground wire is screwed in, systematically, even before turning up the volume.
  • A table or console with PHONO inputs settles all three points at once.

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