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Need help connecting Beyerdynamic A20 to NAD C326BEE

73.249.40.74

I decided to try headphones again. I haven't used headphones (except earbuds) since I was in college many years ago. I bought a pair of Beyerdynamic T90's and the A20 Beyerdynamic amp. I was advised to connect the RCA cables from the head amp to the TAPE OUT on the Integrated amp. Not good! The sound was really bad. Then I tried the PRE OUT which was better but not great. Here's the thing: the A20 has input and output sockets and according to the manual "the input is looped-through, which means audio signals that are present at the INPUT sockets are routed to the OUTPUT sockets, even when the device is switched off." I'm not sure whether I should be connected to the INPUT or OUTPUT sockets on the A20! I'm not sure what I should try. I would appreciate any advice. Thanks Bill

Follow Ups:

RE: Need help connecting Beyerdynamic A20 to NAD C326BEE - John Elison 08:15:40 01/08/18 (0)
Your NAD has a weird tape output. It's unbuffered and has a 1k-ohm series resistor between the source and whatever is connected to the tape output. It's basically worthless for connecting a headphone amplifier unless you short out the series 1k-ohm resistor. That's what I would do, but I'm an electronic technician.

Your best bet would be to use the quarter-inch headphone jack on the front panel. You can either drive your headphones directly or you can connect your headphone amplifier using an adapter cable with a quarter-inch headphone plug on one end and RCA plugs on the other.

Your only other option would be to use the main preamp outputs. Connect them to the inputs on your headphone amplifier and use its parallel output sockets to connect a power amplifier if required. That's probably why Beyerdynamic installed both input and output sockets on your headphone amplifier.

Good luck,
John Elison
RE: Need help connecting Beyerdynamic A20 to NAD C326BEE - PAR 21:11:59 01/06/18 (0)
It might help if you identified the integrated amp involved.
EDIT: Oops it is , of course, in the subject line.
The connection method that you precis from the Beyer Dynamic instructions seems standard and is the way that most people (including me) connect a headphone amp to their system, that is that the Tape Out RCA sockets on the integrated connect to the RCA Input sockets on the headphone amp. You should then find that the volume setting on the integrated has no effect on the sound level of the cans and that only the volume control on the Beyer Dynamic amp sets their sound level. If you have another result then please advise.

Edits: 01/07/18 01/07/18

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