does anyone have an opinion about wheather some receivers are better for playing records than others??? and can you hook up a record player with the marantz???
Unfortunatly most brands have discontinued phone inputs on all their models or you have to go to the more expensive models to get a phono input. In general Denon and Yamaha still include phone on most models. Onkyo on the top two, Elite on the top two, Marantz on the 9300 only, and H/K, Rotel and NAD not at all. You can always use a phono pre-amp but I have had problems with some of these in the past and would prefer a receiever with a phono input as part of the input package. To me this is a sad development and in general most unit are lacking in inputs in general.
It's true most receiver's nowadays do not include a phono pre amp built in, I believe it's a money saver for them plus vinyl is not a very popular medium these days... I bought a NAD T752 recently at Saturday Audio and had them send me the NAD PP2 phono preamp for my LPs,, works great, you can spend from $50 to Thousands on a Phono preamp these days, $99 was enough for me , I didn't want to chance lousy sound so I didn't even consider one of the $50 preamps..
You are much better off getting an outboard phono pre-amp. I know it isn't as elegant of a solution, but you aren't locked in to one particular phono pre-amp section either as many of the built in units are quite poor, regardless of how much the receiver cost. Paul T's suggestion of the NAD PP2 is a good one, as is the Sumiko Pro-Ject Box ($120) and the Parasound phono pre-amp (~$125).
, I didn't want to chance lousy sound so I didn't even consider one of the $50 preamps..