How to confirm a speaker really has a phono stage
Marketing copy is loose about this, and “works with turntables” is not the same claim as “has a phono preamp”. Two reliable checks:
- An input labeled PHONO, not AUX, LINE or RCA. Some speakers label a single input PHONO/LINE with a switch, which is also fine — that switch is the phono stage going in and out of circuit.
- A ground screw beside that input.This is the strongest tell. A ground post exists to tie a turntable’s chassis and tonearm to the preamp’s ground reference, and it is only needed for a phono-level signal. Nobody fits one next to a line input.
If a speaker has neither, it takes line level only. That is not a problem — it just means the phono stage has to come from the turntable or from a separate box. Our guide to phono preamps with powered speakers walks through the four possible combinations.
One cabinet or two: the Spinbase question
Three of the picks above are conventional stereo pairs. The Andover Spinbase 2 is not — it is a single cabinet designed for the turntable to sit directly on top of, with the phono stage inside and a patented anti-feedback design called ISOGroove.
That anti-feedback engineering exists because placing a turntable on a speaker is normally a bad idea. Speaker output shakes the plinth, the cartridge reads that vibration as signal, and the loop turns into a low booming howl. Andover has built a product specifically to make that arrangement survivable, and it is the right answer if you have exactly one shelf.
What you give up is stereo separation. Two drivers a few inches apart in one box cannot produce the image that two cabinets a meter apart can. If you have the space for a pair, buy a pair. If you genuinely do not, this is the product designed for that constraint rather than a compromise you improvise.
What the built-in stage is and is not
Every phono stage in this roundup is a fixed-gain moving-magnet circuit. That is the right choice for the market — virtually every cartridge fitted to a turntable under $1,000 is a moving magnet, and 47 kΩ at around 40 dB of gain suits all of them.
The limits are worth stating:
- No moving-coil support. A low-output MC cartridge produces a fraction of the voltage these expect, and will sound faint. See MM vs MC.
- No adjustable loading.You cannot tune capacitance to your cable and cartridge — the reason the Schiit Mani 2 exists.
- No upgrade path.Improving the phono stage means buying different speakers, or bypassing it with an external stage into the line input — which works, and makes the built-in one redundant.
None of that matters if you own one moving-magnet cartridge and want fewer boxes. All of it matters if you are building a system you expect to develop.
Setting one up
Four steps, and it is genuinely this short:
- Set the turntable’s own switch to PHONOif it has one. This bypasses the deck’s internal preamp so the speakers’ stage is the only one in the chain.
- Run a normal RCA cable from the turntable to the speakers’ PHONO input.
- Attach the turntable’s thin ground wire to the ground screw. Skip this and you will usually hear a steady mains hum.
- Select the phono input on the speaker or remote and play a record.
If it comes out loud and distorted, the deck is still set to LINE and you have two phono stages in series. If it comes out faint and thin, the speaker is on its line input rather than its phono input. Both symptoms are explained in phono vs line.
When to buy line-only speakers instead
If your turntable already has a switchable built-in preamp — most decks under $400 do — then a phono input on the speakers buys you nothing, and the money is better spent on the drivers. In that case go to our powered speaker roundup or speakers under $200, where the Edifier and Fluance pairs offer more speaker per dollar precisely because they are not paying for a phono circuit.
The speakers on this page are for the other case: a deck with no preamp, and a desire not to own a third box.
