Sorry for my naievity (Im pretty new to audio stuff), but when someone says a pre-amplifier is a phono pre-amplifier, are they referring to the fact that the pre-amp uses RCA connections for the input and output ?
Perhaps your to young to remember the phonograph aka record player. They needed a special preamp which others can explain the specifics of (I think it added some bass eq or something). Anyway if you do not have a record player, you don't need a phono input. The phono input will not hurt your system in any way if you do not use it. It just amounts to one of the many unused inputs we have these days.
There's two points on which a phono input on a receiver differs from a line level input. A phono pre amp does the same thing a phono input on a receiver provides.
1) Higher gain, because the phonograph (turntable) puts out a small signal, compared to something like a CD player
2) RIAA equalization which is needed to compensate for technical limitation of the vinyl medium
If your receiver has a phono pre-amp, it has RCA inputs specifically designed to connect up to a turntable (aka. vinyl record player). Turntables need special inputs because they need to RIAA equalization applied to the signal.
In the past, all receivers had phono preamps, but makers started dropping that phono input, but since vinyl is getting a slight resurgence in popularity, so now it becomes a "feature"
Just in case none of the above posts were clear ...
If you don't have a phono, you don't care
If you have a phono and a receiver with a phono jack, you can use that for the phono
If you have a phono and a receiver without a phono jack, you need to buy a phono preamp to go between the phono the audio jacks on the receiver. And they can be had cheaply...or if you prefer, expensively (see Raskin's Needle doctor website.)
