Unti I get a decent pre-amp I am going to use a NAD 352 as a pre-amp into a NAD 272 poweramp.
I am a bit confused about which pre-outs to use on the 352.
I know to remove the link from pre-out 2 - main in to disconnect the poweramp in the 352.

According to the manual it says to use pre-out 1 on the 352 if you have a single poweramp, but it then says you can use pre-out 2 but that pre-out 2 is affected by the volume/tone controls of the 352.

So if I use pre-out 1, the volume controls will not affect the output?

On the 272 there's a fixed in or variable in.

Which are the bext connections to use please?

You can email NAD, but I think it would be pre-out 1 to fixed it.

You can always try all 4 combinations - it wouldn't hurt anything.

Which volume/level control do you want to use?

Typically, the volume control on the preamp is used. The main purpose of a preamp is usually for volume/tone control and input switching. (Only microphones & turntables need actual pre-amplification... Everything else is usually attenuated rather than amplified.)

The level control on a power amp is usually used more as a 'gain control', and it's usually set once and left alone. Typically, the control on the power amp is only needed when you need to match the gain of two or more different amplifiers, or if you have a subwoofer or bi-amp/tri-amp set-up and you need to balance the levels.

Uhhhh... If you don't have a volume control somewhere in the chain, you'll overdrive the amp and maybe "hurt" the speakers, your ears, and maybe even the power amp!

D'oh! Doug is correct.

If you plan to listen only to CD and your CD player has a volume control on the remote, you can go straight from the CD player to the amp.

Thanks for the replies.
I used preout 1 on the 352,
What confused me was that the manual only said that preout 2 was affected by the tone/volume controls, it didn't mention preout 1.

So I didn't want to blow the poweramp & speakers.

So I connected it to preout 1 after turning the volume down on the squeezebox (source) to zero & gradually increasing it.
The tone/volume does affect preout 1 on the 352.

Now, I have the volume on the squeezebox set at 100% & use the volume control of the 352. I have the tone defeat button pressed always.

Am I right to have the volume of the squeezebox source at 100%? I cannot hear a difference if I set it at 95%, 90% but I have not had a chance to try all volumes yet.

Finally, As there is a volume on the squeezebox, would I be better to connect it directly to the poweramp rather than through the preamp?
I have everything going into the preamp so as to just use one control.

I use QED silver spiral connects between the sqeezebox & preamp & between the preamp & poweramp.

Thanks again.

I think that's fine.

The general theory would be to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio by keeping all the levels as high as possible (as long as you don't drive any of the stages into distortion/clipping) throughout the audio chain, until you hit the volume control. For example, you wouldn't want to over-attenuate the signal at the Squeezebox (or at the computer) so that your preamp has to re-amplify it.

If you have something else hooked-up (like a CD player) you can adjust the Squeezebox volume to match, so that the volume doesn't jump up or down when you switch between sources.

Great, thanks for your replies.