ART Pro Channel Preamp and Compressor User Reviews at zZounds

"The best bang for the buck in its price range." submitted August 4, 2007

By a customer from gmail.com

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Musical Background: active musician

Music Style: synthesizer pop

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Sound: Great sound for the price range - it's very clean and the tube pre doesn't color the sound much (can be a good thing or bad thing depending on what you want out of it) until you really drive it. It's a legitimate tube-based design in a world of "just stick a tube in there somewhere and it'll sell" products, and it sounds great and clean. I've heard that swapping out the tubes for better ones can make the sound even better, but I have no complaints thus far. Feature: It definitely has the best feature set in its price range - legitimate tube preamp with HPF, double-duty compressor (either tube or optical mode for different sounds and applications), and legitimate tube EQ with two sweepable mids. Each section would be a great unit on its own, and in fact they were before Art combined them as a channel strip. I like that they've kept a modular design - you can patch into or out of each individual section, or even re-patch them to re-route the signal flow (like if you'd rather have the signal go from the preamp to the EQ before going into the compressor). I've found that I like to have a few different compressors available to choose from for different applications, and I can easily bypass the internal compressor before coming back into the unit for EQ. My one complaint is that the compressor doesn't have variable attack or release times - instead, you have a button that chooses "fast" or "slow" for attack, and "fast" or "auto" for release. I have to admit that these options work for 90% of applications, but for control freaks who really want to fine-tune their compression (like me), it's a bummer. That's why I keep an FMR Really Nice Compressor sitting on top of this unit to patch into and out of. The VU meter sucks, though - there's no defending it. It's far too sluggish to have any meaningful use, and while it looks cool, I wish they had used the space for attack and release knobs for the compressor. Ease of Use: The manual is pretty solid, and anyone who already knows what they're doing shouldn't have much of an issue with it. You have to MAKE SURE that you set up your gain staging correctly, or it'll be noisy, especially if you're using a lot of make-up gain coming out of the compressor. This isn't an issue with the unit as much as an issue with proper gain staging - when I first got it, I was bummed that the compressor section was "so noisy" until I learned to set it up properly (get a good signal coming from the pre, get the compressor zero'd vs. the original signal, then use the master output for whatever makeup gain you might need). The actual interface is perfectly usable. Quality: It feels nice, smells nice, and looks nice. I knocked it off of the table once onto a hardwood floor and it hasn't had a single problem (cosmetic or function-wise) since. Value: The absolute best bang-for-the-buck in its price range. You'd have to spend significantly more (around $1,000 or more) to get a significantly better channel strip. Manufacturer Support: I haven't needed any support yet, but the manual is nice and helpful. I wish the manual/company was a little friendlier about encouraging swapping out the tubes, but I understand that they have to cover their butts if someone fries their own unit. The Wow Factor: It looks clean and nice - not too techy and not fake-vintage. Overall: I'll use it until I can afford something significantly better. And then I'll still use it.

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"Awesome unit for the money!" submitted February 22, 2011

By a customer from gmail.com

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Musical Background: Live Sound Engineer, Recording Enthusiast

Music Style: Vocal / Voiceover

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Sound: This unit has a very nice warm sound - I use it for voice work and am very happy with the sound of the tube pre-amp. Feature: Excellent feature set for the price! I find it very useful that both the compressor and parametric EQ can be bypassed if needed. Ease of Use: Maybe I'm old-school, but I like having all my controls on front of the unit and I also like the option of assigning the analog VU to various monitoring duties. Easy to set up and use if you have any clue about audio gear. Quality: For this price range, I was surprised. Nice solid pots and switches, solid metal construction, rack mountable, even comes with stick on rubber feet if you don't rack mount. Overall - excellent build quality. Value: Name one other unit which combines a tube pre-amp, two compression options, a four channel parametric EQ and then compare prices. Worth every dollar I paid, period. The Wow Factor: I have to say that it looks sweet sitting in studio. People not in the know are easily impressed by all the pots, switches, leds and meters. Overall: Overall I'm super happy with this unit. BUY ONE! or two or three...

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"What noise? none here." submitted July 13, 2007

By a customer from bellsouth.net

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Musical Background: Owner of Studio

Music Style: Anything except rap

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Sound: For this price range, this is the BEST mic preamp! The sound is silky smooth that is close to Universal Audio's much more expensive 610 recording strip. This unit is NOT noisy. It is dead silent. If you are getting noise, then check your cables and power source. Cheap cables will cause it.. i use mogami gold studio cables. Dead silent. Noise can come in through the powerlines as well. Get a furman power conditioner to help with the power line noise. Also, cheap mics can be noisy. Get a shure studio mic. Feature: Just about anything you need for recording vocals, guitar, bass... even violin and viola. Everything sounds good through this thing if you know how to use the settings. Ease of Use: Well, it can be complicated to figure out... but in general, crank up the gain and let the tube compressor cool down the hot signal. The result will be a silky smooth, fat signal. It will make your vocals sound perfessional. I own two.. one for the studio and one for live performances. It makes even weak voices sound powerful if you crank up the gain and then let the compressors tame it. Quality: Best in its class by far. Sounds as good as things costing much more. Very durable. I've traveled with mine in my gigging setup, and it still works great. Value: Well worth its price. Sounds almost as good as much more expensive units... Manufacturer Support: I sent them an email asking a question, and they replied promptly. The Wow Factor: It's a sexy beast. Overall: Get it and crank up the gain... let the compressors cool the hot signal down to about -5db to 0 db depending ont eh quality of your recording system. Some dont like too hot signals. Others have huge headroom. It's awesome.

5 of 6 people (83.33%) found this review helpful. Did you?

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"Great value for a home studio Pre-amp" submitted November 6, 2010

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Musical Background: Recording engineer

Music Style: What ever the artist wants

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Sound: For the price this unit is hard to beat. I have to concur that the VU meter as built is useless. It has been calibtrated by an engineer who does not understand the difference between a Peak meter and a VU meter. I have modified mine just so I can make the meter useful. (See gearslutz ART pro channel). Other than that it's a pretty nice box. Use for vocal and instruments in my home studio and its great. Feature: I would say the compressor is a great feature. Its pretty transparent when you tweek it properly. I like to use it for tracking and set it up as a limiter just to protect the track going down. Ease of Use: This product requires the user to understand gain staging. The compressor is good but a little cryptic for a newbie. Quality: Can't complain about quality. I looked inside and things are well built. Value: For the price this box is hard to beat! Overall: I will continue to use this box for a long time. I actually modded the VU meter and use it with an output transformer. These two changes, bring it up to pro level. For 199 you can't go wrong

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"If you can't afford $1500 for a preamp, then this is what you need." submitted July 9, 2008

By a customer from gmail.com

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Musical Background: Recording Engineer, Active Musician

Music Style: Rock, Pop, Electronic

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Sound: Very clean sound. EQ works just like it should. The compressor is quite transparent - much better than most bundled software plug-ins. The tube preamp is very clean, only colors sound when it is nearing overdrive but even then still produces a pleasing sound. Feature: For the price, I don't think you'll find anything close to this for features. The only thing that's missing for me would be variable impedance, and more attack/release control on the compressor. However the compressor as it is still performs exceptionally will. The option to have optical or tube compression is nice. Ease of Use: Read the manual. If you already know how to run a channel strip, this will be no problem. Quality: I gave this a ten, simply because for the price you won't find anything better than this. This is IT. Like other reviews have said, you'd have to spend $1000 more to get anything noticeably better. For the guys who said they are getting a lot of noise... you don't know how to use it. The one thing to make sure of is that you use the Hi-Z output so you don't have to add another gain stage going into your DAW. The only problem I've had with this unit was that for a while the compressor was taking around 5 minutes to kick in after turning it on. The problem went away on it's own, so I never ended up doing anything about it. Value: Like I said... for the price, this is IT. Manufacturer Support: Haven't needed it yet. The Wow Factor: It's no Avalon, as far as sex appeal goes, but it does come across as a serious piece of gear to people in the studio. Overall: The price has dropped since I got mine around 2 years ago. I'll probably buy another one soon.

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"POTENTIOMETERS ARE GARBAGE BUT THE FEATURE SET AND SOUND IS GREAT WHEN FIXED" submitted April 6, 2008

By a customer from gmail.com

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Musical Background: semi-pro

Music Style: rock, etc.

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Sound: When I finally got this unit working properly it sounds quite good and has a lot of flexibility of use. PLEASE READ BELOW! Feature: A great combination of features. Ease of Use: Pretty easy - if you're using this you probably have an idea of most of the features are used. Quality: Ok...here's my story. I ordered one of the these in the US but I live in Canada...no problem really. I got the unit and started using it but it sounded brighter than other preamps I tried. After using it just a few times my mic sound started giving me intermittent problem - no sound alternating with screaming loud sound and noise. Ok... here's where living in Canada is a problem in situations like this. I should have sent the unit back for repairs (I think their support is probably good). However, I did not want to ship it across the border and wait for it's return from across the border... so I took it apart to see if it was a simple problem (I have a reasonable amount of knowledge in this although I'm not a repair person). There is a circuit board inside that contains all the potentiometers (all the control knobs for the front). I quickly found that if I pressed this board the sound would cut in and out. This board has a 40 pin connector so I took the board out of the unit. This board has virtually no electronics parts (just the potentiometers) so I suspected that the board had some poor solder joints or perhaps a crack in one or more of the traces. I redid all the soldering and was testing resistance values when I noticed that I was getting infinite resistance on a number of the potentiometers (there are 11 pots). I squeezed (physically) the pots while checking their resistance values and the resistance across the pots would jump to the correct values. Eventually I pulled 9 of the 11 pots (2 of them are sort of unique and appear to be quite different). I replaced the pots with ones I purchased locally (about $1.50 each) and the unit works perfectly now. I'm shocked to think that ART would put so much effort into designing and building a unit that has good quality parts except for the controls! So...if you have one of these units, check the potentiometers - they are garbage. If you have questions, email me at martin.mcgeough@gmail.com Value: Great value if you can get beyond the problems I mention above. I can't say what it's truly worth...if people have problems is ART willing to fix all these? Manufacturer Support: After 2 emails they simply sent me the schematics I asked for. The Wow Factor: I like how the product functions now...it took me a lot of time to get to this point with the unit however. Overall: If I knew the build quality was so poor I would have looked for something else - if you can get through these problems quickly, it represents good value.

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ART Pro Channel Preamp Customer Review submitted February 28, 2011

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Features

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Sound: If you're buying this for a studio, and you only have $200, then you're stuck with this. It will work well, but there's better stuff out there. Take my advice and put good tubes in it. That will help. Also, the 'tube color' it offers when you push the gain is just noise- not color. Keep it low and you'll have a nice pleasant sound. Because this is a 'starved plate' design, you may not hear what you expect or want to hear from the tube preamp. Feature: lots of features. I do like the flexibility of the 2 picks of compressor and the wide tweakability of the EQ. I wish it sounded better. Ease of Use: pretty self explanatory, once you figure out how to keep it quiet and what 'x10' means on the EQ. This rocked me as a Bass guitar preamp. Can't beat it for $150. Quality: I have been shocked using this unit. By electricity. AC grounded to the chassis. Not well shielded (for all you single coil pickup people). Tubes are lousy. Put good ones in and it will sound a lot better. Value: decent value, but you can get used stuff that's better (IMO) for $250. Manufacturer Support: still haven't heard back from ART about getting shocked. The Wow Factor: If you need a preamp with EQ and compressor NOW, and you don't have a lot of scratch, this will do. Overall: price range= GREAT in the world of studio gear= not so great. I use this mostly for bass, and it's better than stock preamps in most if not all bass amps. I would recommend using high voltage tube preamps or no tubes.

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"Prochannel for the rest of us." submitted October 26, 2003

By a customer from ATT.NET

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Music Style: Alternative

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Sound: I find that I must use rather high amplification settings with the unit, but ultimately, the sone is warm and very good. Feature: I have played e-guitar and condenser mics through the unit. Great amplificaiton, nice detailed and warm sound. Compresser and equalizer also present, with ability to arrange the order. Many possiblities. I am still experimenting. Workmanship is not so great, but it is the insides and function that counts. Quality: I do not have much to compare it too. It appears to be a very good buy for the money. Overall: From what I have red and done, this is a very good buy. I do not have the ability to compare this to more expensive or other similarly priced units. I cannot always hear some of the effects of the unit, but this may be both my ear and my other equipment's limitations.

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"Not a one trick pony but it's a noisy beast." submitted March 1, 2007

By a customer from yahoo.com

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Musical Background: Artist formerly known as Fence

Music Style: Punk Polka Techno Ska Classical

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Sound: The sound of this unit is noisy. It anything out of the green in the meters starts to buzz for digital recording with soft parts. Feature: This unit does have a lot of features. From 48v mic amplification to compression to parametric eq it does a lot. Unfortunately what it does is add quite a bit of noise to the signal as well. Ease of Use: This unit is easy to use. Quality: I'm not real happy with the overall quality of this unit because of the noise issues I've mentioned. Value: I'll give it a five, it does give you a lot sound sculpting capabilities, noisily at least. Manufacturer Support: I haven't needed to use support so I won't give it a 10 or a 0... The Wow Factor: If you want sex appeal get an Avalon or a Neve 1073. I'm pretty sure those might do the trick... Overall: I'm going to get another pre amp very soon!

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"Do your homework - Then Listen" submitted June 24, 2004

By a customer from audioengineer.com

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Music Style: All

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Sound: Very Quiet and lots of gain. Pre sounds musical and EQ is acceptable. I use in studio and live. Dependable. Always can get desired result. NICE comp in unit well worth the money alone. Quality: Rugged and roadworthy. Value: Well worth the price in comparison to equivalent units. Specs are good or better than others. You won't be disappointed when you hear it. Overall: I am very satisfied with the Pro Channel. I own 2 and find them very versitile from drums, guitars and Vox. Your only limit is your imagination.

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ART Pro Channel Microphone Preamp and Compressor (Model 215)

User Ratings

"The best bang for the buck in its price range." submitted August 4, 2007

"Awesome unit for the money!" submitted February 22, 2011

"What noise? none here." submitted July 13, 2007

"Great value for a home studio Pre-amp" submitted November 6, 2010

"If you can't afford $1500 for a preamp, then this is what you need." submitted July 9, 2008

"POTENTIOMETERS ARE GARBAGE BUT THE FEATURE SET AND SOUND IS GREAT WHEN FIXED" submitted April 6, 2008

ART Pro Channel Preamp Customer Review submitted February 28, 2011

"Prochannel for the rest of us." submitted October 26, 2003

"Not a one trick pony but it's a noisy beast." submitted March 1, 2007

"Do your homework - Then Listen" submitted June 24, 2004