Needing a good dual channel pre for stereo recording, I recently purchased a DRS-2 from Phoenix Audio UK. Although it's an original design, the DRS-2 has some Neve heritage; its Marconi switches are...
The ISA 428 is Focusrite's entry in the rapidly crowding DAW front-end field. Stock, it's basically four mic preamps in a box. With the addition of an optional card, you get eight channels of 24-bit,...
I added this box to my rack for a two-month testing period and was impressed right from the start. It's pretty much a 2U channel strip with preamp, compressor, gate, and EQ sections. At first I was...
What do you get when you combine the UA 610B tube mic preamp and the 1176LN compressor? The 6176, of course. Beyond the mic pre and compressor, the 610 section also boasts simple low and high shelf...
I recently had the opportunity to check out the Seventh Circle Audio N72 mic preamp with the CH01 chassis and PS01 power supply. The N72 is available fully assembled or in various kit forms. With the...
The PreSonus MP20 is a microphone and instrument preamp consisting of dual Class A discrete input buffers followed by a dual-servo gain stage. This design translates into a low-noise, high-gain box....
The M-3 is an 8-channel mixer clearly aimed at DAW users as a tube front/back end for those cold, hard computers. Many people seem to have issues with digital mix busses, and the M-3 is one of several...
Focusrite's take on the 8-channel mic preamp, the Platinum Series OctoPre, has everything one would expect in an outboard mic preamp, including good sonic performance, a clean user interface, and a...
Langevin was a manufacturer of consoles in the 1960s. Manley Labs has since purchased the name, and although they base some of their solid-state designs on the original Langevin topology, the original...
When I caught wind that Speck was working on a single-channel mic preamp, I was excited. I'm a big fan of Speck's reasonably-priced ASC parametric EQ. So I extrapolated and figured a Speck mic pre...
In my opinion there are very few mic preamps under $800 per channel that are any better sounding than an inexpensive console. Many of the "budget" mic pres are based on simple, cheap integrated...
Right from the start, I noticed that the Old School Audio MP1-A ($499) has an extended, "airy" top and sounds flat and accurate in the low end with very little coloration. Compared to the other two...
