Anyone use ART preamps?

  • Thread starter Thread starter nick6572
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Chessrock, thanks for the welcome. You know, I usually look at companies that have good engineering depts. I know it is hard for th home recording guys (and gals) to find this info. When I worked at DBX, I worked with the founder (way back in the 70s).
DBX, then,put serious engineering resources into their products.
They costed like hell, but were solid designs. When DBX sold out, they took some of these designs and mass manufactured them in Japan. Japan made them cheaper and brought solid manufacturing and QC to solid designs. Today, there are so many global factors. Much of the low and high end products are manufactured in whole or parts at the same assembly houses in China,Singapore,Japan and Malasya. Samson makes some great gear. I have a Noise Gate/Compressor/Expander that is very good. The real safe answer for the recording buffs is to look to companies that have been around a long time. Then, when selecting a component, read the manual. Solid designs have straightforward instructions that are not ambiguous. I have seen some really bad components that have all kinds of "sidebar" instructions about fixing problems that the component should not have in the first place. Mass produced electronics suffer from parts ( like op-amps, transistors, DSPs etc) that have "tolerence stackup". An Example: Part A (op-amp) is 2% underspec. Part B (feedback resister) is 2% underspec. The result is an amplifier that will be noisy and will have to be overdriven because the gain of tha amp is too low. Bottom line: Try more than one of any component that you buy. Some components will sound "sweet" on YOUR setup. Some will sound bad. All of your other components in the sounchain will have, to some degree, the same problems. High end componets are manufactured the same way as cheap components. The difference is in how much money goes into the design and "tuning" of EACH component. Many high end manufacturers build into their circuits methods to "hand tune" inputs, outputs etc. This costs much more.
Oh well, my post is long enough. Try as many as you can at home before settling on "the one". I do it all the time. GC probably hates me. So what.
 
"Honestly, I can't figure out why they get such bad press."

This thread's kind of taken on a life of its own beyond the scope of the original question, but I've wondered that myself. I did searches for actual reviews back when I was considering getting a pair of ART Pro Channels to use as a front end for Pro Tools. Every review I found was largely positive...even one from ProRec's Rip Rowan, who can be very discriminating even when it comes to high-end gear. I also found a message board thread in which someone had asked a Sam Ash salesman if he sold very many ART Pro MPAs. The salesman said not really, and when asked why, he said it was largely because many musicians have a preconception of ART gear as cheap and non-pro and dismiss it out of hand.

The ART unit I'm skeptical about is the Digital MPA...I can't help but doubt that the extra $200 tacked onto the price tag is going to get you a pair of A/D converters that could even begin to touch the Lucids or Apogees.
 
Well, this seems like a different face we're putting on the old "Toob MP". I finally gave up defending them after deciding I was killing my credibility doing so. A year ago it seemed that to admit that you like the sound of one was like saying you respect Anna Nicole. :) Glad to see some common sense prevailing now. For what, like $89, those little boxes are very versatile. Most everyone agrees they sound good as a bass DI, but I'm glad to see some others discovering how magical they are on acoustic guitar pickups. And while I don't use mine very often for vocs, I still maintain it's a good color to have in the pallett.
Cheers, RD
 
sweetnubs said:
an ART preamp would be good to use as a makeshift stepstool to reach for a real preamp at the top of your 36 space rack.
Click to expand...

Whats a matter nubs, still not cool enough to join the shit brigade at PSW?
 
Rational Punk said:
I used an ART Dual MP to track the majority of the CD I just finished a couple of months ago. I bought my ART preamps when I was still pretty naive about preamps in general and didn't know that what most seem to consider "pro-caliber" tube gear in fact costs at least ten times as much. That said, I'm not really unhappy with the sound I got from the ART. I did have to do a LOT of low-mid scooping on tracks recorded through it, but it did seem to make the highs a little smoother and soften transients (which is why I wanted a tube pre). I've heard a few people say the ART line can sound quite good if you replace the stock tubes, and I've heard a number of people say the ARTs sound veiled and lack clarity. I haven't had the opportunity yet to use high-end tube gear or a good solid state pre, so I have no frame of reference. I'm thinking for the next project I might just switch to an RNP or a Grace and try something radically different.
Click to expand...


I had the same expierience when I needed out board pres and had to start because of no money with a Mackie 1604. (This is back in 1999.) I am an artist that has been recording for over 20 years, but still was not familer with out board pres, for reasons too complicated to explain now!

Anyway I got suckered from a White Plains Sam's Ass salemen, who sold me the 1604 2 Art duel mono MPs, Duel mono EQ and the Pro VLA Compressor.

In the begining I was loveing the "Tube warmth" , because I was on a marketing hype and I had just spent, at the time, all of my hard earned dough!

As my time in the studio with this new gear became more involved, I then discovered that I needed some REAL TUBE GEAR!!

When I got my Manley 60db mic pre it was like the difference between rideing a rusty bike and then trying a Porshe!

Same with the EQ, which got replaced with a Manley Massive Passive (those that have not checked this piece out: (www.manleylabs.com) the change in audio quality also changed my perception of how I am hearing the music: It is sweeter, fuller, more there and completly real sounding, which the Arts do not provide.......not even close!
 
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Indeed, by all reports there's a definite gap (or is it yawning chasm?) between the "prosumer" tube gear and the real deal. That's why I've been thinking more and more that I'd be better off giving solid state a go, as there are actually some solid state units (such as the RNP) in the $1,000 and under range that most agree are respectable.

That said though, I try to keep the whole issue of equipment somewhat in perspective. Out of the several dozen people who've downloaded clips from my website (some of whom have been musicians and engineers), I've heard nothing but compliments on the songs and performances and not so much as one negative word about the sound quality. Could I have achieved an even better-sounding CD using Manley, Avalon, Vintech, et al? Undoubtedly. But I have to say the ARTs did their job at least to the extent that they didn't damage the audio fidelity enough for most listeners to find it objectionable.
 
Oh. So now we're talking solid state class "A"?

K. Here's a short sample of a Boston 7'-2" Concert Grand recorded using a pair of SM81's and a pair of Audix 35102 mic pre's.
lg-207013.jpg


This "Audix" is NOT the same company that makes the drum packs. ;)
These modules were developed by ex-neve employees.
My Pair is re-racked by Brent Averill. Class A, Discrete, British EQ.
Top 'o line stuff really.
Compare this to the toob sample I posted earlier.....

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=1656&alid=-1

The samples are called sm81 and sm81sanseq.
 
OK, I see what your sayin Mad John, and you are right, but I think to be comparing something like a massive passive and an ART, is a far cry from anything that even needs to be said. It should be obvious that something that retails at $4800 is not comparable to something in this sub $$400 range. However, I myself have owned the dual MP, and currently own the Pro Mpa. My dual mp was a little noisy, but it's true that bass is killer through it. I also found that putting a guitar through it and then into a software modeler made an amazing difference in the reallness of those brittle sounding plug-ins. It didn't really turn my crank overall though. One of my favorite albums ever, was done totally on a pro mpa and it is fabulous. He only used a dragonfly and a blueberry, on a Yamaha DAW. Anyway, I have used it lately and I love it. I think if you need something that will cover all your tracks for $300 or less if bought used this is killer. I have had the VTB-1, the Meek MQ3, Audiobuddy among others, and this crushes them for Pro tone for my application. I liked the VTB-1 but this is still better for me. Keep in mind when i say crush I mean that for me individually, others may feel completly different as they have full right too, the right comes with having different ears than I have. Now I also love my Soundtracs pre's but for different reasons. I see myself getting a John Hardy M-1 this summer, and then keeping the Pro Mpa for a real nice flavor. And it IS a very nice flavor as long as it is used right. BTW it is very quiet also.
 
Hey dudleys lemme ask you a followup question: Do you like the pro mpa or dual mp better for the bass & guitar? Cause I've decided on the pro mpa for general tube pre duties, but I have two inputs left in my DAW and 2-3u left in my rack, so I was thinking about another unit or two for dedicated guitar & bass. I strictly use amp modelers for guitar, so the typical guitar units haven't seemed appealing. What do you think, another one of these two ART units?
 
Well it's hard for me to say as of yet. As for general purpose I like the Pro Mpa better for shure. I did some direct guitar stuff through the dual mp with an SG Standard and a nice bass and it sounded great. When I got the Pro Mpa we did a piece of crap les paul copy through it and it was good but not spectacular, I think that is more to do with the guitar than the pre, but I will let you know when I try it with some real gear. You can't go wrong with any of them. If I find that the Pro Mpa doesn't cut it for guitar then I will just get a $60 Tube MP for that. Until then I am very happy with the Pro Mpa. I really want to try a Peavey VMP-2 though, I hear they are killer.
 
I've heard a lot of good about the Peavey VMP-2 as well...if I remember correctly, unlike the ARTs the Peavey does actually run a higher charge through its tubes like the high-end stuff. That unit uses a LOT of tubes though, and since the VMP-2 is no longer made (to my knowledge), you'll undoubtedly want to pop in all new tubes if you find a used one.

Not replacing tubes on a regular basis got me in trouble once. I didn't realize the tube was going in my AKG Solidtube mic while I was tracking a vocal, and when I finally got to mixing the song and started applying compression and EQ to the vocal, it suddenly began to sound very distorted around the edges. I couldn't bear to re-track it because the performance was exactly what I wanted, but it made that vocal hell to try and mix...had to do a lot of cutting on narrow frequency ranges to mask the problem. Not a mistake I'll be needing to make again anytime soon. ;)
 
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