dbx 386 dual mic preamp?

  • Thread starter Thread starter 6gun
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6gun

6gun

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i'm researching mid-priced mic pres. any owners want to share opinions?
 
Nice unit. Very clean preamps and the A/D converters are not bad. It will accept external word clock input too. i like mine.
 
It's pretty decent. I have read that the A/D converters rank very highly. I mainly use it for the SPDIF out.
 
I find this unit to be a good clean preamp and a very good A-D converter. It doesn't produce as much gain as I like, without using its starved plate front end drive, which in my opinion, does nothing except produce useless distortion that sucks. If you turn that to zero, it produces a limited amount of good clean gain. I solved that problem though! Last night I jacked an Avalon AD2022 into it's line ins, and sent the signal by s/pdif to the board. This allows me to use the DBX's insert points for an RNC, and effectively bypasses both the cruddy pres and the so-so A-D converter in my Roland VS1824.
It is the only combo of gear I've been able to patch together that really gets professional quality tracks out of the Roland. I would call the DBX a fair preamp, and a first rate A-D.-Richie
 
Richie, I'm pretty sure there's 250 volts on the plate in a 386, not what i'd call starved plate but I do agree when you drive it hard it just gets nasty.
 
Well, Track Rat, you know me, I'm techno-challenged. I do, however, know good sound when I hear it, and my experience with the tube drive on the 386 is that a little of it is bad, and a lot of it is way bad.-Richie
 
try replacing the tubes. . i've thrown some Telefunken 12AU7s in my 566 dual compressor. . . much smoother. .
 
I'm happy with mine thus far. I have limited experience, but I think the preamps are the limiting point in my signal chain at the moment.

The A/D does seem very good, and I agree with the others who have said it sounds pretty rough when you drive it too hard. At medium-low gain settings though it seems to be a very useable preamp... and hard to beat at that price (not the pre part, but the whole package).

IMO, it's worth it for the A/D, and you get a pair of useable pre's "for free."
 
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Richard,

You have me curious now. Are you saying you turn the "drive" all the way down (-15db or +30db, depending on which labeling you look at)? And use the "digital output" level for all your gain?

Hmm.... I was using +15db gain on the "digital output" level, and around +10db gain on the "drive" section. Being that I'm using 30db or less of total gain, I'll try it with the "drive" side all the way down, and see if that helps things. I knew too much gain on the drive side sounded like crap, but I guess it didn't dawn on me just to crank it to zero and use only the output side. lol. Thanks for spurring my brain cells into action! :D
 
Yo Bigus! If you only need 30 dB of gain, you should be in like Flynn. That's right- Just zero the fucking drive and crank the digital output. As I've said, I'm techno-challenged, so I really can't explain it properly, but I do know this- If I crank the gain on the RNC, which is patched as an insert, it clips the DBX, so there's no point. But if I take another pre with a lot of headroom (the Avalon has shitloads of it), I can get *some* additional gain from the 386 without clipping. It's enough for my purposes. BTW, can anybody suggest a good afforable stand-alone A-D converter to use with the Avalon?-Richie
 
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