I have just been playing with the the Focusrite Voicemaster over the weekend and here are my thoughts. First it is Class A which tells you that you are getting a step up from solid state units.
Excellent preamp section, worth the price of admission alone. I tested this with a SP C1 and the clarity is excellent. However at times it was a little too crisp on my voice (baritone) and I had to use the EQ button called ambience to take out the 3.5KHz range.
The low end cut worked great to take out rumble.
The gate and silence detector worked great and I would use it on mixes done for guitars or drums but not on a vocal.
The Compressor on a scale of 1-10 (10 being an RNC) about an 8. Very controllable but the layout of the buttons was weird.
The EQ was 50% great and 50% worthless. The warmth control not generally usable but the upper mid and highs were excellent.
De-esser - did not work on the unit I had. So I can't say.
My reccomendation on a scale of 1-10 (10 being a Great River preamp) about a 7.5.
It definitely sounds very high end like the RNP. Transient response was very good. A real treat was to by pass the Opto compressor and run it through my RNC set to Super Nice. That was sweet.
At an average price of $250 bucks on ebay this has got to be the best value for the homerecorder I can think of.
Finally, there is a new version out called the Pro which has improved on many of the originals issues. Plus they have harmonic saturation to emulate tubes! Hey, M-Audio used this term first on the Tampa.
I did notice that the Tampa and
the Focusrite Voicemaster Pro have both been getting excellent reviews and awards. If it was me I would forget the VTB-1 and for a few more dollars buy a used Voicemaster off ebay. Much better value for your buck.
