presonus or art

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brad_g
  • Start date Start date
Thats like asking which 2 teams should play in the "Toilet Bowl"...which coincidentally right now Im watching the Chiefs vs the Bills.

Both those pres are not worth a shit.
 
Ill admit I got both I like the tubepre better its cleaner and smoother relatively. Why not save a bit more and go fancy?
 
I've got the TubePre and an ART Tube MP or something like that (not to be confused with the ART Digital MPA that I also have and use all the time) - both have not seen a single electron in a couple of years. I simply stopped using the Tube Pre soon after I got it, and I committed a hate-crime on the Tube MP with a 40 watt soldering iron.

Changing the tube in either one didn't improve the sound - the only difference is that replacing a hissy tube with a quiet one would reduce the overall hiss.

Here's what I remember:

Tube Pre:
Pros: you could adjust the amount of tube gain and solid state gain independently -- you could get an OK sound by turning down the tube gain all the way, turning up the solid state gain all the way up, then edging up the tube gain until the overall gain was tolerably high. Too much tube gain and it sounded like ass. Pretty much means it's a low cost solid state pre without much gain.
Cons: Effectively not much gain (see above), but plenty if you don't mind the way the tube sounds. Uses surface mount technology, so it's not really something you can modify if you're inclined to.

Tube MP (which I'm assuming to be somewhat like the unit you mentioned, even though I don't suppose it is)
Pros: does *not* use surface mount technology, and there's lots of information about modding it if you're so inclined. After I changed out the opamps and a few capacitors, it started to sound OK (but not really usable). Then I screwed it up and it blew up.
Cons: sounds horrible - no way to separate the nasty starved plate distortion from the sound.

The TPS II looks like it does allow you to turn down the starved plate sound (assuming it has starved plate tubes), and it looks like it has variable impedance, which is something I really like on my Digital MPA - so I guess it's probably better.
 
ok! what do you guys think is the best preamp under 200 buck?
 
Line 6 is great

though I use my ART Project to pretty good effect and its USB...but the Line 6 was cheaper and comes with fantastic pre's in its bundled software
 
they're both adequate pres if you don't have anything else and don't need any real tube sound. the art can clip but it's just fuzz, not attractive.

neither is warm or really attractive sounding, more like neutral and forgettable.

neither sucks to the point of be unusable, I could make quite good recordings with either, but I'd be eqing in the warmth and/or other quality of sound afterwards that I might be able to get from a more "special" sounding pre.

for slightly more money you can buy an art mpa gold 2 channel preamp which actually is warm, musical, expressive, and really does utilize the tube in a useful way (and isn't starved plate design, at least not if you run it in high plate voltage mode... in other words you get better s/n ratio and better headroom with the mpa gold than from the tps).

of the two you noted, I would go with presonus, it'll be a perfectly useful clean, quiet preamp, but imho the bottom line entry level for preamps that actually impart an attractive sonic signature on the tone and offer features that make them superior to using the mic preamp which is built into most audio interfaces would be the art mpa gold.
 
PS. the dmp3 is by far the best of the inexpensive mic preamps if all you need is lots of clean gain. but it doesn't offer the features of the mpa gold (by a long shot), doesn't offer any sonic signature (it's actually really really neutral and forgettable, but in a good way :-), and it doesn't give you any tonal variation through the controls.

the mpa gold gives you plenty of tonal options without even having a true eq in it (other than the bass rolloff controller of course). playing with the bass rolloff, the input impedance (especially with transformer-based mics and dynamics/ribbons most dramatically), and all of the gain controls (ss input gain, tube gain, and output amplifier gain) you can get a lot of different tones.
 
Probably a good idea. I had the Presonus Tube Pre home for one day last week and returned it right away. The tube was really grainy sounding.
 
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