Ableton Forum

I'm looking to build up my equipment to where my vocals sound crisp! So far i have : Event Studio Monitors, M-Audio Firewire Solo Recording Interface, & MXL V88 Microphone, & the 21.5 Inch LED 16.9 Widescreen iMAC .

Looking to get a solid preamp asap!

Any plugs?

another poster recommended this one a couple of days ago.


http://www.amazon.com/ART-Tube-Studio-M ... B0002E50MC

he swears by it... and for the price you can afford to try it.

For the money ART is hard to beat, especially the Pro MPA. You can get one new for about $250 and used for $150. They used list for $799 many years ago, before everything got cheap to build.

If you have some cash, then your options are numerous. Just decide what you want out of it - i.e., transparent, color, both, etc...

Give me a price range and more info and I can suggest something more specific...

nice preamps under 500$ :
-Golden Age Project Pre73
-Focusrite ISA One


I also have an ART Tube-Pre but it's not very good. It can be fun on some sources, sometimes...

yeah those ART preamps aren't that great- lots of noise. they aren't even really "tube preamps"- i think the gain is all solid state, then they throw a tube at the end for "color" and marketing reasons.

i've heard a lot of good things about the Golden Age Pre73- basically a very affordable Neve rip-off.

Re: ART, i too would NOT recommend the one in the link above, but the Pro MPA is actually pretty good.

I've said it before, but the ART Tube Pre is hands down the piece of gear with the best price-to-quality ratio of anything I own - but really, that's pretty easy given that it's only 30 bucks. It sounds very decent for the price though - way smoother and cleaner than any of the $50 ones I've tried.

I wouldn't recommend it as a serious primary pre-amp for someone looking to outfit their home studio, but it sounds great for the cost, especially putting guitars/basses through it when using amp sims. I get significantly more picking dynamic with it than I do using my audio interface's built-in pres, which sound pretty good on their own.

Definitely gets noisy at high gain though (i.e. with the +20db switch on), but that could also be a factor of my electrical wiring.