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ART
Tube MP Studio V3 & MP OPL Reviewer: James Manson Distributor: Network Entertainment Technology |
There are a thousand and one ways to record these days with all kinds of affordable options and combinations. An often overlooked aspect of the home/semi professional recording process is preamplification. The sound quality of mid priced mixers and audio interfaces leave a lot to be desired. While some interfaces such as the Digidesign M-Box feature the superb Focusrite pre-amps that possess inherent clarity, many internal mixer/interface preamps are just plain lousy.
The key to making your recordings more polished and pro sounding could be as simple as using a good preamp.
Make no mistake, digital is clinical and unforgiving, tweak your signal too low and your recordings lack punch, max out your signal in a digital environment and you are confronted with unpleasant digital harshness or distortion. Tubes are in vogue at the moment, it seems that everywhere you look some company is claiming to have discovered the holy grail of tube warmth. What exactly is tube warmth? Harmonic distortion that sounds cool basically. We don’t have time to look at wave forms, and to be honest why would you want to when you could be creating not procrastinating. But we all know tube distortion is good. Don’t we?
ART has been around a long time, I first encountered this company in the late eighties early nineties when they were making great guitar preamps with on-board effects. It was my pleasure to review two of their budget based tube preamps, the MP Studio V3 and the MP OPL.
Both the preamps feature a single 12AX7A tube that drives the gain stage. 12AX7A tubes are not the subtlest of tubes but they certainly provide a distinct tube sound and offer a range of extremes not achieved with a mid priced solid state preamps. Both preamps are straight forward, single input, single output, input control, output control with phantom power.
The Studio V3 really looks the business in a smart blue metal casing with the obligatory vents so we can all see the magical glowing tube (sorry, I don’t mean to sound sarcastic), and a really cool looking VU Meter, which is spot on accurate too. There is a +20dB gain and a phase reverse switch. There are sixteen pre-sets to choose from and these pre-sets have been designed to provide a range of vocal and instrument tube compression and voicing levels. Please don’t get me wrong, the Studio V3 is not a compressor, it’s just that tubes create compression naturally. The pre-sets contain four sections, Warm, Voicing, OPL and Neutral. Neutral is designed to sound good with acoustic guitar, bass and a clear vocal sound. The OPL settings utilize the Output Protection Limiter that controls the output peak signal which makes this a great unit for digital recording. The pre-sets on the V3 were designed (reputedly) by studio heavyweights. In use this unit sounded great with a range of instruments, especially a direct input for bass and guitar and of course it worked a treat with a range of vocals. The Studio V3 certainly does not colour the source or add a signature sound rather it makes an ordinary signal sound great and adds a certain depth without too much colour. The preamp can be driven quite hard but not always with pleasing results. I guess everyone has different ideas to what adds up to usable distortion.
The MP OPL has all the features of the V3 without the Variable Valve Voicing. The MP OPL is housed in a black metal casing and looks as cool as the V3. Again the preamp makes microphones, keyboards and stringed instrument sound big and warm. The MP is one of the most popular preamps of all time and the quality of build and sound make it obvious why it has been such a hit.
Both units provide over 60db of gain and are a class ahead of anything in their price bracket simply because of unique features such as the Output Protection Limiter. For a great sounding good quality preamp at a brilliant price you need look no further than these great little ART preamps.