Avalon Killer!!!

This is one of my favorite pieces of gear. I use it for live vox as well as a $$ channel for recording. You would have to spend 1-2 K to beat it. It has the most bang for the buck. Presonus is junk. Prosumer crap. Dbx is rugged enough to take on the road as well as detailed enough for the studio.

The 376 vs. Eureka

I have owned both a PreSonus and DBX 376 for several years. I use the 376 more because of it's simple design. It is very easy to dial in the sound desired. The LED indicators are also very easy and useful. I don't have time for the evasive metering of the Eureka. I typically use this preamp for vocals, but I have also used it for guitar. The DBX is a great value in this price range for vocals. The sound tends to be warm rather than crisp. If you intend to use this preamp more for instruments, I might recommend the Eureka. Especially in a 'set it and forget it' situation.

Good Channel Strip, but Consider the Presonus Eureka

I looked carefully for a channel strip in the $500 price-range, and the dbx 376 and the Presonus Eureka were the two I came up with. They offer similar features: Preamp, EQ, Comp/Limiting. The dbx comes standard with a digital output; the Eureka offers this extra at a price. I recorded lots of good stuff with the 376, but head to head, I just liked the PreSonus more -- it had more of what I wanted to hear. Both units are little bit hard to steer with touchy knobs, but the Eureka was a bit easier to set, although on the Eureka I found it harder to catch clips (the dbx does offer easy to read LEDs instead of the old school VU meter) and the Eureka's knobs are pretty tiny and catch a bit of glare which makes them very difficult to read.

The dbx 376 is nothing to be ashamed of, but if you don't need the digital output, the Eureka is the better sounding unit in my opinion.

Good overall

a few years ago I did a pretty serious workover of this preamp, along with some MOTU, Vintech, and Focusrite preamps. We were using a variety of mics and the sound source was a Tacoma acoustic guitar, which has a little different flavor than most acoustics. It was not super clean, but was clean and quiet overall, with a bit of warmth to it. In spite of it not being perfectly clean, it still retained good clarity. with colored mics, like a ribbon and an FET condensor, it became very muddy and overly colored in a hurry - losing definition and clarity. However, it did very well with small and large diaphragm condensers.. It was better suited for the strumming parts than for finger picked parts, as it had a little meat too it but didn't bring out all the nuances in the fingerpicking as well as some of the other preamps tested.

Bottom line - not quite as much presence and clarity as I would like for some parts, but overall still a very solid performer on a budget. Keep in mind that 2 of the 3 preamps we were comparing it to were many times the cost of this