Nice and cheap preamp!

I never used any dedicated preamp before, but when I compared this ART with the ones inside my LS9 the ART is a lot better. I will use it to vocals on a live and recording setup. The S/PDIF out is great, this way I don't have to use the LS9 inputs and its preamps, cause the console has only XLR inputs. I did a quick test through the presets and there are a lot of options, but I found the ones I wanted quickly, which are not the presets indicated as vocals, funny.

Versatile piece of gear...

This is a decently versatile piece of gear which can serve the function of several needs. I was kind of skeptical at its merit for usefulness when deciding to buy one, but even at a minimum, you get 2 very decent pre-amps for a great price. Add to this the digital out features, it easily can make use of the S/PDIF inputs on your AD/DA which usually lay dormant in most cases, thus another 2 mic inputs without sacrifice.

The tube effect can be viewed as either wonderful for some coloration or not. I was not overly impressed with the musical breakup of the saturation, but there again I haven't changed the tube to see if it improved it. Even if it did I would suspect a premium tube would still not give the full benefit of a high voltage setup, but there again it doesn't have the price tag of a high voltage setup.

The preset selections from the VR3 knob can give some quick results to getting some coloration, and some signal overload protection as well, I think it is more justified in the case of the latter. I think I would have preferred a variable dial in on this, but hey... sometimes fewer choices are better, and keep us from wasting time on the decision process.

The 2 most important features of this unit in order of importance to me are... Variable impedance, and selectable digital pass-through.
With the ability to select the ADAT channel on which each unit operates, you can basically stack four of these units and daisy-chain them into one 8 channel ADAT input on your AD/DA. This makes it very modular, so if you want to buy 1 unit now, 1 later etc. you can do this and still only tie up one ADAT input on your AD/DA.

But you ask... why not just buy an 8 channel mic pre for 1/2 the cost of two of these? Well, this brings me to the most effective feature of these units (at least to me)... Variable impedance. It makes any mic cheap or expensive take on a whole new life, and sound radically different. Dial them in just right, and you can hit the sweet spot that cuts through the mix, or sits where you need it in the background.

I tested some cheap dynamic mics on it as well, and was amazed at how they came to life and sounded even better than some well known studio condenser workhorses. Imagine how it will make a very good mic sound!

I am convinced, impedance plays a much bigger role than we realize, and so far I haven't seen an 8 channel mic pre setup that gives you this feature.

This piece of gear holds a decent plot of real estate in the good effect for great price world.

Versatile pre-amp

Once unit is connected correctly, all works as indicated. Nice to have multiple input capability and a S/PDIF stream to take advantage of the digital input on the Delta 1010lt. 10 channels now covers the entire band.

Lowest priced dual channel digital preamp

At the recommendation of Craig Anderton (from Sound on Sound) I was looking for a mic preamp to feed directly to my computer interface via SPDIF, and I decided to buy this one, which happens to be the lowest priced one of its kind on the market.

I tested this against the pres on an M-Audio Omni/Delta 66 and a MOTU 828mk3, and it sounds alot better than either one. It's pretty smooth and quiet from the digital out--though the sound quality via analogue is a little inferior. In any case, the "valve" and impedance controls allow you to color the sound in different ways.