Good Preamp 
by Jordan from St.Louis, December 2007
Music Background:  Musician, Recording Engineer

This is a solid piece of equipment for anyone looking to add 8 preamps via ADAT at a reasonable price. I think these preamps sound good, not great, but they should not be expected to be amazing. At 100 dollars a channel they are not going to sound like a $2500 channel strip. However, they greatly expand my mic pre capabilities, increase my ability to record a lot of tracks at once, and sound good and have been very reliable. I have recorded several cd's entirely on this preamp and have been satisfied with the results. It is definetly a good buy.

Digimax LT is the real deal. 
by PT 6.7 LE 002R User from Brooklyn, April 2005

This piece is consistant, accurate, quiet, and very well built. I use it for everything from Drums to Vocals and it's never let me down. If you are on a budget and need 8 solid digital pre's this is the piece for you. It's most bang for your buck. I'm gonna buy another one.

Presonus Digimax LT 
by Daniel Collins from Atlanta, Ga USA, January 2004

In order to keep this review "short", you can find the specs in either the sweetwater Digimax LT product page or at the Presonus website. Basically it is an 8-channel discrete mic preamp with internal A/D conversion and individual channel inserts located BEFORE the A/D.

I'll start by saying I purchased this unit for the purpose of live and studio simultaneous multichannel recording. I usually record bands live and then do individual studio sessions with them later. So I chose this unit for the following reasons:

1. It is very compact for the amount of features it offers - only 1U in size and about 7.5" deep. It fits perfectly into any of the SKB portable rackmount cases and weighs only about 15 lbs. No external power supply is needed (internally jumpered 110/240V capability with IEC power connector).
2. While it lacks the limiting or compression of its more expensive brothers, it offers channel inserts which I used to connect to an ACP-88 for full, 8-channel compression/gating/limiting which is MUCH more full-featured than the Digimax's limiter. I was going to spend the extra rack space on dynamics anyway so it didn't really matter to me that I needed a total of 3 spaces. I get a ridiculous amount of features in those 3 spaces - full 8 channels preamplification of line or mic signals, fully parametric compression/gating/limiting, and A/D conversion to ADAT lightpipe.

These combined features are perfect for live recording when you don't know exactly what kind of levels you are going to get during the take of any performance. The Digimax's 24-bit resolution, 44.1/48kHz sample rates are PERFECT for live recording and the compression prevents stray overs and allows for adding a little more flair to the drums, vocals, or whatever is needed when tracking. I have even been asked to use this rig as a preamp for the house setup at times!

Note: I'm not going to debate whether you need a compressor for tracking 24-bit audio or not. Suffice it to say that when I need to capture a band live, I only get one shot. 24-bits or not, I have definitely come into situations where that leading compressor has saved the take, like when the lead vocalist does something totally unexpected or the guitar player decides to boost their output because they can't hear themselves in the monitor. Your mileage may vary.

Now for the real reason you are reading this review: how does it sound?

Here I must admit that I am by no means an expert on any of this - I do my job because I love music and I love the artists I work with. So I can't speak like a studiophile and tell you all sorts of interesting comparisons against Neve boards and whatnot. I CAN tell you that for what I do with it - including the studio sessions - it sounds absolutely phenomenal. It captures acoustic guitar and vocals exceptionally well, and seems (to me at least) to be virtually transparent, definitely highlighting the microphone's individual characteristics and allowing the instrument to come through brilliantly. The self-noise of the preamp stage is supposedly constant because of their design. Usually this means that the actual gain stage comes last in the circuit and operates at a fixed gain. The input is then attenuated to "reduce" the gain. I don't know if that's exactly how the Dual-Servo preamps work but I can say this: these preamps are very clean. I never had an issue with preamp noise. Ever. Even the ambiant noise, microphone self-noise, noise of the movement of the player (not to mention recording live...) way more than overwhelms any preamp noise that would be there. I've unplugged a channel input and turned the gain up to +60dB (the highest value) and the actual output noise is somewhere around -60dB according to the values coming out of the converters. So that's a poor man's way of saying this unit has an exceptionally clean preamp stage. BTW, there was some inconsistency among the channels on my preamp as far as self-noise, the lowest was -72dB or so, the highest was -56 or so, but this is to be expected with discrete electronics and did not appear to affect the quality of the audio recorded on any channel. Stereo imaging did not appear to be affected in any way by the unit itself, any two channels could be used as a stereo pair and all appeared to be perfectly matched to each other.

I have used the MOTU 828's internal preamps (not bad, but certainly not Presonus), Mackie's XDR preamps (but not in an environment where I could do a detailed, accurate "shootout" - my impression is that the LT's preamps bring out more of a "being there" feel to the sound), and various other preamps and always when recording I reach for my Digimax LT first. It sounds great.

Okay, what would I want to be different about this unit? A few things. First of all, I definitely would like a switch for inverting the signal (often misleadingly called phase-reverse) on each channel. I would like at least one or two inputs on the front of the unit, but I don't think this would be possible to do and still have the wonderfully useable large blue knobs for gain control. I would like more detailed signal meters. Instead, I just use the meters in my sound software (Logic Audio Platinum 5.5 for Windows) which work fine as long as the signal doesn't clip (which the compressor is there to prevent). I would like balanced inserts/returns but you can't do that on one TRS jack. So, all-in-all, I think this unit is an EXCELLENT match for anybody wanting to add 8 channels of excellent sounding microphone preamplification (or even 2, but you might look at Presonus's channel strips for that) with A/D conversion.

I hope this review was helpful to you. My recording environment isn't a pristine, expensive studio. But I do demand a lot of quality from my gear, I don't buy junk, and I make high quality audio with it. I think that's probably the target market for this unit, but I would not at all be surprised to see Presonus's gear compare excellently against even the big expensive names - and probably excel some of them.

One final note: In the first year I had this unit, nothing bad happened. But I did manage to blow the light bulb in the really cool red power button. Presonus not only sent me another bulb to replace it without any hassles, their tech support guy was amazingly friendly, helpful, and even provided some cool tips on my setup. And the unit has held up to probably extreme abuse... I've just slapped it in a rackmount case and flown it internationally several times, just like that. It, the ACP88, an AMT8, and the MOTU unit have all stood up excellently to this type of treatment. High marks on their QC and support.

Presonus Digimax LT - Addendum to Previous Review 
by Daniel Collins from Atlanta, Ga USA, January 2004

I'd also like to add (since I didn't cover this in detail) that the converters themselves on this unit are AMAZING. They blow the doors off of almost every other 24-bit/48kHz converter I've heard, and I'm an electrical engineer with a specialization in DSP. Now, I haven't personally heard the millenia AD chips, or the burr-browns, but the ones used in the Digimax LT are superb. Excellent tracking, precise antialiasing, and very wide frequency response. I'm quite happy with them.

presonus digimax lt 
by Steve Chambers from Tulsa, OK, January 2004

I use the digimax lt as a front end for ProTools LE in a home/project studio. It integrated easily with the digi001 PCI card via optical connection, and even automatically sync'd to my sample rate. Set up was shockingly simple, and ProTools automatically recognized it as input channels 9-16(on top of the digi001's 1-8 analog ins.) I was instantly rewarded with 8 sparkling clean mic pre's. TOO EASY!!! It doesn't seem to color the sound, aside from a nice mild "punch." Bang for the buck, it's probably one of the best investments I have made. 48v phantom power, gain, and pad on each channel, and even inserts available on the back of the unit. The only other thing I would like would be a compressor on each channel, but for the asking price on this piece, you're already getting your money's worth, and then some. By the way, it's built like a tank, and it's seriously a sexy looking piece. I love it!!!

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