Excellent deal for the money. 
by Brian C. from Denver, CO., November 2008
Music Background:  Home studio enthusiast.

The MPA Gold is my third preamp. I started with a Belari MP 101 then moved to a Behringer T1953. I've never tried the high-end equipment so I can only speak from my experience.

My signal chain is this: MPA Gold > ART Pro VLA II > Behringer parametric EQ > MOTU 8Pre > Logic Pro 8. The tubes add color but not too much to make things muddy. You can dial in a fine sound with the knobs and there's a feeling of quality to the unit. Overall there is a very nice sound I'm getting into Logic. Very full, solid and clean. My Breedlove A/E guitar sounds great through this setup.

If the MPA Gold fits your budget go for it. Save up if you have to...you won't be sorry.

  Wasn't crazy about this pre. 
by Kip from New City, NY, October 2008
Music Background:  songwriter / engineer

I kept this preamp for about a month or so. I swapped out the tubes with JJ 12AX7 tubes. The sound of this pre to me was very very colored. And not in a pleasing way. I just could not shake the color this thing imparted on my tracks. It might be useful for one track if you're looking to get a honky mid-rangey sound on something, but for me, it kind of ruined acoustic guitar and lead vocal tracks as well. On the up side, thing thing looks awesome in your rack. I almost wanted to keep it, because considering the price, it's not a total loss. Maybe I could have gotten better results if I put in on NOS tubes, but I wasn't willing to go crazy to get this unit up to snuff, I just spent my money on something else.

  Really not so bad! 
by Mr Brown from Northern California, April 2008
Music Background:  Recording Art Major, Producer, Engineer, Hobbyist, & Musician.

For 300 bucks this thing is a steal. The Variable Impedance is really where this thing shines however. The Line-Ins dont benefit from this feature but its still a very cool feature at this price point.
Still waiting on two replacement 12ax7s to arrive in the mail, but the stock chinese tubes are actually not too bad. They can sound a bit harsh with a high impedance level set though. The upper end of the frequency spectrum gets a bit crunchy if your not careful. This may just be due to my gain structure though. Im still fiddling with what setting work best. But i can vouch that the manual directions for maintaining a good signal are spot on for the most part.
Really looking forward to getting my new tubes and seeing how the tone changes!
So far ive tracked 2 large diaphragm condenser mics through the MPA as well as 1 dynamic - ALL 3 mics sounded much more organic when ran through the preamp thanks to the variable impedance knob.
Both Vocals and Acoustic Guitar sounded great through the MPA.

Id recommend this preamp to anyone on a budget looking for a decent front end for their DAW right now.

  MPA Gold 
by Marvin Querido from Alabang, Muntinlupa, Philippines, August 2007
Music Background:  Session Keyboardist, Arranger, Producer, etc.

The impedance knobs lets you dial in a different sound or response from your mike, so that gives you more tonal possibilities right there. The sound is excellent. In my rack, where there's a pendulum quartet, an la-610, 2 alpha channels, a joemeek twinq, 2 vtb1's, an rnp, rnc, and rnla, and several others it has no reason to be shy. It sounds great too.

  In a word, WOW 
by Steven Wright from New York, NY, November 2006
Music Background:  Professional classical cellist, jazz and rock bassist, composer and vocalist.

I just can't believe what a difference this tool makes to my recordings. I am a professional musician, classical jazz and rock (it's my living after all), and I record on my home daw system with Sonar and some outboard gear (dbx compressors, audix, sennheiser, shure and apex 460 mics). My mic pre until now has been a little dmp3 from m-audio (bought it along with my m-audio 2496 card).

Rented the MPA gold to see if it would really make a difference, didn't expect much if any sonic difference (apparently the op-amps in the dmp3 and the mpa gold are both burr-brown, supposed to be good I was told by the dealer). I can only say that I was completely shocked at the improvement in the sound of my mics and DI from using the MPA gold.

I didn't do anything to it, stock tubes, it was a new unit I rented, but it is warm, beautiful, noise-free, incredibly powerful (easily can overdrive the input on my sound card if I'm not careful), sounds magical at high-plate-voltage setting (only setting I use now), I can easily dial in a bit of rumble removal with the built in eq knob (I have wood floors and can remove lots of signal crap that way on the meters that I can't hear but show up as low level signal in sonar), and the impedence knob is amazing at what it does. Especially with the apex 460 and the sennheiser mics for some reason, it changes them through many types of tonal pallats, some beautiful, and many are improvements over the DMP3 sound.

This has shown me that I can record the music I hear in my voice when I sing, it picks up the sound of my cello with truth I couldn't achieve before, and honestly I'm making recordings that sound very professional now and it appears to have been the limitations of the DMP3 before that held me back. the DMP doesn't have the options needed to get the best from your mics, and it just doesn't sound as magically warm and beautiful as this preamp.

I bought it 7 days after I rented it, and I swear it is the best device for the money, period. DON'T waste time comparing it to other highly rated items like the DMP3, it really is much more useful and musical. Also looks incredibly on my desk, I'm going to buy a rack unit to hold it and show it off because everyone LOVES how it looks (very cool lights and meters and golden metal finish!).

My favorite outboard music tool. Don't record without one!

Good Price. 
by Nelson from Ontario, Canada, April 2006

I bought this Dual Pre-Amp a few months ago and I think it's good for the money I spent. It has a very warm sound and I like it better than the pre's on my Motu for certain tracks. To me, the tube sounds more natural on vocals and the overall recordings seem less sterile when applied to various tracks(in the end result). I don't have the money to spend $3000 dollars on racks, but I would think this is not a lot to ask for something decent sounding..?? I have read articles about changing out the tubes as they say "it then comes alive"... but I haven't done that yet, but might try this when the warranty expires.

I think it's a good idea to have both tube and solid state around if you can ... it seems help my recordings sound more dynamic than without.

Cheers...

Nelson
Ontario, Canada
2006.

MPAGold 
by Leon Turner from Ohio, September 2005

Just recently bought this unit from sweetwater, and it seems to be a great unit, for the price it would be hard to beat.

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