ART Pro MPA II steps up to the plate

This new ART preamp is really impressive with its features: variable impedance (great for ribbon mics), plenty of gain, two different voltage settings for the tubes, a variable (!) hi-pass filter, large VU meters, and most importantly- a Mid/Side matrix! That's why I had to have this box- I love using an M/S mic setup for acoustic guitar, and this box is very handy! Great design, great, transparent sound quality, all for how much...? This ART is used as much as my other preamps, some of which cost ten times as much. Now, if it just had built-in tube- optical compression...

Good Quality - Extremely Low Cost

I give this 5 Stars just because of the quality you can get from this at this price point. I swapped the Chines tubes with 2 Mullard 12AX7's. This was my first preamp. I tracked half of Sho Baraka's Lions and Liars album with an Avant CV-12 going through this. Never had a problem with it. I have owned this for a few years already. Even though I have some more expensive pre's now I still use this in the studio. My advise is to get one and swap the tubes. It will do the job it was created to do.

compared to the high end

we have in the studio a UNIVERSAL AUDIO la 610 an this unit ART pro mpa ii,they truley sound alike, no difference.we put both of these up aginst each other an they both sound great.i try not to get caught up in the popularity contest,because that what most of this is but this art sound just as good as the ua la610

Versatile, nice sound

I bought this as a DI box for bass and electric. The wide gain range, +20dB switch and switchable plate voltage give me a lot of flexibility in sculpting a nice sound to feed various amp sims. I haven't tried mid/side decoding yet (nor have I used it as a mic pre at all), but I will be doing that in time. It's very quiet and clean, but it also overdrives nicely: in particular it makes really, really good bass sounds (which is lucky because that's why I bought it.)

It's solidly built, with - wonder of wonders - stepped controls for the major parameters for easy recall. The meters are large, clear and easy to read. The 'tube warmth' gauge is a bit distracting (that's what ears are for) but it's easily ignored. The illuminated switches are perhaps a little ugly too, so it can lose half a star for that but really, who cares and a lot of people will like them.

It's not just great for the price, it's great.

ART Pro MPA II

In today's digital world, recording seem to loose the sonic character obtained by analog compression or saturation which seems to enhance the harmonic content and make the louder passages stand out with fullness instead of volume. This is especially true for vocals, acoustic guitar and the bass guitar.

The variable impedance dramatically changes the character of any mic to match the desired crispness or roundness desired. I find the crispy clean digital vocal to be annoying. I use the high tube plate voltage on vocals and it adds the butter the vocals needed. I was in the process of mastering an album for a local gospel group and we ended up re-recording the vocals even though they were previously recorded with some of the best pre-amps available.

A must for any recording studio (large or small) without spending thousands per channel.

Impressive and Affordable

What can I say? After shopping for hours online, this was the most obvious choice of preamp for my price range. The build quality of the preamp itself is great and the tonal quality of the preamp is way above expectations. there is virtually no noise with the gain and output settings correctly positioned. and it is very easy to blend between a more saturated tube tone and an almost solid state characteristic using the low cut filters and various impedance selections. i just love how this preamp makes it so easy to record using multiple mics and the mid/side matrix and stereo blend option does that trick very well. I would highly recommend this preamp to any home studio owner or even a pro environment to add a high quality, affordable tube preamp to their collection.

Makes Guitars Shine!

Recently purchased this unit, my first session with it I recorded a mesa dual rectifier, and the MPA definitely gave the recording some extra sparkle and harmonic restoration. The plate voltage is great, you can get a very sharp shape to heavily distorted guitars with it. This unit is also really awesome for stereo mic'ing a drum kit. ART makes some of the best bang for your buck equipment you can get!

Great Unit ... Small Price

I bought this unit to use on a few scratch demos. I now use it regularly in my studio! It has a warm, tube sound that is as good as my other $2500 preamps. It is a little finicky when driving the tube ... it is OK to overdrive the tube a little to get that growly sound but to much and it distorts. A very good pre for the money.

A amazing unit

a nice unit, very good quality, many features,

Niice

Over all it is great piece of kit! Cheap for what it is. When you engage a bitof gain or adjust the impedances the stereo image suffers a bit, to ART i wouls ask better matching on hi and low current settingd. Other than that its great!

ART Pro MPA II - good tube mic pres with some hard to find features

This microphone preamp occupies the top of the ART product lineup (together with Digital MPA-II)

The built-in quality is decent but not solid.
1. One of the plastic knob covers fell off within a week (easily corrected with crazy glue).
2. The analog VU output meters presented another issue. When removing protective film, one of the meter needle got a jolt of electrostatic charge and it was hovering near the middle of the readout for a couple of days (before coming back to zero).

Now, the good news:
1. Adjustable VU output meters - easy to calibrate
2. Variable Input Impedance - an important feature that is very hard find in any price range, let alone at this pricepoint.
Variable Impedance is crucial to preserve the character of ribbon and dynamic microphones.
3. Selectable Plate Voltage - unlike some other ART products, you can actually take a full advantage of the tube tone by applying high voltage.
4. Stereo switch - musician can split mono input channel into two.

5. High Z instrument lines up front - very convenient.

6. Maximum Gain: 75dB

7. The beauty of the tube preamp - one can improve/modify the tone by simply replacing the tubes. (This, however, will void the warranty)

The stock tubes in MPA II are not great and quite noisy for the microphone preamp. 12AX7 is a weapon of choice for guitar preamps where it's imperative for tube to "break up" creating distortion. In microphone applications the intent is quite the opposite: have as much "headroom", get clean 20-60 dB boost.

In my opinion, ART Pro MPA II offers a great value and lots of hard to find options.

Not all it's cracked to be.

Claiming M/S Matrix... Not the case. When recording in M/S a cardioid or omni is placed toward the front and a figure 8 is placed where the polar pattern is perpendicular to the cardioid/omni. So for lack of better explanation. Two mics are used, and three outputs are gathered. To really function as a M/S Matrix there's two inputs and three outputs. The figure 8's normal phase is used on one output, that signal is then doubled, the phase reversed and then sent to the second output. The cardioid or omni is the 3rd and final output. This preamp only has 2 outputs and claims to "decode" the phase shift from the figure 8 mic. If this can function properly as an M/S Matrix I'd like to be shown how.

Finicky piece of equipment

I briefly owned this dual channel preamp. I purchased it new, and used it a hand full of times on a few projects and was very unimpressed. All the the gain, impedance, and level knobs had a great deal of noise. Channel one in my particular unit worked sometimes, and others not. The few instances i did make through the technical difficulties, the sound quality i got from this unit was mediocre. I wouldn't recommend this product to even the smallest project studio. There are other units in this price range that are much more reliable with a night to day jump in sound quality.