ART Pro Channel II Microphone Preamp/Compressor/EQ Professional Tube Based Selectable VU Metering

As of July 10, 2011, I have owned this fine mono-line equipment for 48 hours. I bought it for a mono microphone line to my ham radio station. It is a wonderful piece of equipment. A.R.T. has built a preamp, compressor, and equalizer into one compact box; basically it is "plug and play". At first the equipment seemed daunting as to all of its adjustments. So I hooked it up to the left channel of my low-power FM radio station and, reading the user's guide and listening with my ear, I found its best adjustments that I prefer. Pulling it from the FM station I reconnected it to the ham radio. Ahhh! What a difference to my voice. So what's next? Well... to purchase its stereo counterpart for the FM station! Seller: Ordered on Monday and received equipment on Monday! Pros: excellent quality sound, quiet, 1/4" mono jacks, XLR plug, for microphone, musical instruments. Cons: gets warm due to the 3 12AX7 tubes (you EXPECT tubes to get warm!), so many dials, switches, and LED lights it SEEMS a never-ending task to get it set the way you want your sound to be. (well worth it) Would recommend this to anyone who uses a mono, single sound chain

This a very good channel strip for the money. This is a more transparent channel strip, but you can get some nice character out of this with the right adjustments.

I LOVE this preamp. I'm not crazy about the EQ or compression but I have a great EQ in my DAW and wonderful Compressor so that's not an issue for me. For vocals matched with my SM7b or SM57 this wonderful compressor adds such a warmth I feel as though I'm a late night DJ. It has such beautiful intimacy. I will say that you have to be very careful because the preamps are not noise free. They will add some hiss and I do not know if that is how they are, being tube, or if that is a defect. I need to call ART and find out. In spite of that I would not take this back. It's not noticeable when instruments or vocals are playing so can be edited out in the final mix. I edit out the silent parts anyway. It gives my recordings a warmth that feels like the 70's. If you love classic rock, that's a great thing.

I was very excited to recieve my channel strip until I plugged it in and there was a nasty buzzing noise. I was running it from my furman so I know it wasn't a power issue. I'm pretty sure it got thrown around while shipping and something got knocked loose inside. The actual ART box with the equipment was solid, however the box that was inside, was way to big and not enough padding was around the box. Had to return it and hopefully the new one I get doesn't have a buzzing issue. UPDATE I received another broken product. Called Amazon and said they had a defective inventory? Contacted ART customer service and it's been a week and no response. I would save your money and buy something else. Thumbs way down.

I had high hopes for this unit, having other ART gear that I’m happy with, particularly their tube mic preamps and compressor units. My hopes were dashed when I connected a high end condenser mic to this unit. I could never get enough gain to drive my mics unless I cranked the input gain, the preamp gain, the output pot AND hit the +20dB switch! It only worked with the correct headroom once I added another tube preamp between the mic and this unit. What’s the point of a mic preamp if you have to put another mic preamp in front of it just to drive the circuits?! Besides that, the unit has a 60Hz hum when it’s driven above about 4dB. That’s just bad filtering design and no isolation transformers. The solution was to add my Radial J-ISO immediately after the output to null out the hum. Another $400 just to get this thing to do what it should. So, here’s your real cost for this thing (2022 pricing): $450 Pro Channel II $400-$600 for a decent preamp in front of it $400 for a decent isolation DI after it Actual cost to get decent sound: $1,250-$1,500. There are way better strips at that price and less. Save your money. Sorry ART; you dropped the ball on this one.

I don't like doing a lot of post work vocally so I tried this unit with my MXL Genesis Tube mic and it sounds awesome. Did a session yesterday and the client was like wow what did you do to the mic. Unit is very study and the knobs click into place so I can log different settings for different occasions. Well well worth the money!

Perhaps the unit I received was damaged, so take 4 stars with a grain of salt. The features this unit offers are stellar. Unfortunately, I was unable to use them for the following reasons: * The unit I received produced unacceptable hum levels in my application. * The unit had insufficient gain to handle the dynamic mics I use for voice-over work Due to the lack of gain, I was unable to take advantage of the compression and other features. With a sufficiently high-output microphone, such as a condenser, it's entirely possible the problems above might have "gone away", but I'm "married to cardiod dynamic mics". I meditated on the idea that perhaps tube gear has the drawback on not surviving today's distribution methods. This may have been the cause of the troubles I had with the unit I received. I have, however, retrenched to a solid-state unit produced by company "B" that gives me the gain and compression I want without the hum.

Save yourself some headache and get the ART TPSII instead. Even with a better mic going into this unit, I'm getting better audio from a $50 mic going into the TPSII than I am from this unit. Maybe this unit is more flexible if you have time to tweak every little thing, but I don't have time for that.