Re: inexpensive small true mic preamps

[Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com>]

I bought a VTB-1 last year after reading a lot of reviews and 
auditioning the Art and M-Audio against it - I found both of them to 
have a bit of harshness as compared to the VTB, and I decided the VTB 
was definitely worth the relatively small additional cost. I've been 
extremely pleased with it, especially the features such as a pot for 
amount of tube coloration (I find I like it heavy on the tube for 
vocals, light for acoustic guitar), hi-pass filter, phase reverse, 
instrument input on the front panel, and switchable metering between 
input and output. It adds a bit of hiss when heavy on the tube, but has 
a good amount of gain which makes up for that and I've never found it to 
be a big problem. I'm thinking of buying another.

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com
www.chinapaintingmusic.com

> At one point I had an M-Audio audio buddy, Art Tube MP studio, Studio
> Projects VTB-1 and Behringer ultragain preamp all in the same room. To
> my ear the VTB-1 sounded best, but the ART was very, very close and a
> lot cheaper. 
>