ART Tube MP/C

Great value for money, but at the price level it has to be admitted it is an entry level preamp ... a very good one though and I've enjoyed using this little preamp a lot. I was pleased with how good it worked on cleaner settings with a microphone. It is able to produce a good variety of very musical sounds.

It allows you to get some good variations in sounds and tonal character from it's extra controls in the opto compressor / limiter.

The way it combines a hybrid 12AX7 (ECC83) valve preamp section with the company's 'Vactrol' optical compressor seems to works in it's favour for that variety of good tones - clean and valve "coloured".

The optical compressor has only limited controls but does it's job well with those options that it does have.

Metering for the Gain Reduction, Tube Drive, and also Output Level help to get the signal right when it comes out of the unit. Not a pretty sound when the MP/C itself overloads so it is best not to let the input signal stray too high.

The compressor lacks some of the features you may have come to be used to, but honestly that is of little concern in my application. I simply set it up and left it. It delivers perfectly on the use case I have, which is simply to increase the gain of a popular streaming microphone that audio interfaces often struggle with. In this regard it is fantastic, delivering tons of clean gain, with a lovely warm character, smoothing out the vocals and making them feel more clear and present, mitigating somewhat the proximity effect of dynamic microphones while still leaving the resulting audio sounding rich and full of character. It isn't a totally invisible compression, it does colour the audio, but in a way that's very pleasing and makes your vocals sounds nicely processed. No one in Zoom or Teams complains about my audio quality. If you need a simple, but high quality gain boost between your mic and audio interface that can be set up once and left to get on with it's job, this is hard to beat at the price. Solid, all metal construction, convincingly clicky dials, nice bright LED's, it feels very high quality and built to last.

this tube belongs to the expensive compact tubes so I got what I expected for the price.

the knobs and controls are great. and so are the switches too. they tighten soft but not too soft to lose grip. the device even fits for some professional usages cauz of its well build quality.

the tube takes its place. its perfectly present and my guitar sounds awesome with this little amp.

I just gotta say that the output gaining is a bit less. I dont have very much space between a good output gain and a peak over in volume. but to go on focusing more good features I got a useful input gain switch reaching up to +20 db.

the unit is small and there simply aint enough space for a wide output meter. 4 leds are not much but for many homestudio scenarios its enough.

what's not to love about this Little box. good sounding preamp with some tube carracter and built in low cut, an opto compressor and transformer balanced output..

it looks good with its solid feel aluminium chassis, LED meters for gain, gain reduction and output level

the sound is, no surprice, just like the old TubeMP wich I'm guessing most people know these Days. but with the added low cut and compression, you get a ready to work with result in minutes. something that fits the track without too much work .. great for lineing bassguitar

the only thing i dont like is the "gain +20db" switch, wich appear to be a 20db pad relabeled and functioning backwards...?...I dont get it...so if you need more gain for your vocal mic, you press "gain+20db" instead of using pad when your signal is too hot...same thing really, but backwards campared to almost ever mic pre I've ever used

it might not compete with the "boutique" pre's costing 20 times as much, but all in all, a great Product at a small price

..I hope people "get it" so it doenst go out of production like the old Tube-Pac...