Introduction
The ART VoiceChannel Tube Channel Strip is a versatile piece of audio equipment. Consequently, it can significantly enhance your recordings and live performances. In the following review, we will delve into its pros and cons, providing valuable insights to assist you in determining whether it’s the ideal addition to your audio setup.
Pros
- Tube Warmth: The VoiceChannel features a 12AX7 tube preamp that adds a warm and rich sound to your recordings, making your vocals or instruments sound more natural.
- Versatile EQ: Its three-band EQ allows you to finely tune your sound, making it easy to boost or cut specific frequencies to match your preferences.
- Optical Compressor: The built-in optical compressor helps control dynamics, ensuring your audio stays consistent and pleasing to the ears.
- Phantom Power: It provides +48V phantom power, making it compatible with a wide range of microphones, including condenser mics.
- Twin VU Meters: The dual VU meters make it easy to monitor your levels and maintain an optimal signal, reducing the risk of distortion.
- Compact Design: The VoiceChannel’s compact size and rugged construction make it a mobile and durable choice for both studio and live performances.
- Easy to Use: With its intuitive interface, even beginners can quickly grasp the controls and start improving their audio quality.
Cons
- Price Point: While the VoiceChannel offers great features, it might be on the higher end of the budget for some users.
- Limited Effects: It doesn’t come with built-in effects or digital processing, which may require additional equipment for those seeking more creative audio manipulation.
Conclusion
The ART VoiceChannel Tube Channel Strip is a solid choice for those looking to enhance their audio recordings or live performances. Its tube warmth, versatile EQ, and optical compressor make it a valuable addition to any audio setup.
However, its price point and the lack of built-in effects may be considerations for some users. In summary, if you’re after a straightforward and dependable channel strip, the ART VoiceChannel is worth a closer look.
Duke M. –
For an analog preamp, this is good quality and certainly has its place. We use one for live events to improve mic quality for lectures. It works great for that. However, we bought another one for recording voiceovers, and returned it. It simply cannot compete with our SSL 12, which sounds so clean and rich, it makes the ART sound very outdated.
itsZiz –
Ignore these bad reviews, there are tons of amazing ones on the web and I will add to them here. Simply put this thing is amazing!I make youtube videos and live stream. I’ve used a dozen different audio set ups from $400 headsets to a shure sm7b with cloudlifter and Scarlett interface.The ART VOICE CHANNEL has been the easiest and best sounding interface I’ve used hands down. I cannot do it justice here with a simple review. Suffice it to say the preamp has plenty of power with no noise, I love the compressor with tons of options, impedance lets you have a lot of tonal control making a single mic have lots of different voices, expander/gate work great, EQ is super easy to dial in especialy if you position it before the compressor and use the meter to find the trouble Fq AND BEST OF ALL FOR ME the USB out put works PERFECTLY! Windows 10 can have lots of issues and be a pita some times but this 100% plug and play with zero latency to the PC. YES if you try to listen back to it from your PC there will be some delay as it does NOT have a low latency play back driver like a focus right Scarlett does but ***I*** do not need this. IF you do then maybe look elsewhere.For me this is hands down the very best investment I have made for making youtube videos and streaming. Yes you can do a lot of this stuff in post production or via programs live but nothing is like getting your hands on a nice piece of kit, turning the knobs and having instant access. Plus once you get it dialed in it saves hours of work post production.I hope this helps some one, I have ZERO reservations and wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who wants a good mic preamp compressor, eq, de esser, expander or gate. Having them all in one is amazing. ***AGAIN the only problem would be for musicians/singers who want extremely low latency playback to listen”
Roland James II –
Took me a while to figure out how to set everything up through my DAW, but once I got it working correctly and made my interface the slave. The fact that I was able to turn my signal in to an expander was optimal. Mainly because of the setting my home recording studio is in. To fight with an above fan as well as CPU fans…. Man I tell ya…. Freaking amazing product. The EQ feature is also a time savor as well as the fact that I can maneuver the EQ from post to pre compressor. Great product and amazing features. The only con that I would have is just there software as far as the USB is concerned. I know it is analog gear specifically made for live recording, but Geesh… take some time to update the USB drivers. The ASIO driver seems old. It works, but not with all of the equipment I have running through my PC. Other than that… 5 Stars from me.
Primrose Dark –
So… this thing and I have a weird relationship. I bought it because friends and mentors used it (back when I was really getting serious about recording a long time ago). It served me well for a few years and then started a strange static noise issue that I could not diagnose. Changed the tube, checked the circuits and caps… Not sure what was going on. Perhaps in the power stage or one of the input pots. IDK…That aside, the sound was WARM but… too warm for me as I stepped up the pro ladder. Woofy and saturated, very colored sound. If you have gear that needs 10 EQ’s before it is ready to mix, you need new gear. I sold it to a guy who was thrilled to get it, despite my full honest disclosure of the odd noise factory it’d become. “Just wrap your hand against it and it’ll stop”. He’s happy as can be. Maybe you would be too. Give it a go. It definitely has many features not found on anything at this price point, and most of them are not defective like mine was.
David G. Beneke –
This is certainly one of the best sounding pre-amps at this price and very versatile. I put it up there with an Avalon, costing much more. It makes low volume mics, like the Shure SM7b dynamic, shine, giving it plenty of gain, without noise, and ribbons will benefit as well, especially from the variable impedance knob. Preamp, very clean on condenser mics as well.The metering is superb. The output can have tube warmth, with digital cleanness, depending on how you drive the amp. Like the variety of digital and analog outputs and the variable clock that goes all the way to 24 bit 192 k. The equalization, gate/expander and compression features, if used properly, can give whatever you input into this baby, some added oomph, if used sparingly. Note I said sparingly, you can easily mess up the sound of your mic or instrument by over using all of the above, which may make the less technically adept person, to think twice about getting this complicated of a piece of gear.This one is definitely for a pro.
SRP –
I purchased the ART Voice Channel for my home studio for voice-over work. This greatly improved the overall sound of my microphone recordings. Prior to buying this I was just running my Rode NT1-a microphone into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 interface (I wrote a separate review on the Scarlett 2i2..which I am not entirely happy with).I really wish ART would provide some kind of tutorial for the functions and what their implications are. For a beginner like me it is really tough to find the right settings. I couldn’t find any online videos that really went through all the functions either. One of the big reasons I purchased this was for the De-Esser, but it has not really had a huge impact on controlling sibilance from the microphone. How much of that is due to the microphone itself…I don’t know, but you would think the De-Esser would have some impact, it hasn’t really. ART should make a video tutorial or better manual to explain!