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Finding Warmth in a Digital World

Digital studios, samplers, and computer based recording systems have redefined the recording process. Where do tube processors fit in you ask?

Unlimited processing power and the ability to cut, copy and paste audio tracks together, to manipulate, perfect and compile performances has made the digital studio and the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) the mainstay of the recording process for the foreseeable future. The only remaining limitation of the DAW has always been this; “Yeah, the editing and mixing is great, I love the plug-ins and the effects, but how does it sound?”

Frankly, all of the direct to hard-drive recorders, digital multitracks and computer-based systems are great because they really have no defined ‘sound’ at all. Where a media like two-inch analog tape was warm, fat and furry, digital is often perceived as clean, yes, but also cold and clinical. The truth is, with good digital audio, whatever goes in, comes out generally uncolored. It isn’t the digital world that sounds sterile as much as it’s the source material recorded through a D/A converter that’s designed to be pristine and clean, and as a byproduct may sound a little “lifeless.”

Re-enter the Tube.

Putting a warm, clean and ‘musical sounding’ signal to your digital recorder is the key. Once you’ve captured the source, then the digital workstation or computer based recording system can manipulate and regurgitate the tracks all day long, doing what they do best. You’re guaranteed a warmer, more pleasing final product and a better sounding recording because you’ve recorded warmer, fatter and furrier source material.

It’s vital that you use high-quality microphones or DI’s at the source, but how to get that signal into your computer sound card or digital mixer with warmth, clarity and ‘tone’?

Tube driven microphone preamps at the source, or inserting tube-based compressors in the signal path, are the professional studio engineer’s secret weapons. Enter ART.

Once the domain of the high-end studio, great sounding tube processing was expensive, esoteric ‘tube voodoo’ that few hobby studio engineers could afford or even fully understand. That has all changed with the introduction of our V3 tube technology. V3™ (Variable Valve Voicing) provides optimized reference points to begin the recording process. The V3™ presets were created and fine-tuned by some of the industry’s top studio and live-sound engineers.

V3™ technology allows users to select between a multitude of presets designed for guitars (electric and acoustic), keyboards, bass guitars, drums, vocals and more.

V3™ also incorporates OPL™ (Output Protection Limiter), which precisely and accurately controls and maintains the output peak signal. The OPL™ circuitry is crucial in protecting the next link in a signal chain – such as a hard-disk recording system or a sound card – because unlike analog clipping that sounds musical and sometimes pleasing, digital clipping is nasty and often fatal for your monitors’ tweeters.

Our TubeMP StudioV3 is the most useful little studio tool to come along in recent years, and every home recordist or studio engineer should have at least one in his studio toolkit. Period. The Tube MP Studio V3™ single channel mic preamp offers performance and sound quality superior to the “on-board” preamps found in today's soundcards, multi-trackers, and low-cost mixers. Professional quality sound combined with professional features like a hand-selected 12AX7A Tube, Phantom Power and Phase Reverse, are what make the Tube MP Studio V3™ an outstanding microphone preamp or the ideal tube-driven DI box for guitar, keyboard or bass. It of course has V3™ Technology – found only in ART microphone products.

Another V3 loaded option is the TPS II (Tube Preamp System 2). A two-channel high performance preamplifier coupled with our proprietary V3™ functionality, the TPS II also features variable input impedance that allows users to dial in and match any microphone type from large condensers to ribbon mics. This newly enhanced TPS II can accept +20 dB peaks while maintaining over 120 dB dynamic range, quiet performance and incredibly low distortion.

Digital Inputs on your DAW or soundcard? Why not use them?

The DPS II has all the great features, tone and function of the TPS II, including twin high performance discrete preamplifiers, V3™ with the additional flexibility and choice of analog and digital outputs to feed your soundcard or multitrack machine’s digital input. The DPS II adds continuously variable input impedance, LED input meters, auto mic/instrument switching, OPL™ flexibility and more tube warmth to the DPS II. A versatile insert loop on each channel provides access for additional signal processing or direct access to the high quality A/D converter. Separate gain controls on analog and digital outputs allow you to optimize the unit for simultaneous applications.

Digital outputs include S/PDIF, TOSLINK or ADAT (front panel selectable). The A/D is front panel adjustable from 44.1 to 96K or syncs to ADAT or external word clock (32KHZ to 100KHz). You can patch into any ADAT stream and select which pair (or all) of channels the DPS II transmits. The DPS II also features A-to-D digital conversion and ART Tube Technology similar to that of our DI/O Preamp System. This ensures that when you are going from the analog pre amplification to digital, your signal will be as warm and musical as you want it to be.

Tube Compression. Dynamic Control with warmth and precision.

The TCS (Twin Compressor System) is a two- channel high performance compression system that features two types of compression perchannel utilizing our Dual Topology technology. Unlike any other compressor in its class, the TCS allows the operator to choose between a very smooth transparent optical compression or a more aggressive VCA based compression scheme for hard limiting. Taking it even one step further, the TCS offers the breakthrough feature of stacking the VCA and the opto-isolator for those times when you want that over the top compression, or a hard VCA limiter on your optical compressed channels. Going beyond the idea of just a two-channel compressor, we decided to spice up the TCS with our famous V3™ technology. The TCS also offers the ability for the user to twist the V3 knob to a variety of settings, which takes some of the hassle out of compression, yet still allows each setting to be tweaked to the material’s needs.