The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

Hello all D-stockers. My first post in this forum. Great forum, been visiting many times.

I am going to buy some middle priced tube preamp for my home studio (AW1600, Sonar, Motif ES, Roland HD-1 + some electric and acoustic string instruments). I've almost decided to go for Presonus. However, I've been wondering for a while, how is it possible to use one tube in 2-channel preamps? Would it be better to buy two pieces of one channel preamps (tubepre) or one piece of two channel preamp (bluetube dp)? The latter is cheaper and more convenient, but is there a tonal difference and how does it affect on stereo image if you have only one tube shared by two channels?

Thanks in advance.

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- tuquoque

Hi, just wanted to say welcome to the forum.

When America wakes up (right about now) someone will come along and have a useful answer for you.

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

I own a presonus bluetube, such that you are considering. I can't answer the question you ask about the circuitry unfortunately. Others will be able to do so. I too will be interested in the response.

What i can say is that I have found the unit to be solid and reliable. I have had to train my ears to discern the effect the tube adds, as it is quite subtle through the first half of the control knob's travel. I like also that the tube circuit can be switched off. The pre is relatively quite, until the gain gets up to the top. The Gain and tube knobs have dents (it gently clicks and locks as you turn it up and down), so you can actually count how many clicks you are from a reference point on the dial. this said, the dial is very small, so I have to get a pair of glasses on to check the reference point. ( my life has come to that - glasses. I hope a hearing aid is not in the cards!) It has VU meters - which is why I bought it - I had another lower-end pre, but its meter is a light that changed colour - I am colour blind, so the changes of green>orange>red I could not distinguish. (Not good to have the client/artist over to the board set levels for themselves, I was thinking)

I was disappointed initially that the unit did not seem to give me monster-like gain. It has a pad, but it is -10 dB. The other unit I have had a +20 dB pad. Discussion on this forum has lead me to understand I don't really need all that gain, particularly if i track at 24 bits. So I have come to be more forgiving, and now look upon the unit more favourably. As long as you keep the gain out of the top 3-4 clicks of its travel, it is noisleess IMO. the tube effect is subtle. Even when you crank the knob all the way up you don't get major distortion, in my experience - but it does fuzz (warm?) things up a bit.

Good luck

Regards,

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Byron

Hi,

you asked if 1 tube can handle 2 different channels. The ECC83 which is inside the preamp can handle this, because it can do 2 different operations a time. In tube guitar amps only 1 ECC83 can be used as a reverb driver and preamp for example. So only 1 ECC83 is no flaw for a preamp.

Andreas

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Blues aint nothing but the blues!

Thank you for replying. As it seems that I wasn't clear enough, I'll try to rephrase my question. I have read from somewhere (don't remember where) that when just one tube is used in preamp there is some channel crosstalk and the result is that the stereo image is not so clear as it would be when two completely different preamps are used. Any experiences on this? Can you really hear the difference or is it something that can be measured but not heard by human being?

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- tuquoque