286 S : There is no real contender in this price range

I have been working as a voiceover and producer for a number of years now. For the price, there is no real contender to match ease of use, reliability and build quality. Even some higher priced units aren't as good as this all round.

I recently produced an entire audiobook using this preamp and won quite a prestigious award for the production. Granted I used a lot of VST also (Fab Filter mostly) and other good production techniques, but this unit just gives so much confidence to the performer listening to themselves live. You know what you are going to get with it and you know where you stand with it.

Ignore people saying the tubes are no good. Dig deeper and you will find people who replaced the tubes with "better" ones who eventually reverted back to the stock Chinese tubes. If you are just doing VO for commercials and some games etc. then this is more than good enough, in fact it's brilliant for that. Yes there is no power switch, but it's designed to be rack mounted with a sequenced power conditioner (if you haven't got a power conditioner yet.. please get one and protect your gear.. Furman are good, start there). Get a rack while you're at it.. you're in the audio rabbit hole now and the DBX is a great way to begin the fall!

Great overall, I will probably keep it till I start spending in the high thousands of dollars for preamps.