DBX 286 S 5-stars Reviews

Awesome mic pre

I bought the DBX 286 S for radio broadcasting purposes and it's awesome to give my voice the presence it needs to be heard between all the audio elements we use on air. Really great and affordable.

Best Mic Pre for every dolar we spend

Cost effective, i believe this is matter. 286s will do much more than the money we spend on it. so, it will not go wrong with this 286s

A must for recording

I use this in an active home studio to manage a vocal mic. It adds that "pro studio" feel to the vocals and enables me to manage many different types of vocalist (shouty to breathy). It lives in cohabitation with an Apollo x8, and I find less of a need to apply Apollo filters to the vocal, which is freeing. It's a great value for the money.

Awesome unit. Perfect for a small home studio or a podcast. The only thing I have to complain about is the weird controls on the the compressor. No Threshold or Ratio, but instead Drive and Density. I can never remember which does what.

Can't go wrong

This has to be my best improvement in my home studio.

It all checks out for me. The quality, the build quality, all the features and at what price you can get all that.

My vocal recordings went from boxy, noisy and all over the place to clean, subtle compressed, loud enough.

Of course the microphone also plays a big part in the overall quality of the sound, but I'm using a fairly cheap MXL 440.

I already can get a pristine sound out of my vocal chain.

I can only imagine what an microphone upgrade can add to this...

excellent product for DBX 100% recommend!!

Great Mikrofon Prozessor

I bought this to engage it with my Presonus Studio 1824. It works well, however, if I record voices directly to my Presonus is obvious that sound quality is way better. This processor has great features such as de-ess, compressor, limiter, etc I can say this processor is better suited for voice and post-cast, for recording singing is OK but not optimal due you lose some audio quality from the sound interface, overall I like this hardware and for the price I highly recommend it.

Amazing little box

I use this DBX for vocals, and it's pretty amazing. It has greatly improved the quality of my takes on the way in (less processing needed during mixing). It's a bit hard to get the right settings, but once you get the hang of it, you probably won't want to record without it. There's a gate, a compressor, an EQ, a de-esser, the whole deal!

The most amazing voice proccesor and not only...

I have bought 2 of them a couple of month ago.. and now I am, yet, about to buy another 2 for my radio station. I used them not only on my radio station but in my recording studio as well. They are amazing, the sound that comes out of this preamp is amazing, clean and clear and such a good punch...

Can't find a fault with it!

All across the board, from construction, through feel, sound quality and range features, along with a small price tag, this unit hasn't failed me yet in its daily use! Can't recommend enough.

Almost perfect!

I had been recommended to this product by colleagues who were extremely happy with the same model. I can see why everyone likes it and the 286s is in great demand.

There are too many positives to list, but I will highlight the efficiency of the expander/gate which is excellent. The only negative is the one everyone mentions - there is no power switch, so it is permanently on.

I'm sure they'll address this on the next version, but at £139 this is excellent value, especially when used versions are selling on eBay for significantly more!

Perfect for improving audio during video meetings!

I bought the DBX during the COVID lockdown primarily for video meetings, because I wanted to have a better audio when using my Rode NT1A microphone.

At first I tried various digital workarounds (microphone routed through DAW with noise reduction/gate plugins, compressor, EQ, and looped back) but I had loads of problems that way. Sometimes it worked perfectly, other times my coworkers complained about all sorts of problems that I didn’t hear on my end, not to mention the extra latency.

Eventually I gave up and started looking at hardware options. After watching loads of reviews online I decided on the DBX and it worked great! The compressor and noise gate were especially helpful.

I think that for video meetings/calls or for streaming the DBX is the best choice for this price. However for the usual audio recordings (vocals or voice over) I use it only as a preamp with processing bypassed and then do all the post processing in my DAW afterwards, because that gives me more wiggle room to process the recordings anyway I want.

totally wourth it

This device is something you really need with a rode broadcaster or sm7b.

It sounds 10 times better for a penny.

Good preamp - does the job

I brought this to use with my Shure SM7B as I found that it wasn't loud enough. It works very well, especially if you want to do some processing before it goes to your Daw. However If you wanting this for live use,I'd look at something smaller for portability.

Professional value at affordable price

I use voice recording in an office/studio which operates a lot of electrical equipment and and having a hardware sound chain and preamp in one channel strip like the dbx 286 S Microphone Processor helps me cope with white noise and outside traffic noise while coping with anything from Office 365 Teams telephony and professional voice production.

Packaged in a 19" rackmount form factor may terrify those who are new to audio production, but the unit enjoys plenty of professional YouTube commentary to help understand the learning curve and configure this workhorse. The unit is excellent for those moving up from entry level microphones to prosumer and professional tools. Also, a hardware sound chain like the dbx 286 S may be quicker to get to grips with than learning audio processing software to achieve the same results in tools like Audacity, Reaper, and other post processing apps.

I can disable the sound processing chain and record raw mic input for post processing, and I can always fall back to preconfigured settings for telephony/rush recordings, casting etc. In this respect the High Pass filters and Expander/Gate really help cope with outside neighbourhood noise and suppressing electronics fans etc.

I marked down the the "Features" by one star because the unit does not have a power on/off button. This means having to unplug the unit from my rackmount power strip, and it is a feature I would be very pleased to see included in future iterations.

the best i love it

Very satisfied!

All right. All the products our local companies imported were 110v in total, so I couldn't buy them. Later, I happened to find this site and bought it in 240V version. It was delivered safely and the power cord arrived just right for 240v. I'll give you nine out of 10 points for durability, stability, sound quality and effectiveness. All the functions in one piece are what I need, so I'm satisfied.

Beast features for the budget

I'm on the second unit, first one broken on warranty, got repaired, and has broken again out of warranty (~3 years)

Bought the second one because i think that's the perfect piece of equipment for my microphone adjustments, that comes at a really low cost comparing to other mic preamps that don't have that much features.

And if it will break again i will buy the 3rd unit. Hope not :)).

DBX 286 S Microphone processor

Thank you very much. Very pleased with the product.

you you do any type of vocal recording this is a tool to have on your arsenal