Focusrite ISA One Analog 4-stars Reviews

Best entry mic preamp

ISA was my first microphone preamp and I was fully satisfied with it for a long period of time. If you are in search for a well built transformer preamp - it’s your choice. I pared it with my u87 ai and the sound was gorgeous.

Be sure you can’t go wrong with this one, it’s 100% worth it’s price. I put 4 stars and not 5 because i want a little bit more saturation from my amp and I started to prefer tube saturation with time, but it’s only my personal opinion and it doesn't really affect the greatness of that budget preamp.

great clean pre

I recently decided it was time to upgrade from the built in preamps in my Focusrite Sapphire to a 'real' external preamp. My budget was about 600 EUR. Afer a LOT of online research, I narrowed my options down to 6 preamps, in roughly the same price range. The preamps were:

ART Pro MPA II

Warm Audio TB12 Tone Beast

Black Lion Audio B173 Preamp

FMR Audio RNP 8380

Warm Audio WA73

Focusrite ISA One Analog

As I will be using the preamp mostly for vocals and bass, I tested both those signals.

I plugged my Ibanez 600 in passive mode into my BSS DI, into the preamp. For vocals, I hooked up my SM7B straight into the preamp, into Logic X. The results:

The Focusrite ISA One is the biggest preamp out of the bunch, and built like a tank. Sound wise, it is the most clear pre out of the six. Compared to the built in preamps in the Sapphire, there is definitely more clean gain, with the base character of the tone remaining mostly unchanged. The tone shaping options are more than decent, and there is a lot of I/O. In the end, the ISA One didn't make the cut because it felt too clean, and not big enough of a palpatable difference with the Saphhire.