ART DJPRE II Phono/Line Pre-Amplifier

Product Information

As you see, the DJPRE II has "low cut" filter switch together with input capacitance selector (100 or 200 pf). The front gain trim control and signal / clip LED allow you to optimize the preamp's gain for a wide range of input sources. You're right, you have to spend some serious money to make a significant improvement in many built-in phono stages today. Back in the 1970s, Shure had graphs that indicated that peak recorded levels on LPs were occasionally over 20dB above the nominal 5cm/sec recorded velocity, 18dB was regularly hit.

Records produce a certain amount of hiss, which is covered up in post-production by boosting the gain of the high frequencies before pressing.Unlike many other phono preamps, this one has an easy gain knob that lets you dial in a specific amount of amplification. it could be a little bit more heavy, but if you use the gain poty very rapidly, then it moves some centimeters. The RIAA curve is also applied on the cutting side, so overall cutting/replay headroom should be independent of frequency. When set there, the "Clip" LED flickers red every once in a while, though I don't hear any clipping of any kind. If you are in a situation with numerous powered devices and want to avoid humming, there is also a ground terminal on the back of the preamp.

Both devices are remarkably the same with one significant difference: the pluto bleeds noise from its power supply rectifier into its output. Its length of barely more than 10 cm and depth of less than 9 cm also takes up very little space, so it can feel at home in accessory bags and the like when travelling. Notice that I began this review by stating “recently retired”, and that translates into: Serious Coin is used for prioritized needs and wants… Groceries or expensive pre-amp? As explained above, I wouldn't be surprised, if these were all very similar, so that pretty similar performance would be to be expected anyway. The real cost comes from the switches, necesssary for adjustable loading, and a nice box to put it in.Read more Recently retired, I now have the time and motivation to digitize selections from my rather large collection of LPs. In this way, the signal of a turntable can also be fed to the AUX inputs of mixing consoles, sound cards, or tape decks. Because of this, it was incredibly easy to manually adjust it so the two signal strengths roughly matched. Here we have three graphs: one for Pluto and two for DJPRE II with its filter switch to Flat and Low Cut. Their product range includes digital interfaces and mixers, rack mixers, amplifiers, and monitor speakers, as well as headphone amplifiers, power conditioners, patch bays, and also “intelligent” graphic equalisers, tube preamps, compressors, and of course microphones.

Bought the ART DJ Pre II instead of the cheaper Behringer PP400 as it has adjustable gain and many reviews suggested it was worth the extra money. The built-in low noise phono preamp circuitry is highly accurate and precisely conforms to the RIAA standard. If you want to use the audio signal of a turntable with conventional line inputs, you cannot avoid using a preamplifier. I have the DJPREII between a Technics SL-1200MK7 and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 audio to USB interface. I'm sure there are many other ways to change the power supply for the Art that would work well, but this was my experience.Even while sitting in the sweet spot, my girlfriend switched it back and forth several times and I still didn't hear any change. I'm using a Technics SL-1200 M3D (which has had the ground wire integrated with the RCA plugs) *for whatever that info is worth*.