The ART Pro Audio DJ PRE II preamp. The best preamp bargain out there?

http://artproaudio.com/artcessories/turntable_preamps/product/djpre_ii/

Those of us who frequent the Needledropping thread can tell you . . . this is the little preamp that could. It's currently selling for only $44 on Amazon, but people who've had both this and the Cambridge 640p say that the ART DJ PRE II sounds better. You can find threads about how great this thing is on Audio Karma and Vinyl Engine. But there's been almost no chatter about it here, until several of us in the Needledrop thread wound up taking a chance on it and finding it was noticeably better than what we had been using.

Is it so hard to believe a $40 preamp could be a giant killer, taking down preamps way above its price range? Believe me, this thing is great. Adjustable capacitance, a low cut filter, adjustable gain, and quiet as the grave.

 

Yeah, a very good friend of mine found it on Amazon, and he's getting it for his low end setup. His receiver doesn't have a phono input.

 

I own one and bragged on it when I bought it a few years ago. I no longer use it because I've got an amp with a phono stage, but your comments make me want to pull it out of storage and use it for a needledrop!

 

I've used the version with the built in headphone amp and digital convertor, and I loved it for the convenience. The sound was great though I've never heard a high end phono pre. The digital files never sounded as good monitoring through the headphone amp though. I just bought the dedicated phono pre you are talking about. Not liking it very much so far because I keep hearing buzzes even though I think I'm grounded. Still playing with it.

 

Maybe exchange for another one? Shouldn't buzz.

 

Hmm, interesting. ART specialise in the Pro Audio area (preamps, sound processing for recording and PA etc) and don't do HiFi equipment as such.

I haven't heard this device, but based on your description they may have developed some solid technology and just forgot to add on the audiophile premium.

 

I use the ART in a secondary system.

For the low low price, it is a superb bargain, but I found the imaging to be somewhat 2D compared to my $145 Rega Fono Mini.

 

Agreed, it's a good little $45 phono pre but not a giant killer. Imaging is definitely 2D.

 

Depends on how you have it loaded, what cartridge, etc. I replaced a Cambridge Audio 640P with it and I'm greatly preferring the sound of the Art. Much bigger and deeper soundstage.

 

I picked up the ART a few months back on strong recommendations from regulars of the needledrop thread. I am very pleased with the response and output this little machine creates. Its value far exceeds the money spent on it. I highly recommend the ART to anyone who is just starting out listening to vinyl with a critical ear and a love for great sounding audio.

 

I wish I would have kept my needledrops I did with my old Behringer PP400...after I got the ART, I went in and redid a lot of my drops and deleted my old ones..the difference is staggering

 

The ART was the first phono pre I got after my old receiver died--it sounded truly fine, but I got a subtle 60Hz hum from the wall wart or the wiring in my building that prevented me from making needledrops with it. The gain knob is a very nice bonus. When I discovered the optimal capacitance/loading for my cartridge required a preamp with little to no added capacitance, the 100/200 option on the ART was simply too high. So I switched to a 14pf battery-operated Hagerman Bugle, which also sounds great, and wiped out the hum problem. If using a cart that requires over 250pf, I would definitely recommend the ART as the best low-cost option out there.

 

A great number of the good folks at audiokarma really enjoy this. Thanks to the OP for pointing it out. I need something for a third system & very nearly bought a Cambridge Audio 640, but I think I'll give one of these a try. At the price, may as well satisfy one's curiosity!

 

I actually have a couple of those PP400's as well. Again, for the low price they offer good value, but they do not have audiophile performance.

 

I bought one to connect an old Kenwood KD-2055 turntable to the PC soundcard so I could do quick needledrops. Works well for my purposes.

 

Used off ebay so I'm stuck with it. Not very expensive though.

 

I wonder if a different wall-wart would clear it up?

 

I was actually going to try one of the RadioShack filtered wall warts and see if it made a difference, but never got around to it.

 

Might be worth it. Keep the Shack packaging as intact as possible and then you can get a refund if it doesn't work.

 

They're not too bad, and very quiet, decent frequency response, although a bit "edgy". I had two of them. Note... HAD. The little rotary pot for a level control goes bad very quickly. Not worth my effort to fix. It sounds good for the cheap preamp that it is... but count on it being disposable if you use it hard.

The LED's are quite annoying, but duct tape took care of them.

 

Interesting about the pot issue you had. I just have it set at 60% permanently, and use the pot on my analog-digital converter instead.

 

I wanted to resurrect this thread to share some of my recent findings with the DJ PRE II. I bought it a few months ago simply to compare to the built in phono section on an 80's Pioneer receiver. I used it for about a month before my stylus suffered a sudden and unexpected death (the cantilever just fell out of the assembly! LPGear replaced it thankfully). In that time, I wasn't completely sold on the ART. I thought it was a great piece of equipment for the $35 I paid, and while it did some things better than the phono in on the Pioneer, I also experienced listening fatigue, and the dynamic range was just less impressive than what I was accustomed to.

The turnaround time for my replacement stylus was several weeks, and as I waited, I thought more about what I had been experiencing. As a musician with experience as a sound engineer, I thought about that gain adjustment on the ART, and the instructions on the cardboard insert for setting it up when it first arrived. The instructions of course state something to the effect that you should adjust the gain to where the signal light is green, and if it flickers red on peaks, that's alright. Well, maybe in a DJ scenario that's desired, but in a home listening environment, it just didn't seem right to me. Even when setting it up initially, I took a more conservative approach than what ART suggested, and I ended up leaving the knob right in the middle at the "0" setting. I read online that many people agreed on "+2" in their systems sounding right, and I kept thinking, "Man! +2! That just seems so high!" I know that there are many other factors involved that may require a "+2" trim setting, like cartridge output and so on, but I'm starting to think now that, thanks to ART, people just have it set up wrong.

Once my stylus arrived, I decided to experiment with the ART and see if I could get it to sound better. Like I said, "0" on the gain knob still seemed high on my system, so I decided to observe it a little more closely. It turns out, it was still too high. I began to notice that on high volume content, like a kick drum, or a crescendo, that the green light, while it wouldn't turn red, would flicker a little. It's my belief that this flicker still registers a clip, but because the signal and clip indicators share the same LED, the clip is occurring faster than the LED can display. So I backed the gain off to the point where there was no noticeable flicker from high volume events, and I'll be damned if there isn't more dynamic range, subtlety, nuance, and air in the music. The ART now is appreciably more detailed and enjoyable to listen to than my Pioneer phono section. Essentially what increasing that gain knob does is compress the signal. The music can't breathe, it sounds loud, and nuance is lost because everything's coming out at a more uniform level. It might fool you and sound "better" at first, but it's just loud.

Take this as you will, tailor to your own equipment obviously, but seriously consider backing that gain off, if only to experiment. I'm closer to "-2" now, though a smidge higher. One other point of observation, the green light will flicker sometimes now, but it's more because of the dynamic drop offs in the signal, like the split second silence in between high hat, snare, and kick drum hits. It's not every time, and certainly not because the gain is now too low. It's just because the signal is dynamic, and now it shows.

 

Very cool, thanks for the update!

 

I recently started using it with a 12v DC battery, and the improvement has been remarkable. Here's some sound samples:

ART with stock wallwart:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39332736/ART-wallwart.aiff

ART with 12v DC battery:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39332736/ART-DC.aiff

Recorded with a modded Technics SL-1200MK2 and a Grado Signature 8MR cartridge. ART gain set at -2.

 

Very excellent updates, guys. Thanks for sharing!