ART Dual Levelar

I specifically bought this for it's ease of use and professional sound. I purchased it from a local studio here when the owner was doing upgrades and had used it there to record bass, vocals and guitars. It does awesome job with every day compression chores and some mild limiting. I used to chose the dual levalar at the studio to record vocals, bass and acoustic guitars. In addition to warming things up the combination of the tubes (two 12ax7) and the optical compressor really sweetens a recording during mix down.

I use both ART and Presonus preamps with this at home and a BBE 482i unit after. I really get a good result with this. I had previously owned a ART pro VLA compressor and this has the exact same vactrol circuit. The two units sound identical, in fact for fun I did a blindfold on them and I actually guessed the Dual Levelar was the ART pro VLA compressor. I think the main differences between the two are LEDs vs. VU meters. The Levelar is very quiet. The compression is very transparent, airy and musical. It has a vintage sound to it and gives the mix a very professional quality like old 1970s recordings. I wish they had a plug in that could do what this does. I don't think there is any true replacement for tubes and a optical compressor. This is a true stereo optical compressor. You can even run both optical compressors in series and get some really nice "LA 2" type effects.

Like most ART products it's indestructible. In the years I've owned rack equipment I've never had anything ART makes conk out on me. They have a good web site and if you have any tech questions they answer promptly.

I've emailed them with questions and gotten responses back this next morning in my mail box. I wish all companies did this because its a deciding factor for me if I will buy from them again or not.

I play mostly contemporary covers as well as originals and I am a working musician. I play out twice a week and give lessons. I am glad I bought this. It was in like new condition and in top working order. Reading some of the negative reviews here and the cheap price they paid for the unit on ebay leads me to believe they may have gotten one that had bad tubes or shorted out. The Dual Levelar has rich compression has a nice smooth limiting that works for me for mix down. Actually, I love this unit so much I am shopping for a second one just in case since they are not made anymore. ART still services them if you need anything done. There turn around time is very fast but I use this compressor several times a week and really grown to depend on it as part of my sound and also to give my demos that "professional" quality. I do mostly digital and without this I don't think my songs would have that warm "tubey" sort of sound I can't get from plug ins or VCA compressors. If you get a chance listen to a Dual Levelar and a ART pro VLA. I think ART discontinued the Dual Levelar because it uses the exact same circuit as the Pro VLA except costs half the prices and was taking away from sales too much. I've seen dual levelars in many small studios primarily for their good sound and easy set up.

There are few controls so there are few options. I bought mine used on ebay without a manual but found one on the ART web site. It helped a great deal and was well written but like things really laid out simply like the manual for my presonus blue max.

I pretty much bought this unit based on the harmony central reviews and the popularity of the tube pac model which is a single channel version of this with a tube mp added to it. This brings up a very good point but if you get a dual or single levelar you need to have a microphone preamp. Fortunately I had a ART tube MP around. I found the unit very quiet. I've just ran it straight into a tascam 488 for testing. I used a shure sm57 into a ART tube MP into the dual levelar. I sang and played acoustic guitar for the test. I did several tests using MP/Levelar, just MP and then plugging into the Tascam with no levelar or MP. The best result came from the mp/levelar combination but it was not as spectaculer as I expected. Reading a lot of the reviews for the levelar I expected some kind of vintage 60s tube sound. It does make your recording sound more professional and boosts your signal. I watched the meters when I played back my test recording and listened. It did compress mildly and transparently. It is not an extreme compression or anything that is profound. Until I saw the leds move I wondered if it was on at all and kept feeling the case to see if the tubes were hot. Prior to using the ART stuff I used a lot of real vintage tube equipment from 50's and 60's. I pretty much let go of it because it was delicate, expensive and hard to operate if your not an engineer. I can hear a boosted wound with the 12ax7 tubes in the ART equipment but I wouldn't call it a "tube" sound. It does sound pretty good-not as great as everyone writes about which leads me to believe that most of the people who write it has a good tube sound never played through any vintage equipment. I am satisfied though. It will give you a more professional sound, the compression is very mild to the point of not being noticeable. I do not think this would squash a mix or you would mistake this for UREI 1176 or LA2A. Still I only paid $63 for it and got stereo optical compressor with tubes. Can't beat that

ART is like Peavey. Seem pretty indestructible. Yes, would gig with it.

ART has a good reputation.

I work on home demos mostly. I've been playing since I was five. I bought this mainly for vocals, I always wanted an optical compressor and to use for mix down with my presonus blue max. I'm not a recording engineer I like the fact you do not have too many controls here. What I don' like is I guess I was expecting for some extreme 60's sounding tube compression but maybe a lot of that is just bouncing tape as opposed to real compression. I will use this to record just about everything I can. It's not to bad and unbeatable for the price.

pro sound, consumer ease of use. practically plug n play. lacks variable comp, etc for true PRO use but for $155 on ebay . . .
GO GET ONE!

i use on fx loop in board. runs my TV audio to squash all those explosions over the dialogue. also, handles a bass signal and even the most untrained vocalist w/o noise. sends to hi-fi amp, combo amp, PA amp -- no problems. overdrives w/o complaint. i have a $500 tube sound (w/ a compressor too) for $155 plus $8 shipping!

the price makes it practically disposable but dont take it on the road.

check the website. honest product support. no gratuitous use of 'digital'

good PRE for any signal. just dont expect to squash a full mix flat. great for budget setup where the listeners know a 'CD' isn't the perfect sound.

very easy to set up, less dials and buttons than your
ordinary transistor compressor. No attack and release, only
threshold and makeup gain. One button for fast or slow compression.

Nothing special, kind of bland, needs warming up. Dull is probably
the most fitting description. Works alright, but in most situations you would probably benefit from not using it. problem is that it's too slow, even with "Fast" enabled. This means that the attack of fast instruments like drums, organs or percussive synths are let through without compression. Suddenly the compressor kicks in and it stays in. It's only the very first attack that is let through, the rest are damped, even if the interval between each sound is pretty long (1 sek or so).
I don't like this behavior, which makes the compressor pretty useless at handling anything but really slow stuff like pads or soft voices.
It's definitely not your "bread and butter" compressor, far too slow. Check out the FMR RNC1773 (really nice compressor) instead, similar price but probably much better.

Yeah, almost forgot; the warm tube sound. That was why I bought it in the first place. If there ever was a warm tubesound, then it's elsewhere to be found, not in the Dual Levelar, unless bland and boring is your idea of warm.

For a warm tubesound the best idea would probably be a tube-equalizer, like a TL-Audio EQ-1 or similar.

I'm selling my ART Dual Levelar.

Sturdy design, firm knobs and buttons. Metal case. Good work.

I make techno and Bigbeat and for this kind of music the box is far too slow. Also feel that it takes out too much of the dynamics of a signal, leaving it bland and dull with less character. In some situations it will probably do a good job, especially slow vocals and pads it will handle fine, problem is that it's usually not those parts that needs compression anyways.

For this reason I'm selling it and rate it 5.

Getting a sound from the dual Levalar is EXTREMELY easy! I bought the unit because of the great experiences I've had with my Pro VLA from ART. After using the PRO for recording, I bought the smaller version for my bass rig. The lack of controls is a bit scary, but the thing just seems to work so good, this isn't a problem. A control to set the ratio of compression to something other than 3:1 or 6:1 would be nice, but it's not necessary really. The threshold and make up gain are the only rotary controls on either channel. The low end and top end both seem to sould nice and full, not yechy like they sometimes could with the Alesis 3630. It would work well if everything was just right, but the ART is way more forgiving and sounds a heck of alot better..

The sound quality is very nice. I've only got to use this unit in my bass guitar rig, so I'm not too sure how it would do on more complex signals but for this it sounds lovely. I am using it with my Ampeg SVP-Pro preamp and SVP-1500 power amp with one of their new style Pro series 4x10 cabs. We play alot of different types of music in our band, alot of rock and pop, with some Motown and blues too. This thing just sounds so fat! I think it would be pretty tough to get a bad sound from this compressor in this application, I think it's perfect! I use the auto setting for the release times, seems to work slick for me.

I always open up the chassis on any new piece of music gear! The ART is nicely constructed and layout is good too. The tubes are 12AT7's( one per channel) and they are USA made Phillips JAN military tubes! Glad to see that and the way ART mounts them into the single rack space unit is pretty cool too! The tip of the tube sticks into a grommet that is in the back pannel of the thing, from the backside, you can see what looks like a very small light, top of the tube actually, showing. This would allow the user to see if the tubes are lighting up in case of a problem! Neat! I haven't used the unit all that long, so I can't really say what it's overall rating for reliability might be.

Haven't had to use them.

I would have to say that I could not do without this thing now, it's that good for me. I would replace it if it were swiped! The grapics on the front pannel are a little plain, no problem for me, it doesn't have as many features as the pro model, but the sound is very nice. All in all, a very nice product. Balanced in's and out's with XLR and TRS connections is a nice feature too!

There are only two attack paramters that are pre-set into the unit- fast and slow- but they more than suffice for compressing vocals, instruments, and program material at mixdown... excellent sound with no headache. Some will miss being able to play with the attack and release parameters more, but it's like buying a Rockman- you can't change much about it, but the engineers used an autocratic approach because it took them a long time to tweak it, make it sound right...

Excellent, excellent compression... we use this unit in our project studio when recording vocals (we don't have a condenser mic at the moment- we use a Shure SM-58, and so gain uniformity is paramount when recording), but it is ultra-crucial when we are processing the final mix. The biggest thing that will make your demo sound amateur-ish is lack of compression; this thing delivers. It is completely noiseless, transparent, and- thanks to the tube compression- it does not breathe or pump and is very forgiving when it is being over-used. You can compress the HELL out of a mix before it starts to sound like it has been smooshed.

We have had our unit for about a year; as long as you pay attention to the manual's admonition to let the tube warm up for a minute or so, I don't see any problems in the future. The thing is heavey, made of seemingly high-guage steel, and seems pretty much indestructible.

Hmm... never had to deal with ART's customer support, but I do know that they have their manuals online, downloadable at no charge in Adobe Acrobat format, which is great if you ever lose yours...

I have been playing guitar for sixteen years now, but have only been recording and mixing for about two years. There is an incredible learning curve involved there- but the ART has not been a real part of that. We have owned other compressor before- solid-state, weird machines with way-numerous and mystical knobs, puzzling manuals, and a terrible, wheezing, pumping sound that hurt more than it helped. Compression is, to a lot of people, a hard thing to understand. Compressors are, to a lot of people, VERY difficult devices to operate properly. Not this one. Easy as pie.

This review is for the 2-channel Dual Levelar, but also mostly applies to the 1-channel Levelar. The controls are fairly simple; a bit limited when compared with the usual range of controls on VCA-based compressors like the dbx 1066. You only get two attack and release settings and one ratio, so the unit either works for your application or it doesn't; there's not much to set except the thres I couldn't hear a big difference between the different attack and release values. If you want or need full control, get the higher-end model, the ART PRO VLA, instead.

Very quite and clean; surprising for a budget tube device. I'd give it a 9 except that on some sounds, like bass guitar, its attack and ratio settings aren't a good match and sound dull. A friend of mine uses a Levelar for his acoustic guitar pickup when playing live. I tried it on vocal and drum tracks and liked it, especially on vocals. It can compress by about 12dB before it starts to sound squashed; that's pretty good.

Time will tell. In a few years it might need the tubes replaced.

A good deal if it matches your needs. I wanted more control so I returned it and stepped up to a PRO VLA. The faster attack and variable ratio are worth the extra money to me, for project studio use.

This unit is quite straightforward. There are two channels which can be used independently (dual mono) or as a stereo pair. For each channel there is an input level pot and a threshold pot which controls the level at which the compression kicks in. A switch selects compression or limiting. In other units this is often a pot that varies the compression ratio between 1:1 (no compression) and infinity (limiting). The pre-selected ratios work perfectly well. Each channel has a set of LEDs that meter the compression being used on the signal, so you get a visual clue as to what the unit is doing. Only criticism is that the switches are small and its hard to see whether they are on or off without getting right up to the unit and having decent light. Anyway, don't let the sparse front panel put you off - it works well with minimal effort. Inputs are 1/4 inch or XLR, but these are line level so don't expect to plug a mic in the back and use it as a preamp!

Excellent. This levelling amplifier sounds great. The combination of the tube amplifier circuits and the VCA-less design gives a rich, warm sound that has none of the "breathing" effects that are associated with many compression units. It is just very musical and completely transparent. Don't expect it to sound like a pumping DBX... I originally bought this to insert into a mixer channel for recording vocals, for which it works very well. The surprise was when I accidentally left it hooked up to a guitar track and wondered why the guitar suddenly sounded 200% better than before. This is the reason. Suffice to say that it is now part of my guitar rack.

So far I have had no problems, so I have not needed to use ART support. It seems to be very solidly built.

I bought this on a salesman's recommendation, having never heard of it or heard it, and I was prepared to return it if necessary. I didn't expect to be able to find a great sounding stereo tube compressor for the low price, but I was pleasantly surprised. Easy to use, sounds great and has musical character without getting in the way. I have used similarly priced solid state units with many more knobs that required a lot of fiddling around and never really sounded better than average. This, I would buy again. Check it out, it could make you happy!