dbx 376

Very easy if you know the basics of parameters in every section

I was not very happy with the sound, I hear it sterile and cold, but I replace the factory tube (Electro Harmonix) fot a RCA Blackplate and it change it like night to day... Smoother, heat, mellow sound... I use the 376 like master preamp, in studio and live. In live I use it with Shure Beta87, 376, mpx1, and psm600 with E5... And it sound very great now, much more natural...

Strong construction, very reliable...

I never use it

I will buy it again if it were stolen or loose, changing inmidiatly the tube but I like to try Focusrite Voicemaster Pro, because it is more vocal pre, and I will like to try it head to head...

Both the front and rear panels are clearly laid-out and fairly easy to use.

The digital out worried me, but I plugged it all in and it worked, quick snap. I would recommend a good cable for SPDIF, though. When I first tried with a cheapie cable I had a few minor dropouts.

The gain control is a little unusual. My initial tendency was to center it, but that drove the gain through the tube and I got a fair amount of tube-fuzz...nice, but not what I was intending for vocals. I dialed it back and it was fine.

Annoyingly, the power switch is on the back.

I'm using this with a few different mics, from a decent Rode to a craptacular SM58-clone. I've also run line-in direct from both a bass (Ibanez active pickups) and a violin (Steinberger electric).

The sound is, naturally, colored by the tube. It's quite pleasing, though. I'm tempted to find an even better tube and swap it in. So far, I've been able to get really clear, up-front vocals using it, and the fiddle sounded great (although I needed to mess with EQ for that one). The bass needed a lot of drive, though. That was less exciting.

Since there is a tube, as it heats up the tube gain tends to increase on its own. It's slight, but if you're on the edge between clean and overdriven, or you're dealing with a vocalist with a wide dynamic range, you'll want to keep watch on the gain to maintain consistancy.

The digital out is excellent. With the Type-IV conversion, I can't overdrive the signal, either. That's saved me a few takes, where normally I would've had to redo everything with a lower output setting because I clipped in one place, this conversion acts limiter-ish...not always appropriate but it works well for what I do.

It seems to be built like a tank. Of course I've only had it a few months so I'm not sure.

It does run hot. You will need at least a rackspace free above it for ventilation. And you will not want to leave it on all the time...a task made annoying by the rear-panel power switch.

It's a solid-sounding piece of kit. I previously had a Focusrite Voicemaster Pro, which had all sorts of bells and whistles on it - the dbx ends up sounding about the same, and with the digital out it's pretty unbeatable for my project studio.

it doesn't realy get much easier, though I didn't use the converters in it, and setting them up looked a little more thought involved (still pretty simple though)

okay, I used this for tracking male Rock vocals mainly, and it was realy good at that. It's not the clearest of pre amps, but it is quite warm, especialy when you have the compressor going in over easy mode, the de-esser works pretty flawlessly too, Sounds Amazing for screams!

pretty darn usefull, though I doubt I'll ever buy one in my studio (the one I use is in a friends studio)

It's easy to use. If you have any basic knowledge of compression, tube mic pre's, eq, etc. you don't really have to read the manual.

Good, but I can't say I've tracked a GREAT vocal with it yet. I would really like to tell you that I love my dbx 376, but sonically I'm still not sure I can. That doesn't mean it's not possible. After a year of use, though, the jury is still out. With that said it's certainly not a bad sounding unit but then again I've got pretty decent recordings with much cheaper small mixing consoles as well(hard to believe but it's true). I love musical gadgets and the 376 with its digital out is a cool gadget, plus it has a lot of versatility based on settings. That's the key to getting a good sound out of it - take time dialing in your vocals, etc. I've never had any clicking problems digitally or otherwise. The people who mentioned that in other reviews are goofing up on their bit rate settings or sample rate. Vocally with my AT 4033 microphone, it's pretty easy to push the tube to vocally distort. So people need to make sure they don't drive the tube input too much. All and all the sound is good but I must say I enjoyed a warmer, bigger sound with my old 1984 Sound Craft 200b console and my one inch reel to reel Otari tape deck. The thing was a monstrosity, a giant tank, and I wanted a more ergonomic digital set up. So now I use the DBX 376 with a laptop and lots of plug ins, Sonar, Vegas Pro and ADAT system.

It's seems well built and I've had no problems. I think it's a pretty sturdy unit.

Never called them so I don't know.

Overall I would say it's a worth while buy, especially in the $300 to $350 range, for example, used on EBAY. Also it's particularly good in an all digital set up because of the direct digital out. It helps to know a little bit about processing to get the full benefit of this unit. Tube warmth, EQ ,compression, de-esser, digital settings etc. Final comment: I have a friend I record with in Oakland CA who has a pretty cool studio, tube mics, sound proofing, he has put a lot of time and money into his studio and he chooses this pre-amp along with a Rode Tube mic to track his vocals. He would have it no other way. Except for maybe a U87 with an Avalon pre-amp. So to each his own. Check out my music at www.mp3.com/abcme

i wanted to make an update to the post i made (two posts previous to this one) several months ago. all the problems i was then having with subtle clicks when i recorded vocals are no more. it was matter of syncing the digital clock on the 376 to the the clock on my protools interface (workclock out of protools to wordclock in on the 376). that was it! works great now and the recordings seem to even sound better now as well. if i get brave, i'll try replacing the factory tube with a better quality one (12AU7 from Telefunken ), which i've heard people say improves the sound.

all considered, this gives you a lot in terms of a nice tube mic pre and digital coversion for what you pay.

The 376 isn't a very specialized or detailed unit. It's got a couple of basic features, all of which are pretty simple and subtle. EQ is divided into low, high, and a sweepable mid; compression offers threshold and ratio along with a slow switch and the ultrasmooth "overeasy" mode. I'm not getting much use out of the de-esser. It's really a simple unit for making basic, subtle colorations to your sound via te internal tube. I use it primarily to warm up tracks and fattening them up with a li'l EQ, tube drive, and smooth compression. Pretty straightforward stuff, so long as you know what each little buttun you push is for.

I'm using the 376 into a ProTools workstation as a compressor and tube channel. For those purposes, I'm loving it. Frequently I'll track vocals into ProTools thrugh the 376 wth just a touch of compression, and then send the recorded signal back through the 376 for a little more coloration and compression if desired. The sound is warm and smooth, without being overly apparent. Subtlety is this unit's forte; ideally I see it as a compliment to a digital recording setup as a warm compression unit/preamp with the added bonus of a little EQ.

It's mounted in a rack and isn't going anywhere particularly dangerous. It's biggest threat as I see it is that I'll knock a drink over onto it. It seems sturdy and dbx has a long standing good reputation, so while I'm in no position to really judge in this category (only been using it for about a month now) I feel pretty confident it'll hold up.

I'm not a technophobe, but I like to keep things simple when recording. I greatly prefer a physical unit with knobs and buttons to plugins 9 out of 10 times, and I've found teh 376 to be a very user-friendly, understated unit that matches very well with digital recording. I'm not sure I'd recommend it for general analog recording systems unless you've got some seriously high-end gear and other processing units; the headroom is a little limited for hiss-prone tapes and the sound is naturally quite warm- also given the digital interfaces on this unit, I think it was pretty clearly designed for that domain. Unit noise is pretty good, and re: that clicking a previous reviewer noted, I had encountered it as well, but was able to eradicate it by getting my settings right (sampling/word length, etc) ~ in other words, it was my mistake, not the unit. I wish it were stereo. It's really just a solid, good sounding unit that doesn't do anything spectacular and could definately be done without. That said, though, I love it. A reasonably priced, high quality tube channel with some simple sound sculpting features and some nifty extras; it's a perfect single unit for digital editing where you don't need to make any drastic changes, just a few enhancments plus a nice compressor. Considering that category covers the majority of what I'm doing, and I'd assume the bread-and-butter of most of us recording live instrumentation or seeking to fatten up diital signal, the dbx 376 is a winner for simple goodness.

Very intuitive, barely need to read the manual if you're already familar with mic pre's, compressors, etc. Selecting your sample rate and bit depth couldn't be simpler. However, the input meter LED is too small and not accurate. This causes you do distort the input, while the input meter is incorrectly telling you that you are below clipping. I am going to try a better tube to see if this may help. But bottom line: too little headroom on the input gain.

Sounds better than any of the stock mic pre's built into the various Mackie and Spirit boards I've owned. However, it's no Avalon. Works good for instruments as well. Worse thing about the unit: When recording female vox and using the digital out, there's a tiny bit of soft clicking (ie: distortion). It gets masked in the mix though. This doesn't happen with the analog outs, which leads me to suspect that it may be an artifact of the dbx type 4 process (which you can't bypass!!!). This may end up making me sell the unit as i track female voice frequently.

It's not had any trouble since i've owned it.

I haven't tried them yet, which I should since I'm having the above mentioned problems.

This is better than using the cheap mic pre's built into most mixing consoles. But the low headroom and tiny meter for the input gain, along with the female vox clipping that I'm getting with the digital outs has made using this unit sort of a pain. If you're not using the digital outs, then you'll not need to worry about this issue. If I get too fed up with these problems, I'll look into some of the JoeMeek and Focusrite mic pre's that now have the digital out options

This unit is very intuitive, with all functions easily accessable via front panel buttons. Switches light up in different colors to indicate different states, which is handy. The only confusing thing was that the phase button merely says "phase," with no indication of whether it's reverse or normal when pushed in. Nowhere in the documentation is it explained. Other than this, it's very easy to get a great vocal sound. The classic DBX compression sounds great and is easy to dial in. The manual is stripped down and basic, however, with no actual "primer" on how to use the unit for beginners. I found much more info on-line about how the unit works in practical application.

When recording vocals with an AKG 414 mic, I found the quality of the preamp to be warm, articulate and natural. A nice complement to the super-clean 414. It's very quiet as well, with a ton of headroom. The EQ was musical, though I didn't use much, and the compression is effective, yet smooth. There isn't as much control over compression parameters as some would like, none the less, it performed beautifully for my purposes: recording vox, bass and guitar.

I've had the unit for a week, and so far so good. Can't comment on the long term, though. Seems well-built and solid.

Haven't had to deal with them yet.

Bottom line, this is an impressive unit at a bargain price. It's perfect for getting a professional vocal sound into your digital workspace, yet adds a nice sound to line-level instruments as well. This is now a key piece in my recording setup, and is the vital link between mic (414) and recorder (vs-1680), capturing a clean, noiseless, warm articulate signal and converting it beautifully to digital. Also, the combination of the type IV "unclippable" conversion system, smooth dbx compression and digital output achieved a loud, beefy signal--something I've found tough to accomplish in digital recording.