Art USB Dual Pre

The ART USB Dual Pre is a simple USB interface that has 2 XLR/TRS inputs and 2 TRS outputs. The interface does have Phantom Power and comes with software to record with in case you don’t have a DAW already. The price of this interface is 80 dollars which makes it very affordable to anyone that is on a small budget and wants to have a decent preamp. The unit is very small and can easily be taken from place to place. For this interface to be 80 dollars, the latency is very good. It is extremely low. If you are in search of a plug and play type of USB interface this is the perfect one. I have used this interface many times over the last 10 or 11 months and one thing that shocks me every time is how good and quiet the preamp is.

UTILIZATION

The drivers are very stable on my MacBook mainly because there are no special drivers needed to run the ART USB Dual Pre, I loved using this interface in Logic. It gave me a great sound, and monitoring my recordings with was simple with the ART USB Dual Pre. The resolution is 16 bit 44.1kHz.

GETTING STARTED

The weight of this interface is only about a pound at the most and its only about 5 inches wide which makes it great for traveling with or throw it in your laptop bag to take it with you. You don’t even have to have a USB 2.0 port, it will work with the original USB 1.1 ports that first came out on Windows 98 and Windows 2000 systems.

OVERALL OPINION

The fact that this interface takes no special drivers and can run on any system makes it a must have, even if you already have a interface it is always good to have a backup especially when it’s a portable one because you never know what can happen when you are taking your gear from place to place.

My first sound card, used to record keyboard, guitars (DI and micro) and voices. The two inputs are XLR and Jack, have good headroom without too much wind. The phantom power allows the use of microphones with no problem.
The interface is self powered by USB, but if that's not enough, you can put a 9V battery.
Side outputs: 1 minijack and 2 Jack symmetric. You can adjust the balance between the zero-latency direct monitoring, and the sound of the PC.

UTILIZATION

The product is plug and play, easily recognized under Linux. It works by 44.1/48 kHz, 16 bit.

GETTING STARTED

Anything special to install, small manual is useless!

OVERALL OPINION

I use it for 6 months without any problems.
The best: the price, size
The least: the sound is a little metal means a background noise when trying to record a signal with strong bass, but the interface does not have a particular flaw at this price!
I would do this choice: there is everything you need for fun, no more, no less.