Phoenix Audio DRS-1R 500 Series Microphone Preamp

Since most of my connection to music over the past 15 years has been as some dude who plays guitar and doesn't have money to explore the world of musical equipment more deeply, my experience with high quality mic preamps and DI's is basically zero, but I think I know good sound when I hear it. I've been building a home hybrid music studio over the past year, and the time came to have at least a decent mic pre for recording vocals and acoustic guitars. As an afterthought, I figured it should have a decent DI because otherwise I'm using the DI in my little PreSonus audio interface for recording electric guitars, and the sound there just isn't cutting it.

So, I had a paltry budget and basically the only thing that people seemed to universally praise that I could afford was the DRS-1R: dude, the stars aligned on this one.

First, compared to the mic preamps in a budget audio interface and a budget mixer, there is just, like, no comparison. After hearing my terrible voice through this thing, I'm not sure I could stand to hear my voice through my cheap (though totally functional) mixer preamps. I was previously unaware that a difference like THAT existed, but here we are. I can't compare it to other preamps on the market and have no experience to do so, so take the above with a grain of salt, but I really like how this thing sounds. Sending drum machines through the line level input of the mic pre and experimenting with ratios of input and output gain can get into sound design territory, same for synthesizers.

I'm convinced the DI must be the best DI for electric guitar on the market. This is pure mysticism on my part since I have no point of reference, but a strat into the DI into some quality amp/cab simulation software is producing tones that are blowing my mind. Turning the output knob up produces some really obvious (transformer probably?) saturation that sounds, and even more feels, so gooey and soft. It is a shame there's not a pad that comes after the output because this thing has non-trivial amounts of headroom, so gain staging is very important. Anyway, I would understand anyone who bought this thing only for the DI (though maybe Phoenix Audio has a module for that?), it's that good (again, coming from a novice...)

Some purchases you look back on and aren't exactly certain why you made them in the first place, I can't imagine this one being one of them. I love this thing.

PROS: Just a really nice, full, and extremely open sounding mic preamp. A DI that is of disturbingly high quality on electric guitars. Excellent build quality.

CONS: There's no pad, and this thing will redline the input stage next in line extremely easily. This can be used creatively, but it'd be much easier to manage with a pad (perhaps I'm an idiot and what I'm proposing isn't possible, in which case this isn't a con). When using the mic pre, a pad isn't strictly necessary since you have input and output gain, but the DI only passes through the output stage so this doesn't work in general. This is the only negative thing I currently have to say about it, and it's far from a deal breaker.