Avalon VT-737sp Class A Mono Tube Channel Strip  

The avalon is alright, a lot of it is hype.  I had the chance to compare it to the la 610 mkii on every level and the la610 just sounded better period.  Depending on what sound your looking for, don't be fooled by the price.  I feel the la610 was more cleaner, although the avalon has more eq control you have to look at the whole pic. But every piece of gear has pro & cons.

WARM & CLEAN...At the studio I used to work in, we would use this as the pre for almost EVERYTHING - vocals, acoustic guitar, bass, cello, violin, etc. While it's not a magic box, the difference between going direct into the board and using this is huge - like the difference between photographing in natural sunlight and under florescent lights. Not my favorite compressor, best used subtly & compressed later in the chain, but my favorite preamp of all.

Nice smooth sound.  The equalizer section is very useful and musical.  The compressor section is ok. If it had a limiter on it, that would help quite a bit.  Overall, it imparts a very nice sound to the source audio.  Oh, and I absolutely love the way a bass plugged directly into (front panel) sounds!  If you can't get good sounds out of this, sell your stuff and stick to recording to cassette decks.

The Avalon Vt 737sp is the be all end all preamp in my book... I have worked extensively with summit pres, neves pres, and even ssl stuff... nothing is a versatile and easy to use... The eq sound full and rich... the compresion is sweet and has cool ways you can feed it through the signal chain... also the natural tube distortion you can get is like nothing I've ever heard... bottom line you can't beat it... My only complaint would be it's price... I would love to buy a secound one for stereo tracking but I have to hold off because of the price... But trust me I own cheaper presonus and ART stuff... none of it holds a candle.............

I've been recording my vocals and a few friend's vocals with karaoke backing tracks for years now and could never figure out why I couldn't get that slick, warm professional "record" sound. So I bought one of these to see if it would do the trick. Unfortunately, it sounds about exactly the same as other methods/equipment I've tried. I have an AT 4033 mic going into a Firewire 410 and then into SONAR 5. I experimented by recording my vocals through a MACKIE CFX12 board and then simultaneously outputting one channel to the Avalon/FW and the other directly into the Firewire. Result: just about the same sound. I guess the magic is in the mixing and application of FX and double tracking, etc. Oh well, I guess I'm going to return the unit and be happy with the current front end of my recording (I also sometimes use an Aphex 107 preamp). The only real complaint I have is that the compressor didn't seem to have a limiter function. AS far as looks go, it's definitely a nice heavy duty professional looking unit but I think a lot of this "warmth" stuff is more in people's heads rather than in their ears. To be honest, I also did an A/B with the Aphex vs the Avalon and couldn't really hear any noticeable difference between the 2. Maybe this says a lot for the M-ADIO FW 410 - it sounds just as good!