ART DJ Pre II

It's one of the cheapests phono preamps you can get with a gain knob. I choose it for that reason, however I thought it was a volume knob, and those are different things. However it was still useful considering I had no knob (or at least «easy to reach» knob) to control loudness in my first setup, where I had the turntable conected to this and then directly to active speakers. The gain knob only lets you adjust the strenght of the signal within a certain range. Doesn't let you, for example bring the sound to a «mute».
Either way I still have it in my current setup, and even though a better one can impact the sound quality, I find this one perfect enough, as there are other components (like the speakers and the needle) that have a much greater impact in the final result.

I bought the ART DJ Pre 2 a couple of month ago and i digitized a lot of LP´s.
Really great - for that price, the quality is very good.

Its very small so you can travel with it or bring it to friends very easily. it could be a little bit more heavy, but if you use the gain poty very rapidly, then it moves some centimeters.

The soundquality is awsome - very low noiselevel. even when you push it real hard.

Can not find any bad things about the DJ Pre 2, except the lights.
They are very very bright - a lot to bright ;-) It really hurts my eyes, if the room is dark.
Not that big deal, because its easy to paint it with a black pan, or which color you like.

So in the end: Fair Preamp, i would by it again !

Disclaimer: I am not an audiophile.

I bought the ART DJ Pre II for a relatively specific reason - both my record player and my AppleTV (via a bluetooth receiver) were outputting directly to my living room speakers, and the record player signal was MUCH quieter than the AppleTV, even with the AppleTV turned all the way down.

Because of this, each time that I wanted to play a record I would have to go over and manually turn UP the volume. And afterwards, you would have to remember to turn it back down - otherwise the AppleTV would be ear-shatteringly loud! Quite an annoying situation.

The ART DJ Pre II provided a very flexible and clear way of boosting the phono signal to match the volume of the AppleTV. Unlike many other phono preamps, this one has an easy gain knob that lets you dial in a specific amount of amplification.

Because of this, it was incredibly easy to manually adjust it so the two signal strengths roughly matched.

No more shockingly loud movies from the AppleTV! No more putting on a record and straining to hear anything. Finally everything was in balance.

So in summary, the plus points:
1. Easy to setup
2. Easy to use (volume adjustment is very nice)
3. Sounds like a clean preamp, not coloring the sound in a detectable way
4. Inexpensive

All in all, I would heartily recommend this preamp - the volume knob alone makes it worth buying.

I bought this RIAA Preamp to replace an old 80s JVC pre for recording vinyl to a new Tascam CD burner as the JVCs preamp was built into the amp rather then the turntable. Without this RIAA preamp I could not record the JVC turntable to the new Tascam CD unit. It's features are all useful and good sounding, the low cut does indeed reduce rumble without removing bass. The switchable capacitance makes an audible difference and it even has a grounding post to help eliminate any noise.
The build quality is also of very high standard, the knob and switches are all fine and it came with a power supply unit.

I've always liked vinyl records, both the sound and the more "focused" listening experience. You don't start a vinyl record and go work for an hour. You'll have to turn it after 10-15 min so you'll be more focused, in my opinion)

I had bought a logitech surround speaker set and tried to use it with a record player I already had. Turns out it wasn't a powered one (with a built in pre-amp) so I couldn't use my new speakers.

Here is where the ART DJ Pre 2 comes in to play. this preamp was the perfect add-on to this rig to amplify my record player. The sound quality is very good, no remarks on that. And the ground connector on the the ART DJ Pre 2 is a great feature as it stops any hum comming from the (old) record player.

The set-up of the ART DJ Pre 2 is very easy and straightforward. It was up and running in no time.

My only remark would be that the blue status LED is very bright and as I like to listenen to some music before going te sleep and this lights up my room, but this might very well be a plus for someone else.

Great product!