Though the Channel One contains a tube preamp stage, it runs fairly cool.

Everything I’d read about the Channel One indicated that it made coaxing great vocals a breeze as the unit automated a lot of the knob twisting that one could typically get into trouble with. I also heard great things about the de-esser and how simple it was to wipe out only the offending frequencies. The Channel One is, a you might expect from the name, a channel strip. It has mic and line inputs, high pass filter, phase reverse, separate gain knobs for each input, a de-esser, compressor, limiter, two-band parametric EQ with frequency dial in and associated cut/boost knobs, “Air Band” for adding air to vocals, distortion knob for adding harmonics, output volume knob and a comprehensive headphone section for direct monitoring. Gain is enhanced via a small twin triode tube. An optional A/D converter can be purchased as well, though my unit doesn’t have it. For this review, I used a variety of inexpensive mics (the only kind I have) and a male (myself) and female (my girlfriend) vocalist. Not exactly high science, but it told me what I needed to know.

First, the good news… It was easy to coax a good sound from this unit. Regardless of the mic, placement and vocalist, I literally had to try to make it sound bad. The unit’s EQ is optimized for the vocal range and works beautifully to boost and cut when necessary while the “Air Band” knob can give you instant air with a quarter turn past 12 O’clock. I found the compressor nice but was far more impressed with the limiter for getting a mock LA-2 feel. The de-esser is a work of art and unquestionably the best I’ve ever used, outboard or otherwise. The high pass filter worked far better than those I had on three of the mics used. I didn’t get a lot of use from the distortion knob though I only tested the unit for vocals when writing this review.

The only negatives I noticed were that you can’t really get a lot of expression out of this unit. Having a piece of outboard gear that is designed to offer foolproof vocal recording bliss comes at a price, and that price is the ability to make drastic alterations to the sound. Still, 9 times out of 10, I’d rather have a unit that can produce well from almost any source than one I have to endlessly tweak. The tradeoff is both acceptable and understood as far as I’m concerned.

The main word I would use when describing the effect of the Channel One on vocals is “polished”, and true to form, it does offer the novice recorder a better shot at not tripping over his or her own feet when laying down vocal tracks. I can’t tell you what the transformers did for the sound without a non-transformer based unit to compare it to, but I find the sound to be highly pleasing and perhaps a little retro. All in all, I’m not disappointed and will manage to get a lot of use from the unit.