The modern Focusrite company just can't win. Despite consistently offering, in my opinion, some of the better bang-for-your-buck gear aimed at the home/amateur recordist in recent years. On occasion they've released products that, given their price point, were incredible: "Wow! I can't believe how great this sounds for 199 bucks!" But that doesn't matter because to some Focusrite will always be remembered for their original ISA 110/130, a truly awe-inspiring design, and their adoption of a more, ahem, consumer model is always going to be seen as a major sell-out. In the modern age devices like the Saffire range continue to defy what is possible at a given price point.

Unfortunately, this is not the ISA428 story.

It's an okay preamp. It has some decent options, including variable impedance with its "ISA 110 Mode" (yeah, right), a very usable, ripple-free high pass filter with a good range (up to 420hz), phantom power, 4 DI's with handy front plugs, a gain switch, trim control, push button insert, built in soft limiter for hotheads and noobs--all good stuff. Build quality is decent enough, and the ergonomics are excellent; only a nimrod would get lost on this clean layout. Additional options, like AD conversion with up to 192khz was pretty cutting edge for when it debuted.

All very handy, this was a good design brief. However, if you've ever spent much time using a Saffire you'll be familiar with what to expect sonically; as clearly the Saffire was a cost-cutting spinoff of the 428. It's not that the preamp is terrible, because it's not.... it's just too middle-of-the-road in every category to really inspire. The frequency spectrum is pretty well-balanced and represented, and the high frequency handling is certainly better than most (most preamps sound "dark" compared to the 428), the low end is okay... nothing special but its there. Midrange is a bit "hazy" in my opinion. But there's just no distinction to the whole affair. It lacks the "stupidly squeaky clean" feel of a Millenia, the transparency of a GML (okay, not fair... we'll say Grace), the size of a Neve, the punch of an API.... It's most distinguishing feature is its ability to be undistinguished. Okay, if I had to give it a character I'd say "bright"; on the flip-side I'd say it can often sound anemic... it's definitely not helping, I don't think it was hurting.

That being said, if you can't get decent sounds don't blame the preamp. This is a prosumer grade preamp and it can yield professional results in the right hands. A word of warning: even though it comes equipped with a soft limiter to prevent digital overs you don't want to push this preamp that hard--leave it some headroom, as it doesn't saturate as much as "pinch." This is a preamp you want to keep in its zone, which is admittedly fairly wide (although it lacks a sweet spot). In all fairness, there is one particular application I liked the ISA428 on--drum overheads when pretty much I was looking for "cymbals only", in which case the HP filter came in useful. Admittedly, I'd never buy them for this purpose--personally I'd use Focusrite Reds which I find to be pretty acceptable pre's; or really splurge and get an original 110 in a 4 rack (albeit hopefully with a rebuilt PS).

Now if these had debuted around 1200 dollars instead of 1600 to 1800 dollars it may have been a better deal. Well, there wasn't much competition in that price range really when it came out. However, within a few years there was PLENTY. Quite frankly, most things considered, the 428 was often the least impressive thing you could buy for that kind of money towards the end of its product cycle.

Bottom Line: at the end of the day all the features in the world cannot save you from its middling sound. Probably a good deal if you can track one down for your home or project studio for 800-900 bucks. It's not terrible, but there are so many better options out there these days I just can't imagine anyone getting too excited about these. I honestly believe they have no place in a professional "finishing" studio (i.e. do more than just demo grade stuff, commercial audio, you know--disposable audio). They are, however, better than consumer grade stuff... just not so much greater your wig flips, which can certainly feel like a let down.

A few months ago I picked up a mint ISA 428 MKII off of craigslist for $800. This unit does not have the digital interface installed. For $200 a channel, this thing is a beast. Having said that, I probably would not have bought it for more than that. While I can agree somewhat that the character of the pres isn't a "wow" kind of thing, they are perfectly acceptable, sound very good, slightly on the "warm" side, and I've gotten some nice tracks with this unit. On the MKII model, the VU meters have been eliminated in favor of a short LED display. The metering is probably the thing I dislike the most about this piece, it's fairly useless and I usually just meter in the DAW.

The layout is easy to navigate, and the feature set is very good, with inserts on every channel, a variable high pass filter and a 4-way impedance selector. Primarily I use it with dynamic microphones because of the impedance choices -- this thing is a like a swiss army knife for dynamic mics -- the variable impedance selections can change the sound of the mics in a noticeable way. In my place it often ends up doing duties on snare and kick, guitar cabs, or any other source where you would use a dynamic mic. I was impressed how good an SM57 sounds through this pre, actually better than some of my more expensive pieces.

I have not tried it yet on vocals, acoustic guitars, etc but I'm sure it would be perfectly adequate if not stellar. Still, I would say it's a fairly versatile pre. My other mic pres are a Great River MP2H, Great River NV2, and four channels of API clones. The Focusrite is a pretty good alternative to these others, with its own sound. You could do much worse for the money.