There is no doubt the LA-1A sounds great but for me I would worry that pairing it with any of the Tube preamps here would make it to warm and not defined enough for my taste in a busy mix. It does make one wonder though as it sounds really nice lol.
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Tube Preamp/DI Sound Samples — Noble, Oracle, P-15, Super Stack, REDDI, Tonecraft, Jule...
- Thread starter scubaduba
- Start date
They are all good and you did a great job comparing them, thank you so much.
I personally prefer the Noble and the Arkham but there's not a bad one among this lot.
I personally prefer the Noble and the Arkham but there's not a bad one among this lot.
@scubaduba Thanks for all your work on this! I still love the Noble/Cali76 CB best, but I can't wait to try the Oracle/LA-1A in a few weeks. I found the P-15 is very impressive as well.
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Thanks for recording the Oracle revision, @scubaduba. Oddly enough, the level was much closer to the Noble example in this instance. I imported the flat examples into ProTools so that I could quickly jump between them. I simply cannot hear a difference between the Noble and the Oracle, they are INSANELY close. After bringing it down 2dB to match peak levels, the P15 has a slightly beefier response below 100Hz and a slightly different character in the mids, bit more rolloff in the bat ears (above 10kHz) zone.
I ran these three through the averaging spectrum analyzer on ProQ3. Look how close the Noble and Oracle are! Noble left, Oracle middle, P15 right.
I ran these three through the averaging spectrum analyzer on ProQ3. Look how close the Noble and Oracle are! Noble left, Oracle middle, P15 right.
when you say Mid flat, you mean flat for the pedal (aka noon) not flat for tone (aka dimed)? The super stack is one of the most game-changing pedals I've come across and I honestly don't like it much when the mids aren't dimed. It is my understanding that with the fender tone stack, if you wanted it flat from an EQ perspective, that would require the mids to be maxes out.
Mine is currently set at:
Bass = 2:00; Mids = dimed; Treble = 11:00 -- hard to tell if clip 5 or 6 are my settings since your strings are pretty bright sounding to my ears (I'm one of those guys that only changes a string when it breaks - I love the sound of OOOOOOLD strings). Seems less scooped in these clips, but hard to tell (I also wasn't using headphones this time around)
Mid flat means Mid dial all the way clockwise like the Fender/Alembic tone stack.
jacoby75
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Interesting. That's pretty much exactly where I set the EQ of my EBS Valve Drive, with is also a Fender/Alembic tone stack. Sounds perfect.
I would think it's the other way around. There's nothing in the RNDI to cause interference with other units. It's powered by 48V DC with no switching or anything. The Oracle, on the other hand, has a power transformer.
- John
What we are hearing is magnetic coupling from the power transformer to the RNDI audio transformer. The reason the Oracle doesn't currently have an onboard DI.
Very interesting, thanks a lot !
The noble definitely reacted best to the compressors (to my ears anyway). Its HPF sounded strangely inefficient though ?
On the other hand the Oracle's HPF is maybe the best demo of a HPF I've ever heard. A very good overall sound too.
I love how the super stack sounds with boosted highs, it's very hissy unfortunately
And that sushi box was the surprise of the lot, love how it sounds - $120 what the hell !? But sold out apparently.
In the end all sounded good, I guess that's the big win for us bassists.
There was a time when finding a good sounding preamp was difficult and expensive, this is now definitely over it seems.
The noble definitely reacted best to the compressors (to my ears anyway). Its HPF sounded strangely inefficient though ?
On the other hand the Oracle's HPF is maybe the best demo of a HPF I've ever heard. A very good overall sound too.
I love how the super stack sounds with boosted highs, it's very hissy unfortunately
And that sushi box was the surprise of the lot, love how it sounds - $120 what the hell !? But sold out apparently.
In the end all sounded good, I guess that's the big win for us bassists.
There was a time when finding a good sounding preamp was difficult and expensive, this is now definitely over it seems.
Glad & good to see, this re-instills confidence in my oldish ears (re:my earlier post).
Thanks for running & posting this.
Ooph this is making me lust after a La1a in a bad way. I may have a Darkglass Hyper Luminal up for grabs soon lol. This also reaffirms my choice for my custom Verellen Meatsmoke pre all of these pre's are great but the eq options on the Meatsmoke and versatility make it a monster. Now I just need to tube roll and see if I can tame that high gain channel without messing up channel 1 or I'm gonna have to ship it out to Verrelen and get channel two modded to match channel 1.
Jule monique or simone ,sonic farm tantra, Millenia media td1 or sst origin would be good ones to test too. I know those are all uber spendy and not all pedal sized either but would be awesome to hear your thoughts on themAnybody have a Broughton SSDI or Sonicfarm 2DI4 they’d like to ship me to add to this thread?
That Millenia is phenomenal. I played through one for a while many years ago.
Well I’ve got a Sonic Farm 2DI4 coming from Canada.
Nice. Handle looks flimsy thoughWell I’ve got a Sonic Farm 2DI4 coming from Canada.
For those listening to the samples, don't forget to share your thoughts with comments and/or votes which which tantalizes your ears most.