Big DI Shootout 10-300€

[DanLights]

I´m between I and J for the passive one, seem to be the clearest/fullest sounding. H sounds really muddy and cheap IMO, I´m guessing that´s the cheapest one?

On the active ones, they all sound pretty good and similar, but IMO C sounds best. This is without reading any other responses.

This is really cool, thanks for doing it!

Edit: I see now you already gave the answer, results are really interesting, I have a Palmer Pan-01 and it seems I liked my DI box the most hahaha

 

[Torgal]

Very interesting to see the "I+J" and "G+K" camps here.


Today is the big reamping day and we're testing the following boxes:

• Millenium DI-E
• LL Redeye 3D Phantom
• Radial JDI
• Palmer Daccapo

We'll see which box offers the most bang for the buck. I'll keep you posted ...

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

Very interesting to see the "I+J" and "G+K" camps here.


Today is the big reamping day and we're testing the following boxes:

• Millenium DI-E
• LL Redeye 3D Phantom
• Radial JDI
• Palmer Daccapo

We'll see which box offers the most bang for the buck. I'll keep you posted ...

Nice, I have the Palmer Daccapo.. hopefully it doesn't suck in comparison to the others..

 

[Torgal]

Hey guys! As promised akbeda and I did some reamping yesterday.

Unfortunately the results are somehow confusing and showed us that we haven't had any clue about reamping at frist.
In the end we discovered that you just can't compare the boxes just by pluging in, setting the output level to -3dB and leave all other parameters the same. The outcome of that were realy crappy samples. Once we came up with a decent setting on the amp for one reamp-box it sounded awful on the next one.

Our signal chain was as follows:

Audio Interface (Creative X-Fi Elite Pro) -> Reamp Box -> Maxon OD808 -> Marshall 30th. Anniversary Head

1. -> V30 -> SM57
2. -> Line Out including Speaker Sim

After all we ran out of time for further testing so here's my impression. Please take it with a gigantic grain of salt because I'm sure we've made some major mistakes here and there

Radial JDI:
Noisy and fuzzy as hell. We didn't engage the -15dB Pad because we think the signal should be as loud as if you would plug your guitar. We checked the level by sending the signal directly to a Hi-Z input after the reversed DI-box. Are we mistaken here? Sounds like "overdrove" the amp. Maybe actually we did that.

Redeye 3D Phantom
Better, but somehow around 6dB less level than all the other boxes. Sound OK, a little compressed.

Palmer Daccapo
OK'ish. Completely different flavour of sound.

Millenium DI-E
Again different flavour, surprisingly we liked that one the most. Almost no loss of output level.

I'm going to do a new Line-Out / FX-Send Reamping Test this week, but I have to sort out some problems first.

So here I am with more questions than before, hopefully some of you can help.

A) How do I know how much output level I should send into the Amp? We tried to have a level equal to the output level of the guitar, but that did not work for every box. What can I do if I can't get up to the original Instrument level? Do I even need to?

B) We encountered realy serious noise problems while reamping. It's almost certainly a problem between PC and the input of the amp. We checked the amp by simply pluging a guitar instead of the reamp chain and it was dead silent.
Our solution was to apply the built in gate in cubase to the reamped tracks, but I doubt that's optimal.
How can we deal with that? Insert a noisegate into the reamping chain?

BTW: Did anybody try to reamp one my DIs?

 

[deLuther]

Did you tried ground lift switch on reampers?
I`m usually just prefer to setup all chain to unity gain, i.e. output signal level is same as guitar straight to Hi-Z.
But if DI`s are recorded hotter than unity gain (i.e. with some amplification) than better to reduce reamper output.
As for noise. there can be some noise from interface itself, without playing DI track, so you must determine cause of noise - recorded DI track or interface-reamper noise...

 

[Torgal]

Thanks DeLuther for your help!
I also set my output level to unity gain, sometimes a little lower if I can't get it high enough. The ground lifts were always active to kill the 50Hz buzz.

Yesterday just before you posted I did some additional tests with the Millenium DI-E, JDI and Redeye. Honestly they all sounded pretty good and I couldn't determine a "winner". They all handle level and gain a little differently but by tweaking the amp every setup was pleasing. Only thing I noticed that it's hard to get a good amount of low end in. Any suggestions?

Every box was in some way noisy, but after I put the "Boss-Noisegate" from Guitar Rig over the original DI the noise was gone on the reamped track. As far as I can tell without any loss of quality on the reamped track. I'm also getting a different cable between audio interface and reamp box. So far I'm using an unbalanced 1m cable and I'm getting one with XLR to TRS. According to this review the old PCI-version of my interface, the ESI ESP 1010 could work balanced and unbalanced on it's output jacks. So I believe my newer version can still do that.

I'm not sure if the noise occurs only when the track is playing or in standby. I think it was there even in standby but I'll check that tonight.

So for all of it's features I'm going to get(keep) the Redeye (most probably).:Spin:

So here's a little bit of audio for you to hear the current state of my progress. I've included the original DI-track for comparison.
Thank you all for your contribution and please comment on the audio files!

 

[deLuther]

It will be interesting to see frequency response of this "reampers" (because some cases are DI in reverse, not actually reamp-boxes) into same Hi-Z input...
Maybe there is some lack of low end response.
I`m have relatively flat frequency response with my modified Radial ProRMP:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equipment/568415-radial-prormp-modification-2.html#post9639064
But better to see with extended plot range:

Stock ProRMP have almost V1 mod response, only lower output level.

 

[Torgal]

Hm, I doubt that's the case, because all boxes prety much sounded "neutral" and I haven't ever heared anybody complain about the Redeyes Low-End response.
What I did notice is that when reamping only trough the preamp (via FxSend) you cut out presence and countour controllers and depth boost buttons etc. This way you're lacking all the options of the poweramp to color the sound.
Is there a way around this?

Edit: I've seen the low end drop on your Pro RMP is around 50Hz and we usually cut the guitars at 60-70Hz to make room for the bassguitar. So this won't affect me nagatively. Maybe I wasn't precise about "low-end". I'm going to check the frequencies and find out where exactly my "low end" sits.

 

[deLuther]

Only thing I noticed that it's hard to get a good amount of low end in.

Maybe I did not understood this sentence right

 

[Torgal]

Yeah my bad.

I'm relatively new to all the engineering stuff so I'm probably abusing one or the other technical term on my adventurous journey through the recording rabit hole.
In my own words I would describe it as low punch, growl, voluminous body, hairy balls.

The "thing" I'm going for is more present on the LeGion Vst-track.

Does that make any sense listening to the files?

 

[Torgal]

I put my hiss/noise question into the big reamping thread along with some sample files.

As promised I examined the frequencies on the reamped tracks and the LeGion VST track and there is a drop
from around 250Hz to 500Hz. The top one is the Marshall and below that's the vst plugins. So maybe this
is the section where the "big hairy balls" are situated. Can I simply EQ that back up and be fine?

 

[Siguros]

Skip to 00:21 on all of the tracks, H, I and J all have a bit of noise/hiss at this point. G and K don't though.

Is that the problem you're talking about? Sounds like a cable is moving, or just due to them being cheaper boxes I'm not sure.