Little Active/Passive DI comparison

[MartijnPaauwe]

Heya gents!

Today I recieved my new DI box which is the Palmer PAN 02.
I already had the PAN 01, which is a passive DI so I decided to get an active one as well.

I decided to a little comparison and share the results, the difference definitely surprised me to say the least!
(Excuse my bassguitar playing and the very, very, very old strings)

Passive :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/419882/BASS_PDI.mp3

Active :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/419882/BASS_ADI.mp3

My jar actually dropped a little when I heard the difference.
Aside from the active DI box having loads more gain the passive one just sounds a bit dull and lifeless in comparison, the active one sounds like it's giving a bit more high end as well, even when the strings are old.

I'm offcourse aware that different (bass)guitars and different pickups yield different results.
Bassguitar used wass a rather cheap Ibanez GSR200

Hope you guys like it and feel free to chime in!

 

[Vihaleipä]

Cool comparison, the difference between the PAN 01 and PAN 02 definitely noticeable. I own the PAN 01 myself and I've been pretty sastified with it, but the PAN 02 sounds much less dull and lifeless, I'll probably have to get one to myself in the future.

 

[Astrikos]

I can certainly hear more low end in the active.Big difference that's for sure.

 

[Machinated]

I've always preferred active DI's FWIW. I'd love to try one of the high end passive's with great transformers though.

 

[HCL]

Interesting

 

[cobhc]

I did a couple of reamp tests with these DI's.

Active DI
Passive

 

[Jan___]

Wow I never would have expected SUCH a difference

Thanks for the comparison!

 

[mva801]

Quite the difference. What kind of pickups does the bass have? I usually run a Little Labs Redeye 3d phantom, which has 2 inputs. An active input for passive pickups, and a passive input for active pickups.

Id be interested to hear the difference in your DI's with active and with passive basses!

 

[MartijnPaauwe]

Glad you like it guys, I was definitely a little stunned when hearing the difference as well.
I just checked the bassguitar and I can definitely say it has passive pickups because there's no 9V compartment to be found anywhere.

If I can get my hands on my hands on a bassguitar with active pickups I'll definitely check the difference as well!

 

[KHE]

I just checked the bassguitar and I can definitely say it has passive pickups because there's no 9V compartment to be found anywhere.

so then no surprises here, the buffer in the active DI removed the loading of the cable-capacitance and the impedance from the mic-pre from the equation.

on good active pickups, the would be nearly no difference.

 

[mva801]

so then no surprises here, the buffer in the active DI removed the loading of the cable-capacitance and the impedance from the mic-pre from the equation.

on good active pickups, the would be nearly no difference.

My thoughts too, but I'd love to hear a comparo

 

[MartijnPaauwe]

Definitely makes sense, and I was aware of this.
But never heard the difference with my own ears or tried it, so I was definitely a little baffled how much the difference was