Preamp shoot-out: 003 - Audient - Empirical Labs

[AEL89]

Hey dudes, I thought this might be of some interest to you. I just grabbed some DIs from some recent work and decided to reamp it and see what difference the preamp makes. Just took a transformerless 57 and threw it a few inches in front of the cab - no tweaking - just a quick run-through for each pre.

Chain:

Schecter (not sure which model but had an EMG 81 in the bridge) > Radial J48 > Audient ASP008 > 003 > Radial X-Amp > TS9 > 5150III > Mesa OS 4x12 > Transformerless 57 > 003/Audient ASP008/Empirical Labs Mike-e

Post processing is the same for all of them (high and low pass at 100 and 10k)

003: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1041607/003.wav

Audient: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1041607/AUDIENT.wav

Empirical Labs: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1041607/EMPIRICAL LABS.wav

 

[Skinny Viking]

the 003 link doesn't work

in the meantime ... the EL actually sounds just the slightest bit more muffled to me

 

[barricade]

Does Mike e have it's own a/d converter? It may sound muffled bacause of the lame digirack converters! But i like both of them. Were you driving the Audient on 5k impedence?

Edit: i gave it a listen again and i think that the Audient wins it imo...more high end and crunchyness!

 

[AEL89]

the 003 link doesn't work

in the meantime ... the EL actually sounds just the slightest bit more muffled to me

Should be done uploading now dude!

Does Mike e have it's own a/d converter? It may sound muffled bacause of the lame digirack converters! But i like both of them. Were you driving the Audient on 5k impedence?

Edit: i gave it a listen again and i think that the Audient wins it imo...more high end and crunchyness!

No - I had it on the lowest impedence setting. I think the Audient signal was the tiniest bit hotter so it might be worth importing the files into your DAW and matching or normalising.

I've just been reading the Empirical Labs' manual and it says to leave the drive on 0 even when bypassing the CompSat section - I had it on 5. Might be worth doing it through the Empirical Labs again. I might experiment with less preamp gain and more output and vice versa...

 

[Skinny Viking]

so far the Audient is winning

 

[greyskull]

chapters?

 

[AEL89]

chapters?

Yeh just a snippet. Literally love their stuff

 

[chrisrivalry]

audient, the difference between the three is so minuscule though, hence why I left gearslutz!!

 

[AEL89]

audient, the difference between the three is so minuscule though, hence why I left gearslutz!!

haha! Yeh, its very subtle. Driving the saturation on the Mike-e yields amazing results on guitars (and anything else for that matter). The impedence switching on the Audient is also very useful and definitely makes a difference to the sound.