My curiosity built up enough to run a native bundle vs hardware box comparison. Out of the 70, 300, 480, & 80/90’s I have available the 90 is the closest unit I have at hand to this native lineage. It’s also the box that would get replaced 1st. I did a rough numerical parameter match just to see how close it came without further tweaking. This is the result.
Category: Analysis
After recently acquiring a Red Type B / R8 I wanted to compare it’s sound to the ole faithful 414. I also wanted to compare the mics on different sources, that gives this drummer an excuse to noodle around on instruments I have no business otherwise touching 🙂 . So keep that in mind while listening to these. I find I prefer the RED overall. It’s a brighter mic. The 414 was darker in color with a greater Low end/Low Mid response.
I kept the mic positioning as balanced as possible.
Signal chain = Mic – Hardy M1 – DomII – DAW. Dry recording/No EQ.
While demoing the SSL Duende X-verb I noticed the preset names seemed very familiar. I noticed the similarity to the Lexicon gear that i’m used to dealing with. That got my curiosity churning. Time for a comparison I say. I pulled up some multitrack drum noodling & a verb bus comparing both the X-verb & Lexicon m300. The result? It’s now of my opinion the X-verb team was influenced if not down right trying to replace the classic Lexicon hardware we know.
For the comparison I pulled up similar named presets on both the X-verb/ m300 & recorded the results @ 24/48.
MP3 Examples –
I have processed some drum noodling with 3 highend hardware reverbs & 3 algorithm based plugin verbs. Are you able to tell the hardware from the plugin? In each section three examples are processed with hardware, three are processed with plugins.
Hardware = Lexicon m300, Lexicon PCM 70, & TC M5000
Plugins = CSR , Sonitus Reverb, & Fabrik R Studio
Out of nothing more then curiosity I wanted to know the fundamental differences between the Moog Voyager & Minimonsta. The filter is obvious so I didn’t even want to have that in the equation. I wanted to look at the raw building blocks, the oscillator waveforms. These are my results.
- 1.Voyager-saw
- 2.Minimonsta-saw0:04
- 3.Voyager-square0:04
- 4.Minimonsta-square0:04
- 5.Voyager-tri0:04
- 6.Minimonsta-tri0:04
Visuals
Voyager-Saw
Input stage curves.
0 to 200% sweeps.
Ever want to know what the input stages are doing? The input stages not only effect the tonal quality but more importantly change the Key response to the compressor.
