I just got my Naiant littlebox a couple days ago and ran it last night for STS9. I decided to not waste any time and to do a comp right out of the gate. Discussions of the just-released Naiant littlebox preamp can be found in these threads:
http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,122871.0.htmlhttp://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,118862.0.htmlAnd more on the Naiant website:
http://www.naiant.com/studiostore/microphoneamplifiers.htmlJon at Naiant (mshilarious here on ts.com) can custom configure quite a lot with his littlebox preamps. I should note that his standard design is to use an Analog Devices op amp, but I asked that he use a Burr-Brown instrumentation amp in the design (INA111). The Burr-Brown amp he used is in the same family as the Burr-Brown amp used by the Lunatec V3, but is a lower power version. I wanted to compare the littlebox to the V3 for this reason, and also because I ran the V3 for 6 or 7 years and am very familiar with it. The littlebox certainly wins on price and size, and battery power since mine is configured with an internal battery that should last for at least 10-12 hours when running phantom power at 48v. For mics that will allow it, it can run at 20v phantom, and will have much longer runtimes this way.
For the comparison, I borrowed a friends pair of Gefell m210's and his Lunatec V3 (which had been my V3 for many years
), and those together with my Gefell m210's and littlebox were used to run a comp of the littlebox compared to the V3 using my Oade-mod R44 as a recorder. All 4 mics were on the same t-bar within an inch or so of each other, both mic pairs in same pattern, same stand, etc, etc. I really would have liked to switch which particular mic pair went with which preamp at set break, but unfortunately STS9 only played one set. Mic cables were all copper cables (though one pair belden and one pair canare), and all interconnects were teflon-jacketed silver-clad copper. All 4 channels on the Oade R44 were modded the same, to the best of my knowledge. So it wasn't a perfect comp, but pretty close. Next time around I'd like to be able to switch up the gefell m210 pairs, but hopefully all 4 of the mics used are fairly well matched.
Anyway, that is the big backstory since most people aren't probably too familiar with the Naiant littlebox. I'd really like to hear people's thoughts on this preamp comp. I've put together two different tracks as part of the comp, with the tracks simply listed as pre1, pre2, pre3, pre4. There are only two preamps used, but since there are 2 tracks, I labeled them all separately.
The comp flac files (16bit) are available off megaupload here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X8VEWS8QPlease post your thoughts!!
Topic: Preamp Comp: Naiant littlebox ($179) vs. Grace Lunatec V3 ($1525) (Read 33784 times)