A/B OPA2604 and NE5532 in the Green Pre (Vox) Samples

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matta

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 11, 2005
Messages
1,640
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Hey Guys,

I recently came into a couple Burr Brown OPA2604's and decided I would drop a couple into one of my Green Pre's and A/B it against the NE5532.

The 2 pres in questions are V1 of the Green Pre's and don't have a Low Cut filter like the newer boards so I applied one in Pro Tools at 80Hz to take some of the bottom off as these pres tend to show the bass boom quite a bit.

It is in NO way a scientific test it was me just mucking about in my office with the PC tower whirling away and traffic which adds to the 'nice' ambient noise, but the results are interesting none the less.

I know it is not definitive and probably totally irrelevant as an A/B but it's interesting anyways. I'll reserve comment for now, but would love to hear your thoughts.

The mic was Violet Designs Black Knight, into the Green Pre into a 002R tracked to Pro Tools.

Green Mic Pre with OPA2604 (.5MB)
Green Mic Pre with NE5532 (.5MB)

Cheers

Matt
 
Hard to tell from these laptop speakers, and the voice differs a bit in both tests, but I feel that the OPA was a tad smoother.

Keep these tests comming :thumb:
 
very subtle difference I think. I prefer it with the opa2604 is a little more open or with more headroom .
 
Nice Voice Matt.

I would't kick either one of those out for eating crackers in bed!.

Very small if any difference on these PC speakers.

Perhaps a short clip with a more complex sound like an accoustic guitar would reveal more of a difference. Thanks for the effort and time to put this together. :sam: :guinness: :sam: :guinness:



Peace - Out, Irv
 
Matta thanks for doing this-
5532 sounds stronger in the mids like 1k-ish~2k-ish but that might be due to the lack of low freq IMHO A touch of telephone line like quality in 5532.
2604 sounds more round, warm and pleasant. I prefer 2604 over 5532
by miles...

peace

m

monitoring krk 7000b
 
Who cares about opamps? That beautiful voice and accent.. I'm in love. :razz: :razz:

But aside from that I did like the opa better :razz: :razz:

I bet the differences really would be quite distinguishable with a variety of programs, guitar, solo piano etc. But I'm just listening with phones on my laptop.

Kiira
 
Who cares about opamps? That beautiful voice and accent.. I'm in love.

I'm flattered :oops:

Thanks for all the comments. The differences are sublet indeed. I've got some Guitar takes I'll try get up tomorrow.

I'm going to keep the OPA's in 2 channels and the other 2 channels will stick with the NE5532's, just nice to have a little/slight tonal variation.

The NE5532 seems to have a more 'woolly' sounding low mid range compared to the OPA, which is seems to be a little cleaner/clearer, but I still enjoy both.

Not as big a difference as I expected, then I'm not sure what I expected. The OPA costs more than 4 x the NE5532 here in South Africa but I wouldn't say it sounds 4 x as good as the NE5532, it also may respond differently in other circuits.

Cheers

Matt
 
[quote author="matta"] ... , but I still enjoy both.
Not as big a difference as I expected, ... [/quote]

and there is one of the big lessons

5534s can work fine
the Green Mk1 or Mk2 are simple and well thought uses of the opamp

simple equipment can be very useful for recording and at the end of it all it is the recording techniques and performance that matter

mixdown and mastering and delivery will have even more bearing on the end result

we have some many good simple projects here that can stand proud in any recording facility
 
[quote author="bluezplaya"]I prefer the OPA's. You should record something more complex, like bagpipes, to get a better A/B comparison.[/quote]
yep
audience applause is a ripper for that sort of stuff
:roll:
not the sort of thing lying around the average music studio

perhaps someone rubbing paper ... sand-paper ... to get that complex wide frequency response stuff
 

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