RicardusMy CLoudlifter clone is coming along.
Commodore Sixty Bore@Ricardus Very cool. I nabbed a cheap clone called the SS-1by Simply Sound a few years ago.
@sikkdays Oh neat. Haven't seen that one before. Wait til you see this finished package when it's done. The PCB was sized to fit perfectly in this cool Neutrik enclosure.
Christian Vogel@Ricardus care to share a few measurements of the original and your clone? That's one of my main grieves with all the inline preamps: No hard values to compare on.
@vogelchr It's not really a clone of any particular unit. It's an original design. I just called it a Cloudlifter clone because people generally know what that is. This one is pretty high gain compared to most. The designer quoted me about 30 dB of gain. But yeah, the rest are very different. I've seen anywhere from 5 to 25 dB.
It's not finished yet, but I should have one of them done by tomorrow night. That pesky work (real job) gets in the way. 🙂
@Ricardus what I'm mostly interested in is the self-noise/noise density, say at 200Ω.
LSK389 is quoted at 1nV/√Hz, but does the design reach it? How low is its distortion?
And how good are the competing "Cloudlifters"/"Fetheads"? I didn't find anything quantitative about those either.
It bugs me that people often blindly recommend these inline preamp to anyone with a low-output dynamic or ribbon mic, without any consideration if it really is better than their current mic inputs.
@vogelchr Not sure I can measure self noise.
But if you've got an old ribbon mic, one of these things is necessary unless you have 65 or more dB of gain on your pres. My SSL 9000 preamps have 76 dB, which should be enough for anything. But the vacuum tube pre I built is old school with like 53 dB.
I just got one finished and I'm pissed at Neutrik!
@Ricardus You can do these measurements with equipment you most likely have.
A DI box to inject a known signal into the preamp.
A voltmeter to calibrate this signal (say to 1Vrms).
Some way to attenuate the signal down to something the preamp chain can handle (-60dB -> 1mVrms).
Then inject the 1mVrms into the preamp, record to calibrate your ADC in terms of Volt/Digit.
Terminate the input with short or 200Ohm, measure the noise.
Then you can analyze the noise for V/sqrt(Hz), dBu/20kHz, ...