Reamp vs DI.. No Contest!

[losthighway]

The reamp can only do what it says: reamp. Can it not also record as the D.I. before you send the signal back out? This may seem naive but I was hoping to find a box that does both, because they seem like such similar functions. The Radial stuff looks cool, only you need a DI and their reamp to do the trick....

[ubertar]

The ATI Matchmaker sounds great as a reamp. I haven't tried this yet, but it should work well in the other direction as a DI. I had some extra ones to sell before, but they're all gone. They come up from time to time on ebay.

[farview]

The reamp can only do what it says: reamp. Can it not also record as the D.I. before you send the signal back out? This may seem naive but I was hoping to find a box that does both, because they seem like such similar functions. The Radial stuff looks cool, only you need a DI and their reamp to do the trick....

It all depends on the design. Some DI's are made to take a line level high impedance signal and bring it down to a low impedance mic level signal. In that case, if you plugged a high impedance line level signal into the other side (using it backwards) you would end up with a higher impedance, higher output signal. That isn't very usefull.

[ubertar]

Some DI's are made to take a line level high impedance signal and bring it down to a low impedance mic level signal. In that case, if you plugged a high impedance line level signal into the other side (using it backwards) you would end up with a higher impedance, higher output signal. That isn't very usefull.

Line level is 600 ohms. That's a little higher than most low Z mics, but nowhere near the high impedance level of a guitar or high Z mic. Line level is not high impedance.

[farview]

OK, higher impedance line level signal.

Either way, a DI that uses the transformer to bring the level and impedance down to inject into a mic preamp will do the opposite when hooked up backwards. The only way that would be useful is if you were feeding a low impedance, mic level signal into the back end of it. Which is not what comes out of your recorder when you reamp.

[ubertar]

You're right, that's not what comes out, but it's pretty close, impedance-wise. I think the main difference is that a reamp also accounts for gain differences, as well as impedance, while the backwards DI only accounts for impedance.
We're talking about the difference between something made for going from 600 ohms to 20-30k ohms vs. 150 ohms to 20-30k ohms. It's significant, but not that big of a deal, I don't think. What makes the DI better (and stuff like the ATI matchmaker) is it also deals with the high gain that's coming out of the recorder and brings it down to something the amp can handle better. At least that's my understanding of it.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

The reamp can only do what it says: reamp. Can it not also record as the D.I. before you send the signal back out? This may seem naive but I was hoping to find a box that does both, because they seem like such similar functions. The Radial stuff looks cool, only you need a DI and their reamp to do the trick....

the littlelabs redeye is both a di and reamp. well worth the $200.