Dan, I wish I could give you a good comparison of the Langevin but the best I can do is share my experience with the GR NV.
I should preface my comments by saying you didn't give a lot of information the type of music and what other gear you are using so your mileage may vary.
The NV is definely a first call mic pre. Most of the (Nashville) engineers I talk to will always put the GR in their top 3 picks of mic pres. It deserves this reputation because it is extremely smooth sounding and has a nice solid bottom end. As you may know the NV is based on
the Neve 1073 design.
I am currently doing a project and we have use the NV on just about every thing you can imagine. While a mic pre with a faster response time like the GR MP-2 or the Buzz Audio is best for some acoustic guitars, the NV is my first choice for vocals, guitar, drums...
It has plenty of gain and there is not even a hint of noise. I have a 60's vintage Sony 37a tube mic that is very warm, but it lacks gain. The NV handles with no problem and makes this mic sound wonderful, especially on vocals.
A nice feature of the GR is that you can drive the input transformers pretty hard by turning up the input gain and turning down the output. This gives a wide range of quality depending on the sound you are going for. I use this when recording bass via the front panel DI. Really gets a great rough sound but still clean bass guitar. I guess the word most would use is
thick.
The NV also has insert points which are great because I can patch in a compressor in the signal path on a live gig without having a lot of other gear.
Dan not sure what else I can tell you but would be happy to answer any questions. I might be able to make some raw audio tracks available but not sure that will help. I did do some quick test on the DI with NV against a Mackie. I used the Mackie because there are so many of them out there and just about everyone has used, heard or owned one time or another. The difference was night and day. I can make those tracks available but the uncompressed wavs would be BIG and not sure what would be loss in the MP3 compression.
You might want to be aware that GR just announced a single channel NV called the MP-1NV. This little guy is build with the same armored tank quality of the 2NV and sounds exactly the same. So for a little less than $1k you could go that route. These are brand new and are rare so hardly anyone has the 1NV in stock right now but I know of where a few are.
1NV Photo
I like to do a lot stereo recording so for me
the MP-2NV was the way to go.
Dan my last comment would be that the NV is definitely a mic pre that you will not be disappointed in and I know its a piece I will have in the rack for a looooong time. This is NOT a "trendy" piece of nouveau-gear that you see pouring into the market.
If you have more specific questions fire away.
Lee
p.s. The guy who owns and designs this gear is named Dan so it has to be good stuff, right ?
