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NPD DSM Noisemaker OmniCabSim

#1,424
Seriously. This is ridiculous. I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. Is this forever going to change my tone for the better? Probably. Am I finally going to enjoy the sound I hear in my headphones when I'm practicing and playing without an amp? Most likely. Am I overreacting? Setting the bar and my expectations too high? Maybe. But I don't think so. Do I like to ask myself questions and then answer them? Definitely.
 
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#1,425
Lavaro said:
View attachment 2978516

I have just got my OmniCabSim!

The pedal is smaller and lighter than I figured through pictures (which is good). I like the headphone's level knob, too.

The box came very well packed, with enough plastic bubles to alleviate my daily stress. I just tried it shortly, but I found the sounds very natural and usable.

I have no relationship with the maker. It is just that I found the service and the product well above Chilean standards ;)
Click to expand...
You’re going to love it... it’s probably the best pedal I’ve purchased.
 
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#1,427
The sky's a little bluer this morning. The sun's shining a little bit brighter. The birds are singing just a little sweeter. Can you hear it? No? Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's because my OCSD showed up last night, all unexpected-like. It somehow eluded the final stages of tracking and showed up at my door like a sneaky little pedal ninja! It is such a feeling of relief. I can now move on with my life. No more checking for tracking updates ever 10 minutes. No more watching videos on Youtube hoping my stuff will someday sound that good. It's here. And it does.

I've only had half an hour to play with it so far. But that's all it took to know that this pedal will forever change my direct-only setup for the better. I already have it dialed in on a great tone. The knobs are very intuitive and work well together. At the extremes it can sound a bit ridiculous (like if you max or min the knobs), but in that sweet spot, it is oh so sweet. And it does indeed make my drive pedals sound less farty and more like an actual overdriven amp. And as an added bonus, the headphone amp works like a charm, so I don't have to plug my pedalboard into my USB recording interface anymore to practice. I A/B'd it with the speaker sim on my VT Bass DI, and there is just no comparison. It makes the VT sound like a toy. I will say, though, that I don't think I can quite get rid of the VT just yet. I'm going to leave it in the chain - probably right before the OCSD - to use as a preamp and EQ, bypassing its speaker sim capabilities, because I still feel that my passive basses can benefit from the gain boost and external EQ control. There are other (maybe better) options for this purpose, of course, but I already have this one and don't have to buy something else, so it wins for now.

My one critique (if you'd call it that, maybe just an observation) is that the gain knobs seems a bit odd. It doesn't do much from about 0-12:00. There is only a minor change in the perceived gain, if any. Technically at "0" it's a -6db gain reduction. Maybe that's not a lot. But then from 12:00 up it quickly introduces a significant gain boost. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. But 12:00 isn't unity. For me, about 1:00 is.

High response around 10:00. Cab size and resonance around 3:00. Punch at 10:00. Mid response at 1-2:00. Pure bliss.

The wait almost literally killed me, but it was totally worth it. I can safely say this is the most important pedal I have ever purchased. And I've purchased a heck of a lot of pedals over the years. Well, maybe my tuner was more important, technically speaking, but not nearly as fun. Well done, @Dsmnoisemaker!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go re-audition a few overdrive/distortion pedals I was on the verge of selling to see if this bad boy breathes new life into them.
 
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#1,428
jacoby75 said:
The sky's a little bluer this morning. The sun's shining a little bit brighter. The birds are singing just a little sweeter. Can you hear it? No? Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's because my OCSD showed up last night, all unexpected-like. It somehow eluded the final stages of tracking and showed up at my door like a sneaky little pedal ninja! It is such a feeling of relief. I can now move on with my life. No more checking for tracking updates ever 10 minutes. No more watching videos on Youtube hoping my stuff will someday sound that good. It's here. And it does.

I've only had half an hour to play with it so far. But that's all it took to know that this pedal will forever change my direct-only setup for the better. I already have it dialed in on a great tone. The knobs are very intuitive and work well together. At the extremes it can sound a bit ridiculous (like if you max or min the knobs), but in that sweet spot, it is oh so sweet. And it does indeed make my drive pedals sound less farty and more like an actual overdriven amp. And as an added bonus, the headphone amp works like a charm, so I don't have to plug my pedalboard into my USB recording interface anymore to practice. I A/B'd it with the speaker sim on my VT Bass DI, and there is just no comparison. It makes the VT sound like a toy. I will say, though, that I don't think I can quite get rid of the VT just yet. I'm going to leave it in the chain - probably right before the OCSD - to use as a preamp and EQ, bypassing its speaker sim capabilities, because I still feel that my passive basses can benefit from the gain boost and external EQ control. There are other (maybe better) options for this purpose, of course, but I already have this one and don't have to buy something else, so it wins for now.

My one critique (if you'd call it that, maybe just an observation) is that the gain knobs seems a bit odd. It doesn't do much from about 0-12:00. There is only a minor change in the perceived gain, if any. Technically at "0" it's a -6db gain reduction. Maybe that's not a lot. But then from 12:00 up it quickly introduces a significant gain boost. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. But 12:00 isn't unity. For me, about 1:00 is.

High response around 10:00. Cab size and resonance around 3:00. Punch at 10:00. Mid response at 1-2:00. Pure bliss.

The wait almost literally killed me, but it was totally worth it. I can safely say this is the most important pedal I have ever purchased. And I've purchased a heck of a lot of pedals over the years. Well, maybe my tuner was more important, technically speaking, but not nearly as fun. Well done, @Dsmnoisemaker!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go re-audition a few overdrive/distortion pedals I was on the verge of selling to see if this bad boy breathes new life into them.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the dsm brotherhood!
 
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#1,433
IMG_20180427_161030951.jpg
jacoby75 said:
Ooooh! What's the new sticker legend?
Click to expand...
 
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#1,437
The only way to get a precise gain control ( with 0dB at noon and -+ dB side to side, is to use an inverting opamp with a linear gain pot. I couldn't use that without adding another opamp IC, adding cost and eating board space so i settled on a logarithmic pot. A linear pot would have a weird taper..
The omni has a tune-by-ear philosophy, so it wasn't really something important to me .the main point is to be able to set the gain to the point where you maximize sound level without clipping.
 
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#1,438
jacoby75 said:
The sky's a little bluer this morning. The sun's shining a little bit brighter. The birds are singing just a little sweeter. Can you hear it? No? Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's because my OCSD showed up last night, all unexpected-like. It somehow eluded the final stages of tracking and showed up at my door like a sneaky little pedal ninja! It is such a feeling of relief. I can now move on with my life. No more checking for tracking updates ever 10 minutes. No more watching videos on Youtube hoping my stuff will someday sound that good. It's here. And it does.

I've only had half an hour to play with it so far. But that's all it took to know that this pedal will forever change my direct-only setup for the better. I already have it dialed in on a great tone. The knobs are very intuitive and work well together. At the extremes it can sound a bit ridiculous (like if you max or min the knobs), but in that sweet spot, it is oh so sweet. And it does indeed make my drive pedals sound less farty and more like an actual overdriven amp. And as an added bonus, the headphone amp works like a charm, so I don't have to plug my pedalboard into my USB recording interface anymore to practice. I A/B'd it with the speaker sim on my VT Bass DI, and there is just no comparison. It makes the VT sound like a toy. I will say, though, that I don't think I can quite get rid of the VT just yet. I'm going to leave it in the chain - probably right before the OCSD - to use as a preamp and EQ, bypassing its speaker sim capabilities, because I still feel that my passive basses can benefit from the gain boost and external EQ control. There are other (maybe better) options for this purpose, of course, but I already have this one and don't have to buy something else, so it wins for now.

My one critique (if you'd call it that, maybe just an observation) is that the gain knobs seems a bit odd. It doesn't do much from about 0-12:00. There is only a minor change in the perceived gain, if any. Technically at "0" it's a -6db gain reduction. Maybe that's not a lot. But then from 12:00 up it quickly introduces a significant gain boost. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. But 12:00 isn't unity. For me, about 1:00 is.

High response around 10:00. Cab size and resonance around 3:00. Punch at 10:00. Mid response at 1-2:00. Pure bliss.

The wait almost literally killed me, but it was totally worth it. I can safely say this is the most important pedal I have ever purchased. And I've purchased a heck of a lot of pedals over the years. Well, maybe my tuner was more important, technically speaking, but not nearly as fun. Well done, @Dsmnoisemaker!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go re-audition a few overdrive/distortion pedals I was on the verge of selling to see if this bad boy breathes new life into them.
Click to expand...

+1 to everything you stated - This is the most important pedal I've ever purchased and my dirty tone without it sounds like a fizzy mess. The 1/4 thru, the headphone amp, the aux in. I have been suggesting the DSM OCS to anyone and everyone.
 
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#1,439
Grahams Groove said:
I'll start out by saying that I understand a lot of clank, buzz, and harshness hides above the 5 KHz range when you use bass distortion/dirt/fuzz. I've remedied some of that in the past by turning down the tweeter on my cab, cutting some treble at the amp, etc. I was getting solid results with my dirt pedals before, but some of them were getting lost because my fundamental bass sound was getting a bit too 'opened up' and was washing out in the mix. Likewise, a lot of that top-end and harmonic buzz was getting lost in the guitar/cymbal frequency spectrum. So, I was needing to dial in significant boost with a couple dirt pedals to keep the bottom from falling out when engaged. This works in a practice/band setting when I am carrying myself with just amp/cab, but it would definitely be problematic when recording or running through a PA. i.e. It would be a big, noticeable volume spike when engaged. Also, dialing out some tweeter or treble on the amp end was fine for distorted tones, but there was a sacrifice in my clean tone. I felt like I was neutering more of the top end and high-mids than I would like.

The OCSD only arrived yesterday, but I've probably put 4-5 hours into it already between last night and this morning. That includes headphone and amp time. I still need to see how things sound in the band mix during the next few rehearsals, but this really seems to both tighten and thicken the sound. So, some of my distortion & fuzz pedals now sound way thicker and more focused with the OCSD. I've used HPFs before (fdeck hpf3 and now an adjustable HPF on my Mesa D-800+). So that aspect of the OCSD is not new to me. However, this is my first time using a LPF to smooth out the top end and cut out some of that piercing, buzzy, can-of-bees content. This seems way more precise and effective, in that it's making my dirt pedals sound punchier and more 'useable' without being detrimental to my cleaner tones. As a result, I'm trying all my dirt pedals with the OCSD and finding they have a much different character that may be more applicable in my setup.

Also worth mentioning... I asked in here a few months back whether most people were only using this for recording & ampless gigs. The response was that a number of folks leave it on all the time, even running into their amp on stage. It seems sort of counter intuitive to use a cab-sim in front of a cabinet, especially when we buy amp/cabs for their inherent tonal qualities. In reality, the OCSD allows me to tighten everything and I can utilize different cabinet sounds with the option to turn it on and off with a simple foot-switch. I'll need a good amount of time to fully dial in some go-to settings for my rig, but I've already found a couple that drastically improve how distortion sounds through my amp without my clean sound taking a hit.

Final initial comment is about the headphone amp. I'm hoping this can replace my 3Leaf Enabler, which I was using for headphone practice as well as some recording (DI/EQ). The headphone amp on the Enabler is more hi-fi, and I like the interface a bit more. I think the recordings I play along to sound slightly cleaner and more dynamic through my Enabler, and it has more gain on tap if needed. On the other hand, I prefer how my bass sounds through a cab-sim when learning new tunes and playing along to tracks. If I didn't have the Enabler as a reference for a super high quality headphone amp, I would have zero complaints about the headphone/aux-in on the OCSD. Very useful...
Click to expand...

Love this and glad you snagged one! I've been running the unaffected thru to my on-stage rig and the DI out to the board. This has been an absolute game changer for me
 
#1,440
Lining up my next change for when I have some extra loot... Want to get a bit more dirt at the end of my chain and will probably switch out my Broughton Low + High Pass Filter for one of these. Don't know if anyone has mentioned doing something similar in the 70+ pages here... But this looks like it'll fit the bill and play nicely with my Ictineo.
 

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