Not to be flippant but you’re the one that has them both. Why not hook them up, mess around for a bit, and then tell us the answer?
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conceivably, definitely yes. it’s going through another two conversions ADC and DAC and an amplifier section.
so you can hear the difference in a way that absolutely ruins everything? You sort of have to test for yourself I guess cos it’s all a matter of what you can hear and how much you care about it.
probably not. If you want to get real geeky and test what it does, you can:
send a signal from the Tangerine, through the NTS-3 on 100% dry, record it in a DAW.
Then send the same signal straight into the DAW, record it. Line the two clips up (perfectly!) and then flip the phase on one of them.
Record the sum of them. Whatever is there is the difference. It’ll probably not be much tbh…
It’s also unlikely to be nothing at all I guess, everything is distortion really 
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I’m more worried about the volume wheel which feels like a bit of a weak link to me, I feel like 99% of them will be crackling in a few years and there will be a much watched youtube video showing how to bypass it.
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Is that what’s called a null test or something?
that’s the fella.
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Having fallen victim to this train of thought many times myself, i think it’s important to question a) what you want out of the effects and b) how much of a difference one conversion stage makes to the overall sound.
I would recommend being less methodical about it. Record a track with the NTS-3 removed from the signal chain, then record the same track with it in the signal chain but bypassed. Go through your normal steps to finish a song — add other instruments, fix the EQ, get your compression going, etc. During final mixdown, switch back and forth between the Tangerine tracks and see if you can identify a difference.
I used to have an EHX Hazarai delay and it was my absolute favourite pedal until I noticed that it changed my tone even when bypassed. It drove me nuts and I wound up passing it along and spending WAY too much time and money looking for something i enjoyed half as much. But now when I listen back to the many, many songs i recorded with it, i can’t actually hear any problems with my base tone…
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Yeah, I will eventually do that. I guess the reason I was asking is, I was not sure if it was even scientifically possible that there would be a difference
This is a great idea. Thanks
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should have mentioned - you need to be careful to level match too.
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Every digital FX unit I’ve used has killed the sound of the source material except the 96k EFX-1000, which is about the size of a god damned toaster oven
The test subjects:
KP2
Kp3+
KP quad
Mood mkiii
EFX-500
I think you need to go very high-end FX unit doing 96k audio or have a high end mixer to blend the effected signal back in
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Thanks for the insight. I’m actually excited to try a null test with the NTS-3 now……I’ll report back what I find
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I hope it sounds good. I am an amateur so my experience could be due to incompetence
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Incompetence is bliss.
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mine just arrived earlier, time to build it.
Ok, let’s try the again using .mp3’s. ! I finally had time to try out a null test! I recorded a clip straight from the Tangerine, and also the same clip but from the Tangerine through the nts-3 with effects off. Interestingly, the waveform from just the Tangerine was just a little bit ‘spikier’, and when through the NTS the waveform peaks are a little bit less, relative to the main body of the waveform. So, I tried to volume match as best I could, and start the samples at as close to the exact same time as I could. Then I switched polarity on one of them, played them both together and recorded the result.
Just the Tangerine:
through the NTS:
result of null test:
Conclusion: There is obviously a slight difference because you can still hear a bit of audio in the null test clip with the polarity flipped. However, it seems very slight to me! I am no expert but this seems like an acceptable difference, and when listening to the Tangerine clip vs the clip through the NTS, although I think the straight Tangerine ones sounds very slightly better, the difference is pretty minor and I don’t think anyone listening would really be aware of any difference
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Hi, I would like to add a midi controller to the NTS 3. Most tiny midi controllers today onl have a single usb as they are meant to be connected to the computer. Anyone knows a midi controller that would fit the NTS 3 in a simple way. I want to think of a small device.
does feel like theNTS-3 has dulled transients a bit maybe… interesting!
The 1010 stuff generally sounds very punchy to begin with.
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Here’s a second null test, with different audio! I would have just included this in my original post but the website didn’t seem to like it when I tried to link 6 audio clips all in one message. Same procedure as before
Just the Tangerine:
through the NTS:
result of null test:
The thing that comes to mind is a Faderfox EC4
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EC4 is a great device and I agree that it’s an ideal controller for the NTS-3. The only catch is that Korg and Faderfox adopted different TRS-MIDI configurations, so you’ll need to use adapters with a 5-pin cable between them.
The EC4 comes with its own adapter and Korg uses the same standard as Akai, Roland, Teenage Engineering, etc. so it’s not hard to find the right cable — just know that you can’t run an aux cord between the EC4 and the NTS-3.
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