9V or 12V Power — Is More Better?

We are often asked, "Is it better to power Neunaber products from 12V? Does it change the tone? Does it increase the headroom?" As you might expect, the answer depends on the product and on your application.

As of the date of this blog post, all of our products can be safely powered from either 9V or 12V, and there is no change in tone between these two.

For products that have an analog dry signal path (such as Immerse and Inspire), using a 12V power supply can increase the dry-signal headroom by about 2.5 dB. That's not much, but if you have a particularly hot input signal, every little bit may help. This 2.5 dB increase applies only to the dry signal; the wet signal's headroom will be unchanged.

For products that do not have a separate dry signal path (Neuron or Iconoclast, for example), there will be no increase in headroom by using 12V.

Our recommendation is not to go out of your way to use 12V unless you hear slight clipping of the dry signal. If you hear excessive clipping, then the input signal is way too hot. A 12V power supply will not fix this.

And finally, don't try this with 18V! While our products implement some protections from over-voltage and reverse-voltage, prolonged exposure to 18V may degrade and ultimately damage this protection circuitry.