Langevin dvc = stereo la3 or am i dreaming?

Langevin was discontinued several years ago IIRC. I have the older ELOP which is half of it, they stopped making that at least a decade ago. It’s a good opto, but it’s not an LA-3.

Yeah, I always heard mixed reviews of the preamp/EQ.  My impression is it's somewhat a copy of the later AM(3? 4?) end of the road Langevin SS, which is about the least desirable of the original Langevin stuff.   The opto's strong suit is, as you say, doesn't do anything wrong, which used to be pretty hard to find.      It's solid invisible hand gain control.  It will start to erase drum transients, not a first choice for mix bus on rock music.   The overall circuit does have a distinctive discrete transistor sound to it, but subtle as those things usually are.  Things sound a hair 'bigger/better' if you use it as a line amp with compression in bypass.   I've used mine many times as extra gain after the preamp to record crickets at distance with low output mics, for example, a much better approach than ye ole' cloudshitter/etc approach.   

These are really good points, Doug. It's easy to forget how few quality new "affordable" hardware pieces were available back when the DVC debuted. I think the first proper piece of outboard I bought was an RNC, followed by the DVC.

And I may have undersold certain aspects of it in my prior post. The Opto was good enough that I actually found myself looking for one on eBay/Reverb a few weeks ago, just to see if there were any floating around. It was a great early compressor/limiter for me because it was so simple and generally good sounding that it was hard to mess up audio (especially vocals and guitars) when tracking oneself. Easier than an LA-2A, even, because it was more transparent and more forgiving. The compression action was not as audible, which was a good thing for me at that point in my recording career.

The only thing I ever hear referred to as seeming cheap is the feel of the pots, which are more expensive conductive plastic types....and.....that's what they feel like. Mine has to be 25 years old at this point.   It's one of the only things I have that old which doesn't have a scratchy pot position if I don't use it for 6 months.  

There is a ground strap that can be set differently IIRC correctly. That is annoying, so many possibilities as to cause. The ELOP at least is unbalanced in/out on the 1/4", and probably impedance balanced on the XLR. You can make certain connections, like transformer coupled into the 1/4" that don't work at all, has to be the XLR.

I'd say the Great River is SUPPOSED to sound like something, the Langevin really isn't. It's in the category of 'good' not sounding like anything as opposed to the sea of 'bad' not sounding like anything that reveal themselves as 'actually sounding like something not so great' after repeated use.

Would you say the compression action was the same, and the amp tone was the difference, or the compression was also different?