lm386 is more blinky, sound reactive is more of a fade from loud to soft. and with lm386, you can use whatever voltage leds you want, the output is 5v. on direct contact, you can only use up to the output of the speaker, I don't know what it goes up to. So if you want to burn out some leds, you can use less resistance than you are supposed to on the lm386, and have a brighter led mod. remember that lm386 requires soldering much more than the direct contact method, and if you are good at soldering, I reccomend you solder to the traces of the speaker instead of the actual speaker or speaker contacts, it left me much more room