OX Stomp Dynamic Speaker Emulator Reviews

I'm a tone snob. Opinionated and always looking for "holy grail" sounds. I was very skeptical that anyone's idea of what guitar should sound like could meet my personal standards (UA - no offense! I absolutely rely on your Apollo ecosystem and plugins for my audio work.) This pedal has hit the mark. While the presets are great, I actually needed some very specific dual mono setups and was able to build stunningly realistic rigs that are fun to play through without the froggy tones of IR platforms. Thank you UA. (And thank you for the super smooth controls in the latest free app update - that was my only gripe!)

The quality of the speakers and mics is great - no complaint here. If it is better than good IRs is highly subjective but thats not the point. Some people like me hate the IR workflow.

The layout of the pedal is not great. Instead of the speaker drive poti I would like to be able to control reverb and delays levels without the app. No indication of stored values. So you need the app for fine adjustments of existing presets. Connection still is a bit rough.

But the app itself is horrible. So bad that the effects are not even really usable. Some sliders only work in the first 5%, no exact values possible for example important for the delays. It is often either too little or too much. So you are bound to use them in very simple ways... I call that false advertisement.

What really bugs me is that UA knows all that and does NOTHING. Because of that I don´t think I will buy another UA product.

If you care about your tone, you really should give this box a try. It is a wonderland of boutique tones for all of your preamps and amp simulators. Since I got it, my guitar recordings sound so much better -- very lifelike and 3D. If you own a Synergy system, any UA Stomp pedals, Fractal/Helix stuff, or any of the other amp-in-a-box devices (from Victory, Friedman, Two Notes, etc), this is a great match. However... I'm using it mainly for home recording. I don't know how useful it would be in a live situation, and it's NOT a load box, so it can't go directly after a tube amp head.

I used this with a cheap Boss IR 2, and it is really surprising how good this thing sounds. Factory presets are great to demo how a single cabinet can change character with a few studio effects. You could easily pick a single cabinet you like for your amp sim and have six distinct preset slots by making simple changes in the app.