Are these amp in box pedals really not as great as everyone here says?

General
1

I’ve come across plenty of comments from guitarists who are happily swapping their bulky tube amps for amp-in-a-box pedals. Since I wanted a simple setup for certain gigs, I decided to look into it myself. After reading reviews and watching demos, I picked up both the Strymon Iridium and UAFX Dream to try out.

While they do sound like faithful reproductions of the amps they’re modeled after, I wouldn’t mistake them for the real thing through a PA. They lack the depth and presence of an actual amp, and there’s definitely something missing. It’s not just nitpicking either—they don’t have the same impact as a real amplifier. Honestly, I’d rather use a budget solid-state amp over these. They’re great with headphones, and they’re useful for quick, compact setups, but the hype about them fully replacing amps seems seriously exaggerated.

4 Likes
2

The audience doesn’t hear your amp directly; they hear it through a microphone and amplified by a PA system. Amp-in-a-box solutions replicate the mic signal that goes to the PA, so the audience is hearing the same output. It just sounds different to you.

1 Like
3

The impulse response (IR) you use can have a significant impact. I recently played a gig where the front-of-house engineer assumed I had an amp mic’d up backstage (we had set everything up with his colleague) and was surprised when I told him it was just my Nux multifx! However, I wasn’t using the stock IRs.

1 Like
4

What does IR stand for? Just asking because I’m still trying to learn

1 Like
5

Impulse Response - essentially a mapping of the sound of a particular speaker/mic/room combo