Anyone try using UA Ox Stomp for their cabs?

I using an Ox Box with a Line In mod (basically the same as an Ox Stomp) with my Axe III for cab sim, and it sounds fantastic. I do plan on getting an Ox Stomp when they become readily available here in Canada.
 
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Compared to the OX Stomp, the only thing Fractal doesn't have in its cab sim is room mics. But you can simulate some of that with room reverb and you have much more granular control over the mic position but less mic options.

@FractalAudio, any thoughts on these UA claims?

Going far beyond the one-dimensional captures of Impulse Response systems, only UA’s groundbreaking Dynamic Speaker Modeling convincingly emulates speaker breakup, drive, and cone cry — providing harmonics and sonic complexity indistinguishable from a perfectly studio-miked speaker cabinet.

I have seen this sort of stuff claimed by Celestion Speaker Mix for their Dynamic Speaker Response but so far when I've tried these things I have not perceived them to sound any better than good IRs.

The Fractal Amp block simulates several speaker related things already. I can understand a "cab sim only" product would include similar things in them, I'm just not buying the claims about "groundbreaking modeling" from UA. I've read some claims about UA cab sims not being IRs at all and I'm doubting that as well.
 
laxu said:
Compared to the OX Stomp, the only thing Fractal doesn't have in its cab sim is room mics. But you can simulate some of that with room reverb and you have much more granular control over the mic position but less mic options.

@FractalAudio, any thoughts on these UA claims?

Going far beyond the one-dimensional captures of Impulse Response systems, only UA’s groundbreaking Dynamic Speaker Modeling convincingly emulates speaker breakup, drive, and cone cry — providing harmonics and sonic complexity indistinguishable from a perfectly studio-miked speaker cabinet.

I have seen this sort of stuff claimed by Celestion Speaker Mix for their Dynamic Speaker Response but so far when I've tried these things I have not perceived them to sound any better than good IRs.

The Fractal Amp block simulates several speaker related things already. I can understand a "cab sim only" product would include similar things in them, I'm just not buying the claims about "groundbreaking modeling" from UA. I've read some claims about UA cab sims not being IRs at all and I'm doubting that as well.
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In my tests there was nothing "dynamic" about the speaker modeling. The cabinets were completely linear and exhibited no dynamic attributes. IOW, they're just IRs.

You can easily obtain IRs (and I have actually done so) from the Ox Box without modifying it. Simply use a solid-state power amp.

I have also obtained IRs from the Ruby and Dream pedals using the "Reference IR" feature of the Axe-Fx.

I did some fairly comprehensive tests on the Ruby and Dream pedals, FWIW. They exhibit high levels of aliasing and the frequency response is quite inaccurate compared to the real amps. The input frequency response has a significant lowpass response. They sound good though so I suppose that's ultimately what matters.
 
FractalAudio said:
In my tests there was nothing "dynamic" about the speaker modeling. The cabinets were completely linear and exhibited no dynamic attributes. IOW, they're just IRs.

You can easily obtain IRs (and I have actually done so) from the Ox Box without modifying it. Simply use a solid-state power amp.

I have also obtained IRs from the Ruby and Dream pedals using the "Reference IR" feature of the Axe-Fx.

I did some fairly comprehensive tests on the Ruby and Dream pedals, FWIW. They exhibit high levels of aliasing and the frequency response is quite inaccurate compared to the real amps. The input frequency response has a significant lowpass response. They sound good though so I suppose that's ultimately what matters.
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Very interesting!

I guess the UA pedals are liked because they are very simple to get good results since you operate it like an amp and cab sims are basically baked ready for you. I've seen some wild claims about their "betterness" on other forums so I've been tempted to find one used just to be able to compare head to head with my Axe-Fx 3 and the Strymon Iridium I have. I've tried the UA amp sims in a store and liked what I heard but at the same time didn't hear or feel this "tonal superiority" some claim they have. Same for the IK Tonex for that matter.
 
bigfoamfinger said:
Not sure if there's really any advantage to this approach over an IR given how deep the parameters are in AXE Edit, but wondering if anyone has tried it?
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I'm doing the same thing as Satch4u3, using the Ox box for cabs. The advantage is the cabs sound great and there were times I was able to find tones that were alluding me using my regular IR's. I'm sure I could have found it eventually, but the interface on the Ox with it's very limited choice of cabs and mics is very appealing.

If I knew how to shoot IR's of the OX, I would, but still, there's the interface on Ox where you can switch mics, have low cuts, pan things etc.. that are still nice to work with. From what I understand the the dyna-cabs might provide the same kind of ease-of-interface but I haven't gotten around to trying them.

The disadvantage is that it's another step to loop in external gear and I found myself defaulting back to regular cabs b/c of this.

Anyhow how I happened to have just posted my recording of a song where I used the Ox Box for cabs yesterday.
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/song-using-ox-box-for-cabs.198614/
 
laxu said:
Very interesting!

I guess the UA pedals are liked because they are very simple to get good results since you operate it like an amp and cab sims are basically baked ready for you. I've seen some wild claims about their "betterness" on other forums so I've been tempted to find one used just to be able to compare head to head with my Axe-Fx 3 and the Strymon Iridium I have. I've tried the UA amp sims in a store and liked what I heard but at the same time didn't hear or feel this "tonal superiority" some claim they have. Same for the IK Tonex for that matter.
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These things are obviously subjective.

Using objective tests I've found nothing inherently superior. The aliasing performance is quite poor and the frequency response is inaccurate.

I dug through my computer and found this aliasing test:dream_aliasing2.PNG

The blue is the Axe-Fx III, the green is the Dream. The spikes in the Axe-Fx are power supply ripple (since we model an AC power supply). Note the peaks are at 120, 180, etc. Multiples of 60 Hz.
 
FractalAudio said:
These things are obviously subjective.

Using objective tests I've found nothing inherently superior. The aliasing performance is quite poor and the frequency response is inaccurate.

I dug through my computer and found this aliasing test:View attachment 127937

The blue is the Axe-Fx III, the green is the Dream. The spikes in the Axe-Fx are power supply ripple (since we model an AC power supply). Note the peaks are at 120, 180, etc. Multiples of 60 Hz.
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I assume these would shift based on how you set the Amp block AC Line Frequency setting? E.g 50 Hz = aliasing at multiples of 50 Hz.

Without knowing anything beyond the basics of what alłasing means, what are "good" and "bad" numbers for this? Obviously lower is better, but what is the threshold where it starts to be an audible problem, with squirrels coming out of the woodworks?
 
FractalAudio said:
I have also obtained IRs from the Ruby and Dream pedals using the "Reference IR" feature of the Axe-Fx.
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I did the same thing when I had a Ruby here to demo. I really liked the Silver cab setting on there.

@laxu I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the baked in cab sims. With the same IR it's fairly straightforward to match them to the Fractal models.
 
laxu said:
I assume these would shift based on how you set the Amp block AC Line Frequency setting? E.g 50 Hz = aliasing at multiples of 50 Hz.

Without knowing anything beyond the basics of what alłasing means, what are "good" and "bad" numbers for this? Obviously lower is better, but what is the threshold where it starts to be an audible problem, with squirrels coming out of the woodworks?
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It's the kind of thing that's hard to put a single number on, because the relevant number is basically just a THD measurement. The "problem" is that most distortion is overtones of the pitches that create it. Aliasing comes from overtones above Nyquist that "fold back" under Nyquist, which means that the "extra" pitches have no harmonic relationship to the audio that causes them....which sounds bad....and also means that the inharmonic pitches won't be masked by the music you're playing.

It's one of the things that causes that weird swirly almost phasey sound.

It's a very different display, but this is Standard Clip doing 5dB of hard clipping on a sine sweep with a lot of oversampling (32x) and basically no aliasing.

1697213554784.jpeg

The lines above the bottom one are the overtone series created by the clipping.

This is exactly the same input signal and settings but with no oversampling (I didn't hit stop when I was recording it as quickly, which is why it's squished side-to-side):

1697213678646.jpeg

Same overtone series, but as soon as one of the overtones "hits" 22.05 kHz, it folds back down. And, yes, that means that the first overtone created by the 15kHz part of the sine sweep is creating sound in the sub-bass region.

Yes, I had my speakers muted when I was doing those tests. It sounded horrible.
 
FractalAudio said:
The cabinets were completely linear and exhibited no dynamic attributes. IOW, they're just IRs.
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This doesn't surprise me. If it could capture the nonlinear behaviors of a cab, it'd also be very close to working as a Kemper replacement....which they would have done by now if it could do that.

I assume that the Ox's compressors are actually compressing though, right?

IDK....I kinda think that the Ox Box/Stomp would be cool (due to the room mics)....if it weren't for the fact that you can find room mic IRs pretty easily...and the Ox doesn't come with cabs I really like....and AFAIK they haven't ever added any.
 
I have the original OX load box with a line-in mod. Still baffles me why they chose to "hide" the line-in, even though it's part of the circuit board. Oh, well...

The close-miced tones sound identical to IRs, in my opinion, it's only after the room mics get introduced into the mix that I hear an improvement in overall tonal quality compared to standard IRs. The official claim is that they model the whole cab section mathematically, which I also find hard to believe, but their room simulations are indeed very nice. I love their Ocean Way and Capitol Chambers plugins and I guess that technology has seeped into the OX. They're probably starting out with simple IRs and add their room simulation special sauce on top.

Listening to isolated guitar tracks of famous records shows why the UA OX room simulations are so appealing. The Axe is powerful enough to cover this part of the signal chain quite well, but since guitar players are mostly a techincally conservative bunch, adding a small room reverb after or inside the cab block simply doesn't sound as convenient as mixing in "room mics" with a single, always present, slider. UA's reverbs and room simulations are still a cut above Axe FX's algorithms, but not by much.

The only aspect that makes me doubt the "only IRs" claim is OX's cone cry effect. I assume this must be a non-linear process that is simply not captured by standard IRs, which would at least lend credibility to partial mathematical modeling of the cabs?
 
Joker said:
Still baffles me why they chose to "hide" the line-in
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Probably so people wouldn't plug amps into it.

Joker said:
The official claim is that they model the whole cab section mathematically, which I also find hard to believe
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Well...cabs do significantly affect the frequency response of the speaker, but it's also captured in an IR.

Joker said:
since guitar players are mostly a techincally conservative bunch, adding a small room reverb after or inside the cab block simply doesn't sound as convenient as mixing in "room mics" with a single, always present, slider.
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If they're also taking enough measurements, they could still do that with IRs the same basic way DynaCabs or the Ox lets you move mics around the speaker. I don't know if this is full-on room modeling or interpolation based on finite measurements....but I think either would work.

FWIW, I do think that room mics sound better than room reverbs. But...pretty much all reverbs (spring, plate, algorithmic, analog, digital, plugin, hardware, whatever) piss me off. That seems to hold unless it's an IR/Convolution of a room that doesn't have any flutter echo....which is part of what the good room mic IRs do.

I haven't even looked at the reverb block since I found a room mic IR I liked. I mean...I didn't look at it much before that either, because I hate reverb. But...still.
 
marsonic said:
This doesn't surprise me. If it could capture the nonlinear behaviors of a cab, it'd also be very close to working as a Kemper replacement....which they would have done by now if it could do that.

I assume that the Ox's compressors are actually compressing though, right?

IDK....I kinda think that the Ox Box/Stomp would be cool (due to the room mics)....if it weren't for the fact that you can find room mic IRs pretty easily...and the Ox doesn't come with cabs I really like....and AFAIK they haven't ever added any.
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The Kemper cabinet portion is not dynamic either. It's also just an IR, and a short one at that (about 256 samples).
 
FractalAudio said:
The Kemper cabinet portion is not dynamic either. It's also just an IR, and a short one at that (about 256 samples).
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How does UA achieve the cry cone part if it's just an IR they're using? Do they just use some overdrive/distortion generator on top for specific frequencies?

Have you ever checked out Celestion's Speaker Mix Pro?

Here's what they're claiming:

"Add a new dimension of sound and feel with Celestion’s proprietary Dynamic Speaker Responses (DSRs), the next generation in Impulse Response technology that also capture the sound and feel of the speaker’s dynamic, non-linear response for even more detail and realism."

IR technology that can capture non-linearities sounds like marketing lingo, but i can't rule it out completely as someone with only a basic understanding of these technologies...
 
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