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UA Dream 65 amp sim pedal is the hype. How does it compare to iOS amp sims?.
A friend just ordered one of these Universal Audio UAFX Dream '65 pedals that go for 395€. Swears it’s the real thing. I’ve watched a ton of videos and indeed it sounds like a real amp and has a great form factor.
I’m wondering. Is it better than all the great iOS amp sims available?. Nembrini, THU, Tonex, etc… Or is it just the pedal enclosure and format that justifies the purchase?. After all it’s digital, uses IRs, etc, just like Nembrini or any amp sim app.
To be clear, I’d only consider purchasing it if I was doing a ton of gigs and had to carry the stupid amp around. But it’s not the case. I am curious about the pedal format and the very straightforward setup. No screens or menu fiddling.
Being the cheap bastard I am I just bought a Joyo American Sound for 25€, second hand. I think I’ll enjoy playing straight into the interface, for the price it’s worth trying it out.
Comments
I had it and sold it. I prefer Tonex
I’m all-in on the Strymon Iridium.
Been gigging the Joyo Standard American for 6~7 months - so cheap, so amazing!
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/50422/joyo-american-sound-fender-amp-sim-pedal#latest
Me too, but it is darker sounding than the Dream65, which I personally like but others don’t.
@tahiche one thing that’s great about using a pedal is that it’s more immediate: you can dial in your sound very quickly and leave it there. It also means you put less strain on the iPad since you’re doing the guitar processing on the pedal.
The Joyo pedal is unbeatable for the money, the UA and Strymon pedals are better-sounding (mostly because of the cab IRs) but so much more expensive. You can just add an IR to the recorded Joyo to get a better tone.
Yes, I received the Joyo American and I can’t believe how natural it sounds. It doesn’t have that digital character that you can feel in other units. I’m happily surprised.
About adding an IR after it, I’ll try it for sure. In the videos I watched they don’t recommend it as the Joyo has its own IR baked in.
I’m sure the UAFX or Iridium might be better, but it seems like one of those cases where you pay 1000% more for less than 10% in frase in quality.
The Mooer Radar is a great way to add IRs to other pedals. I was using it with the Ethos Clean analog amp sim, until I found I could ditch my board for the Iridium, and add other effects with the iPad.
I think Tonex sounds and feels better, for a lot less cash.
The joyo doesn’t have an IR, just a lpf to simulate the high end roll-off you get from a guitar speaker. There are instructions in distant places online to mod the circuit to eliminate it. I don’t know if it is worthwhile or not. Hearing clips of the joyo American sound on bass though, it sounded very cool.
its a never ending search, always something missing, however after purchasing the quad cortex my search has ended
Believe it or not, their AMP sim plugins sound crazy good ( lets they are voiced well)
UAFX I did not try , come on they could not even add a headphone out for 349 quid?
For that price, if it didn't (sound crazy good)!? It's what I payed for my M1 16Gb ram 1Tb iPad Pro 11", and for a few pennies (in context) more I got TH-U, a bunch from Nembrini and Yonac's Tonestack w Pot of Gold. Crazy was the word.
I've tried a lot of (too many $$!) ampless solutions over the years. I bought the UA Dream 65 but ended up returning it. It was too bright and thin for my taste. I just didn't hear that Fender amp thing going on. It sounded generic to me. The amp section did anyway, the tremolo and reverb were excellent.
I ended up with v1 of the DSM Humboldt Simplifier. I like that it's analog. It is good for clean/edge of breakup tones, it needs a pedal in front of it for overdrive, it takes pedals really well. The Fender sim in it also doesn't have that Fender twang going on but it is a nice, full, clean tone. That Fender amp sound must be difficult to reproduce I guess. (The Marshall and Vox tones in the Simplifier are really good though.)
I know it's not a popular or probably common opinion but I would choose a software solution over the Dream pedal.
It’s maybe a bit off topic but I just don’t get the obsession with trying to replicate a particular amp. If it’s hard to replicate a 50’s amp, with all its nuances,, don’t. Just do something that sounds great. That’s what I love about the Gain Stage Vintage Clean app, it sounds really good but not like anything in particular. We keep trying to replicate 70 year old gear over and over. How many users have actually owned one of the real amps these modéleles are trying to replicate?.
I do wish these gadgets had been available when I was lurking those heavy amps around. Only to have some random mic positioning by some random sound guy through some random PA speakers… You have a really nice (expensive) amp and have worked on your sound only to have these variables messing it all up. I would have loved to have my 25€ Joyo, would have sounded better and more consistent.
What is the simplest (simplest, is that a word?) setup to play with a guitar, your headphone and the Strymon Iridium?
Can I plug my guitar in the Iridium and the Iridium in my Yamaha AG03 and my headphone in the Yamaha? (I mean, without iPad or computer?
Yes. Guitar into Iridium, and then either use the headphone out, or connect the regular output to a mixer or whatever. No computers required. This is how I use it.
Yes I often play with headphones plugged into the Iridium, no iPad needed.
Any thoughts on the Joyo clone of the Iridium?
I didn’t know they did a specific clone of the Iridium, so I can’t comment on that. However I do own the Joyo American which is a Fender style amp sim pedal, and it’s very good for the price (less than £30 in the UK).
I would still choose the Iridium over the Joyo in that particular shootout, but the Joyo is incredible value for money.
FYI: Joyo makes a USB-C Guitar Interface that arrives today… I’ll compare it to the irig HD X which arrived on Tuesday. I’m hoping it’s louder in my low efficiency (but flat) headphones.
I have a Dream 65. It is good. It behaves nicely. It is on the more scooped side of the spectrum when it comes to modelled Fender amps. It sounds beautifully glassy. It's probably better-sounding than the closest THU rig equivalents, but I'm not actually too concerned about that comparison.
There are endless and probably yawn-worthy discussions online about why anybody would want hardware, particularly when it's a wrapper for software that you could theoretically put in a window and click with a mouse. I'm on the side of "yes, but hardware feels good", because it's about the experience rather than doing blindfold tests of the end result. Of course the end result is important, but the enclosedness and the limits of a dedicated hardware device does nice things.
The Dream 65 does those nice things. It has a "thingness" and a more concrete set of intentions that create musical decisiveness, in a way that the UI fluidity of the iPad tends not to do. (I speak as a UI designer who loves software and our interactions with it.) You're also paying money for an intentionally one-trick pony. If you create a value matrix that includes discrete features, the Iridium comes off as far more compelling, and a modelling platform like THU even more so, but you're not paying for features, you're paying for "thingness".
On that pony itself: apparently like the particular Deluxe Reverb they based it on, it breaks up far earlier than, say, the Iridium apparently does. In any case, a broken-up Fender amp is not to everyone's taste — its "edging into breakup" sound (that's what she said) isn't as satisfying to me as the VOICE DC30, which I recently acquired in lieu of being financially stupid and getting a UA Ruby as well. But I guess that's the difference between a Fender and a Vox, right. I got it for saturated clean tones, anyway. It's probably too faithful to the reference hardware (it seems rather needlessly obsessive), but there's something to be said of the instrument-like idiosyncrasy of that. It feels very much like itself. If it were this confident in its identity without being slavishly authentic, I'd probably still like it.
The drawbacks I've noticed are where it fails in its "thingness". As much as I like to say that "thingness" obviates the need to turn on an iPad, plug it into an interface and open an amp sim when all you want to do is play, it has the longest "boot time" of any of my pedals, betraying its core digitality. It's annoying enough that I actually just leave it on all the time. (Am I evil?) And although many pedals are probably far worse on this front, the treble and boost controls double as the "tremolo" controls, and this mode switching does muddy how discrete it all feels.
The Dream 65 is nice. Not perfect. And you're paying for discreteness.
Oh yeah, it occasionally gives me a very slight "ripped speaker" crackle that's definitely not what most people are intentionally looking for in edge-of-breakup territory, but apparently that's also a slavish dedication to the quirks of the original hardware. Hrm.
Yep, that’s part of it.
And? Results?
My bad, I was referring to the Joyo American. It's not a clone of the Iridium.