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Sonicake Pocket Master as an iOS interface for guitar

I’ve been using the Pocket Master as my interface for an iPad 10th gen for a few days and I’m really impressed. Shows up as a 2 in/2 out audio interface, plug and play with no issues. Although I don’t know the specifics on the round trip latency…it feels good. I’d love to hear what other users are experiencing.

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Comments

  • Good to know! Thanks for sharing!

  • wimwim
    edited January 27

    Mine arrives on Tuesday. I have pretty low expectations after more than 25 years of disappointment with such gadgets, so we'll see how this goes. 😉

  • @wim said:
    Mine arrives on Tuesday. I have pretty low expectations after more than 25 years of disappointment with such gadgets, so we'll see how this goes. 😉

    Looking forward to your thoughts

  • edited January 28

    Its great, love it for its simplicity of use and it just sounds great with the ipad - so much so have shelved biasfx and amplitube and 20th anniversary guitar apps. Sonicake is just better for me. Gigfast and Thu stay though :)

    The firmware is in Chinese though and the main menus etc are english, but i purchased mine mainland china so maybe thats why, Be sure to visit their site for the latest firmware which is 1,1.0 at time of writing :wink:

    Zero complaints here and its so much better than their sonicake amphonix gadget which i was disappointed with.

  • @dblonde said:
    Its great, love it for its simplicity of use and it just sounds great with the ipad

    That’s great to hear. I’m using it with an iPad as well. I still can’t believe all you’re getting for $64. I was considering an iRig device as well as looking at other options for my iPad I don’t think there’s a better fit for me personally.

  • wimwim
    edited January 29

    I'm able to use a NAM Clone for the amp and still use my own imported cab IRs. That only makes sense to do if the amp capture doesn't include a cab already. Someone mentioned that you couldn't do both. However, you can.

    [edit] it now seems that although everything else acts as though this is possible, turning the cab on and off makes no difference in the sound, and as @espiegel123 points out, there's an "Off" glyph on the cabinet icon. It's misleading because except for that all other visual indications make it look as though it's working.

  • @wim said:
    I'm able to use a NAM Clone for the amp and still use my own imported cab IRs. That only makes sense to do if the amp capture doesn't include a cab already. Someone mentioned that you couldn't do both. However, you can.

    Yeah I thought you could as well be hadn’t tried it out yet. Thanks for clearing that up! How are you liking it so far? Are you using it with an iOS device?

  • Another thing people in the Facebook
    NAM group have mentioned is that many NAM profiles are done at 48k and the Pocket Master seems not to account for the sample rate difference which results in the frequency response being shifted.

    I don’t know if that is true but a couple of people posted frequency analyses that seem to support that.

  • wimwim
    edited January 29

    @Uprightmusic said:

    @wim said:
    I'm able to use a NAM Clone for the amp and still use my own imported cab IRs. That only makes sense to do if the amp capture doesn't include a cab already. Someone mentioned that you couldn't do both. However, you can.

    Yeah I thought you could as well be hadn’t tried it out yet. Thanks for clearing that up! How are you liking it so far? Are you using it with an iOS device?

    Well, except for changing too many things at once and not verifying with my ears what I was seeing on the screen carefully enough, I'm liking it well enough. I'll save up my thoughts though and check back in after spending more time with it.

  • @wim said:

    Well, except for changing too many things at once and not verifying with my ears what I was seeing on the screen carefully enough, I'm liking it well enough. I'll save up my thoughts though and check back in after spending more time with it.

    Fair enough. Also the phone app is great for dialing things in quickly and can be a bit easier to use than the device itself for creating presets.

  • wimwim
    edited January 30

    Here are my initial thoughts after about six hours with the thing. It's gonna be a long post. Important: I'm no guitar expert. I know what tones I like and dislike, but my tastes are often not those of the majority. Don't waste your time reading the Tone section if you're serious about tone opinions.

    I haven't measured latency as an interface yet. I've only tested with a Lightning connection via the Apple USB3 Lightning adapter. I don't have a USB-C device to test with.

    Summary

    • Overall I'm completely pleased and can definitely recommend the Pocket Master as a tool casual use and for encouraging practice. Tone-wise it's better than expected, but no replacement for today's great iOS amp sims and FX. I believe it's going to help me to play more at home. I believe it could be used for light gigging, for jam sessions, and for busking as well. It's absolutely a great value.

    Functionality

    • Overall it's fabulous! Battery powered, a very readable display, and the on-board controls are easy to use and navigate. Just plug in your guitar and headphones and you're ready to jam.
    • As an interface for iOS devices it works well. I did have to plug it in to the Lightning adapter before plugging the Lightning adapter in to the iPad get it to be recognized though.

      • A bit concerning though: The LCD screen sort of pulsed a little bit when connected and running on battery power. Adding power to the Lightning adapter didn't change anything. Adding power to the device did.
      • I get electrical noise with mains power attached, but that's true for any interface for me. Battery power is dead-silent.
    • I'm really bothered by the lack of level meters. There are adjustments for all the different levels needed but no way to measure what they are. That's a problem, especially to avoid clipping with 16bit USB in/out. I also have no way of knowing what my guitar input level is. Even just a small icon to indicate clipping on the input would be helpful.

    • Bluetooth Audio out from iOS is handy! Latency is of course way to high for recording purposes, but for sending audio out to jam over, it's way cool.
    • I actually prefer changing settings on-device over the using the app. ymmv.
    • The onboard tuner is very nice to have.
    • As noted elsewhere, it may appear that you can load cabinet IRs and NAM profiles at the same time, but the IR section does nothing if a NAM profile is loaded. This limits one to full rig NAM captures. I haven't found any that sound even as good as the included amps, so I'm probably not going to use that feature.
    • The drum loops it comes with are only playable from the app. Only the metronome is available in the device itself. This isn't documented anywhere, so I spent a long time trying to figure out how to do it on the device.
    • The metronome has a lot of choices for time signatures. Nice!
    • It has an onboard looper. I can't see using it for anything, but kinda cool that it's there.
    • Battery seems to drain fairly fast. I'll have to test to see if it could actually last four hours as claimed.

      • [edit] it charges up very quickly, even with a low power charger and while in use.
    • With care I was able to use the fairly large up/down buttons to change patches with my foot.

    • Point of info: Patches with a P in front of the number are user patches. Factory patches have an F in front. You can only save changes to factory patches to a user slot.
    • Headphone out is 1/4" (6.35mm), so if you use 1/8" (3.5mm) earbuds or something, you'll need to dig up that pesky adapter that is always lost somewhere.
    • Build quality is just fine. I don't feel like this is going to have any problems being tossed around, dropped, etc.
    • There's a bug in the companion app on the iPad in landscape mode. You can't get to the reverb effect.

    Tone

    • Overall it's better than I expected, but nothing I'm overly excited about. I am happy that I can plug in and get plenty good enough sound so that it's not a distraction. If tone sucks, then I'm not motivated to play. Tone is just fine but is no match for my favorite iOS amp models.
    • I absolutely hated all my previous compact hardware amp simulators - for over 25 years. I'm very happy that this makes the grade.
    • I play fairly clean, with just a bit of breakup, most of the time. This works well for that.
    • I hunt for responsiveness to dynamics and guitar tone rolloff. High marks here! Possibly even better than my favorite iOS sims.
    • There is a little of that damn fizziness that seems to be in every cheap/compact amp sim when you get into crunch territory. It's not bad, but it's still there. So far I haven't been able to EQ it out. Probably I can though.
    • Compared to similar Nembrini amp sims, I don't have to fight as hard to tame the distortion. That's a plus.
    • I've only checked against my few go-to amp sim patches. So far the Pocket Master is no match, but plenty good enough for casual playing.
    • The FX are all pretty good as far as I've tested. Nothing much stood out, and that's good, because if it did it would probably be because I didn't like it.
      • The reverse delay is terrific though! That one is an instant favorite.
      • The reverbs are plenty varied and plenty good for my purposes of casual playing.
      • There are a nice variety of distortions and they're good enough.
      • I don't use many other FX. The chorus FX are able to be set very subtly, so that you hardly know they're there. I like that.

    Other

    • The manual isn't great. I didn't need it to find my way around, but I'm pretty good with figuring things out on my own. Some stuff just wasn't easily discoverable. I'm sure I could have found some of those things by wading through hours of YouTube videos, but I can't stand doing that. I eventually found everything I need to know through trial and error.
    • This could really shine with MIDI control over patches.
    • A critter that plugs directly into the guitar like the Mustang Micro is tempting to reduce clutter even further, but I think I prefer to have something sitting in front of me with a screen and controls that I can see when not tethered to the iPad.
    • [edit] It needs an acoustic guitar simulator and an acoustic amp simulator. Maybe I'll see if the IR loader can work for those.
  • @wim said:
    Here are my initial thoughts after about six hours with the thing. It's gonna be a long post. Important: I'm no guitar expert. I know what tones I like and dislike, but my tastes are often not those of the majority. Don't waste your time reading the Tone section if you're serious about tone opinions.

    I haven't measured latency as an interface yet. I've only tested with a Lightning connection via the Apple USB3 Lightning adapter. I don't have a USB-C device to test with.

    Summary

    • Overall I'm completely pleased and can definitely recommend the Pocket Master as a tool casual use and for encouraging practice. Tone-wise it's better than expected, but no replacement for today's great iOS amp sims and FX. I believe it's going to help me to play more at home. I believe it could be used for light gigging, for jam sessions, and for busking as well. It's absolutely a great value.

    Functionality

    • Overall it's fabulous! Battery powered, a very readable display, and the on-board controls are easy to use and navigate. Just plug in your guitar and headphones and you're ready to jam.
    • As an interface for iOS devices it works well. I did have to plug it in to the Lightning adapter before plugging the Lightning adapter in to the iPad get it to be recognized though.

      • A bit concerning though: The LCD screen sort of pulsed a little bit when connected and running on battery power. Adding power to the Lightning adapter didn't change anything. Adding power to the device did.
      • I get electrical noise with mains power attached, but that's true for any interface for me. Battery power is dead-silent.
    • I'm bothered by the lack of level meters. There are adjustments for all the different levels needed but no way to measure what they are. That's a problem, especially to avoid clipping with 16bit USB in/out. I also have no way of knowing what my guitar input level is.

    • Bluetooth Audio out from iOS is handy! Latency is of course way to high for recording purposes, but for sending audio out to jam over, it's way cool.
    • I actually prefer changing settings on-device over the using the app. ymmv.
    • The onboard tuner is very nice to have.
    • As noted elsewhere, it may appear that you can load cabinet IRs and NAM profiles at the same time, but the IR section does nothing if a NAM profile is loaded. This limits one to full rig NAM captures. I haven't found any that sound even as good as the included amps, so I'm probably not going to use that feature.
    • The drum loops it comes with are only playable from the app. Only the metronome is available in the device itself. This isn't documented anywhere, so I spent a long time trying to figure out how to do it on the device.
    • The metronome has a lot of choices for time signatures. Nice!
    • It has an onboard looper. I can't see using it for anything, but kinda cool that it's there.
    • Battery seems to drain fairly fast. I'll have to test to see if it could actually last four hours as claimed.
    • With care I was able to use the fairly large up/down buttons to change patches with my foot.
    • Point of info: Patches with a P in front of the number are user patches. Factory patches have an F in front. You can only save changes to factory patches to a user slot.
    • Headphone out is 1/4" (6.35mm), so if you use 1/8" (3.5mm) earbuds or something, you'll need to dig up that pesky adapter that is always lost somewhere.
    • Build quality is just fine. I don't feel like this is going to have any problems being tossed around, dropped, etc.

    Tone

    • Overall it's better than I expected, but nothing I'm overly excited about. I am happy that I can plug in and get plenty good enough sound so that it's not a distraction. If tone sucks, then I'm not motivated to play. Tone is just fine but is no match for my favorite iOS amp models.
    • I absolutely hated all my previous compact hardware amp simulators - for over 25 years. I'm very happy that this makes the grade.
    • I play fairly clean, with just a bit of breakup, most of the time. This works well for that.
    • I hunt for responsiveness to dynamics and guitar tone rolloff. High marks here! Possibly even better than my favorite iOS sims.
    • There is a little of that damn fizziness that seems to be in every cheap/compact amp sim when you get into crunch territory. It's not bad, but it's still there. So far I haven't been able to EQ it out. Probably I can though.
    • Compared to similar Nembrini amp sims, I don't have to fight as hard to tame the distortion. That's a plus.
    • I've only checked against my few go-to amp sim patches. So far the Pocket Master is no match, but plenty good enough for casual playing.
    • The FX are all pretty good as far as I've tested. Nothing much stood out, and that's good, because if it did it would probably be because I didn't like it.
      • The reverse delay is terrific though! That one is an instant favorite.
      • The reverbs are plenty varied and plenty good for my purposes of casual playing.
      • There are a nice variety of distortions and they're good enough.
      • I don't use many other FX. The chorus FX are able to be set very subtly, so that you hardly know they're there. I like that.

    Other

    • The manual isn't great. I didn't need it to find my way around, but I'm pretty good with figuring things out on my own. Some stuff just wasn't easily discoverable. I'm sure I could have found some of those things by wading through hours of YouTube videos, but I can't stand doing that. I eventually found everything I need to know through trial and error.
    • This could really shine with MIDI control over patches.
    • A critter that plugs directly into the guitar like the Mustang Micro is tempting to reduce clutter even further, but I think I prefer to have something sitting in front of me with a screen and controls that I can see when not tethered to the iPad.

    Great write up! Thanks much @wim. Mines coming early next week so can’t wait to have a play.

  • @Cambler said:

    @wim said: ...

    Great write up! Thanks much @wim. Mines coming early next week so can’t wait to have a play.

    +1. Great write up. Mine is also coming the next few days. I honestly don't know why I ordered it...because I could and it's a gadget I guess, but technically my current interface (Roland Duo-Capture) is already battery powered, should I chose to (I never have) and I prefer recording my guitars "clean" so I can re-amp as I like after the fact, and as stated, I'm really quite pleased with my amp sims in my ipad already.

    Still, I ordered one of these. I'm sure I'll be happy to find it at some point in the future when I go "didn't I have a thing that...". :lol:

  • To me it's a motivator to practice more. The fewer hookups and less setup needed the better for that. If the tone sucked too bad I'd never use it, but it's fine. Being able to send Bluetooth audio out of the iPad to jam over is a big bonus too.

    I won't be using it for recording unless I'm messing around and just want to quickly capture an idea. I too like to leave the option to re-amp open, and can't imagine using the onboard stuff over the better stuff on iPad for finished work.

    That reminds me though. I meant to try it out as just a plain ol' interface with all FX bypassed.

  • @wim said:

    That reminds me though. I meant to try it out as just a plain ol' interface with all FX bypassed.

    This is how I use it. I actually haven’t used the on board stuff much at all outside of initially trying the NAM stuff.

  • wimwim
    edited January 30
    • I'm showing device input Latency 1.02ms and round trip latency 7.85ms at 128 frames buffer size in AUM. It feels like more than that when listening through the headphone jack on the device when passing through AUM though. I'm guessing there's an additional delay back to the interface.
    • I had to boost the USB output the full 20db to get a full raw signal input in AUM from my guitar.
    • That seems to indicate my guitar is coming in low. Normal presets don't need that much boost.
    • I've no idea what my guitar input levels are like because there's no way to measure. 😐
    • Playing standalone with this is a joy because with direct monitoring there's just about zero latency.

    Bottom line is I don't see any advantage to using this as an audio interface. It's nice to have for when you already have the thing out and don't feel like changing things, but provided I have my normal iPad powered small device available, I won't be using it for that purpose. It's a convenience thing to get me to play more than anything else, and for that it's good.

  • @wim those are interesting findings. I’ve been using it daily as an audio interface since I got it and it feels generally great IMO. I’m running into the iPad with backing tracks playing on the iPad, basically just as a practice setup that fires up quick and allows me to get right into practicing. Much faster and intimate than turning on my full rig and DAW. if I have an idea I want to further I can record it using AUM and Airdrop it to my full setup.

  • @Uprightmusic said:
    @wim those are interesting findings. I’ve been using it daily as an audio interface since I got it and it feels generally great IMO. I’m running into the iPad with backing tracks playing on the iPad, basically just as a practice setup that fires up quick and allows me to get right into practicing. Much faster and intimate than turning on my full rig and DAW. if I have an idea I want to further I can record it using AUM and Airdrop it to my full setup.

    I get too much latency for my comfort going to the iPad, through FX, and back out to the Pocket Master. It's fine if I'm using the Pocket Master FX because then I'm just playing to what comes out of the DAW. In fact, that's doable over Bluetooth even as long as it's just playback from the DAW.

    The difference for me is I still have an iPad with a headphone jack. So with another audio interface, I can listen to the audio coming straight out of the iPad for lower latency, which I find acceptable. I haven't been able to use the Pocket Master and still use the headphone out on the iPad.

  • @wim said:

    I get too much latency for my comfort going to the iPad, through FX, and back out to the Pocket Master. It's fine if I'm using the Pocket Master FX because then I'm just playing to what comes out of the DAW. In fact, that's doable over Bluetooth even as long as it's just playback from the DAW.

    The difference for me is I still have an iPad with a headphone jack. So with another audio interface, I can listen to the audio coming straight out of the iPad for lower latency, which I find acceptable. I haven't been able to use the Pocket Master and still use the headphone out on the iPad.

    Totally understandable. I was definitely considering an interface for the iPad but it was hard for me to pull the trigger because I already have an expensive interface so justifying another just for the iPad, kept me practicing with just a nylon string guitar and backing tracks playing from the iPad speakers. When the Pocket Master popped up for $64 it was a no brainer for me.

  • @wim I’ve got more options than I can shake a stick at but the iPad interface was something I just got stuck on and couldn’t justify spending more than a $100 on.


  • Holy shit. 😂😎❤️

  • OK, I have been playing with this thing virtually all day, and the more I do the more it grows on me. For those who have a fixed studio setup I can see that it would have less utility value. But for me, pretty much confined to playing at the couch or the dining room table, the barrier to getting set up and running with a tone that I like is just enough lower than what I had, that I know I'll be playing a lot more. Anything that can do that for me is a huge blessing 'cause I've gotten embarrassingly lazy about playing my guitars for a long time now.

    If it ever gets midi control, it'll be as close to perfect as I need.

  • @wim said:
    OK, I have been playing with this thing virtually all day, and the more I do the more it grows on me. For those who have a fixed studio setup I can see that it would have less utility value. But for me, pretty much confined to playing at the couch or the dining room table, the barrier to getting set up and running with a tone that I like is just enough lower than what I had, that I know I'll be playing a lot more. Anything that can do that for me is a huge blessing 'cause I've gotten embarrassingly lazy about playing my guitars for a long time now.

    If it ever gets midi control, it'll be as close to perfect as I need.

    Also at the price of $64 ! 🤣

    By the way that was an epic detailed review you posted earlier forgot to say thanks for that!

  • wimwim
    edited January 30

    I get paid per the number of words.

  • It needs an acoustic guitar simulator and an acoustic amp model.

  • @wim said:
    OK, I have been playing with this thing virtually all day, and the more I do the more it grows on me. For those who have a fixed studio setup I can see that it would have less utility value. But for me, pretty much confined to playing at the couch or the dining room table, the barrier to getting set up and running with a tone that I like is just enough lower than what I had, that I know I'll be playing a lot more. Anything that can do that for me is a huge blessing 'cause I've gotten embarrassingly lazy about playing my guitars for a long time now.

    If it ever gets midi control, it'll be as close to perfect as I need.

    This is exactly what I'm hoping for as well so this is great to hear. Also keen on it being a very portable recording interface as well.

  • @wim said:

    If it ever gets midi control, it'll be as close to perfect as I need.

    Stupid question, but what will midi control do for you?

  • wimwim
    edited January 30

    @Cambler said:

    @wim said:

    If it ever gets midi control, it'll be as close to perfect as I need.

    Stupid question, but what will midi control do for you?

    Things like letting me change presets from a foot switch. Allow toggling, say an overdrive stomp box on or off, that kind of thing. Not a biggie, but diving into the patches to do quick things like toggling an FX or cranking the gain is a little tedious.

    Not a big deal, but it could be useful to make practicing little more fun. Especially if you could do it over Bluetooth. I only got started thinking about it because I read a brief hint somewhere that it might be coming.

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