UAFX Amp Pedals vs UAD Amp Plugins - Keep Going Back to Pedal

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sjgam

Venerated Member
Before the UAFX Pedals and ports of Ruby, Woodrow, Dream, and Lion were available in plugin formats, my go-to amp for home recording was the Fender 55, with the input dialed down low, taking advantage of the unison and direct signal path, and the convenience of only using my Apollo.

I enjoy the clean Fender sound and prefer to use my analog pedal board for drive and modulation/wet effects.

When it came out, I bought the Dream Pedal and was blown away by both live-in-your-face, chimy Fender sound as well as the organic drive sounds. To me, it was levels above the Fender 55, and the Fender 55 was my favorite.

Now with their release, I have all four of the Ruby, Woodrow, Dream, and Lion, and understand their algorithms are exactly the same as the pedals, and I am able to deal with latency with buffer adjustments, and I am really impressed with their sound and authenticity. And now I am doing the same with the new Showman.

But ... after I spend hours with the amp plugins, tweaking, ramping through presets, and am really pleased with the sound, I go back to the Dream pedal, and immediately I feel the sound is more live, present, and again level above the plugins. Not even close in my ears. I got the Enigmatic and again, while it's a different sound than Dream, it feels a level above the plugin versions (even though it does not have a direct analog in plugin format (yet)).

Not sure if it's a placebo effect or I have just gotten so used to the Dream Pedal, but so much more satisfying to use the pedal than the plugin just purely on sound/feel.

Funny, every few months I do the same thing and get really excited, impressed with the UAD Amp Plugins, only to conclude once again that when I go back to the pedal, it's so much more satisfying. I spent some time just now with Showman and really like - clean Fender with lots of headroom is my sound and its really good but when I go back to the pedal all in the world is good.
 
LesBrown

LesBrown

Hall of Fame Member
fwiw: I consider the Enigma pedal to be my amp of choice (having used all but the Anti.) Given that, I feel no need to own the native amp plugins, except the free Showman of course. I never track through native plugins. But not everyone has a pedal, or an amp, so imo the plugins are another alternative to get to the same sound.
 
klasaine

klasaine

Hall of Fame Member
It’s probably the very slight (but perceptible for some folks) latency of the plugin. I personally don’t notice it but some do.
FWIW, I did a track using both the dream pedal and the dream plugin. Rhythm and lead. Clean and dirty. I was able to match them perfectly. I can’t tell which is which without looking at the session.
Matching the tone will have a lot to do with the gain staging between the input gain of your interface and the plugin as opposed to the pedal.
With the pedal, I bump up the input on my interface (Apollo) a couple of db. Whatever two leds are. With the plugin, I drop my Apollo to zero (no leds lit) and lower the input gain in the plugin to about 10:00 on the dial. I then bump up the output gain in the plugin

Heres a thread with the track I did.
2nd post down (it should link directly to my post) …

Dream 65 plugin vs pedal

Hello, I have the dream 65 pedale which i love. I want to get the same quality sound from a audio interface - plugin setup. So i bought the ssl 2 interface and the dream 65 plugin. But the sound is not as good as the pedal.... Comparing the two output into monitoring speakers, and with exactly...
uadforum.com
 
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S

sjgam

Venerated Member
LesBrown said:
fwiw: I consider the Enigma pedal to be my amp of choice (having used all but the Anti.) Given that, I feel no need to own the native amp plugins, except the free Showman of course. I never track through native plugins. But not everyone has a pedal, or an amp, so imo the plugins are another alternative to get to the same sound.
Click to expand...
Yeah, there is the lower cost and in-the-box convenience of the plugins, but it's interesting that they have the exact same algorithm and again I dial the buffer down where I dont think there is perceptible latency but the experience is for the lack of better words - more alive to me categorically with the pedal.

Yeah I have added the Enigma too with the thought it could offer tighter distorted leads as well as clean sound. It does that but just lately been going back to the Dream for that chimy no fuss Fender clean sound that makes me feel more comfortable.
 
S

sjgam

Venerated Member
klasaine said:
It’s probably the very slight (but perceptible for some folks) latency of the plugin. I personally don’t notice it but some do.
FWIW, I did a track using both the dream pedal and the dream plugin. Rhythm and lead. Clean and dirty. I was able to match them perfectly. I can’t tell which is which without looking at the session.
Matching the tone will have a lot to do with the gain staging between the input gain of your interface and the plugin as opposed to the pedal.
With the pedal, I bump up the input on my interface (Apollo) a couple of db. Whatever two leds are. With the plugin, I drop my Apollo to zero (no leds lit) and lower the input gain in the plugin to about 10:00 on the dial. I then bump up the output gain in the plugin

Heres a thread with the track I did.
2nd post down (it should link directly to my post) …

Dream 65 plugin vs pedal

Hello, I have the dream 65 pedale which i love. I want to get the same quality sound from a audio interface - plugin setup. So i bought the ssl 2 interface and the dream 65 plugin. But the sound is not as good as the pedal.... Comparing the two output into monitoring speakers, and with exactly...
uadforum.com
Click to expand...
Wow great playing and I cant tell the difference either. Yeah maybe when I play as you say there might be slight latency that I feel. Maybe thats it. Or perhaps as you suggest the input levels with output signal need to change for plugin and pedal to get more of a match. I think on a dumber level the fact there is this piece of hardware under my foot making me "feel" a difference with playing feel and sound. Your test takes that away and I assume your are saying you also can't "feel" a difference when you play the two aside from the fact that you yield the same sounding recording? I realize my "feel" term is vague.
 
Eric Dahlberg

Eric Dahlberg

Purveyor of musical dreams fullfilled.
The placebo effect is real in my own case. I use the Tonex pedal and there should be even less difference there (gain staging is actually better on the plugin version), yet I always prefer the pedal.
 
exoslime

exoslime

Hall of Fame Member
also its fun to dial the physical knobs :)
I also kept my UAFX hardware pedals even after the plugins were released and same as you i like the Dream pedal alot

when i switch between the plugin and the pedal, i dont notice much of a sonical difference, however, i noticed the reaction and feel is might be a bit different, but maybe its just a placebo effect, but i think it has to do with the signal flow, when you go with your guitar straight into the audio interface, you will most likely have a different impedance (which does affect the resonances and tone of your pickups) and also different AD conversion than when you plug your guitar straight into the pedal, i´m not saying one is better than the other, just a tiny bit different.
and as already stated, also the signal levels are quite different which needs to be taken into consideration :)
 
S

sjgam

Venerated Member
Well to thicken the plot - as I said I like the more immediate lively feel/sound of the amp pedal over the plugin version but when I compare the Fender 55 Tweed Unison plugin to Dream, Ruby, Lion, Woodrow (I guess thats the most appropriate), and Showman - I like the sounds of the native amps better probably because I am more of a blackface amp guy than a Tweed amp guy BUT I like the feel better on Fender 55 I believe because its Unison and going right from Apollo hardware to my headphone/monitors. There is some kind of lesson there.
 
bugscoe

bugscoe

Active Member
I've had the same experience with the Ruby pedal. Much prefer tracking with that, rather than adding the Ruby plug in after the fact. The plugin is nice to have if needing to tweak a guitar sound but the pedal just feels like the real deal from the get go.
 
klasaine

klasaine

Hall of Fame Member
I think on a dumber level the fact there is this piece of hardware under my foot making me "feel" a difference with playing feel and sound. Your test takes that away and I assume your are saying you also can't "feel" a difference when you play the two aside from the fact that you yield the same sounding recording? I realize my "feel" term is vague.
Click to expand...
I can’t feel the difference. What I know about the tech - the algorithms in the pedal are exactly the same as the plugin. Your computer is gonna have a lot to do with the feel. My music computer is strictly that. I don’t do anything else on it.
I do make it a point to turn off all native processing and obviously drop my buffer. 64 seems to be the sweet spot.
 
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MakerDP

MakerDP

Hall of Fame Member
I'll echo what Klasaine said about the input levels for the plugin. In my experience this is absolutely vital to matching the plugin to the pedal. If I don't get the input right, then there is very little chance of getting the two to sound the same.

In fact, that's a good way to set your input to the correct level... set the plugin and the pedal to the exact same settings then tweak the input/output balance until they sound the same.

The "feel" aspect of it though... if you notice a difference there, then it could be because your interface between your guitar and the plugin does in fact change your signal, even with matched levels. Not exactly the same as going straight-in to the pedal from the guitar. With a good interface it should theoretically be pretty darn close, but the modelling could react to those differences in different ways.

Let your ears & feelings guide you to the right method for you.
 
David MacNeill

David MacNeill

Hall of Fame Member
Man, all this gushing praise for the Dream pedal has me jonesin' for one again, just like when it was released. The only thing keeping me from ordering one right now is that I have zero room left on my studio pedalboard! Every one of these pedals has a vital and frequently required function for what I do, so I guess I'll just stick with the Dream and Woodrow plugins until I add a second single row pedalboard to my rack.

IMG_2303.JPG
 
MakerDP

MakerDP

Hall of Fame Member
David MacNeill said:
Man, all this gushing praise for the Dream pedal has me jonesin' for one again, just like when it was released. The only thing keeping me from ordering one right now is that I have zero room left on my studio pedalboard! Every one of these pedals has a vital and frequently required function for what I do, so I guess I'll just stick with the Dream and Woodrow plugins until I add a second single row pedalboard to my rack.
Click to expand...
TONEX to the rescue! Capture your UAFX amp pedals and take them off the board. That way your pedalboard has room for ALL of them. :) I'm almost to the point where mine are dialed-in to where I can do that.

Problem is you can't capture the "room" control.
 
David MacNeill

David MacNeill

Hall of Fame Member
MakerDP said:
TONEX to the rescue! Capture your UAFX amp pedals and take them off the board. That way your pedalboard has room for ALL of them. :) I'm almost to the point where mine are dialed-in to where I can do that.

Problem is you can't capture the "room" control.
Click to expand...
That would be a deal breaker for me. I love the Room knob on these pedals and plugins and simply would not use them without. The stand apart from my many reverbs somehow in that they really sound like an amp in the room.

I also like pedals because even though I know most of mine are essentially software-in-a-box, they feel like the simple hardware pedals of my formative years. I often switch to my pedals as a relief from my computer and my DAW and all that distracting complexity, blinking and beeping and generally making a ruckus, y'know?
 
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