Universal Audio OX Amp Top Box

OX is a premium reactive load box and guitar recording system, giving you perfectly studio-miked amp sounds from your favorite tube amp. OX lets you play and record your amp in its sweet spots — from huge clean tones and edge-of-breakup to fully cranked — at any volume level, and with mic, room, and speaker cabinet emulations at the turn of a knob.  

Featuring Universal Audio’s breakthrough Dynamic Speaker Modeling, OX is the first system to accurately emulate speaker drive, breakup, and cone cry — making it the world’s finest speaker attenuator and guitar amp recording solution.

The World’s Best Reactive Load Box

With decades of analog hardware engineering expertise, Universal Audio’s dream team of engineers set out to design a reactive load box that retains the tone, dynamics, and feel of your tube amp — no matter how much it’s attenuated. The goal was for your tube amp to “see” OX as an actual speaker — with continuously variable impedance and response — so you don’t lose a drop of tone or playing dynamics. 

Dynamic Speaker Modeling

UA’s groundbreaking Dynamic Speaker Modeling faithfully emulates speaker breakup, drive, and cone cry — an essential ingredient to authentic tube amp tones. Using the Speaker Breakup knob in the OX app, you can control the harmonics and sonic complexity that occurs only at certain frequencies and volume levels on various speakers — far beyond a static Impulse Response system — giving you the same sonic phenomenon that occurs with a real speaker cabinet.

A Beautiful Software App

Most guitar products do digital awkwardly. They’re ugly and hard to understand. The OX software app, on the other hand, offers slick, intuitive control over all of OX’s RIG settings via Wi-Fi — letting you tweak, store and recall hundreds of presets from your iPad or Mac. You can then save your six favorite tones onto OX’s front-panel RIG knob for instant recall in the studio or at a gig.

All The Right Connections

Not only does OX Amp Top Box feature a front-panel headphone jack for silent practice with your cranked tube amp, it also sports a bevy of connections for all kinds of recording and live workflows. Stereo S/PDIF digital outputs via RCA and optical TOSLINK, as well as balanced TRS stereo line outputs with front panel level control, give you the necessary connections for studio monitors, DAW, or live mixing console inputs. 

Premium, no-compromise analog reactive load box and guitar recording system for tube guitar amps 

Instant album-quality mic and speaker cabinet tones via front-panel RIG control

Get record-ready sounds quickly with expertly-placed virtual mics and cabs — no amp miking required

Five finely-tuned guitar amp attenuation levels, from completely silent to whisper quiet to full band volume

UA Dynamic Speaker Modeling emulates speaker drive, breakup and cone cry 

World-class Universal Audio EQ, compression, delay, and reverb effects built-in

Selectable 4, 8, and 16-ohm operation 
Front-panel Headphone out for silent practice with cranked tones

Balanced TRS line outs and S/PDIF digital outs for stereo recording

Pair with the OX mobile or desktop app over Wi-Fi for editing and saving RIG presets

MANUAL 

 

OX App Requirements

• OX Amp Top Box

• Apple Mac or iPad

• macOS: Sierra or High Sierra

• iPad: iOS 11

• Wi-Fi network with internet connection to register (once only)

 

Sounds fantastic!

I have two other reactive loads with recording emulation. This is nothing like those other two. Those other two are now for sale.
The iPad wifi setup was dead easy, and it works well. The Mac apps works well too.
Very happy.

J. Bennett

February 9, 2018

 

Unreal

If you don't feel like reading the whole review, I'll save you the time, BUY IT.
I have always sworn that you can hear the "digital" in other cabinet emulators, even the expensive Torpedoes and Kempers. If you like that, great, I personally hate that digital aliasing weirdism junk that happens in their tones.
Along comes this thing. I'm a huge UA fan, and I believe that Universal Audio has the best analog emulations on the market, period. So naturally, when I heard they were putting this baby out, I was intrigued.
I work on a lot of metal stuff. So I was a little sketched out the entire time I was waiting for the preorder, because out of all of the videos I found on this thing, NONE of the guitar players were playing anything remotely metal, or even hard rock-type stuff. So I was definitely a little uneasy about it.
I got it before the app came out, apparently Sweetwater accidentally shipped a week early. I saw one of the default presets was a greenback 4x12. I've always preferred vintage 30's to greenbacks but I said what the hey and plugged my EVH 5150 III into it and took the line outs directly into our console.
You guys ever hear a piece of gear and your eyes just go wide and you get the "holy ****" feeling? This was one of those. This greenback 4x12 cab emulation sounded better than any cabinet I've heard in person to date. It was insane.
Then the app comes out. I messed around with the mics, EQ, reverb and delay, and I got some insane tones. The user interface is incredibly smooth and easy to use, a musician that isn't used to dialing in studio gear could use this thing no problem. I also think the build of the unit itself is just gorgeous.

The parameters are so cool, like you don't get the unlimited mic movement like you do the torpedo and some other emulators, but these are more than impulse responses, these are true emulations in the usual UA fashion that we've come to know and love, down to descriptions of exactly how the mics were placed in the room in relation to the cab.
Don't have your guitar player sit too close to it (within two feet), it will feed back a little, but that's very avoidable.
So that's about it. An easy-ish way to put it is, you know how you hear your amp go through your favorite cab, and it sounds amazing, so you mic it up and add some EQ here and there to capture that tone? This thing sounds pretty much exactly how I want my guitars to sound without having to mic a cab or process much of anything at all. And it goes without saying that this thing is great for reamping.
I honestly was a little disappointed at first when I found that there were no V30 emulations, and I still kind of hope that they come out with new emulations as time goes on, but at the same time I just don't care, this thing is a work of art. Buy it.
I have NOT tested this out as load box into a live cabinet, I've only used the balanced line outputs.

V. Kourkoutas

February 8, 2018

WOW

Universal audio nailed it once again! One of the best pieces of gear I have ever purchased. Both sides of the OX are pro level sounding, taking into account the real amp feel that we guitarists always seek. Having owned all similar products of this category, after buying the ox, they all sound plastic and artificial. It is a must have for every guitarist and every studio owner.

J. Williams

February 8, 2018

Fan-Bloody-Tastic

Absolutely unreal! Love it. Sounds amazing with all my amps. Killer box!

A. User

February 8, 2018

OX Captures The Soul Of My amps & Saves My Ears

I have to say the OX is just incredible. I have yet to record anything to Logic that doesn't sound great.
In the past, I usually get slowed down with dialing in a great sound. For example, while the Kemper has the potential to sound great, it's way more time consuming to find the sounds you want as you basically have to find a profile (out of hundreds/thousands) that fits what you need. The other closest competitor, Two Notes Studio, in may opinion blows chunks compared to the OX.
Lastly, I can crank my amp while keeping volume well under control. This is good for my ears. Lots of guitar players eventually get Tinitus (ringing in ears) due to playing in front of cranked amps for hours at a time.
So with the OX, just plugin into the amp I want and get a perfect sound fast. Then just add some plate reverb and done!
Oh happy day

D. Case

February 8, 2018

Love the OX!

I'm in an environment where I can't get my amps up loud and stick mic on them, so I've tried a number of solutions in the past to mixed results. Software amp emulators are ok for some things, but not all... I've tried reactive load boxes with IRs and that was just a hassle. Previously, I had asked UA to provide an IR loader plugin so I could use a reactive load and get real-time UAD monitoring of the amp tone to no avail. I know there are workarounds with that, but it wasn't a smooth workflow.
Well, I got my OX on the day it was available and I've found my solution - it lets me use my greats amps in their sweet spot (a Suhr Badger 30 and an old Fender Princeton Reverb), attenuate the signal in the room or the club, and utilize speaker modeling which - to my ears - is so much more flexible and better sounding than IRs.
I gave it 4 stars because of the lack of a Windows client (I'm on a Mac, but Windows should have ben there at launch) and the other items (foot switch, USB ports, internal sample rate) which should be addressed later as the product is in market for a while. If UA provided messaging about those features, it would have been 5 stars.
For my needs, OX is absolutely stellar! It's changed the way I record guitars, practice and play live.

B. Oaks

February 4, 2018

Tubbs sold me

Saw Shawn's video and that was it. Bought it.....

K. Gleason

January 30, 2018

Way better than software emulation

Every single software amp either overly sags or sounds unnaturally compressed when the amp is pushed. Touch sensitivity feels artificial and the clean break up is way off. This changes all of that. Real tone with very good speaker emulation. Take the room out if you want the best sound out of this box. This is a must buy and having an attenuator too boot makes this a very good deal. Price tag is well worth it.