Hotone Ampero II Stage MP-380

[GTR37]

"Main selling point" HA HA

You do know I am being sarcastic about that

 

[kartikg3]

 

[JCW308]

Looks like the Stage is getting fantastic reviews. Anyone here actually have one yet?

 

[Elric]

Leo confirms that 8ms latency of the Stage when using the cab block. Just the same as the Stomp. So it's getting clear that they are basically the same thing with different form factor, switches, and wireless.

Sh*t! 8ms is completely unacceptable, IMHO. You chain that with another digital unit or a wireless and you will definitely get latency in the 'just about anyone can detect it' zone. Last time I read up on the topic, IIRC, it was 10ms to 12ms is the limit where it will cross your average joe guitarist's 'WTF threshold'.

That's the thing with this cheaped out stuff. There's no free lunch.

 

[JiveTurkey]

This thing and that Nu-x Amp Academy were the only pieces of the cheap gear bunch to sort of catch my attention? I have zero need for either and this thing especially while sounding pretty damn good in clips is just wayyyyy too much $$$ for what I would want to spend on a 5th tier device.

 

[GTR37]

Sh*t! 8ms is completely unacceptable, IMHO. You chain that with another digital unit or a wireless and you will definitely get latency in the 'just about anyone can detect it' zone. Last time I read up on the topic, IIRC, it was 10ms to 12ms is the limit where it will cross your average joe guitarist's 'WTF threshold'.

That's the thing with this cheaped out stuff. There's no free lunch.

The problem is their cab block grab a York audio IR and it drops considerably
With wah drive amp ir verb and delay he says it’s getting 5 and a bit which is certainly no worse than some and better than many
It’s the cab block that they need to work out, or ditch it all together and drop price to $599

 

[JiveTurkey]

The problem is there cab block grab a York audio IR and it drops considerably
With wah drive amp ir verb and delay he says it’s getting 5 and a bit which is certainly no worse than some and better than many
It’s the cab block that they need to work out

I was watching Leo's latency vid on it. It's weird the baked in cab block adds that much latency.

 

[Sascha Franck]

How comes he's not measuring latency anymore? I mean, from all we know it's not a given that it's the same as on the lesser models.
Edit: I was being daft. But how does he not mention this in the main review?

 

[JiveTurkey]

How comes he's not measuring latency anymore? I mean, from all we know it's not a given that it's the same as on the lesser models.
Edit: I was being daft. But how does he not mention this in the main review?

I had to dig for it a bit as I figured he would cover it in that vid but did not.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Uh, it's only the internal cab block adding so much. With an IR instead it's quite low.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I had to dig for it a bit as I figured he would cover it in that vid but did not.

Yeah, I've seen that by now.
And as said already, no drama at all. 3.3ms for amp and cab is decent enough (unless some other typical blocks such as dirt pedals and what not would add latency on their own).

 

[JiveTurkey]

Yeah, I've seen that by now.
And as said already, no drama at all. 3.3ms for amp and cab is decent enough (unless some other typical blocks such as dirt pedals and what not would add latency on their own).

If it was $399; I'd be interested. At $5-699? Not interested at all. Whether or not it's worth that price or not.

 

[Sascha Franck]

If it was $399; I'd be interested. At $5-699? Not interested at all. Whether or not it's worth that price or not.

Dunno. For me it'd check a lot of boxes for a certain kind of gigs possibly coming up. Boxes that the HX Stomp doesn't check for now (and possibly never will).
But then, that money would also buy me a 2nd hand GT-1000, which might be even better for those particular gigs.

 

[the-trooper]

Sh*t! 8ms is completely unacceptable, IMHO.

Switch to IRs instead of their speaker emulations and problem solved.
In that price range, it practically has no competition.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Something you always only learn about a lot later: What are the modifying options (could likely look up some rather dubious "chinglish" translation of the manual, but I'd rather like someone to showcase it). Modifying as in switching various things at once and what not.
Basically, that's one of the main reasons, pretty much none of the smaller modelers are doing it for me - and at the same time the reason for me to like, say, the HX Stomp. Inside one patch I'm getting 8 "tones" out of the 3 Stomp switches (sure, they're all based on the same core modules, but still), that's only possible because of the completely free assignability of the switches. None of the smaller chinese units I'm aware of have any options like that.

 

[Desertdweller]

I don’t know but that demo guy at the end is damn awful as is the tone

Ugh you're right. Very plastic-y tone for sure.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Ugh you're right. Very plastic-y tone for sure.

To be fair, there's much better tones in the Mooer units. The tones in the video are almost like "let's make this sound as bad as it gets, shall we?"

 

[Elric]

Uh, it's only the internal cab block adding so much. With an IR instead it's quite low.

That's good to hear for users. Thanks to you and @GTR37 for posting the additional info. They should disable the internal cab for now, until they get it sorted. LOL.

 

[Jkist7]

Dollar for dollar, i personally would take this over the HX Stomp. I think a lot of the amps actually sound better, although I haven't tried the latest Marshall offerings from Line6, i heard they were a big improvement.

Still, even with the better Marshall amps, I'd still go with this. I'm not chaining multiple digital devices together, that's why I would choose to use a modeler in the first place. It's all in one box. So the latency doesn't bother me too much.

Would of course be nice to see them get those numbers even lower.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Dollar for dollar, i personally would take this over the HX Stomp.

For me, it'd strongly depend on the use case. For instance, right now I'm using my Stomp live as a delay/verb unit exclusively - and it's just fantastic, the Ampero couldn't hold a candle against it, simply because the footswitches don't allow me to do the same things as on the Stomp.