So compared to proper guitar amp sims, rackmount “guitar” fx presets don’t really cut it, and they are totally reminiscent of older more digital sounding guitar apps as you say.MixBox® is a registered trademark property of IK Multimedia Production. You can even get Preamp Rigs from TH-U, and while they sound great, they definitely have more of that digital preampy sound. However something like Gain Stage Vintage Clean for guitar or Nembrini PSA1000 for bass have done an amazing job with how good they can sound within a preamp type plugin.

Proper guitar amp sims are more realistic, not only because of better cabinet emulation or the use of IRs, but because of more guitar specific non-linear technology and response. A lot of plugins have guitar presets which are basically eq shaped and saturarion and filtering added. IFX rack also has guitar and cab rackmounts which I don’t use. Yes I’m not surprised, when you have “guitar” and “cabinet” emulations and presets in these rack type plugins, they’re doing more of a digital preamp type sound, like when you go guitar direct in the studio. So, as I thought it will be good for all except guitars THU or Nembrini play in a completely different league on iOS. Typical Amplitube/BiasFX digital sound from a few years ago. But I've also tested factory presets for guitars and I am very disappointed.

It looks promising for vocals, drums and overall production/mixing. On the topic of the dropdowns, the team is aware and are looking into that I am weak, finally bought. Since this seems like it might be specific to your setup (could be the iOS/GarageBand version but very well could be something else) I would recommend reporting this to our support team directly so they can look at it directly with you. MixBox looks really cool, awesome FX, but 3 bugs in a few hours of use, it's recent and still suffers from instability problems. Well, I'm not going to make friends among the sound pros here yet, but at home it's crashing everywhere. MixBox instance with only one FX aka this Curtis Air 3, iOS 13.6 (I admit it would be nice to upgrade, but I'm afraid my brand new iPad will start to get slow with successive updates. Just had an other sound crash while playing with the frequency knob with the Curtis filter.

Ik mixbox review