Kiive Audio LunchBox AMP Review (2023)

Kiive Audio LunchBox Review (2023)

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LunchBox comes roaring out of your DAW with a growl and bite much larger than it’s compact silhouette might indicate that it is capable of. This fairly recent entrant into the world of in-the-box amp sims comes to us from Canadian producer/mixer/engineer/developer, Eddie Lucciola, and his impressive new company, “Kiive Audio”. Unlike large, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink suites, such as Overloud’s TH-U and IK Multimedia’s Amplitube, this amp sim somewhat follows Igor Nembrini’s solo amp examples in that it is a single, specialized amp accompanied by only a trio of essential onboard FX.

​Kiive Audio doesn’t actually disclose what type of amp has been modelled here, other than it’s based on a British valve design from the 1960s. Judging by its handsome GUI though, I would assay it to be fashioned after a 10 watt VOX Domino, or something in that vein. Although the LunchBox is a small pony, it can do more than one trick – and it does them quite well. From clean jangle to raucous snarls, LunchBox delivers a very solid punch way above its weight class.

Kiive Audio is a new player on the digital field, coming to notoriety with the company's homerun smash, "Tape Face" - yet another take on the ever popular virtual Reel-to-Reel tape craze. The company is a small affair, comprised of Eddie Lucciola; Founder and Developer, and Pablo Ochoa; GUI Designer. Hailing from Canada myself, I can't help but hold a degree of pride in what this Canadian startup (Kiive Audio) has achieved since it began in 2020. Be that as it may, LunchBox can confidently step out on the world wide stage entirely on its own merits and impressive sonic properties.

At the time of this publication, LunchBox may be had for only $36.40 -- a huge 47% savings off the normal MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) of $69.

​In regard to platform compatibility, LunchBox is available natively for both Windows (Win 7 and later) and MacOS (10.7) in VST 2.x, AU and AAX plugin formats respectively. ** At the time of this publication, the plugin isn't available in VST3 format - at least not for Windows PC.

Of special interest, for a large portion of this review, I successfully had LunchBox running under wine-staging 8.13 within Kubuntu Linux v22.04 – no negative issues to report. I used yabridge to make the Windows VST accessible to my Linux-native installations of Reaper 6.8x and Tracktion Waveform 12.5.x with imperceptible delay, function loss, or performance degradation.

Authorization and Activation

​Kiive Audio's software authorization/activation process is of the C/R (challenge-response) type. After you've purchased any one of their products, you’ll receive an email invoice listing your purchased products and respective download links. The links are temporary. If you need to re-download your plugins some time in the future, it will require you logging in to your Kiive user account. Unlike most online login processes, this one is a bit different in that you don’t use a combination of username and password. Instead, after you’ve submitted your email address, a customized one-time-only login link will be sent to your registered email account. Click the link you receive in the email and you’ll be automatically logged in to your user account. All in all, it's an unobtrusive activation method that doesn't seem to require periodic "phone home" licensing checks after activation. There doesn’t appear to be any type of offline activation available, so if you keep your DAW machine offline, this might pose a difficulty.

Don't worry, if you need to check for updates or re-download your plugins, you just go through the same steps noted above to get a fresh, new, one-time-only login.

​At A Glance

​This charming plugin is easy on the eyes and genuinely a pleasure to look at, greatly due to its clear layout and unpretentious presentation. Here we enjoy a mediumly subdued colour palette featuring a sand-taupe foundation augmented by an earthy, burnt orange-ish hued background, and muted, cranberry-like accents. The entire graphical design shows off tasteful, artfully-crafted 3D-esque protrusions, lighting effects and texturing. Overall, the plugin’s facade is of the photo-realistic variety, yet there is plenty of 3D-modelled styling to keep things visually interesting.

LunchBox’s GUI has base dimensions of approximately 930px x 650px, but it can be downsized to 75%, or upscaled by as much as 150%, ensuring that it will accommodate HD screen resolutions with ease. For anyone using 4k resolutions (or higher), a higher resizing factor of 200% or greater would probably be even more advantageous.

LunchBox presents one of the slickest, most intuitive user interfaces that I have ever seen on an amp sim plugin. Everything is laid out perfectly, with only the necessary parameters and controls to manage. The UI is free of any confusing or superfluous doodads that could potentially prove to be distracting, making for a super speedy workflow. Much like using a physical guitar amplifier, there are limited, but expected Gain and EQ knobs to tweak.

Speaking of the knobs, they operate fluidly and seem to have been well programmed to attenuate smoothly without being the least bit fiddly or herky-jerky. If you shift-click on any of the knobs, you can type in a specific value. Double clicking on any control resets it to its default value, as does alt-clicking (Option-click on MAC).

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​The Appointments

There’s a capable 3-band parametric EQ on the amp’s faceplate, along with an oh-so-important active presence control. All of the tone controls default to 0dB at their straight up, 12 noon positions. Both ‘Low’ and ‘Mid’ range from -10dB to +10dB, but things begin to diverge a little hereon. The ‘High’ band sweeps from -10dB to +18dB, whilst the ‘Presence knob scales from -10dB to +8dB.

There is a substantial 30dB of AMP input gain primed and raring to go. The ‘Gain’ knob can get snarly pretty fast – by the time you reach 10 o’clock, even a squeaky clean single coil signal starts to break up. Keeping the gain knob set to 9 o’clock or lower, and compensating with higher ‘Master’ volume settings, will produce lovely, clear tones reminiscent of typical clean VOX and clean Marshall-esque sounds. By the way, the Master volume provides a maximum of +12dB of "power amp" output.

Down along the bottom of the GUI we’re accorded a tidy panel of simple controls to facilitate global plugin configuration. On each side you’ll find input and output dials – each of these can be set between -20dB to +20dB. You have a choice of three cabinet IRs onboard – these being a Marshall-like 4x12 selection, a decidedly VOX resemblant 4x12 cab, and a Mesa Boogie 2x12 offering. Alternatively, one can bypass the built-in IR engine entirely and enlist any other external IR loader such as Two Notes’ Torpedo Wall of Sound or Redwirez's MixIR. Oversampling options are conveniently available, variable from 2x up to a whopping 16x!

LunchBox Bottom Panel (amp view)

From right here on the main screen you can enable or bypass each of the three included ‘stomp boxes’. To actually adjust the FX, simply click on the ‘Stomp Box’ button. This switches focus from the main amp view to a gorgeous, pedals-on-the-floor perspective. Herein we’re provisioned with a very basic pedal arrangement consisting of a Klon lookalike (overdrive), a Delay unit, and a Room reverb. I have to give full 100% marks and Top-of-the-Class Kudos to Pablo Ochoa (Kiive's graphics designer) for the superlative visuals. Why, you'd swear it was your Grandmom's dinning room carpet that you're looking at on the Stomp Box page!

LunchBox Stomp FX - Click to View HD Image (opens in new tab)

​Personally, I think it would have been apropos if the reverb pedal emulated a spring reverb, instead of a simple room/ambience effect. The room reverb should be retained, but placed elsewhere - perhaps moved to the global control panel on the bottom of the amp page?

Although the previously mentioned Input and Output volume controls do their jobs well, there isn’t, unfortunately, any form of signal metering or a clipping indicator. A pair of handy-dandy ‘Undo/Redo’ buttons is on deck, rounding out the amp page appointments.

Some might argue that a simple amp sim doesn’t require a built-in preset manager -- I beg to differ. While it’s true that one can rely on their DAW’s preset management system to save plugin settings, that methodology does not address the need of moving from one DAW (or host) to another; and being able to instantly and conveniently recall a previously favourited configuration.

Mr.  Lucciola, with respect, I strongly recommend that you implement a preset manager into a (hopefully soon forthcoming) update, sir. . ."

How Does It Sound?

To my ears, Kiive Audio has definitely hit a strong 3rd base run here. Eddie Lucciola has done a commendable job of creating a highly convincing VOX-meets-Marshall Plexi amp sim. LunchBox’s clean and low gain tones are indeed very reminiscent of the beloved chime-y liveliness that VOX valve amps from the early 60s had become so famous for. Conversely, there is more than enough snarly gain on tap to take any rocker well into grunge, hard rock, and even classic metal territories. This amp sim is a faithful nod to classic tube amps; it really isn’t intended to be a Triple Rectifier stand in, so it isn’t best suited to djent or modern metal.

​Tonally, there is a very wide sonic spectrum on offer here. Not only are the amp’s parametric EQ bands extremely variable, but the built-in cabinet IRs each contribute considerable tonality differentia as well. This amp sim has a genuineness about it that is gratifying, and it responds nicely to playing dynamics and pick attack. I especially like LunchBox for its edge-of-breakup, low gain and crunch tones - this is the sonic category in which it seems to excel. The upper mids and highs are generally pleasant without sounding unruly or rude -- unless you deliberately hype them. On the other hand, the low mids will turn tubby and overtly resonant quite easily if you aren't careful. The bass too, can get much too woolly and boomy if you don't scale the lows back by 3 to 6dB (possibly more depending on pickup type/position and IR selection). For this reason I don’t consider LunchBox to be well suited to modern metal or other musical genres where a tight, controlled high gain low end is absolutely necessary.

The low end woof and rumble is most profuse whilst playing through the MES 2x12 IR, where you’ll also quickly observe a rather mid-scooped profile. As such, I’ve found that cutting the lows by 6dB or 7dB, and boosting the mids by 3 or 4dB, results in a really good, full-bodied single coil tone (IE. Strats and Teles).

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Low mids (350 – 700 Hz) are most resonant and obvious when you’re using the VOX 4x12 Cab IR (BRIT VX 4x12). Keeping the low and mid knobs dialed back while bumping up the high and presence controls, makes single coils sing sweetly while still barking out low notes with authority.

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I was pleasantly surprised by the Marshall cab IR (BRIT MRS 4x12). I deem most vintage Marshall cab IRs to be rather boxy sounding in the mids and wooly on the low end. That is not the case here. This one comes across as the most evenly balanced sounding of the three onboard IR choices. As a blanket statement, the Marshall cab seems to pair with humbuckers more amiably than its VOX and MESA cousins do. Notwithstanding, thanks to the versatility of its 4-band parametric EQ, LunchBox can be tweaked to sound good with just about any guitar.

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​A couple of very convenient and helpful features that Igor Nembrini has slipstreamed into most nearly all of his Nembrini® amp sims, is built-in high and low pass filters, and a basic noise gate. Alas, these handy amenities are nowhere to be found in the LunchBox plugin, so here’s hoping that Kiive Audio will implement them in a future update (an update, not a v2 paid upgrade . . . ahem). Where this is a fairly straightforward amp sim, and since basic filters and noise gating are some of the less challenging DSP bits to code in, I really don’t consider this to be an unreasonable expectation.

The onboard FX sound very good, if not limited in scope. I would like to see them be a bit more tweakable though. For instance, while the Echo pedal sounds lush and dimensional, it’s hard coded to be a ping-pong effect; it can’t be reconfigured to function as a simple (non ping pong) delay. Nevertheless, one of my favourite ways to exploit the Echo, is to dial in a short, slapback delay with a subtle wet mix of 12 to 15%. This trick results in a really wide, double-tracked type of sound that can indeed be very useful in many musical applications.

​The “Klon looking” overdrive does reproduce somewhat convincing Klon-ish properties across some of a typical electric guitar’s frequency range, but it isn’t as even-toned or well-balanced as an actual Klon pedal or Klon clone is (Eg. Rocket Archer or Wampler Tumnus). The overdrive is not as mid-bumped as an Ibanez Tube Screamer, but to my ears, it does suffer from a bit of raspy, nasal tonality. The EP OD cuts lows a bit more than the actual hardware would, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since this amp sim does have copious amounts of low end in reserve. I was really eager to try out the onboard ‘Klon’, but my hopeful excitement ebbed to moderate acceptance rather quickly. I’m not saying that the overdrive is bad – it’s actually quite decent. However, it is my considered opinion that if a developer is going to release a plugin that has a “Klon looking” component in the fray, they had better make double dog certain that their plugin accurately reproduces that famous, unmistakable Centaur tone. Jus’ Sayin’.

​The third onboard FX is the ‘Roombience’ reverb. It’s an acceptable room-meets-plate reverb effect – it isn’t bad, but neither will it WOW you. Used judiciously, Roombience will add some pleasant ambient space to your guitar signal, but you “get what you get” with it. There are zero parameters to tweak other its wet/dry mix, so if its long-ish decay and overall EQ curve doesn’t fit your project’s needs, you’ll not be able to modify it in any way.

​Generally, this amp sim does produce very cool, satisfying sonic flavours. Pumping a Les Paul through the BRIT MRS 4x12 cabinet IR using medium gain settings, dishes up some very sumptuous Marshall Plexi styled zest. I would prefer that its breadth of clean tones were a little more varied – it gets crunchy mighty fast. I appreciate the distinct properties of each of the three built-in cab IRs, but I am puzzled as to why Kiive Audio didn’t include an AC30 2x12 type of cabinet IR. Quite frankly, I would expect a VOX 2x12 configuration to be the default speaker choice in an amp sim of this type.

Lastly, there is a peculiar, unexpected anomaly exhibited by Kiive Audio’s implementation of oversampling in this plugin, in that the plugin’s output level rises quite dramatically as the oversampling multiplier is incremented. I’ve not experienced this particular irregularity in any other plugin – amp sim or other. While this isn’t an absolute deal-breaker, one must bear it in mind, so that any mix that you might be using LunchBox in, doesn’t suddenly go out of whack if you happen to change the level of oversampling. I recommend that Eddie L. put LunchBox back up on the bench so that he can fix this oddity as soon as possible.

Concluding Remarks

All in all, what LunchBox has to offer is tasty, and makes for a great musical snack, but I honestly feel that there’s room for improvement. A few additional functionary appointments would take this plugin from merely being a good ‘snack pack lunch’ to being a solid, full portion meal. A quality SPRING reverb emulation, high and low pass filters, a noise gate, and an AC30 2x12 cabinet IR would round this plugin out perfectly. It also wouldn’t hurt to have more user control over the FX. For example, having configuration options available to change the Echo from being a stereo ping-pong to a straight ahead delay would be much appreciated; as would having control over the reverb’s decay time.

Something that LunchBox has going for itself, in spades, is that it is extremely CPU and RAM friendly. Even when it’s set to 4x oversampling, LunchBox consumes less than 1% of my i7-10700 CPU (Reaper @44.1 kHz, 64 samples). Its memory requirements are nice n' light too. Even older i3 laptops shouldn't have any problem running a few simultaneous instances of this VST (or AAX).

>> Click here to visit the LunchBox product page <<

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Here's a brief video to let you hear the different cabinet IRs and EQ range on a low gain setting.
​I used my 2016 Fender FSR Telecaster in the bridge position.

Here's another short video presentation to quickly demonstrate the onboard FX. I used the same guitar clip for this demonstration. The amp was setup for a clean, "barely break-up" tone. I apologize for the few crackles - it is not the fault of the plugin. The crackling seems to be some sort of glitchy interaction between my Audient iD24 WDM drivers, Windows WASAPI, Reaper 6.81, and my screen recording software.

4 Out of 5 Stars

:: Pros

• Cool, attractive, easy-to-use interface – scalable and 1080p/1440p compatible.
• Excellent edge-of-breakup, low gain and crunch tones.
• Nice clean tones are possible too, but there’s not a lot of wiggle room – it gets crunchy quickly.
• Very CPU and RAM friendly.
• Easy, unobtrusive authorization and copy protection.
• Affordable - especially at the current price of $36 (as of the time of this publication).

:: Cons

• The three built-in cabinet IRs are good, but the omission of an AC30 2x12 type of cab IR is a pretty serious oversight on Kiive Audio’s part.
• It would be more beneficial to the user if there were a greater degree of control over a few important FX parameters, such as reverb decay time and delay type. I’d also recommend that Kiive Audio revisit their “Klon lookalike” overdrive and bring it closer to actual Centaur tonality.
• Adjusting oversampling should definitely NOT change the plugin’s output level - this really ought to be addressed right away.

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​Brother Charles is a freelance writer, Gospel music artist and minister. Charles had been a professional touring musician during the nineties; working primarily as a lead guitarist in the Canadian country music industry. Brother Charles is also involved with music production and quality home recording."

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