ToneX is blowing my mind…!

[BBN]

I've used IK modelling plugins (Amplitube) and other IK products for many years - they do provide fairly frequent updates, and from my experience are serious about improving their products (probably not to Fractal's standard but who is?). I don't own Tonex (not into the whole capture thing), but I would not expect any different for it.

The thing about capture products (especially with the limited effects in Tonex) is - how many updates would you need? If it captures, it captures.
If they create better algorithms and it increases the accuracy, then great. But I would imagine Tonex would follow a similar path as Kemper...very infrequent updates....and their user base is still huge.

I bought Tonex as a desktop toy. It sounds better than I thought it would. I am a happy customer.

@deathbyguitar - I totally agree with you statement. Love more competition as it breeds innovation. I'm happy as can be with my Fractal products, but as a gear nerd, I love to see other new products coming out.

 

[Brucegregori]

Tone x is great and with the tone x pedal it is even going to be better.

 

[RevDrucifer]

I think I've just been spoiled too long with my Fractal units where I can have it all in one box.
The thought of creating a pedalboard again and doing the tap dancing of turning multiple things on/off at once just seems archaic to me now.

I’m too big of a gear fan to restrict myself to do that. My III will always be my main recording unit and the FM9 will most likely always be my main live rig, I just wanted to build a non-modeling rig because more is more and I love gear. And loop switchers got rid of tap dancing decades ago.

 

[RevDrucifer]

And yeah, I wouldn’t judge the quality of ToneX based on the captures I played through the other night. They were all pretty terrible, but they were all amp/cab captures and that’s depending on regular people to know how to mic an amp properly. I‘ve heard plenty of terrible tones coming out of Fractal units over the years, there’s a youtuber who puts out regular AxeFX vids and they’re horrible, but that’s no reflection of the units themselves, just the person dialing it in.

 

[Brucegregori]

I capture the ax with my quad cortex works perfectly. So should be possible.

 

[BBN]

I’m too big of a gear fan to restrict myself to do that. My III will always be my main recording unit and the FM9 will most likely always be my main live rig, I just wanted to build a non-modeling rig because more is more and I love gear. And loop switchers got rid of tap dancing decades ago.

Totally get it. I never went the route of loop switchers because it's just more to add to a pedal board, and the 'all in one' units were really taking off when loop switches were becoming affordable. But I respect the more is more, and being a gear collector. I've got tube amps, 4x12 cabs, full rack cases and plenty of pedals all hanging around in my basement studio for when I feel like having some fun. Even though the only thing that usually makes it to a gig is my FM3. Guitar gear is just the best.

 

[Sixstring]

Interesting unit, but given what it's doing or more to the point what it's not doing an FM3 makes way more sense. The amount of effects units you would need to add to it would make it rather costly. My comment is obviously coming from a live setting application, Never been one to sit in front of a computer and play but I understand the ability to move from one medium to another.

 

[deathbyguitar]

And yeah, I wouldn’t judge the quality of ToneX based on the captures I played through the other night. They were all pretty terrible, but they were all amp/cab captures and that’s depending on regular people to know how to mic an amp properly. I‘ve heard plenty of terrible tones coming out of Fractal units over the years, there’s a youtuber who puts out regular AxeFX vids and they’re horrible, but that’s no reflection of the units themselves, just the person dialing it in.

Please PM me the name of the YouTuber who makes horrible Fractal videos. I must see this.

 

[Aivoryuk]

NAM update is out. It adds an IR loader and EQ section. Still a few bugs to iron out, however, its moving along at a good pace. Out of every amp capture product out there, NAM is at the top for me. Its free, and the captures are great. The REVV captures are sick that he posted on his facebook group page and youtube video

WAYYYYYYY too much hype for Tonex. Its not that great, most of the user captures are absolutely horrendous and completely inaccurate. I still havnt found any captures of an EVH 5150 III that even comes close to my EVH head.

I've been playing with NAM a bit this week and I think it is one of the better capture programs I've tried. I think maybe because it is better at capturing the amp and not the cab as well.
I was not impressed with the free version of Tonex.

However where I think NAM needs improving is the dynamics. I didn't think it cleaned up that well and didn't feel as good as playing through Fractal.

 

[monkeymanx]

I picked up Tonex SE to give it a run since after Jam Points it was only $35. Sounds pretty good. Some of the user made captures are excellent. The interface is horrible though. As in, a total dumpster fire of a UI. I'm not sure what they were thinking on that part. The browser is sort of confusing and I haven't found a way to hide stuff on the right hand side that isn't included with the version I bought. It seems like I have to hit a web browser and hit tone net that way to get captures instead of being able to do it within the application.

Seems like there is a lot of potential here but it needs to be a bit more user friendly from a UI standpoint.

 

[GlennO]

The browser is sort of confusing and I haven't found a way to hide stuff on the right hand side that isn't included with the version I bought.

The browser has a filter and you can select "Yes" for "Owned" to only show tone models you own. I'd even call it a pretty nice browser with searching, sorting, filtering, notes, categorization, etc. Is that what you mean?

 

[Tremonti]

In this day and age, most of us that play guitar don't own real amps at all. I would have no use to profile anything. Cool for those that do. But I have a wife, kids, job and have zero time to bullshit. Cliffy says something is a Vox and makes it for us.....that is good enough for me and can simple tweak and start being a musician and not a engineer.

 

[northern_fox]

I'd love it because I have plenty of cool gear I like to use that just isn't in the axe fx and can be very hard to mimic, even with tone matching. Especially different drives, rack preamps, power amps, etc. Including a means of loading a capture of some sort would only enhance the user's ability to get the sounds they love. It doesn't need to replace modeling.

Sure, there are 300 models - but many are also very similar amp / channels too. It's not about finding a great tone - there's no shortage in the axe fx. It's just about being able to use what you want to if it's not already in there.
Some kind of capturing block could only add value to the fractal system.

Also, you can also capture other things like EQ and studio gear, vst plugins, and many pedals or hardware that do things which aren't time dependant. There's all kinds of uses that aren't just replacing an amp block

 

[GlennO]

Sure, there are 300 models - but many are also very similar amp / channels too. It's not about finding a great tone - there's no shortage in the axe fx. It's just about being able to use what you want to if it's not already in there.

By that logic though, an amp that isn't modeled in the AxeFX is probably pretty similar to one that is. When you've only got a dozen amps modeled in your modeler, I can see this being an issue. When you have 300 though...

 

[northern_fox]

By that logic though, an amp that isn't modeled in the AxeFX is probably pretty similar to one that is. When you've only got a dozen amps modeled in your modeler, I can see this being an issue. When you have 300 though...

You can often, but not so much for bass gear. Also, you can spend hours deep tweaking trying to do that and in the end still not really accomplish it. Tone match is good, but it can only be used once in a chain and still only addresses EQ.

Anyway, like I said - I'm not saying the models are insufficient to get great tones. I'm saying sometimes you just want to use what you want, and a capture style block would be a great addition to support that. I'm not saying it's better.

 

[monkeymanx]

The browser has a filter and you can select "Yes" for "Owned" to only show tone models you own. I'd even call it a pretty nice browser with searching, sorting, filtering, notes, categorization, etc. Is that what you mean?

I'm talking about the right hand side with the collections. I did know about the filtering for the menu under the amp picture. Also when you browsing Tone Net by scrolling down it keeps popping up the loading message which is odd behavior. They should have made a decent browser within the app that pretty much replicates the web site for Tone Net as far as searching for captures.

All just my opinion of course and some may actually like the interface.

 

[GlennO]

I'm talking about the right hand side with the collections. I did know about the filtering for the menu under the amp picture. Also when you browsing Tone Net by scrolling down it keeps popping up the loading message which is odd behavior. They should have made a decent browser within the app that pretty much replicates the web site for Tone Net as far as searching for captures.

All just my opinion of course and some may actually like the interface.

The bit on the right is for shopping, that's not the browser. I suppose loading from tonenet could be faster, but browsing your own library works quite well, with a number of very useful browsing features.

 

[monkeymanx]

The bit on the right is for shopping, that's not the browser. I suppose loading from tonenet could be faster, but browsing your own library works quite well, with a number of very useful browsing features.

Messed around some more. Brought Tonex in Amplitube so I could use my own IR files with some of the direct captures. For some reason captures I downloaded with Tonex work in Tonex but not in Amplitube's Tonex. Odd.

 

[monkeymanx]

Played around some more today with this. One thing I notice is that if you remove the cab and use your own impulses from the captures with the cab as part of the capture then it doesn't sound very good. The direct captures that are just the amp work great with my own impulses though.

They should really add the ability to browse captures by user. The ones with UR in front of them are excellent. That user has done some great captures. When you search in the bar for UR you'd think it would bring up just those but it doesn't. It ends up bringing up some captures that don't even contain that string of characters in that order.

After playing some of these captures that I consider to sound good to me I realized that Tonex isn't any better than anything else available on the market when it comes to the top software amps out there. Unless you are capturing your own amps I'm not sure how much use this has against the other amp sims out there.

 

[northern_fox]

After playing some of these captures that I consider to sound good to me I realized that Tonex isn't any better than anything else available on the market when it comes to the top software amps out there. Unless you are capturing your own amps I'm not sure how much use this has against the other amp sims out there.

The ability to use amps that haven't been modeled, for one. It's also substantially cheaper than Kemper/Fractal/QC for two. For me the best point of interest is the one you mention - capturing your own amps/gear. I like collecting specific kinds of unique amps and gear, almost none of which really exist in software form and certainly not in the axe fx.

It's not that it's "better" (or that it should be), just that it provides easier means of using real sounding tones for much less money and without having to reamp anything.