ToneX is blowing my mind…!

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northern_fox said:
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.
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There was a thread some years back with Cliff explained something about a lot of these amps having similarities. As in, you don't need to model a bunch of amps that effectively are the same thing. I think that is what happens with the capture phenomena though. You have a ton of different amps that actually sound very similar but the cab capture is what is actually making the difference. If you are a guitar player or solo recording person you probably don't need a ton of amps (real or modelled) because you have the couple of tones you really like. If you have a studio then having access to a bunch of amps that sound different (real or modelled) is probably somewhat helpful.

There are so many bad full rig captures in Tonex. When TH-U introduced their version of this I tried a couple of the commercial profiles and was let down pretty hard. It's almost as if people haven't figured out how to put a microphone in front of a cab to get a good recorded sound. There are some good ones out there but you have to swim through the sea of shit to find them. This isn't just free ones but paid as well.

It's sort of like a cab IR pack that gives you 90 shots with one microphone but only 2 shots actually sound good. What is the point other than wasting time? The person that recorded that pack knows those 88 shots with that microphone sound terrible but they still include that as some kind of perceived value.

Either way, definitely interesting times to be alive and record music. We shall soon be replaced with AI anyway so enjoy it while it lasts.
 
monkeymanx said:
There are so many bad full rig captures in Tonex. When TH-U introduced their version of this I tried a couple of the commercial profiles and was let down pretty hard. It's almost as if people haven't figured out how to put a microphone in front of a cab to get a good recorded sound. There are some good ones out there but you have to swim through the sea of shit to find them. This isn't just free ones but paid as well.
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Same thing with KPA and QC. 98% garbage.
 
monkeymanx said:
There was a thread some years back with Cliff explained something about a lot of these amps having similarities. As in, you don't need to model a bunch of amps that effectively are the same thing. I think that is what happens with the capture phenomena though. You have a ton of different amps that actually sound very similar but the cab capture is what is actually making the difference. If you are a guitar player or solo recording person you probably don't need a ton of amps (real or modelled) because you have the couple of tones you really like. If you have a studio then having access to a bunch of amps that sound different (real or modelled) is probably somewhat helpful.

There are so many bad full rig captures in Tonex. When TH-U introduced their version of this I tried a couple of the commercial profiles and was let down pretty hard. It's almost as if people haven't figured out how to put a microphone in front of a cab to get a good recorded sound. There are some good ones out there but you have to swim through the sea of shit to find them. This isn't just free ones but paid as well.

It's sort of like a cab IR pack that gives you 90 shots with one microphone but only 2 shots actually sound good. What is the point other than wasting time? The person that recorded that pack knows those 88 shots with that microphone sound terrible but they still include that as some kind of perceived value.

Either way, definitely interesting times to be alive and record music. We shall soon be replaced with AI anyway so enjoy it while it lasts.
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I almost never use captures with cabs in them. Exclusively DI captures. I agree there's a lot of "bad" stuff out there, but let's be totally fair in that comparison - there is also plenty of bad fractal content out there. The only difference is that it's not really necessary to look at any of them to use the unit. It makes sense that you might not want to limit yourself to what's captured by others, because you don't have a lot of control then, and you're essentially stuck wading through all those to find what you want. Also, there are people who make amazing content on the commercial side - that's where I usually go if I want something I don't have, and they don't half ass it with filler. The same people who do it for kemper, QC, and tonex all make really good content, reliably.

But where tonex and similar shine is in their ability to let you use whatever gear you want, including pedals and things. If you don't own much gear, it's not really an advantage. But if you have analog gear you love, it's suddenly very easy to use that - you can do excellent captures that you can easily use in the DAW or live. That's the strength of ML in its current state. Eventually it will be possible to do parametric captures that model an entire amp, but we're definitely not there yet with any of the currently released tech, though some are working on it.

The fractal amps cover a lot of ground, but certainly not all of it and don't include as much modern stuff either. And it seems like there's not a lot of interest in changing that. I get that most amps are "based off this" which is "based off something else" and in general if you happen to know quite a lot about amplifier design it's possible to make one sound like another. But in general, beyond the basic EQ matching and gain matching, it's frankly not all that easy to do. And I think in some cases it just isn't going to work at all. What is easy to do, is spend 15 minutes capturing the amp with the settings you like and having not an approximate copy, but an exact copy. That's what I love about tonex and the ML process. It "just works" and it works extremely well (at least in the case of tonex and NAM) if you do it properly.

What I've been playing with recently is using ML DI captures as a basis for EQ matching in fractal - to make the fractal models sound just a little more imperfect / less polite.

fremen said:
Same thing with KPA and QC. 98% garbage.
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I don't disagree - public stuff tends to always be because it's whatever someone else liked, not what you like. But if you go commercial or own the gear you capture, then it's not the case
 
monkeymanx said:
There was a thread some years back with Cliff explained something about a lot of these amps having similarities. As in, you don't need to model a bunch of amps that effectively are the same thing. I think that is what happens with the capture phenomena though. You have a ton of different amps that actually sound very similar but the cab capture is what is actually making the difference. If you are a guitar player or solo recording person you probably don't need a ton of amps (real or modelled) because you have the couple of tones you really like. If you have a studio then having access to a bunch of amps that sound different (real or modelled) is probably somewhat helpful.

There are so many bad full rig captures in Tonex. When TH-U introduced their version of this I tried a couple of the commercial profiles and was let down pretty hard. It's almost as if people haven't figured out how to put a microphone in front of a cab to get a good recorded sound. There are some good ones out there but you have to swim through the sea of shit to find them. This isn't just free ones but paid as well.

It's sort of like a cab IR pack that gives you 90 shots with one microphone but only 2 shots actually sound good. What is the point other than wasting time? The person that recorded that pack knows those 88 shots with that microphone sound terrible but they still include that as some kind of perceived value.

Either way, definitely interesting times to be alive and record music. We shall soon be replaced with AI anyway so enjoy it while it lasts.
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I've been thinking this for a while - captures and most IR creation is someone else's perception of what sound good.
This is why I now prefer more methodical IR's from MIKKO or two notes
 
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Aivoryuk said:
I've been thinking this for a while - captures and most IR creation is someone else's perception of what sound goods.
This is why I now prefer more methodical IR's from MIKKO or two notes
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Yep - usually what works is going commercial to get a lot of settings covered, or (in my preferred case) just using captures of your own gear chains so you can dial them in how you like. When you do that it's pretty damn spot on. The QC doesn't quite get it depending on the gear/gain/riff, but toneX and NAM really nail it. I think if people stop seeing them for what they can't do (i.e., be tweaked, etc) and start seeing the useful utility of ML like tonex as you can literally copy the exact sound of the rig you are using for recording or at home and bring it live or in the DAW. It's not flexible like modeling, and it will be a looong time yet before it even has the possibility of being so. But that's fine, because that's not what makes it useful.

IMO a perfect rig would incorporate both. If that tonex pedal comes out, my rig is 100% going to be an FM3 with tonex in the loop for specific things. I wish people didn't have to draw lines and say that one approach is better, because realistically neither is "better". It's all about use case and purpose of what you're doing. Let them augment each other.

As an aside, one kind of modeling we haven't seen yet that I think would be really cool is to combine analytical solutions with ML solutions. Solve what you can analytically, but take advantage of ML to accurately model systems and components that can't be solved with reasonable amounts of DSP in real time instead of compromising the models to work. I think with some hybrid stuff we'd some really cool innovation.
 
monkeymanx said:
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.
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You could use this free app to browse the tone models stored on your computer. Double click to copy the model name to the clipboard, then paste it into the search field to locate the model in Tonex.

https://www.codefn42.com/tonexdbexplorer/index.html

tonexdbexplorer.jpg
 
Bought SE on sale to have on the computer that's not near the AF3 and ignored it after the first night - the captures I tried were terrible (primarily the factory ones) and the interface is awful but I gave it another spin tonight with some of the captures from people who are doing commercial Kemper/QC captures and I gotta say it's pretty good. Hope the pedal is quality, this would make more sense for me as a 'pedalboard amp' than a QC/FM9 (cost, size, don't need to duplicate the abilities of the AF3) or the UAD pedals.

I like lower gain amps (clean Marshall/Hiwatt/OR120/Ampeg etc.) and I tend to think captures work better there than with high gain stuff.
 
Hi i've been a long time helix user, helix has been great in terms of making my life on tour so mutch easier. But i've always felt like i was missing something sound wise. So off course as soon as the fm9 came out i got on the waitlist. Several months later i'm still waiting.
So when tonex came out, and since its free i thought. Why not give it a chance?
Maaan it's was the right choice, the amps just sound amazing. They even have the a bit of the amp in the room feel, it's incredible how accurate some of the user captures are. Off course i agree that most of the factory presets are sh..t. But user ones? daaamn good, i highly recommend the product.
I really hope fractal is as good so i don't get dissapointed once i finally get the fm9 lol
 
Tone X Pedal officially been announced - might be worth a spin for the cost just trying to work out regarding 3rd party IR as you can't save them on the device itself but you can apparently you can use them in the software itself as part of the tone
 
I've been playing with this plugin the last few days and I'm quite impressed honestly, most factory presets sound pretty good and also the captures I made of some of my fm9 presets are pretty accurate, the only differences being some high end roll-off and the low end sounding a bit rounder, two inaccuracies that are pleasing to the ear anyway.

I've never had any interest in a capturing/profiling device either, but this plugin will be handy for me to have my fm9 tones available in a vst plugin, so that I don't need to waste time reamping thru the fm9.

How I wish there was an Axe FX Native plugin!
 
This is my Amp lately: Strymon Compadre on dirty mode, into Native Audio Kiaayo, into (optional) Wampler Tumnus Deluxe for bass, into Jackson Audio Golden Boy. Really has so many authentic, authentic sounding tones. Authentic. Versatile. A u t h e n t i c sound.

Even a J Rockett Touch can sound stellar..
 
DLC86 said:
I've been playing with this plugin the last few days and I'm quite impressed honestly, most factory presets sound pretty good and also the captures I made of some of my fm9 presets are pretty accurate, the only differences being some high end roll-off and the low end sounding a bit rounder, two inaccuracies that are pleasing to the ear anyway.

I've never had any interest in a capturing/profiling device either, but this plugin will be handy for me to have my fm9 tones available in a vst plugin, so that I don't need to waste time reamping thru the fm9.

How I wish there was an Axe FX Native plugin!
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That's what I was saying as well. Being able to capture my real amps and/or fractal, and have it in my laptop when I travel, is SUPER useful.
And I agree - the tones are great.
 
Very competitive price point at $399 and looks like you get amplitude 5 too.

Not a end all solution but a cool way of mixing software and hardware features and from what I’ve heard in video clips, sounds pretty good.

A lot of bang for the buck at or just a little above some of the amp in a box pedals like the iridium etc.
 
Really curious to hear more about the feel of the pedal. Sounds like the presets are a mixed bag. Heard some decent sounds in the initial videos, but definitely concerned about having to go down a rabbit hole buying presets to get decent sounds that may or may not work with my guitars. Sounds like the tone controls are a bit more realistic than Kemper for minor changes, but still doesn't respond like the real amp. That said, if you could find a few great profiles/captures/whatever that work for you, I could see this being a great little backup or the heart of a pedalboard for someone that just needs a few of "their" sounds.
 
Cam Heiliger said:
Really curious to hear more about the feel of the pedal. Sounds like the presets are a mixed bag. Heard some decent sounds in the initial videos, but definitely concerned about having to go down a rabbit hole buying presets to get decent sounds that may or may not work with my guitars. Sounds like the tone controls are a bit more realistic than Kemper for minor changes, but still doesn't respond like the real amp. That said, if you could find a few great profiles/captures/whatever that work for you, I could see this being a great little backup or the heart of a pedalboard for someone that just needs a few of "their" sounds.
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yup I agree - the captures are created by someone else's guitar/pickups etc and more importantly the person's perception of what sounds good. You may be lucky in getting a capture that translates to what you want.
I played again with the Tonex software but this time using my IR's and it was a better experience - at this price point it could be useful - I'm glad I didn't go down the Kemper/QC route.
 
vertibration said:
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.

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NAM is the best - I love it. Managed to train my own stuff locally (own PC) and not have to rely on the Google Colab cloud. The resulting models are so juicy. It's an amazing product (and it's free lol).
 
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