Do you mean mono in the sense that it comes out of one speaker only, or mono out of both speakers? If the first is happening, then check in the plugin instance if the output routing is set correctly - usually, it should not be that using an IR creates a mono on-sided signal, if without the IR it's loading in Dual mono. For more complicated stereo setups, you want to use NAM within a DAW and do your stereo routing there. NAM itself is only the loader for the amp capture basically.

When I load NAM as an insert plugin and load IRs it fold down to mono sum. It's like pressing the mono button on my monitor controller. How do I use it in stereo? Is the NAM plugin itself mono only?

@@PippPriss any Idea?

We just smack our drum-mic set onto the shells. So for our gig, we have two drum-mics per shell - one coming from the venue and feeding their stuff, one which only feeds our mixer. In smaller venues, when we arrive early enough to set up the entire chain together with the engineer and we are staying anyways for the night, we can in theory also just use our mixer, and then have the FoH engineer use our digital MIDAS DN-4816 splitter and it's output signals to fetch the mic'd drum sounds.

In a different context, I would completely agree with you - the cabinet+ micing makes the biggest differentiating factor, if the amps are as similar as they are like here. But well, in my description I actually thought I'd clarified that this is not a scientific comparison by any stretch, but just smacking in the plugins and shooting them out loosely against each other. It's more of a "plugin vs. plugin" type of thing. But to be fair, this was a very early video of mine - today, I'd perhaps take more time and actually include an A/B comparison with the same IR, to find out more about the nuanced differences between the two. Unfortunately, I do not own Gojira X to revise it properly.

I personally like the sound aesthetics of the Gojira a bit more, since Amp 3 has more of that 5150 style of distortion. However, you basically answered the question for yourself - if you like the MLC more in it's gain structure, than that amp sim is definitely for you. Amp sound is key, everything else are just gimmicks.

@@PippPriss Thanks! :)

This was a great review! I was actually about to purchase the current iteration of the Key and Gate, but if the pedal he demo-ed is an upcoming version, would you recommend waiting? Iʻve been bouncing between different noise gates and this vid pretty much decided for me haha

Ah nice, I was already wondering from all the pictures not showing the response settings, but I didn't wanted to bother asking since I know how INCREDIBLY busy you were during the last months, and I read online on a wiki that the Key & Gate was running through numerous revisions, so it did not came as surprise 🙂

@@mylesayakawa2234 Thank you so much, glad this review helped you decide!

Thanks so much! Appreciate you always watching and commenting 🙂

Thank you so much for the kind words! I really tried to make this demo "based on real world effects", and glad it shows! My bands name is TEMPEST - link should be at the very bottom of the description :-) thanks for checking it out!

For the greater part of this video, I am running the Gehenna straight into a clean solid state power amp. At the later portion in the video I am running it out-front into the clean channel of the amplifier. The Gehenna has two gain stages being footswitchable - are you on the "correct one"? Does it change in case you run the pedal through the clean channel? If yes, maybe somethings wrong with your FX Loop. Also, many amps do not activate the FX Return unless you plug something into the FX send, like my Bugeras here for instance, without any footswitch connected. When doing this kind of test, please make sure to have the volume set very low and/or the standby turned so that your amp is silent, otherwise you might be exposed to super loud cracks and pops, which are harmful for both your ears and gear.

Okay, that's just, like, your opinion, man. And pretty wrong as well. NAM works pretty well and is now adopted on a lot of technologies. But granted, this video perhaps needs a follow up, ALOT has changed during the last year or so.

Thanks for highlighting this! This is a section where I miserably failed to inform myself before making the video. But I only have time around midnight to shoot these, and I was pretty much dead when I did this one in particular. ;-)

Sorry, I had no idea that was the case, but currently seems to be sold out, and as far I understood the recent post of Lichtlaerm, US distribution will move completely to CultFX. I will check on this and eventually uupdate the description accordingly, thanks for pointing out!

@@PippPriss I only know that they’re sold there because @Danielringl told me

@@PippPriss not completely: EMS is and will always be our dealer! Cult-FX is just managing our US warehouse (direct orders from our shop by US customers will be shipped by them) 😊

Yeah, adding a noise gate perhaps will help with the squeal, but on the initial reviews I felt that would be cheating 🙂 On the NAM-thing, I can talk with Daniel if he is okay if I capture the pedal. Without Lichtlaerm Audios' permission, I would not feel okay doing that, especially since they were kind enough to borrow the pedal to me specifically to review.

@@PippPriss Sounds good with me. Totally agree. Thanks for the demo

Glad you like the video! If you need any further help regarding feature set or so, you know where to find me! Hit me up direct and we can have a chit-chat on the topic! :-)

Thanks! I actually have the amp Maiden allegedely originally used on the album up my way - the Gallien Krueger ML250. Very excited for this one coming to my place, hopefully can make a video on this during next week.

Thank you!

I think a straight comparison between the ToneX One and NAMplayer is somewhat misleading, since the NAMplayer is capable of quite alot more than the original ToneX pedal as well, and that in turn has more capabilities than the ToneX One. But, it also cannot be argued that IK Multimedia have struck a master coup with the ToneX One. The feature set for the price point is sheer insanity, and they are selling the ONE pedals like hot cakes, rightfully so. Combining that with the BOSS MS-3, or a Line 6 Helix Stomp or similar is a super powerful rig which gives you more than you could ever need. The NAMplayer on the other hand is and will perhaps remain a niché product for early adaptors and fans of the NAM technology. I really hope they take off however, as the product is great. NAM captures are just a tad more responsive in the way it reacts, and I am at a point where I only can hardly live with the compromises ToneX let me live with. I received an heavy discount for making the video, but I would have certainly as well bought the pedal full price.

These are good for all applications - plugins, mixing, using in and IR loader for live use. There are no specifics which exclude them from using live to FoH - in fact, the smoothed out frequency response will perhaps make sure that you get a more consistent and smoothed out tone from venue to venue :-)

I cannot remember really, but no, I cannot remember using any elastique pitch or so. It could however be that elastique pro 3 was set as default stretch algorithm. However, whatever changes applied for MPL, they also certainly applied Vocalign Project 5. I think the Vocalign is more streamlined and intuitive in it's usage and giving a bit better results. That said, MPL is PERFECT for somebody not needing ultra-tight vocal, and it's free (at least this version, I think the second version is also like only 20/30 $ or so). You cannot argue with that. It's incredble, that it's available at all.

Not really much. It uses your GPU quite intensive when doing the training, and NAM itself is a bit more CPU hungry than the ToneX software it seems. However, I have a strong computer and never had any issue.

@@PippPriss i meant i dont wan t a computer while playing

Absolutely fair assessment. I have not measured CPU usage, since that is not my concern. But for what it does, ToneHub Tracer works really well. I'd say it's somewhere between ToneX and NAM, quality-wise.

Is there a specific reason how you can't to this conclusion? NAM is generally known to make better captures overall. But curious to hear different thoughts around the subject

Very true, I would have expected something like this around 2019, to be honest.

True. But nam has lost me. There are to many profiles imo and the quality varies to much. It’s a pain to use. Tonex 2 probably

NAM is simply AWESOME! Love it!

Stock captures sound great. I personally enjoy all of their Marshall captures the most. But the SLO 100 capture also sounds great, too. But to be also frank: there are not many stock captures yet. But I confident there will be more in future.

There are around 20 stock captures or so, maybe a bit more (haven't counted). The stock captures, to my knowledge, are not taken from ToneHunt or anything, since that is not legal to just take them and include them into a commercial product without prior consent of the actual capture-creator. I guess, these are self-made by the folks at DIMEHEAD with their own equipment..

Very much possible, since these are the signature loudspeakers of Mick Thomspn from Slipknot. They are their own animal, and not completely my cup of tea, but they certainly are good speakers in the context of music like Slipknots' music.

Evolution is a continuous process. ;-)

Thanks a ton for the positive feedback! Let me try to cover your questions, in case I miss anything, just hit me up again: 1) We are very happy with the LD Systems MEI 1000 G2 - for our setup and venues we play (like "medium sized venues for metal bands, fitting a maximum of 600-1000 people), we had no dropouts really. The XVive U4 does have a way smaller range due to the frequency spectrum, but I am quite stationary as the lead singer and guitar player, and the rack is always on stage at the front of the drum riser, or directly underneath it, so it's at max 5 meters away from me - personally never had a drop out on stage, way more often have dropouts in rehearsal, since we rehearse in an leftover bombing shelter bunker (in Germany, that's quite common). So I personally, am truly happy with the XVive U4. 2) We all use SHURE SE-Series headphones, Drummer and guitar player use the SE215, Bass player uses the SE425, and since I am deaf on one-side, I have on my hearing ear a single SE535, on my deaf ear the stock SE215. I have to stress how much I love the SE535! There are maybe the best investment I have done in my entire musicians career. SE215 are a muffled, blanket-topped mess in comparison. Not bad by any means, but bad in comparison with the SE535 certainly! 3) The guitars are connected wireless to the floorboards, we use for that purpose the Line 6 G10 and Line 6 G10S (got a video on my channel on the pedalboard, in case you are interested! 🙂 ) both guitarist' floorboards have DI-Boxes, which take the cabinet-emulated signal via an 4-cable-XLR snake from our boards to IEM-mixer. Also, my main vocals are carried over this XLR snake to the mixer as well. If the venue has it's own cable, I just place a small 1-channel-splitter between the venues XLR cable and my microphone, so splitter input goes to mic, splitter out1 to venue PA, splitter out 2 goes to the snake, which in turn goes to the IEM mixer. 4) The drummer, interesting point which I forgot to mention: We stay completely independent from FoH for our mixes. What we do, is we always have a spare drum-mic kit, which we just slap "on top" during changeover. So we provide Snare and the 3 Toms with our own microphones, which feed into the IEM-system. On smaller gigs, we can use the MIDAS DN4816-O to provide the FoH with our mic'd up drums, that way we save some time during changeover. On bigger festivals etc., we just smack them on right beside the FoH's drums and are happy. 🙂our drummer can live without overheads on his monitors, so that's cool. For Kickdrum, he has a Roland TM-2 Trigger Module and Triggers on his pedals from "On Trigger", which work very well. His mix comes out of the regular AUX2 output, since no stereo is needed, and feeds into his Behringer P2 headphone amp. This entire setup allows us to go FULL SILENT on stage, except for Drums of course. I was super sceptical at first, because I come from a situation where we used to have a fullstack on every side of the stage, no matter what size the venue, and I loved that as well, as it oozed rock an roll - however, the sound, our performance and the way I personally can differentiate between the soundsources have massively improved in using a complete silent stage setup. I will never look back on the olden days with loud amplifiers, except with a nostalgia for my youthful years. 🙂

@@PippPriss Ha, I come from the old times in the 80s with mushy Marshall fullstacks and everything, so I exactly get what you mean. Rock'n'roll and emotion, but what a lack of definition and transparency... Quite an investment on the personal IEM equipment that you use, these headphones for your bass player and you are pretty expensive! But I get it, like in the studio, the final stage from electric to acoustic is the most critical one for good results... and if you only have one ear, definition and clarity is everything... Thanks a lot for your detailed answers! Very appreciated!

While you are correct, that the MIDAS DN4816-O can only give out the signal after the input gain taper, I personally have a few remarks on that: - Adding a regular splitter will add at least another HU to the rack for the XLR cables to run from the splitter, if you want to utilize all 16 channels, perhaps even 2HU, because in case you don't go with a very expensive splitter, you will also need a regular patchbay - With proper gain staging (and then LEAVING it that way, doing the rest of gain staging and mixing by other means), there is no issue for the FoH using the MIDAS outputs in my view - We had no issues so far with the sound guys we worked with, in fact, everybody was really happy using our setup/signals - While everybody is different, I personally do not understand the remark to partout not wanting to take our signals. If I'd meet a soundguy rightout refusing to take our signals, okay, then we can roll the traditional way with mic'ing up everything - however, this type of attitude of "my way or the highway" showcases an issue which we very often face: soundguys often think that the band is at their mercy, when the reality is, that there should be collaboration to get the best results. Also, even though I am taking your comment as an example, I want to stress that I am not implying you are that way, just using your comment to make a case point here 🙂 My personal reality and experience is, that we much rather face people not knowing how to properly do the job of the FoH, and we are partially taking that job over as well, and thus we needed something which we, in case needed, can output not only the incoming signal, but actually being able of putting out the processed signal as well. But, in any case, we are always prepared to just run the traditional mic'd up setup, if that's what the engineer prefers - after all, our setup is mainly to curate our IEM-mixes towards us, and having the MIDAS is just the icing on the cake. But the few occasions, where we could set up a silent stage and have the engineer take our signals directly, the feedback was very positive, stating things like "I never worked with an easier setup" etc. - seems like we must be doing something right.

Have not tried or heard really of the Tank-G, I will read a bit into what i5 is and what it can do. But it seems to be a very cheaply made Chinese product, kind of a rip off of the ToneX pedal. As time progresses, things will become cheaper and more accessible. However, I also find it important to support domestic and underground pedal developers who really innovate. DIMEHEAD definitely are in the second group of companies :-)

Also probably the tracer is the dev. tool that they used to make the tones in tonehub for years

I don't think so, to be honest. I was somewhat involved in testing, and the amount of tests required for it to work make me believe that this toolkit was developed from the ground up. It might be used for future tools though, since it's really accurate. Also, the subscription model is often criticized, but in case of STL Tones have proved to have merit, at least for AmpHub. The platform constantly evolved and is now really great - I happily spend 10 $ a month for that kind of progress.

You get many professional profiles by well known players etc. With Tonex you still have to buy them. So the cost goes up. If you just profile your own gear. Yes maybe.

Absolutely fair to do so. If you feel fine with bringing a laptop to a gig, which I played with a guitar player doing so successfully and getting great sounds, who would I be to argue against that :-) I personally love the form factor and like devices to be intended for a singular/particular purpose, so this unit is perfect for me.

There's approximately 3gb of storage on the device... a NAM file is about 290kb, and an IR is roughly 100kb. Everything is loaded via a USB stick, so it's easy to quickly change things up whenever you need to do so.

Hey, not sure what that means - but for me, the best thing about NAM is being able to train models of my own gear. Have you had a go at reamping and training your own amps/pedals yet? I assure you it's one of the most awesome experiences =)