I really appreciate the thoroughness that went into this video. Well done. I like the sound of this thing, but as always, IK Multimedia exhibit their old tendency for horrible interfaces and bad gain staging.
Good on you for doing this long form critique. I'd like to see an update from you finding out if the issues you brought up have been addressed - - before I buy it!
@@MetalZoned the short of it - no feeling of immediacy like I have playing with my amps. It may sound virtually the same but I does not feel the same. Other than that it still is an incredible piece of gear.
Was a huge fan of my kemper since 2015, had so many of them (at the studio, at home) but now I’ve done extensive comparisons between kemper and ToneX I’m blown away but ToneX. It replaced my kemper and the studio also switching!! Quad cortex wasn’t as convincing but finally someone found the perfect neural network to train!!!!
This is what we wanted the Kemper to be. Close your eyes and you can't tell a difference. Focus on it and you can tell minimal differences. THIS is what it means to have the differences be inconsequential, not what the Kemper does.
@@joejohnson8966 the way ToneX play is also very important. I feel very connected with my ToneX captures, like using my amps with IR, a lot better than kemper did, especially for high gain settings and amps. To me ToneX is the best product of the decade. First professional level plugin at reasonable price is also insane. Now I know they are working on the pedal version. Will get to only for supporting the tech.
@@notalkguitarampplug-insrev784 Completely agree. Nothing I've played that is digital felt as good as some of the profiles. The fact that it is a plugin that we can use as many instances as we want just makes it another generational leap. Couldn't be happier. Thank you also for commenting on so many videos and spreading the word. Without your comments I wouldn't have triet ToneX out. Thank you.
You are absolutely right! The UI usability is totaly catastrophic! I have not yet captured my amps so far but am impressed with some of the models that are included. I hope that they will change the interface and how it works because it makes at the moment working with it a pain in the ...
A great review, albeit tough on IK but well deserved. I got the Tonex Pedal thinking it could do many things that it in fact does not. I then bought the ToneX Capture and found it incredibly tricky to understand and use. THeir manual are horrendous. Thank goodness for RU-vidrs like you who helped me figure this stuff out. I have been a QC User for several years and find it so much more intuitive, comprehensive and ultimately a much better product even given these are in two different price points. However, if you add the cost of an New Audio Interface, ReAmp Box and ToneX Capture (and hopefully you don't need a new computer), you are 2/3's the way or more to paying for a QC which does so much more than the ToneX does, and so much more simple. It does seem like ToneX was developed by separate teams working in isolation and they never reviewed how to make this a holistic unit. SO we have a half baked unit with some cool features and some desperately need to address features. Lastly try getting any support from IK. Non existent. My units are on their way back for return., Maybe in a year or two I could revisit their stuff. But I doubt it.
Huge thanks for the work you put into this video. I watched from start to finish. I have yet to start capturing my amps / pedals. I have a very good CPU but just an old GPU for my audio PC, I did not know GPU is a thing for profiling?! :o The biggest issue with this capture is the inability of tweeking and turning the knobs. Each guitar, cab, mic combo would require different settings on the amp, so it's still a long way to go all digital with this.
Glad this was valuable to you! The GPU basically acts as a big parallelized number cruncher for the machine learning aspect of the model generation. So, it's just as impactful in this use case as other common non-graphics application, like CFM or crypto mining.
I had exactly the same sounding capture failure as you had with the Pedal, Amp. Cab and Mic setup, except I was using Pedal, Preamp, Power amp to the stereo outs from an OX Box. I have to try again without the pedal to see how it comes out. You are the first person I have found even mentioning this. I thought I had an issue in my rig somehow. Strangely , I have a lower spec PC than you do, an i7 6700K with a GTX 1070 and 32 Gigs of Ram , and i am able to do the advanced capture in 37 Minutes, with my system resources not being fully utilized. Task Manager was showing around 8 Gig of Ram, 36 percent CPU and 45 percent GPU usage. I wonder why that might be.
The modeling vs profiling argument has always been an interesting one. I wonder if it will be possible soon for a hybrid of the two to exist? Or perhaps a technology that is a hybrid of modeling and AI. This way you could have the accuracy of the capturing process with amp controls that work as real amps do.
In that case, I think it would just be easier to make a differently-voiced profile better suited to your exact sonic needs then? Case in point, I tried the free ToneX demo, and after about 15 mins of on-line time with it I found about 4 four profiles that were doing pretty much exactly what I wanted them to.
The cyberpunk future of ads direct to retina is looking more and more real lol. Interface is s* sounds great for the money tho. Awesome video as always thanks
Good video bro thanks for highlighting its flaws because you have all these fan boys comparing it to the kemper and QC when they are totally different products.
Is it bad that in the Darkglass pedal captures, I actually preferred the Tonex version? They're not 1-1, but I feel like there's a bit of low cut or somesuch there? Either way, love this dive. I love how you're straightforward with both praise and criticism. I know I have a tendency to love everything while it's novel: so this kind of content is quite useful for me
Do you think you could review a Boss Katana amp at some point? They're universally praised online from what I can tell and I would love to hear your thoughts on them.
It’s just great to have a new video from your end 😊 And I totally agree that the Tonex software right now is still very unusable for metal guitar players. The ads are super annoying and the signal chaining inside Tonex is bullshit.
Would running something like a Radial DI box in front of the ToneX hardware offer an discernable improvement in tonal quality, or would that just be a waste of time if you're already using a decent quality usb interface?
I bought the capture tier. The GUI is F’ing awful when trying to navigate profiles, especially just trying to see the ones you made🙄. Happy with the captures, they’re “close-ish” but huge F when navigating the plugin Also…who Beta’ed this and had a positive experience 😂
I hear that tonex has very slightly less low mids and less thump/sag. Also less airy frequencies. I ask myself if this can be fixed by resonance and presence controls in the app.
I have a question for the reviewer: I Capture my amps direct as you show at the 29:00 mark of your video. However, one difference that use is I take the Speaker Out from my Amp to the Amp Input on the ToneX Capture Box and then take connect the Tonex To Cab Out of the Capture to my Load Box (UA Ox) and Attenuate it to Off (No Sound). I then take the Capture XLR LIne Out to my Audio Interface. I am not using the Line Out of the Load Box to the Capture. Curious for your thoughts on this? Any Pros COns to either method?. Great Video and depth of analysis
You're effectively doing the same thing I am, just using the capture box as a pass through. The amp will react just like it would plugged directly into the load box.
Agreed. I appreciate what they've been able to do on the same hardware for so many years, but usually the point of that sort of long term support is spearheading price decreases through economies of scale and process maturity. They are certainly not passing on any of those benefits to the consumer, and the minor update developments have been painfully slow. Between ToneX, NDSP, and Fractal's endeavors the past few years, it's embarrassing that Kemper has not made any substantial progress on their modeling or hardware.
I will tell you why, they don't need to. They were the first that made profiling/capturing a tube amp so accurately, conquered the market and now the vast majority of guitar players that play live with their bands uses a Kemper. So the unit is still making good sales, it gets updated, even slowly, it has a massive profile library right now and everyone is happy. Also it's the only company offering the same product in 3 different formats, Head, Rack and Floorboard, they got everyone covered. Is it the most accurate in copying a guitar amp? No, QC and Tonex beat it in the details. But for live performance noone cares about 1-2-3-4% sound difference. If it sounds good it sounds good. Eventually, i think that they will come up with a new unit sooner or later, i believe if not in 2023 then in 2024. And copying effects will (or i would like to be) the best next thing.
I have a fryette power station and would like to capture the signal between my cab and the fryette so i capture all my rig(3 pedals into amp into fryette power station into cab) how should i procede? how to connect the cables? i have a tonex capture and focusrite interface ? thanks to unlock my brain cauz i'm kinda fryed after trying to figure it all! 1 watt brain when it comes to cables puzzles!
Your critiques of IK Multimedia are completely valid. IK Multimedia is a VERY frustrating company. their documentation/instructions are a PITA and it's very difficult to control where downloads and presets get stored. They repeatedly force everything onto C drive which is a PITA for me since my other drives are bigger and faster. Ugh!!!
When i saw this announced, my initial reaction was "Oh cool, IK Multimedia beat Positive Grid to the punch and made Bias Amp 3". After downloading the custom shop version and playing with various tone-net captures, that opinion was very much confirmed. I'm not in a position to make my own captures anymore, but having tone matched my old Bugera 333XL in Bias years ago and having looked at the capture process for ToneX on 2 people's channels now, what i'm seeing is incredibly similar processes and incredibly similar quality results, albeit with less tweaking before capture on the IK-M side. At least Bias has never crashed my DAW.
Excellent presentation again, Ryan. IK multimedia just never seems to get quite 'there' with their products. Good, but never good enough to justify the expense, imo ofcourse. Perhaps I'm just jaded with plugins and modellers; I'm all real analog gear for now.
I really want to get into profiling and using my amps live without having to haul an amp to a gig, but it really irks me the IK design of their software, the tonex looks like a cheap virtual amp plugin and the amp panels look cartoonish. I'm not a fan of their design I want to be able to have something that looks like it was made for a professional musician not some gimmick software. I really want to invest in this but with all the point you hit on this video it kinda makes me think twice, Neural is by far the most streamlined and pro looking interface I've seen but damn they really charge you for that in the cost. I'll look into this further hopefully Ik listens to their customers and makes an update.
Not the same technology. Kemper is waveshaping to match impulses and sinesweeps. ToneX is neural network and machine learning. That’s far from profiling or modeling. It’s a third type approach. I find it nicer to play in my experience (have the kemper too)
@@notalkguitarampplug-insrev784 I agree it is a new type approach and apparently from other videos I have watched on the pedal launch, I heard stuff that was exactly how an amp. reacts, heard sag from effects/fuzzes put into it, just like a real analog setup. It can only get even better from here.
Really digging your videos your channel. I will never buy IK multimedia anything because their tech-support sucks. Literally no reply after 5 messages asking how to uninstall their software libraries and plugin demos.
Actually I've just learned that you can create a ToneX chain with pedals amps etc by using AmpliTube. (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-j7pjqiJMkxk.html) It works just fine. I have not tried with the free AmpliTube version but maybe it works there as well. Still I have no idea why you cannot do that in ToneX itself. Maybe in a fututre update...
@@PlagueScytheStudios Yes indeed it's a new development. Luckily Amplitube Max is on sale ($500 discount LOL) for $99 now, so for ToneX users it makes sense to grab it now I guess. :)
1000% everything in this vid. Especially your thoughts on adverts and having to use 2 instances of the plugin to use stomps etc before your amp. Totally ridiculous. I'm just not buying this one. I'm feeling good writing music with my current sims. I just don't need Tonex, as cool as it might be. Cheers Ryan
@30:30 Why preamp at minimum setting? From what I know, the preamp analog gain is always less noisy than adding gain digitally in software... That's why it exists in the first place and why you should always use the maximum amount of analog gain without clipping.
I think you're conflating two different concepts here. Cranking the preamp gain to just shy of clipping is not proper gain staging; i.e. its not representative of the true output level of my guitars pickups. The "instrument mode" on the interface with the preamp gain at minimum is though. Using that setting is equivalent to plugging straight into an amp both in terms of output level and noise. That way, VST plugins react the way they are supposed to, and there are no noise issues introduced. Otherwise, clean amp plugins would probably be driven way too hard into breakup, and high gain amps wouldn't be usable past Gain at noon. Furthermore, if I did turn up the interface preamp gain, I would have to offset (subtract) that gain in the DAW before it hits a plugin to keep the level "authentic" to the real guitar output. This is exactly what Fractal Audio does with their input pad settings by the way - every dB added on the analogue side is subtracted on the digital side, and vice versa. That would be a royal pain in the ass since each one of my guitars will have a different dB offset, and it's all in the pursuit of solving a signal to noise issue that doesn't exist.
@Plague Scythe Studios I still fail to understand HOW do you know that mapping +12.0dBu to 0dBFS is "representative"? How do you know it's +12.0dBu and not +7.5dBu or -4.9dBu or any other value? I see the point of not bothering, but it doesn't mean that it's the right way to do it.
This is a case of listening with your eyes and not your ears. There is simply no need to obsess over dB levels where a noise or signal integrity problem doesn't exist. Again, what problem are we trying to solve here? Firstly, I know this setting is "representative" because the incoming signal level measures the same (within a margin of error that no one should care about) in the Focusrite control panel as it does coming into other equipment I use with input signal level measurements - mixers, Fractal Audio devices, etc. Further, when I reamp the DI signal recorded at that instrument level into a real amp, it too sounds the same as plugging the guitar straight in the amp. This is exactly in line with how Focusrite says their instrument settings should behave. What people discuss as "best practice" is often still dictated by old practices that stem from a time where signal to noise ratio was a huge issue with analogue equipment. It was definitely a neccesity then, and still is if you use that gear, but this is not one of those cases working directly in the box with just an amp plugin. We can obtain way higher signal to noise levels with a cheap audio interface than they could with analogue gear. So many times I see people doing things just because engineers used to do it with totally different equipment and signal chains, and they don't really understand why. It's just "the way it is." In this guitar application, you would not be able to hear or measure an impactful difference between what I'm doing or what you say I should be doing. You would absolutely never tell the difference in a mix.
@@PlagueScytheStudios Firstly, I do agree with you to some extent that people are obsessing about little things that may not have much of an impact. The 24bit quantization error should be negligible in this application. Raising the gain would also raise the noise floor to some degree. Also, the input is already quite optimised by the manufacturer for the signals it would be receiving so you wouldn't have to adjust much anyway. And it is much better to be on the lower side than to be clipping. The issue is that you are referring to your digital signal as being the same as the RAW analog signal. But they are two completely separate worlds, and there is a translation process that involves gain. So when you say that it sounds the same when you reamp as when you plug directly, well that also involves the gain of the output signal. Or when you say that going into a VST sounds then same as going into a real amp, well that might just be a coinsidence in your setup because your guitar doesn't need much gain in the first place. But you complaining why the engineers at IK Multimedia are asking you to set your gain properly and sharing the idea that we should all just set our gain at minimum when ALL of the recording devices on this planet have a gain control circuit, well that is just a bit hypocritical to me and I don't like it. The noise issue is an issue and will always be an issue in this non-perfect world. For high gain amps it becomes even more of an issue, obviously... Just try dissabling your noise gate... So removing as much noise as possible is always a good practice. Deterring people from doing so is not good practice. If you want, you can easly verify and calculate if there is any advantage to using analog gain vs digital with something like Voxengo SPAN. Just compare the RMS values of you playing the guitar vs guitar muted (not unplugged!) at various input gain levels (without clipping of course). If both RMS values change by the same amount of dB that yeah, there is no difference between analog and digital gain. But if let say your playing signal jumps by 15dB but the noise jumps by 5 dB then that's 10dB of improvement. I'm sorry for bothering you with this, I don't mean to be rude. I appreciate that you are responding to my comments.
My complaint with IK Multimedia's implementation of guitar signal gain staging isn't that they're forcing us to turn up a gain control that we all have, and potentially improve signal to noise. The message I was trying to convey doesn't even have to do with analog to digital conversion, and maybe that got lost. My issues are: a.) Their gain meter readings imply theres a problem with signal strength when there actually is not one, and: b.) Their next step not only has you attenuate the signal to reduce the overall level back to "normal," but you have to dial it in by ear anyway. This introduces unnecessary places for confusion which are also prone to human error, especially with beginners of this capture software. This whole step of the process really could have been laid out better. I don't see the hypocrisy in that. Kemper and Neural DSP don't have this awkward step in their capturing methods because the hardware just takes care of it for you. If IK really wanted to, I see no reason why some of the active gain staging duties couldn't have been handled with their 4CM box with outputs to both the amp and USB interface. This methodolgy also assumes the end user has a decent quality interface whose analogue gain circuit doesn't introduce more noise than clean amplification - which SHOULD be the case - but that doesn't mean it is. I would argue you shouldn't be using amp plugins on those low tier interfaces to begin with, but people will, and they could argue that you're being hypocritical for assuming their gear is as capable as you say it should be. Whatever the case, I'm not going to change your mind on this and I don't really aim to. If you are dead set on turning gain and attenuation controls to perfect an aspect of this particular signal chain I have found to be totally inconsequential, it's not hurting me. My videos are to inform and demonstrate my actual experience with products, and this was an aspect of it that could be better. I know I won't be the only one who thinks the same, and they should know about it.
How come it never asked for you to turn some of the knobs to any other position during the capture process? I just don't understand how it can model the tone stack behavior or the gain linearity without asking you to move these knobs... I presume this is an early release where they add their own tone stack to all of the models and assume perfect linear behavior. Or perhaps they don't care. You get the sound that you physically dialed-in and that's it...
Ok I get it, you capture only the one tone that you dial-in. The skin is irrelevant, it doesn't have to match the real amp and the knobs don't move on the skin... It's more like an advanced IR.
Man, I ask myself exactly the same question. I have a Quad Cortex and I want that feature in it. Why do I have to make a shit ton of captures with slightly different setting when you should be able to capture an amp with knobs reacting the same way as the original.
@@rosthariton7930 It seems that it's not that relevent. You can add your own EQ before and after the plugin in order to modify the tone. They provide some EQ in the plugin as well. It would have been better to have the option to capture the behaviour of the tone stack so that you can have one more realistic model and not multiple models. I also hope we will get that someday. One thing I also don't quite understand is how you can change the cab after you create a capture of the amp + cab. How does the app remove the effect of the cab from the rest of the capture. I see no capture mode that records both amp out and microphone out simultaneously...
Thought i was going mad for a while as couldn’t figure out how to get the pedals and amps running together…… Eventually realised…. They don’t ….. what a ^&&{£;!£.&{£ .
Hey, it's good how you didn't BS everyone that it's the best thing since sliced bread, like all other videos. Bought it, and for ages I was trying to put a pedal in the pedal slot in front of the amp. couldn't believe it wasn't possible. What's that dotted slot for then? I also though that it did not take real pedals as well as Neural plugins, so that's a double whammy. the other thing is: the reverbs are rubbish! I mean, I cannot recognise a spring reverb from the 3 models of spring they offer. it sounds shit. Room is just ok. Really, that's super disappointing when you consider that by design, amp captures cannot capture reverbs.. so... you'd expect a decent reverb to put in the back of your chain. But no, the reverbs are shit. I think the amp captures are pretty decent, some good sounds "out of the box". but yeah it feels like maybe this thing is going to come alive at version 1.5 or version 2.
While I really respect the time you put into these videos, not to mention the fact that you have almost zero cuts, your videos are just a bit too long for my taste and I seldom find the time to watch them. I do hope others aren’t such squirrel brains as I am, and do invest the time, since the content itself is great.
That's why I title these kind of videos as "In-Depth," they're not meant for everybody. And that's okay, it just means I'm filling a role other video creators are not and vice versa.
Wouldn’t splitting the video into 3 or 4 parts be best of both worlds? That would probably mean a bit more editing and planning but might cater to a larger audience. Of course I am assuming that you are aiming to maximize your audience, which might be a completely wrong premise. Great content whatever length though. I guess I am just not quite interested enough in the Tonex stuff to commit to an hour long video.
Splitting videos into multiple parts is actual RU-vid suicide. Parts 2 and onward never get half the views as part 1, and people are actually far less likely to click on things with "Part X" in the title. I have done it before, but doubt I will do it again. If people really want to know the information I have to share, they will watch the whole thing or pause and come back to it. RU-vid History keeps track of time watched so its not like you have to dig for a timestamp.
What? No, I love every minute of his videos, tons of good and interesting information, honest opinions, no marketing speak, no annoying subscribe popups every 20 seconds, no 2 minutes intro/outros. It's one of my favorite channel I love to take the time to watch every minute of.
Since you spent so much time b*tching about the box. Here's my 2 cents. I worked in the soft/hardware space for many years. Here's my take. The ToneX pedal is worth every bit of $400. It comes with $300 of "free" software. The ToneX Capture is $250. You are basically paying to unlocking the software and getting a capture box that probably cost $20 to mfg. Many years ago I bought an Audiobox Interface for $99 so I could get the "free" copy of Studio 1 instead of paying $99 just for the download. Bundling how MFG's provide value, a way to jack up the price, a way to get rid of inventory they can't sell or hook you into their design so you will continue to buy products. As for the way the VST works that's BULLSWH*T. It's assinine that you have to open two instances in a DAW to use the amp and effects. Oh yea, I forgot nobody cares about latency and resources. Great in depth video.
