Calibrating Input Level for Plugins

[MirrorProfiles]

Fwiw, I looked around in this thread but couldn't find any info about leveling Amplitube properly (unfortunately I couldn't resist, so I just got IK's Studio 4 Max in the recent sale). I'd only need to know how much the input level would deviate from what HX Native likes to see, because I have that covered pretty well. The Amplitube presets are of zero value to at least get a "ballpark" idea as their levels are all over the place (I have hardly ever stumbled across worse presets). It does however seem as if it needs somewhat less input gain as HXN because many amps start to compress noticeably (might as well just be their settings or questionable modeling, though).
Anyhow, in case anyone knows the difference between the input levels of HXN and AT, I could just see whether I'm getting along.

Oh boy.





TLDR is all the models vary. Some (like the Fender, Orange and Dr Z) need a significantly louder signal than what you’d use for Helix, others need a lower one. There is no clues about what to do, if you’re familiar with the real thing you can guess based on your familiarity. Otherwise you have to guess in a 40dB range and hope for the best.

 

[the-trooper]

Fwiw, I looked around in this thread but couldn't find any info about leveling Amplitube properly

Didn't they rage quit this forum because every amp they have modeled requires different value and didn't like that users were calling them out on that clusterfuck?

 

[Sascha Franck]

TLDR is all the models vary. Some (like the Fender, Orange and Dr Z) need a significantly louder signal than what you’d use for Helix, others need a lower one. There is no clues about what to do, if you’re familiar with the real thing you can guess based on your familiarity. Otherwise you have to guess in a 40dB range and hope for the best.

Oh my, that's what I supposed already, as the model's input requirements really seem to be all over the place. No wonder they don't come up with an exact number.

Didn't they rage quit this forum because every amp they have modeled requires different value and didn't like that users were calling them out on that clusterfuck?

Yeah, that guy defenitely has no thick skin at all, either. Wellknown thing.

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And fwiw, just in case anyone knows, how TF do I log into tone.net from within AT or ToneX?
All I'm getting is this:

And obviously I already logged into tone.net, but there seems to be no way to enter anything in that stupid ToneX software or in AT.
I might ask in the ToneX thread in case nobody knows...

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Fwiw, it's a shame the levels are all over the place in AT because there's some things I really like, such as their fuzzes, they're cleaning up better than all other software fuzzes I tried so far (the HX ones really only seem to work once you make use of the hardware's impedance switching).

 

[ChordInversion]

Oh boy.





TLDR is all the models vary. Some (like the Fender, Orange and Dr Z) need a significantly louder signal than what you’d use for Helix, others need a lower one. There is no clues about what to do, if you’re familiar with the real thing you can guess based on your familiarity. Otherwise you have to guess in a 40dB range and hope for the best.

I stopped trying to use Amplitube 5, and uninstalled Total Studio Max. They can't be troubled to do basics.

They should make their tagline:

IK Multimedia: For When Adequate is (Mostly) Sufficient

or

IK Multimedia: Tone That You Guess At

 

[Sascha Franck]

I'm just installing some things from the package (Modo Drums) and it's the lousiest installer ever. Told them so in their forum (of course in a much more "neutral" way), post got deleted. What an epic loser that Peter dude is (he's possibly their main forum guy).

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I'm just installing some things from the package (Modo Drums) and it's the lousiest installer ever. Told them so in their forum (of course in a much more "neutral" way), post got deleted. What an epic loser that Peter dude is (he's possibly their main forum guy).

that’s how IK roll unfortunately.

There’s some good ideas and technology lodged in their stuff but it’s hampered by dumb decisions and incompetence throughout. Add in some of the absolute worst customer support (who are more likely to gaslight you than help) and you have a pretty miserable experience.

Frustrating because there is so much potential, only being held back by IK themselves.

While you’re at it @Sascha Franck , do the T Racks plugins (like the 33609 Precision Compressor/Limiter) report the correct latency when in bypass? That’s been an ongoing bug that’s been there for 10+ years in Logic and Pro Tools that IK won’t even acknowledge exists, let alone fix.

 

[Sascha Franck]

While you’re at it @Sascha Franck , do the T Racks plugins (like the 33609 Precision Compressor/Limiter) report the correct latency when in bypass?

I have absolutely no idea because I haven't even installed them yet.
Fwiw, there seems to be a new issue with latency compensation while using software monitoring coming with Logic 11 (kinda getting sick of them not fixing things timely anymore). So, I possibly wouldn't even know what would be correctly reported and what wouldn't.
I may not even install all that stuff anyway, I basically got Studio Max for Modo Drums/Bass and Amplitube.

 

[Richard_G]

IK is a strange company. They make the platform I’ve enjoyed the most in 2024 (Tonex) (but dependant on third party captures). At the same time they continue to have terrible software for the platform, combined with rude, ignorant and/or lacking customer support and online prescence.

I’ve been somewhat tempted to buy the Total Studio Max while it’s on sale for 149 (and using some «jam points» to reduce the price further). But I don’t want to (sad really - I seldom have this antipathy towards any company).

 

[[Nathan]]

IK multimedia, 3 steps forward 2.5 steps backwards
Cue the “I told y’all” image

So many times they seem to do “just enough” to get a product out the door. Like it’s usable and technically does what they say… but all the obvious stuff you’d expect is a pain (installers, guis, updates etc).

It’s the main reason I can’t jive with tonex… I’m more at peace with it now but it has its quirks that they could easily fix. NAM in comparison doesn’t have those quirks and is free/open source… just boggles the mind why they don’t refine things.

Whenever I see something new and shiny from them I just can’t get excited cause I know there’s more than likely some level of “I told y’all” about it. Ironically I’ve had the arc studio box running flawlessly for months now, so some things they do are great

 

[Sascha Franck]

First off: Happy New Year!

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So, while we can discuss skeuomorphism yes/no and all other UI aspects as harsh as we may, I hope we can all agree that IKs Amplitube and ToneX interfaces are downright horrible. It's very easy to click something wrong (such as exchanging a pedal instead of adding one), then there's wasted space on one hand and many things crammed into smaller places on the other hand, plus quite a lot of things just not working well (or quickly). And then there's no undo/redo, which is really, really bad (AT edits are not reflected in Logic's generic plugin undo/redo function).

Let alone you simply can't get through their presets with one fixed input level at all. By now I tried pretty much about every amounts of boosts/cuts, the preset levels are all over the place, and even worse, their gain levels obviously are as well, sometimes so much I'm having a hard time to understand the preset name until I massively alter the input gain, such as "pristine clean" sounds not being clean at all, such as gainier sounds to either have way too little or way too much gain, and even going as far as to completely alter the amp's tone. Add to this that some preset designers must've had too much of that Sadites Cool Aid as there's plenty of presets with "master" compressors, pretty much spoiling the real amp sound, especially as you have to deal with input gain staging a lot, which, at least on clean amps, has a huge impact on the way the master compressor acts. Etc.

But while we're at it (sorry for the OT blurb): Their Studio 4 Max package sure is a great deal (sale until tomorrow). I already very much liked the free version of MODO Drums and the full version IMO really delivers. Some kits sound very nice and tweaking them is pretty easy but can as well become complexed if you wish. Some rather illogical design decisions to be observed here, too, still very usable overall. Most likely to become my go-to for all real drums.
MODO Bass is no slouch, either, but it's a rather mixed variety of sounds and some defaults IMO need tweaking.
The B-3X organ is very good.
And as said before, there's some pretty decent sounds in AT as well. For the time being, whenever I need a virtual fuzz pedal, AT will be my top choice, even if I wished there was one or the other modernized fuzz (coming with some decent onboard tone controls). I will likely create some base amp patches and then only tweak them using pedals.