IK Multimedia TONEX

That video is a good watch for anyone who thinks nulls tests mean anything. He clearly demonstrated how different guitars amps and playing produced different results. If you are not running a comparison with your gear and playing style, the results of a test can be misleading.

That said, he was way kind to Kemper. Yeah, it's 15 year old tech, but where are the 15 years worth of updates to it? Tonex had much smaller issues with their capture accuracy than Kemper but they made an effort to fix them and it took them less than 3 years to release a significant update.

Another interesting thing that I had not realized was he said Kemper seems to have issues where there is power amp distortion. That does make sense to me since I thought it struggled with both Plexis and cranked Fender circuits. It did pretty good with a clean BF Super or Twin, but cranked up into distortion, it started to fall short. Hmmmm.
 
timbuck3 said:
Free always makes me happy lol
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We all like free or cheap, but the learning curve and user experience for NAM and Tonex are less than ideal. That said, they are the only digital solutions I have been using for a couple years now, but for me at least, it was the sound and feel and not price that overcame the UE shortcomings. Playing good captures on either makes me smile in a way Kemper never did.
 
Chocol8 said:
That video is a good watch for anyone who thinks nulls tests mean anything. He clearly demonstrated how different guitars amps and playing produced different results. If you are not running a comparison with your gear and playing style, the results of a test can be misleading.

That said, he was way kind to Kemper. Yeah, it's 15 year old tech, but where are the 15 years worth of updates to it? Tonex had much smaller issues with their capture accuracy than Kemper but they made an effort to fix them and it took them less than 3 years to release a significant update.

Another interesting thing that I had not realized was he said Kemper seems to have issues where there is power amp distortion. That does make sense to me since I thought it struggled with both Plexis and cranked Fender circuits. It did pretty good with a clean BF Super or Twin, but cranked up into distortion, it started to fall short. Hmmmm.
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I think since captures are cloning or whatever the company wants to call, it has taken off in the last two years and recently this year last year and probably next year with the stadium as well as other platforms that camper is going to be way behind the ball unless they release something monumentally new
 
timbuck3 said:
I think since captures are cloning or whatever the company wants to call, it has taken off in the last two years and recently this year last year and probably next year with the stadium as well as other platforms that camper is going to be way behind the ball unless they release something monumentally new
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Not sure if it’s just because of the Tonex V2 update and continued NAM progress or what, but it does feel like captures are creeping up in popularity. I’m having a blast with Tonex V2 and can’t wait to see what L6 is cooking up there whenever that arrives in Stadium.
 
I haven't kept up. Are any of the "converted" NAM captures or whatever available in the cheaper hardware units keeping up with Tonex (v2) at all? Or it's basically just the Dimehead and a few other smaller projects for competitive NAM representation in hardware?
 
Chocol8 said:
IMHO, no. Sound quality is not terrible, but the entire experience still comes up way short and user experience is hardly IK’s strongpoint!
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Okay, thanks, good to know!

I don't mind awkward processes in a technical way (I'd prefer that to the sort of annoying that IK UX can be), but I also don't want to spend too much time just trying to get things to work lol

I'll probably look at the Dimehead more if / when they start shipping to the US again. I basically am just using the Tonex for captures > HX Stomp for IR (easier management than Tonex) and post FX, and the Dimehead NAM Player seems like it would be able to cover both for my needs. We'll see!
 
@IK Multimedia Have you considered allowing users to determine which parameters are controlled by the Tonex One Alt mode?

The default Gate/Comp/Reverb is a pretty useless setup. Gate is "set and forget". Comp you might not use with many tones. Reverb is nice to have.

I'd love if I could just on a per-preset basis assign those to e.g Modulation mix, Delay mix and Reverb mix.

It seems like a pretty easy to implement feature that could really expand the Tonex One's capabilities.
 
synthpenguin said:
Tonex for captures > HX Stomp for IR (easier management than Tonex) and post FX,
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In that scenario, maybe not so bad, but also what’s the point of switching? Probably the single biggest issue I have with the Sonicake is when you use a converted NAM capture, you can’t also run an IR. So, that eliminates the use of DI captures which I much prefer, and makes changes to the cab a real pain that requires a new capture. There are other issues as well, but if you are using the Stomp as the cab sim, that major annoyance is less of an issue.

But, I don’t see much benefit in switching from Tonex. If the Dimehead lets you drop the stomp, that would be more worthwhile.
 
Chocol8 said:
In that scenario, maybe not so bad, but also what’s the point of switching? Probably the single biggest issue I have with the Sonicake is when you use a converted NAM capture, you can’t also run an IR. So, that eliminates the use of DI captures which I much prefer, and makes changes to the cab a real pain that requires a new capture. There are other issues as well, but if you are using the Stomp as the cab sim, that major annoyance is less of an issue.

But, I don’t see much benefit in switching from Tonex. If the Dimehead lets you drop the stomp, that would be more worthwhile.
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Yeah, the switch would purely be for space-saving / simplicity. Which going down to the Tonex One will help me with in my case, and the stacked latency is not bad at all (especially since I'm not using the Stomp loop), but if I could get power amp sim + IRs + post FX + headphone out in one end of chain piece, that would just be very convenient. But yeah, it's more just a casual interest at this point.

ETA:
I am going to mess around with NAM a little this weekend though, via GENOME (which I've never actually used). I'm curious to try the TSM power amp sims that has too, because I think they're the same as the ones in the Opus, and I wonder if they're better than the ones the Cab M had.

It's fun to try this stuff, but I have a pretty functional and fun board as it is now, even if I'm never totally happy with the Helix reverbs.
 
Found the Genome + NAM process very smooth and easy. It was cool to compare a NAM capture to a Tonex capture with what I'm doing (tube pre > power amp capture). I setup an A/B system in a DAW, going between Tonex and Genome with a key press, and found it really interesting. I was using Fireball 25 power amp captures by @Progressive_disclosure in both cases, and was able to get them sounding almost identical. I believe the NAM version of the capture was done at a slightly different master volume setting, but interestingly I was able to get them extremely close just by upping the gain of the Tonex by a notch and making a slight upper mid cut. The high end of the NAM capture was definitely a bit more "detailed" in a way you can't just EQ into the Tonex, but otherwise I was pleased with both.

And fwiw I think IK should take a lot of hints from the Genome software haha. It was very refreshing compared to the Tonex stuff, and I basically immediately "got it", even with a lot more options available.

Anyway, I know this is a Tonex thread, so the long story short is that while NAM is noticeably better when A/Bing, Tonex definitely holds its own to my ears, at least a v2 capture.
 
synthpenguin said:
Anyway, I know this is a Tonex thread, so the long story short is that while NAM is noticeably better when A/Bing, Tonex definitely holds its own to my ears, at least a v2 capture.
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I've gone from having ToneX uninstalled to buying a tonex one pedal to make some videos, the turnaround with v2 is real. I agree its splitting hairs with NAM now and if you want to use it as a pedalboard/rig solution then ToneX is going to be the cheaper way into it.

Sounds like IK are cooking up a helix style unit with no doubt ToneX captures alongside Amplitube effects. They generally have cheaper hardware solutions to others so if the timing is right it will come across like a cheaper Stadium alternative, some good moves for IK if it all happens.

NAM has its own pros that we can have more conversations on, but in the context of "cheapest/best" pedalboard captures then ToneX is solid now.
 
[Nathan] said:
Sounds like IK are cooking up a helix style unit with no doubt ToneX captures alongside Amplitube effects.
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Is this an assumption or have you seen something concrete confirming it? It does seem like the obvious play but I think it requires the introduction of a novel hardware device for IK, which may be a significant obstacle at this point.
 
synthpenguin said:
And fwiw I think IK should take a lot of hints from the Genome software haha. It was very refreshing compared to the Tonex stuff, and I basically immediately "got it", even with a lot more options available.
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Well, I only partially agree.
The NAM block in Genome is absolutely excellent, I wish something like that was available in the Tonex-ecosystem, especially on the hardware. But Genome's NAM file management is as bad as it gets - simply because it's not existing at all. This is something IK has done *way* better (even if it's still leaving several things to be desired).
 
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