Richard_G's Tonex Captures

[dean701]

Sure.
Still, to me it seems that the vast majority of captures are working better at 0 than at +8.5. But then, I obviously have no idea how they were actually meant to sound like.

Play the downloaded capture using the internal player within tonex. put gain at 12 o clock, play :gritty'. Now play it with your guitar and adjust the 'input gain' of the software to match the dirt level you just heard using the player. . That's what I do. If I transfer to the pedal I adjust the pedal gain to what I heard in the software.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Play the downloaded capture using the internal player within tonex. put gain at 12 o clock, play :gritty'. Now play it with your guitar and adjust the 'input gain' of the software to match the dirt level you just heard using the player.

That's what I was doing already. But it doesn't really help as some captures are actually sounding pretty bad with the internal player, typically way overgained. As said, without adjusting any of the Tonex gain parameters (input or amp), hence keeping them at middle position, I need to turn my interface's input up so much it's very close to clipping to match the levels of the internal playbacks. And once done with that, they often still don't sound right.
See this very thread, @Richard_G said that I was apparently hitting the captures somewhat harder than he would - and that was with a noticeably lower input gain than what the internal player files would suggest (regardless of which of them I select).

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, just bypassed everything in the Tonex plugin and inserted a level meter after it, then went through some of the internal player's files. They're all peaking very close to 0dB, so it almost seems as if they were normalized. That's way more level than what I'd typically use. And it's also way above the levels I'm getting when following the advised settings of the interfact input calibration database.
Sure, they could've been using a lot hotter guitars than mine, but not only do the files don't sound like that, they all have the very same peak level. In a nutshell, IK seems to be going for the traditional "get the signal as hot as possible with just a hair of headroom" approach. So that's possibly not the best starting point for many captures - but it might be the best starting point for their own captures (for instance, the Dumble series in fact sound a lot better when hit pretty hard).

 

[dean701]

That's what I was doing already. But it doesn't really help as some captures are actually sounding pretty bad with the internal player, typically way overgained. As said, without adjusting any of the Tonex gain parameters (input or amp), hence keeping them at middle position, I need to turn my interface's input up so much it's very close to clipping to match the levels of the internal playbacks. And once done with that, they often still don't sound right.
See this very thread, @Richard_G said that I was apparently hitting the captures somewhat harder than he would - and that was with a noticeably lower input gain than what the internal player files would suggest (regardless of which of them I select).

Interesting. My audient stays at 0 dB. Never to be touched. My guitar only needs a few DBs but I use the software and I'm there.
. Whenever I did my own captures I added a 3db inline boost on the input and i would tickle the red.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Interesting. My audient stays at 0 dB. Never to be touched. My guitar only needs a few DBs but I use the software and I'm there.

I'm doing the same. And it works a treat with HX Native, following my own measurements (I compared my DI signal with what's coming out of the Stomp, which is pretty much identical to the value posted in the input calibration database). It also works well with many Tonex captures, but their internal player IMO isn't a decent reference point as the files are as hot as it gets. Which seems to work with IKs own capture collections but not so well with others.
Maybe this is as well the reason why the Tonex pedals default to +8.5dB, they just want you to hit things hard on first contact - and with the preloaded captures (all from IK), it's in fact working pretty well. With plenty of others it doesn't seem to.
Really, it's still all hit and miss.