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.

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

I changed the input trim to 0 as advised. Only tested my own captures thus far but it was in the right direction! Maybe a bit under gained even when cranking up the digital Gain knob.

 

[Richard_G]

@Sascha Franck

I sat down playing a bit with one of my uploaded TKI captures today, this one: - Rhythm channel. Edge of breakup. DI. Send dBu level: 14.8 dBu.

If you keep the input trim on your Tonex One at 0 and want to bring the gain of the TKI capture closer to how things sounded when I made it, given how I dialed the TKI in using my guitar and other gear, I'd say you will be close if you reduce the gain knob on the tone model itself from 5 to something like 3.2. Please keep in mind that I'm talking about the gain knob on the "amp" here and that those numbers are not in dB (so reducing this by a given value will give a different result than reducing the input trim with the same value).

You can, of course, compensate for the resulting volume loss by adjusting the preset’s volume setting.

 

[Sascha Franck]

@Sascha Franck

I sat down playing a bit with one of my uploaded TKI captures today, this one: - Rhythm channel. Edge of breakup. DI. Send dBu level: 14.8 dBu.

If you keep the input trim on your Tonex One at 0 and want to bring the gain of the TKI capture closer to how things sounded when I made it, given how I dialed the TKI in using my guitar and other gear, I'd say you will be close if you reduce the gain knob on the tone model itself from 5 to something like 3.2. Please keep in mind that I'm talking about the gain knob on the "amp" here and that those numbers are not in dB (so reducing this by a given value will give a different result than reducing the input trim with the same value).

You can, of course, compensate for the resulting volume loss by adjusting the preset’s volume setting.

Well, you know, it's all fine with me anyway. I mean, by now I got so irritated by the different outcome of various captures that I try all of those that seem to make my needle move a bit with a variety of gain knob settings anyway.

 

[Richard_G]

But knowing the max dBu input level of the Tonex pedals (which IK will not publish) and the max dBu input level of your audio interface - combined with information about the dBu level used when a capture was made - will be the ticket.

So, using one of my uploaded TKI captures (this one: - Rhythm channel. Edge of breakup. DI. Send dBu level: 14.8 dBu) as an example, here’s how I’d go about it:

• The capture was made using a reamp chain with a send level of 14.8 dBu.
• My Motu M4 audio interface has a max input level of 16 dBu on the instrument inputs. When I leave the gain knob on the Motu input at 0, I get the expected results in the Tonex plugin/app on my Mac with the input trim in the Tonex software set to +1.2.
• For some unknown reason, IK refuses to publish specs like the max dBu input level of the Tonex One (and the Tonex Pedal). However, I believe it is 8 dBu. If I set the input trim on my Tonex One to -6.8, the result is pretty consistent with using the same capture in the software, as described above.
• I could very well just stop here, with fairly consistent results when using my capture in both the software and the pedal.
• If I wanted to, say, leave the input trim on my Tonex One at 0, I’d need to reduce the gain knob in the actual tone model to achieve consistent gain using the capture. Reducing it from 5 to something like 3.2 (note: this is not in dB) seems to get me close.

If I were predominantly using captures made with a send level of around 15 dBu, I’d probably just leave the input trim on my Tonex pedals (One and the OG) set to -7 permanently.

But if I plan to use a lot of captures made with different send dBu levels, one could argue that leaving the input trim at 0 and instead adjusting the individual tone models might be a more useful approach—if that more closely matches how most of the captures were made.

In all cases, though, I’d want to know the send dBu level used when the captures were made!

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

Does anyone know the send dBu level of Helix loops/outouts in Instrument setting? I know the input sensitivity but not the output.