Re: GP-5/50 vs. Tonex
So far, I couldn't directly compare them as the Tonex'es are all at home whereas we're on our xmas/NY travel.
Yet, there's some observations I think I can share already.
As a standalone capture-only player (obviously, only the GPs have genuine amp models), the Tonex IMO wins.
Yes, there's a whole plethora of great NAM captures, they defenitelx exceed Tonex captures in quantity but possibly in quality as well.
But, as the GPs require you to run captures with baked in cabs (at least in standalone mode), the amount of available captures is greatly reduced and you're at the mercy of the capture for the overall sound yet some more, whereas with the Tonex ecosystem you can actually exchange cabs at will, which even works great on at least some captures with the cabs baked in.
Also, there seems to be some sort of quality loss when converting NAM files to the GPs "snaptones" which I can't exactly put my fingers on just yet, but the resuit seems to be a kinda "sameness", loaded captures might be somewhat more compressing or whatever.
Usability is a bit of a different thing, obviously the GP-50 wins big time here, especially when compared to the Tonex One, but I might even prefer it over the fuil Tonex. The GP-50 editing couldn't be much easier.
As a result, if it was about an all-in-one unit, the GP-50 should be tough to beat (in that price bracket there's absolutely nothing comparable IMO).
And even if you try to expand things a bit, it might still be great (would not want to run it through other digital units introducing further latency, though). Add a MIDI controller and things are quite on another level already and if there was a small MIDI controllable loopswitcher (unfortunately there's nothing really affordable) taking care of one or the other dirt pedal, it might be a killer little setup.
Anyhow, as far as integration in a larger setup goes, the Tonex One wins yet again - especially in case you manage to get one of the Tonex One Controllers (from Pirate MIDI or DIY). With a device latency of around 1.5ms you can even run it in the loop of another MFX unit (I'm doing just that with a GT-1000 and it's absolutely excellent), something I would never use the GP for.
Regarding all kinda additional features, they're kinda on par. Both suck as audio interfaces, if for different reasons. Tonex One can be buspowered and doesn't come with that much horrible latency, but it still causes recording offsets and there's no way to control the overall output volume others than per app (an epic fail). The GP-50 offers battery operation and BT, DI signal recording, separate line and HP outs - but its audio interface portion is abysmally bad and so far I think the signal quality of the TXO is better, too.
Whatever, there's use cases for both of them. In a better world, there'd be a Tonex Two doing everything the GP-50 does - but it'd do things properly.
