IK Multimedia group buy 2025

[jens]

Sorry dude. I was trying to help. I assumed because you were immediately dismissive and compared it to Amplitube in general as opposed to the amp modelling approach (component vs impulse ) that you gave it a quick go and saw the limited features and had an immediate reaction.

Yes, I had an immediate negative reaction indeed - but that wasn't to the lack of features but rather to the lack of dynamic capability - they feel dead - a touch player's nightmare.

[Scotty]

That's interesting. A lot guitarist report the opposite and find the dynamics to be improved. That doesn't mean they are right. It could also be some of the captures are not done well. I know that the Brown series gets a lot of praise for nailing the sound and the dynamics. Guitar tone preference is really individual regardless. At any rate I think we understand each other. All is good.

Sorry dude. I was trying to help. I assumed because you were immediately dismissive and compared it to Amplitube in general as opposed to the amp modelling approach (component vs impulse ) that you gave it a quick go and saw the limited features and had an immediate reaction.

Yes, I had an immediate negative reaction indeed - but that wasn't to the lack of features but rather to the lack of dynamic capability - they feel dead - a touch player's nightmare.

[wintoid]

As a bassist, I've found Tonex to be much better than Amplitube. I sold my Fractal after getting Tonex.

[Proteinshake]

Yeap. Servers are dead again and run as smoothly as their support!

IK MULTIMEDIA, YOU JUST MADE OVER A MILLION DOLLARS, HOW ABOUT YOU FORK OUT SOME CASH FOR YOUR SERVERS BANDWIDTH SO WE CUSTOMERS CAN DOWNLOAD WHAT WE BOUGHT ??

[sjm]

AFAICT, all the picks I made right before the server crashed have landed up in Nirvana. They're not showing up in TONEX, but they do show up as unavailable in the group buy. They don't show up in my account; but I do have an email with the serial number.

This morning, the servers seemed to be up again, so I tried re-registering the serial for one of the products (Joe Satriani Amp Vault). While the Product Manager says the product was registered successfully, the server just died on me and I still see nothing in TONEX. The only collections I am seeing in TONEX are the picks I made a week or two ago. And now the website is incommunicado again.

Hoping this can get sorted out pronto, as the servers have now been down for rather a long time and it looks like the issue is also affected product ownership. Though I'd want to test that out again when the servers are actually running properly.

[Cuauhtli]

As long as you get your serial numbers you should be okay. In a couple of months maybe...

[jens]

As a bassist, I've found Tonex to be much better than Amplitube. I sold my Fractal after getting Tonex.

So far I tried it only on guitar, so I have yet to try it on bass. even though I can't imagine it to fare it to be much better there, since all the officials guitar-models I tried have a very noticeable lack in dynamics. After I made my posts here yesterday I had another, more systematic go at it and I am pretty sure it would be easily measurable (if I knew how to properly go on about this - which I find difficult). The drive is very good, but dynamic-wise it's like a throwback to the early 2000's.

[heyheycnv]

Its turning out to be a Lurssen buy. Didnt have it, really wanted it. Already had most of the plugins from the last years Max buy.
Tonex and Amplitube just have too much futzing around and most of the presets demoed sound dreadful to me. I was excited for Pianoverse and then saw downloads of 21-47 gigs per piano. Yikes. Maybe I'll try one or two.

[Download SOphist]

Its turning out to be a Lurssen buy. Didnt have it, really wanted it. Already had most of the plugins from the last years Max buy.
Tonex and Amplitube just have too much futzing around and most of the presets demoed sound dreadful to me. I was excited for Pianoverse and then saw downloads of 21-47 gigs per piano. Yikes. Maybe I'll try one or two.

Yeah, i registered all the pianos but only have space for a couple. Well, I already needed an external ssd drive…. The one i tried didn't floor me, though.
So, you’re liking the lurssen console/eq?

[heyheycnv]

Yeah, i registered all the pianos but only have space for a couple. Well, I already needed an external ssd drive…. The one i tried djs t floor me, though.
So, you’re liking the lies em console/eq?

What's the lies em console? The Lurssen?
The eq is a banger. Better than Soma. It has more fine control with the +/- than the Lindell 285. More bands than the Manley.

[Download SOphist]

yeah, typo (now corrected) - thanks for the reply

[Cuauhtli]

As a bassist, I've found Tonex to be much better than Amplitube. I sold my Fractal after getting Tonex.

So far I tried it only on guitar, so I have yet to try it on bass. even though I can't imagine it to fare it to be much better there, since all the officials guitar-models I tried have a very noticeable lack in dynamics. After I made my posts here yesterday I had another, more systematic go at it and I am pretty sure it would be easily measurable (if I knew how to properly go on about this - which I find difficult). The drive is very good, but dynamic-wise it's like a throwback to the early 2000's.

Stating the obvious but I assume you mean the amp models not responding to dynamics? As in picking harder drives the amp more or it cleans up a bit if you pick lighter; not just changes in volume?

I guess it makes sense since the Tonex models are captures, trying to get the tones as opposed to modeling a specific amp/pedal/whatever in its entirety.

[BackInCheck]

It is the impulse captures from the real amps or distortion pedals. It isn't component modelling. Serious guitarists really like the captures. An impulse won't have all the amp features of the regular amplitube stuff but if the capture is done well and you find the setting you want , it will be indistinguishable from the real deal for most of us mortals.

Yeah, or so is the theoretical claim...

none of the - mind you: official - Tonex models I tried were anything to write home about at all...
they certainly neither can hold a candle to ICM (Guitar Rig) nor to State Space (Ampire) - heck, not even to the old Nembrini amps (PA) - and what makes it especially laugheable is that there's better counterparts to every one in tried right there in Amplitube... but now I know I'm not a "serious guitarrist" (whatever exactly that means), so thanks for the heads up.

Try it out that way and I think your ears will find it to be impressive.

Well, it's actually rather my fingers that need to be impressed.

Such bold statements are based on very subjective perception, unless you really did make an effort to run a systematic test AB'ing the plugins side by side. The PA Nembrini plugins are decent, but I find it hard to believe that they will outshine their Tonex equivalents.

My understanding is that Tonex (just like the free NAM btw) is based on Neural / machine learning captures of the amps it covers, which is generally considered a step-up from earlier mostly circuit emulation approaches.

NAM is top notch from my experience, even though you will only get one particular amp setting with a profile of choice. In theory it's possible to capture multiple parameters within a profile, but the typical NAM profile does not make use of that possibility.

I'm assuming that Tonex will be as good or even better as NAM (considering that it's a commercial grade product as opposed to a hobbyist side project of a single computer engineer) and has a superior user interface. I'm not sure whether Tonex captures multiple parameters of the amps, but it has a range of settings, such as EQ for each amp model + a basic suite of guitar FX on board.

I may be wrong, but I'm almost certain that there wouldn't be a night and day difference in quality, especially not one in favour of older algo / circuit modelling plugins like the older PA Nembrini line.

Amplitube is a different story. It never seriously impressed me, even though I look forward to check their addons such as the Fender packs. I always considered it a mediocre attempt of modelling guitar amps at best.

[jens]

It is the impulse captures from the real amps or distortion pedals. It isn't component modelling. Serious guitarists really like the captures. An impulse won't have all the amp features of the regular amplitube stuff but if the capture is done well and you find the setting you want , it will be indistinguishable from the real deal for most of us mortals.

Yeah, or so is the theoretical claim...

none of the - mind you: official - Tonex models I tried were anything to write home about at all...
they certainly neither can hold a candle to ICM (Guitar Rig) nor to State Space (Ampire) - heck, not even to the old Nembrini amps (PA) - and what makes it especially laugheable is that there's better counterparts to every one in tried right there in Amplitube... but now I know I'm not a "serious guitarrist" (whatever exactly that means), so thanks for the heads up.

Try it out that way and I think your ears will find it to be impressive.

Well, it's actually rather my fingers that need to be impressed.

Such bold statements are based on very subjective perception, unless you really did make an effort to run a systematic test AB'ing the plugins side by side. The PA Nembrini plugins are decent, but I find it hard to believe that they will outshine their Tonex equivalents.

My understanding is that Tonex (just like the free NAM btw) is based on Neural / machine learning captures of the amps it covers, which is generally considered a step-up from earlier mostly circuit emulation approaches.

Ah, you think a statement that is made based on actual personal experience is bolder than a statement that's based on the expected/imagined virtues of a certain development technique?

KVR really never fails to entertain...

[bmanic]

Well, I too tried ToneX and Amplitube 5 this past week and while I didn't expect much, as I've never liked Amplitude 3 or 4, I was pleasantly surprised.

I do not at all agree with Jens on this one. To me the ToneX models ranged from great! to mediocre.. but most importantly, there are some extremely varied tones to be had there with a single click. Stomp + Amp + Cab.. all in one go, and it reacts beautifully to your picking/playing/tone and volume controls on the guitar. Granted, I have a quite high-end signal chain, except for the guitar itself which is a crappy Cort from 10 years ago that I paid 60 euros for in a fire sale.

Some captures are obviously much less reactive than others.. but guess what? That is also true for real world honest to god analogue amps! That's the very thing that separates some amps from others. Some are SUPER dynamic and some flat as pancakes, giving no changes to the output no matter how or what you use to pick your strings.

I'm not really into high-gain stuff so I mostly explored the 'Driven' and 'Clean' categories.

What I really liked were all the different pedal distortion emulations. There are some real hidden gems in there and they pair very nicely with the AI amp captures.

I also have to give some props to Amplitube 5 itself. Their VIR cabinet modeling thing is really fun to fiddle around with, changing speakers and mic positions in full 3D. Though the room IRs they provide are absolute dog shit in my opinion. Then again, I also got the FAME Studio Reverb and that tiny little vocal/amp booth in Studio B is amazing for subtle ambience.

What I don't like about Amplitube 5 is the overall user interface. It's convoluted, messy and not all that pleasing to use. It feels like an ancient UI when compared to Guitar Rig or TH-U v1 (though I heard v2 got worse in TH-U). I also thought some of the vanilla non-AI amp models sounded quite decent and many of the pedals are awesome.

Having said all that. My favorite amp to just sit around and play with while watching some movie or reading a book (yes really!) is the Neural DSP Tone King Imperial mk2. It's just gooey, lovely and dynamic in a way no other amp sim quite captures. I'd probably like the real thing very much. It also works extremely well as an amp that you feed distortion pedals into. This is what I am going to use ToneX for. It's the pedal, Neural DSP Tone King is the amp and TH-U is my cab sim.