Tonocracy (Amp, Multi-FX, Profiler) is Now Free!

[Uncle E]

I'm planning on doing some DI captures of my '79 Vibrolux Reverb and want to do some SM57 only captures too at the same time but I'm not going to invest the time and effort until the batch functionality is in place since I want to do a bunch.

Great amp! I captured my Vibrolux, then sold it.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

IME, the input gain responds like a real amp. When I feed it a lower level signal, it cleans up just like the real amp does. But the highest gain amp I've captured is a Mark I, I haven't done any metal amps and I could see it not working in those more extreme cases.

I find it cleans up well too but there's no set reference.

Imagine this scenario: I capture my amp with volume at 5 using my low output strat with vintage-style single coils. This is an edge of breakup tone. I use the "close to 0dbfs" reference level IK asks for on the send. I make the capture. With my Strat plugged into my interface and the gain at/near 0dbfs, I'll have the same edge of breakup tone. So far so good. 5 minutes later, I plugin my Les Paul. Now, I'm expected to trim back the input gain to compensate for the hotter pickups and get the input levels near 0dbfs. So I reset my levels for that guitar and play. Result: it's an edge of breakup tone. Problem: this sounds nothing like my Les Paul plugged into the amp with the volume at 5. In real life, the amp would be in overdrive territory at that level.

IK's capture process and input signal levels were designed to normalize everything to the amount of gain the capture was made with regardless of guitar. NOT the amount of gain the amp has at that particular setting. So it's less realistic in that regard.

My approach has been to dial in levels for my hottest output guitar (my Les Paul), then use a fixed gain level when using TONEX via the minimum input on my interface and a trim plugin. This yeilds "more realistic" results. It's capturing the sound of the "amp at 5" versus "edge of breakup - regardless of guitar".

Hope that makes sense.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Great amp! I captured my Vibrolux, then sold it.

We can sell amps? I haven't learned that trick yet (I'm up to 9 tube guitar amps, then a solid state bass amp, and a keyboard amp).

[Uncle E]

I find it cleans up well too but there's no set reference.

Imagine this scenario: I capture my amp with volume at 5 using my low output strat with vintage-style single coils. This is an edge of breakup tone. I use the "close to 0dbfs" reference level IK asks for on the send. I make the capture. With my Strat plugged into my interface and the gain at/near 0dbfs, I'll have the same edge of breakup tone. So far so good. 5 minutes later, I plugin my Les Paul. Now, I'm expected to trim back the input gain to compensate for the hotter pickups and get the input levels near 0dbfs. So I reset my levels for that guitar and play. Result: it's an edge of breakup tone. Problem: this sounds nothing like my Les Paul plugged into the amp with the volume at 5. In real life, the amp would be in overdrive territory at that level.

IK's capture process and input signal levels were designed to normalize everything to the amount of gain the capture was made with regardless of guitar. NOT the amount of gain the amp has at that particular setting. So it's less realistic in that regard.

My approach has been to dial in levels for my hottest output guitar (my Les Paul), then use a fixed gain level when using TONEX via the minimum input on my interface and a trim plugin. This yeilds "more realistic" results. It's capturing the sound of the "amp at 5" versus "edge of breakup - regardless of guitar".

Hope that makes sense.

Yes, thanks. That makes perfect sense.

[Agreed]

That's cool about the extra features. I think I see what you mean, I had to go back-and-forth a few times to level match the first time I made a capture. However, it was only necessary the first time, everything is calibrated now.

The main issue I have with Tonex is that it can't create captures in batches. I want to be able to record different sounds from the amp all at once and then walk away while the software batch processes all of them. Do Tonocracy or NAM have that ability?

Tonocracy gets so detailed and precise with it - multimeter out to calibrate Send level, then plug Send into Instrument In and it auto-calibrates that instantly with the press of a button. Then plug Send back into your Return directly, and it auto-calibrates that. This give you the dry signal level, and from there it's so dead simple to plug it back into the pedal or amp, and just ride your pedal or amp's level knob and hit that calibration button while adjusting it until you get the exact same level as your dry signal. Only thing you have to change capture-to-capture after you set those to just keep calibrating the Return level with your pedal or amp engaged and getting it to the correct exact level as your dry Send was, and you're good to go, quick process and 100% repeatable, it's been a real shift in consistency for me - considerable!

Precisely level matching the dry signal and the wet signal this way to 0.1dB has resulted in incredibly consistent captures for me, frankly beyond what I can do with ToneX as far as the consistency of the levels goes. But, that does not mean that the ToneX models have poorer accuracy - quite the contrary, ToneX captures are excellent, it's just a lot more of a manual process for me and I can't just do a whole batch of them easily no fuss, no muss. ToneX and Tonocracy both give outstanding sounding capture results

Tonocracy is quite strong at batch processing, by the way. You can easily take more tone captures while it's processing the old one, and your models will be processed in parallel on the Tonocracy GPU cloud. You get a list at the end of the process to individually audition and approve them. This part of the user interface is just top notch and in my opinion industry-leading at this time. I spent so little time setting up a bunch of captures of my Keeley Muse Driver earlier today, and just did other stuff while it processed them in the background, approved and added them to my kit all at once later. Chef's kiss.

I can't say that is true about all aspects - I have run into a few issues/bugs with the overall Tonocracy interface, and I think it could use some more development as far as the effects go and all that. But the capturing side of things is marvelous, love to have similar precise features in ToneX! I am still a big fan of the Amplitube software environment, I've been using it since 2008 and I feel AT5 is so easy to craft tones in. Since I've kept up with it over the years, it's loaded with all kinds of processors that I've come to know well & the workflow gels for me. I'm already thinking of how I can adopt better calibration protocols for ToneX in the meantime, just using my multimeter to do the same thing that this is doing but differently - the consistency I'm getting here is awesome & speeds things up.