IK goes AI

[seangm]

If you have AmpliTube 5 MAX (including from Total Studio 3.5 MAX) you will have a special coupon for TONEX in the cart when you put TONEX in your cart. Just click Apply to apply the coupon. Also, if you'd like to go for TONEX MAX (seems to be the more popular choice overall) and have AmpliTube 5 MAX, you'll see the $/€50 off coupon ready to apply in your cart too.

I tried checking out but if I apply the coupon it doesn't let me use my jam points. Is that correct? I don't think I've run into a purchase with IK before where I couldn't use jam points even with a product on sale or a coupon applied.

Yes that's correct, you can't use both.

Thanks, that was the first time I'd run into that situation.

[Bombadil]

The Tape Machines could certainly be modeled with machine learning.

Oh, I wanted to thank Peter and IK for the Native ARM TrackS 5 free update. Quite late in the game, but better late than never.

Have you also noticed that most of the VST3 versions aren’t loading?

I’m getting VST2 versions in the place of VST3 on 75% of the T-RackS plugins running as native M1.

I noticed your comment on it, but I use Logic, so it isn't affecting me.

[Uncle E]

If you mean like TONEX, I certainly hope not. Don't get me wrong, I love TONEX and think it sounds awesome, but it's the 'caught at a moment in time' part I'm not all that keen about, as opposed to something you can tweak to your hearts content.

Once you start moving away from that 'moment in time' you are taking away not adding to, and with something like T-Racks it could be worse.

Compressors ought to be do-able. LA2A and LA3 would be easy, the knobs simply set the input and output levels. Ratio controls are basically just mix knobs and I imagine that Attack and Release controls could be made to work, though maybe not as convincingly.

[martinjuenke]

I tried the TONEX CS, but everything I click on brings me to a "NOT INCLUDED, BUY IT HERE" button.
Embarrassing.
Deinstalled.

[Bombadil]

There's a filter, but it isn,t very obvious. Symbol looks like a funnel. There you can choose 'owned' and 'premium' 'user' tones from Tone Net. I think you can get 20 downloads. I tried it, and immediately bought it.
IK, please make the filters hold their settings. It is annoying getting to what I own every time I open it.

[jamcat]

Just to update on the T-RackS 5 VST3 issue I had in native M1 Studio One earlier, I was able to fix it by deleting Plugins-en.settings from Library > Application Support > PreSonus > Studio One 5 > ARM64

All T-RackS 5.10 plugins are showing up as VST3 now on my Mac as native M1.

[lajosuti]

Well. I am happy, satisfied. I have uninstalled all other guitar plugins since Tonex release (all the nDSP, STL, and 10+ others). I hope they will improve on the usability of the UI, right now I prefer using it inside Amplitube; but anyhow, at this point I don't care. The response, the sound is just that good. This was the best plugin for me in 2022. (I wrote a lot of bad things about syntronik, so you can be sure I am not IK affiliated). I honestly suggest everyone to try it. With most guitar plugins I had an issue, they produced a usable tone only after serious tweaking, and if you just adjusted one tone knob it ruined the whole sound. This is not my experience with my tube amps, and this is also not my experience with Tonex.

[Bombadil]

I am learning not to scoff at IKs releases these days. Tonex patches within A5 for the fx is my new sim standard. It is very good. Especially if you have 50 or so classic amps of your own to sample! Even if you don't, I still haven't tried all 400 patches within Tonex because there are some great captures on Tone.net.
I'm not affiliated with IK, either, and have been quite harsh about some things that they do, but they bought me off well and truly during their yuge group sale last year.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Yeah, TONEX is a killer product. It's basically a software Kemper. Slightly better than a Kemper from some comparison videos I've seen. If I were a gigging musician, the Kemper would still be the better product but I'm not. So between the tube amps I have here and TONEX, I'm really happy. And TONEX doesn't cost me hundreds in annual repair bills like the amps do!

[jamcat]

I’m using TONEX inside AmpliTube as well. The new TONEX stomp slot is nice and I’ve already put it to use. But TONEX cabs within AmpliTube are not nearly as flexible as they are in the TONEX plugin. Hopefully the next thing they add is TONEX to the cab menu to give you the same flexibility to swap TONEX cabs in AmpliTube.

[Arp_]

TONEX is pretty good for clean to crunch zone, but doesn't model high gain tones well. There is a pretty noticeable drop in high frequencies compared to the original amp (especially if you listen through good headphones) and the attack sound gets smudgy and loses its percussiveness. It's a challenge to find a high-gain tone either in factory library or in user tones which will give you that good metal "chug" just from the amp and don't use any extra pedals in the chain.

Also, the UI and preset browser is not very well designed and still has unpleasant bugs. Every now and then it can get stuck in the "Searching for tone models..." state or lose it's connection to ToneNET and only connect again after restart of both the plugin and IK manager.

[Uncle E]

The cool thing is the clean to crunch zone is the area where most other plugins are lacking. For high-gain, get Diezel VH4, it kills:

http://youtu.be/n7V-WplJDkY

[electro]

Hi Gain is what algo plugins do well. See Kazrog Ampcraft 1992. What you don't get ITB are good cleans so I would look to something like ToneX for that. Someone recently said it had a spot on JC120 capture.

TONEX is pretty good for clean to crunch zone, but doesn't model high gain tones well. There is a pretty noticeable drop in high frequencies compared to the original amp (especially if you listen through good headphones) and the attack sound gets smudgy and loses its percussiveness. It's a challenge to find a high-gain tone either in factory library or in user tones which will give you that good metal "chug" just from the amp and don't use any extra pedals in the chain.

[The Noodlist]

After more testing, I pulled the trigger on the Tonex intro offer, I also used 30% Jampoints.

I like the results going through Tonex, PwrCabs into a FMR RNC 1773.
 

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

TONEX is pretty good for clean to crunch zone, but doesn't model high gain tones well. There is a pretty noticeable drop in high frequencies compared to the original amp (especially if you listen through good headphones) and the attack sound gets smudgy and loses its percussiveness. It's a challenge to find a high-gain tone either in factory library or in user tones which will give you that good metal "chug" just from the amp and don't use any extra pedals in the chain.

Are you doing your own captures of your own amps and coming to this conclusion or listening to other people's captures? I'm not a metal player, so I'm really not the person to ask about what constitutes a good "chug" sound, but I've done enough captures to think that what you put in is what you get out. I'll note: I don't think you're entirely off-base entirely. I do hear tiny differences in TONEX captures at times, there can be a tiny loss of bass frequencies and a slight change to the highs at a times (I'd describe it as slightly less open sounding), but those differences I've heard are so incredibly minor that it's almost moot. I've seen YT vids of people doing high gain captures of their amps and it's been the same. If you're not finding a good chug tone, that might be because someone hasn't captured a chug tone your liking versus the technology being deficient.

One thing that's really important to note with TONEX captures, when you're doing the capture, it asks for a REALLY HOT input gain signal. Enough so that you can easily clip the input on the way in (it wants the signal close to 0dbfs). But when you're plugged in and playing captures, you're almost certainly not running your guitar signal anywhere near that hot. If you're like me, you may be 10db lower than the signal TONEX wants during capture. So you have to compensate for this difference by increasing the Gain knob in TONEX (this just increases the input gain hitting the amp in the software realm). I find increasing the Gain knob to on-screen values from 7.4 to 8.2 is about the sweet spot depending on your guitar and input level. If you're not doing that, that may also be what you're hearing because you'd otherwise be under-driving the input signal. In that case, find some captures that were close and increase the gain, and play through them again. Do they suddenly sound better?