I used TH-U from their 1st release. There was something about it that caught my ear. When all the captures started, I paid more attention, and many hours to the ānew thingā. I still kept TH-U in my rig, along with Amplitude, Nembrini, Neural DSP, and many others. STL has taken over some of those, just because I could pull up a decent sound very quickly.
Tonex and Nam changed a lot, and I keep them on tap.
I still make presets for what I use live. I just go for what I need at the time. I made many racks for different sims, but there were so many updates, and the developers were in a continuous war of who can post an update quickest at the time. It became overwhelming.
I just recently noticed the TH-U v2 was out, and havenāt had the time to make an opinion yet. But, I will post my opinion when I go through it.
Is anyone using Tonocracy? Iāve been looking at it and it seems interesting, especially since it uses NAM files; going to test it out when I get some time. From what I gather the CPU load isnāt too bad. Andā¦ itās free!
Tom
I am using everything, HaHa! Iāve not used it enough to really give an opinion, but hope to in the future. It looks good though. I have a ton of captures to try out. Some day soonā¦
Iāve tried it for some time - fundamentally a nice concept. Pretty decent amp models included, plus the ability to capture your own amps and use NAM captures.
The included effects leave a bit to be desired (e.g. no tempo sync for delays), and overall the CPU load is a bit too high for my tastes, especially when using multiple instances in a mix.
After the initial buzz on launch and the announcement of it becoming totally free, things have quieted down quite a bit around Tonocracy - Iām afraid that it may become abandonware, so not betting on it. Especially with atomic amps behind it, who have a bit of a history of abandoning projectsā¦
Update on my amp sim journey: Iāve now pretty much consolidated all my guitar needs on Tonex (the plugin!). So far, it has been rock-solid and snappy, with no issues at all on preset recall or other nasty stuff Iāve encountered on other plugs when using live in Cantabile. The included effects are not overwhelmingly good, but decent enough for live use - and in Cantabile, I can chain other stuff around them when needed. Typically, I use some separate Valhalla reverb/delay after the guitar rack (for seamless switching) and the wonderful Hypertune by PolyChrome DSP for downtuning before the rack.
I have captured some of the sounds of my typical go-to-guitar amps from my previously used favorite plugins in Tonex, so I have everything in one place - makes my life sooo much easier! And capturing plugins is actually quite easy with Tonex, Cantabile and some fancy routing within the RME virtual audio ports to pipe signals between Tonex and Cantabile.
Now I have all my favorite plugin sounds captured within Tonex, combined with the pretty wicked arsenal of free and commercial captures in the Tonex universe - thatās it for me!
And when I succumb to GAS for another nice plugin (latest: the reeeeally nice Bogren Digital BDM bundle - everything Marshall youād want in a nice, easy-to-use great-sounding set), I play with it for a while, then take Tonex captures of my favorite settings and just add them to the arsenal!
Plus: I can take my favorite Tonex sounds on the road directly using the Tonex pedal - also definitely an added bonus!
Hi all,
a quick update on this: IK Multimedia have just released a massive (IMO) update for Tonex: they have encapsulated the āModelingā functionality in a separate app, with some really significant features for those of us who want to do their own capturing:
Batch Functionality
This is THE game-changer for me: you can capture multiple amp settings in a row - without having to do the time-consuming training with every capture right away. Later, you can do all the training in a consolidated queue without supervision - on a slower system, youāll do this overnight.
Add to this the ability to do the capturing and training on separate machines (capture with a laptop in your rehearsal room, then do the training on a more powerful PC with an nVidia card), this makes creating your own captures sooo much more convenient.
Improved Modeling
The whole modeling process has been improved. The reference audio file has been re-worked - itās now a bit shorter (a bit less than 3 minutes) and seems to focus more on dynamic response than the previous one. IK promise that the results are more accurate (compared to the original), plus the latency inherent in the models has been reduced, which gives a more āsnappyā experience.
Also, the speed of the neural training has been significantly improved - on my system, with an up-to-date CPU and an ancient nVidia GPU, a typical āextendedā capture takes 6-7 minutes to train. Pretty fast in my bookā¦
The new version makes capturing plugins a lot more comfortable and efficient: I can create a range of captures with different settings in a relatively short time; then I set the training queue to do its thing and go do something elseā¦ So where I previously capture my favorite 2-3 settings per plugin, I can now capture a whole range of different settings in less time.
If you have Tonex, definitely go and grab the update - and if you donāt have it, itās time to consider it
Not doing any modeling but excellent review/article by @Torsten. I was early on with Tonex in the group and now have 2 guitarists using them. I had the one Tonex that my friend uses for bass and guitar but when the lead player joined we found a deal on another anniversary model and so we all pitched in and got it for him. I got real good with the pedal programming but welcomed the editor in a big way. Our mixes are way better with these boxes and our in ear monitoring and FOH is great sounding. The boxes sit in a mix like a glove and get along with the keys drums and bass just fine. The lead player brags on switching from a Katana to his Tonex light weight pedal board rig all the time now. Better tone, no unwanted feedback and no aching back.
I was early on with Tonex in the group and now have 2 guitarists using them. I had the one Tonex that my friend uses for bass and guitar but when the lead player joined we found a deal on another anniversary model and so we all pitched in and got it for him. I got real good with the pedal programming but welcomed the editor in a big way. Our mixes are way better with these boxes and our in ear monitoring and FOH is great sounding. The boxes sit in a mix like a glove and get along with the keys drums and bass just fine. The lead player brags on switching from a Katana to his Tonex light weight pedal board rig all the time now. Better tone, no unwanted feedback and no aching back. 