I THOUGHT I’D HATE THIS… IK TONEX Completely Surprised Me

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Hi everybody. Hope you're doing marvelously well. I'm here with a rather marvelous Mr. Lorenzo at IK Multimedia in Mona.

[00:00:07]>> Yeah. Welcome Warren. Welcome to the studio.

[00:00:10]>> Thank you. Now, in all the years that I have covered your products and I've been using Oh, wow. I've been using T-Rexes.

[00:00:16]I think 2000. They come out in 2000.

[00:00:19]>> Yeah. Yeah. More or less.

[00:00:20]>> Forever. I have done the iRig. I've done well, you name it. But what I never worked on and never done anything on is tonex. And I'm probably very very late to the party.

[00:00:30]>> Never too late.

[00:00:31]>> Never too late.

[00:00:32]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:32]>> So, what we're going to do is we're going to try out the pedal, but also we're going to talk about the capture.

[00:00:36]>> Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:38]>> Which I think is pretty phenomenal as well. Um I think my ears got perked up recently because of the the new kind of Rush lineup that's going back out on the road. And I watched a video I think on Instagram and YouTube of Rush playing and Alex Lys was playing with Batonics Poker.

[00:00:54]>> Yeah, that's right. We have a full, let me say, collection of his amplifiers on on Ton X on Tonet. So, yeah, he made his stuff, his rig on Ton X.

[00:01:04]>> Fantastic. So, what I want to do is play with the pedal, see what's in it, >> but also do a capture of a guitar sound and you are going to try and see if you can fool me into >> Absolutely. We're going to do the AB blind test and you're going to tell us if you can tell the difference.

[00:01:19]Absolutely. So, it's going to be me and some other product manager from IK guiding you through all the process and all the sounds. So, welcome and let's start.

[00:01:34]>> Feder Rico, how are you?

[00:01:36]>> Are you good?

[00:01:36]>> Nice to meet you.

[00:01:37]>> Good to meet you, too.

[00:01:38]>> Yeah. Yeah. Great. So, can you believe in all this time of doing videos with IK over the years, I've never done a Tonex video. This is the first one ever. And it's a great technology.

[00:01:51]>> Tell me all about it. I I'm I'm going in pretty cold. I mean, obviously I know what it is, but you've got it rigged up here so we can control parameters, etc. Um, and settings from the laptop, as well as obviously manually tableabling through. I mean, why don't you take me through it and show me what it can do?

[00:02:08]>> This is a Tonx pedal, big pedal in our family of Tonx pedals. And, uh, it has a lot of presets. It has basically uh 49 banks uh 50 banks >> and uh with three preset per bank >> and you >> so 150 sounds.

[00:02:27]>> Yes.

[00:02:27]>> Yeah.

[00:02:27]>> You can store uh a lot of sound, a lot of amp uh with our technology uh with our modeling technology and um you can uh use it alone. You can use it with pedals uh in cab FR cab uh with cab with IR. So you can have only the amp with the cab and the loaded in the cab. It's a basically an allaround pedal. You have effects. You have um modulation uh compressor, delay, reverb, no gate.

[00:03:01]Uh and it's a it's a very cool pedal. It take a very well pedal. So you can >> How well do you know it? Meaning throwing you in a deep end. If I if I shout out a sound to you that I want to use, are you going to be able to find it? Maybe. Yes, you can try.

[00:03:17]>> Yeah. Okay. Well, so from a perspective of a producer, obviously, um we do have a lot of guitar players that watch watch this channel, of course, but you know, we're a production channel. So, I see you have a deluxe reverb sitting over there. That is probably, you know, working in LA for a couple of decades, one of the most recorded session guitar amps of all time. Something like a 65 Deluxe Reverb. Can you give me that?

[00:03:42]>> Yes. This is a clean sound with modulation and reverb. We have a chorus and reverb.

[00:03:50]>> So that's a 65 reverb with chorus and verb.

[00:04:00]>> And a bit of drive. So, >> do you have it without the uh without the chorus?

[00:04:14]>> Yes, we can just switch it off.

[00:04:19]We have some light compression post amp.

[00:04:23]>> Okay. Post amp. Okay. So, it would be like if it's recorded.

[00:04:28]>> And we're listening here through two Tonx cabs. Yes, we we are running a stereo system. Uh so basically the modulation, delay and re reverb effects are capable of stereo and uh we can run it through two cups or recording through L and R.

[00:04:45]>> Nice. So my question is you're saying you can use it as an interface.

[00:04:49]>> Yes. So what I love about this is I see you have two pedals on the way in.

[00:04:54]You've got a tube screamer and of course this very inexpensive cheap pedal.

[00:04:59]That's my joke. Obviously, the centaur there, the clone. I know from y olden days of of multi effects pedals that when you put pedals in front of it, it was an absolute raging disaster. They just never worked. You've got both these pedals going into the uh the tonex. So, I'm intrigued to hear that. But first of all, can you bring down the drive on this uh Deluxe? I want to hear what it sounds like a little bit cleaner.

[00:05:26]Split the difference just a little tiny bit more.

[00:05:35]compensate the volume.

[00:05:37]>> Bit more volume. Yeah.

[00:05:42]>> Love it. Yeah, it's pretty convincing.

[00:05:45]Yeah, it's really nice.

[00:05:48]With V2 modeling, it basically sounds like the rear one even in the low range and the high range of volume.

[00:05:58]>> Right. That's fantastic.

[00:06:02]Now I can manually still lift in here and go and adjust this. So this is bass and compressor. How do I switch between the two?

[00:06:09]>> Uh with the alter button on uh the left.

[00:06:21]Love the bite it's put on it. Okay, so that's my first test for you. Do you have a JC120 in there?

[00:06:28]>> JC?

[00:06:28]>> Yeah, a Roland JC120. Okay, good.

[00:06:33]I'm going through my favorite amps >> also with chorus.

[00:06:37]>> Ah, well, of course that's fine. See, that's probably a better test for Yeah, that's great.

[00:07:07]>> Yeah. Lovely. All right. AC30. AC30.

[00:07:17]a drive sound >> with driven drive.

[00:07:22]>> Okay. Can you take off the tremolo just for a second?

[00:07:38]>> Tiny bit more drive, please.

[00:07:40]>> Yes. Basically on every bank of the pedal we have an amp >> and you can choose between various bank we have the first preset the A preset on every bank is a slightly less gainer presets.

[00:07:55]>> Okay.

[00:07:56]>> Uh the B is a more gainer and this is the gear one.

[00:08:00]>> Okay. Uh so basically in this bank which is bank six we have a clean sound of the Vox AC30 right the drive sound which is the one uh you were playing before without the tremolo and one ger on.

[00:08:54]Great.

[00:08:56]>> Yeah, I love it.

[00:08:56]>> I can turn on some delay if you want to.

[00:08:59]>> Sure.

[00:09:00]>> Or a solo This is great. All right, so we've done Deluxe, we've done JC120, we've done AC30, all of which sound absolutely superb. I suppose classic to Marshall JMP.

[00:09:42]Marshall GMP. We have a lead one, a Maru.

[00:09:55]Can I hear about the verb on?

[00:10:10]Yeah.

[00:10:14]My AC/DC.

[00:10:23]It's great. Okay. Okay. So, we've done JMP, we've done JC120, we've style >> Deluxe. Um, why don't you surprise me?

[00:10:34]Give me something that I wouldn't expect.

[00:10:36]>> Something uh heavier. Let's try this.

[00:10:39]>> Okay.

[00:10:39]>> I need a lead sound.

[00:10:52]This is more heat.

[00:11:16]What is that?

[00:11:17]>> 5150.

[00:11:19]>> Oh, yeah. I have one. So, the 5150, what I like about it is that Can you take the delay off it, please?

[00:11:27]>> Maybe the reverb and mix.

[00:11:29]>> Yeah, reverb as well.

[00:11:52]presumably modeled with the original cab as well.

[00:11:56]>> Yes.

[00:11:56]>> Okay. Super old one, but uh this particular auto model is with a Marshall 1960 with vintage 30.

[00:12:04]>> Uh but >> can you put the the the Eddie Van Halen cab on it as well? Uh, right here in the pedal. I'm going to search if I have Yes, this one.

[00:12:50]All right, I'm having too much fun. Too much fun. All I want to do is shred.

[00:12:54]Let's get back to reality and and start playing some chords and melody. Um, so give me something clean, loads of warmth.

[00:13:02]Okay. High what?

[00:13:05]>> Who doesn't love a high one?

[00:13:08]>> Oh, with a phaser on it.

[00:13:43]That's a lot of fun. What phaser is it?

[00:13:46]>> Uh it's the default phaser of Tonx >> which is uh taken from amplitude amplitude effects. And uh in the modulation section we can choose between the phaser which is the classic phaser.

[00:14:00]>> Yeah.

[00:14:00]>> Uh chorus trim flanger and rotary.

[00:14:27]10 points. Anybody that can name that song. It's fantastic having all of this at your fingertips. It's incredible.

[00:14:34]>> We can go to some suo.

[00:14:38]>> Sanos.

[00:15:04]Yeah. Got like a high mid just kind of consistent bite, hasn't it? Yeah.

[00:15:12]Probably really good though.

[00:15:43]All Oh, I love it.

[00:15:43]>> You can do the classic Evalan thing with the phaser. With the orange phaser.

[00:15:48]>> With the orange phaser. Okay.

[00:16:07]Makes you just want to play something simple and repetitive just to hear the phaser working.

[00:16:14]You can also switch between sync uh which you can choose between uh quarter notes or 80 and up the tempo >> or between milliseconds or rate or classic rate parameters >> uh in the modulation and in the delay section.

[00:16:34]>> You can also uh bring the modulation session uh pre amp.

[00:16:39]>> Okay. So you have the classic pedal swamp modulation.

[00:16:44]>> We got classic phaser pedal cuz guitar is not even turned up but you can hear the phaser going >> or pass and you have the stereo image.

[00:17:15]Great. Keep surprising me. This is so much fun.

[00:17:17]>> We can try uh some dumble with >> Oh, the dumble. We were having dumble conversations earlier. Okay.

[00:17:25]>> This is a clean dumble. The black one over there.

[00:17:28]>> Okay.

[00:17:30]So, this is the overdrive special.

[00:17:32]>> Yes.

[00:17:49]Let's drive it. Sing this to the overdrive special. Let's hear what it sounds like driven.

[00:18:08]So David was telling me that he's like the overdrive on this he said it's really good for lead stuff. It sort of follows he said it follows the mid-range of your performance wherever he is. So it's >> So what do you got for me here? What's this?

[00:18:41]>> This is a Fender Twin Reverb.

[00:19:13]We can go big guitar and small amp with the Fender Princeton without the phaser.

[00:19:35]Drive it. Let's see what it sounds like a little bit driven.

[00:19:41]Of course, I immediately want to use the big speed, which will throw the whole thing out of tune, but so Marco, you have been alluding to the fact that several rather The wonderful guitar players like Mr. Alex Livson and of course the great Pat Matheni have been modeling their own amps and taking them on the road. How do we do that?

[00:20:20]Show me how you do that.

[00:20:22]>> Yeah, it all starts here with an amp you you like and you like to model a deluxe reverb.

[00:20:28]>> You can capture it soul and uh it can become a small file that you can use in the software or in the hardware in the tonics pedal like you used before. And uh actually if you have not one amp but a nice collection of amps, you can capture them all and bring them all with you. Basically, you dial a tone that you like. You you you tweak everything and when you're happy, we can move to the studio and actually capture the >> Okay.

[00:20:58]Of course, this already sounds great because it's a deluxe.

[00:21:05]Love it. Absolutely love it. Um, yeah. I usually have the bass a little bit higher. Trouble's about right. Of course, it's about right. I'm just going to push the amp slightly harder. Just So, just a little bite.

[00:21:23]I always want the amp just a little bit because I want to I want pedals to and also when I'm playing I like to be able to play lightly, you know, but then be able to dig in and have it drive.

[00:21:36]>> Nice breakout point.

[00:21:38]>> Yeah, I think rock, not metal guitars, but rock rock players, we never have the amp completely clean. It's always about, you know, just kind of like making it all about how hard you play with your right hand.

[00:21:50]Okay, so I'm going to put this on. See what it does.

[00:21:58]the same thing. I should be able to just Okay, so we got we got a great sound.

[00:22:10]Got a great amp, great sound, great pedal. Okay, so now we're going to move to the studio to the control room. Uh you're going to connect your guitar to the audio interface. Okay, we're going to pass through the Tonx model software and and a reamping chain will come out of that and we we come back here with the cables and go into the the chain that you want to capture. But now it's just uh the tube screamer and a deluxe >> we miked with SM57 and that's the old chain that we're going to capture and we're going to model with Tonx.

[00:22:40]>> Okay, >> so let's move to the >> but you use your own interface whatever you've got.

[00:22:44]>> Oh yes, Tonx was the first um platform commercial platform. available to let you capture uh your amps, your gear with a software and so basically anyone with a common computer, any laptop uh basically interface, they can capture their own amps or collection of amps.

[00:23:03]>> That's great.

[00:23:04]>> Yeah. And then if they're, you know, Pat Lethini or Alex Lson, they can also go through all of their nice gear and all that stuff.

[00:23:11]>> They have nice gear. One would imagine.

[00:23:14]One would hope. All right. Great. So, Marco, what are we going to do? We're going to capture the sound that we just got in the other room.

[00:23:20]>> Exactly. You're going to do it with a Tonx modeler software that allows users to do this.

[00:23:26]>> Uh, and it guides you through the process.

[00:23:28]>> Okay. Guide us through the process.

[00:23:29]>> Yeah. Here I choose what kind of rig we're going to model. So, it's for guitar. It's a complex rig, meaning it's a pedal into a an amp >> with a cabinet. Here we can choose the the audio setup routing input outputs and we got it already set up for you. Here you can strum on your guitar and we're going to set the input level. Now we are hearing the signal coming back through the microphone. As a producer you might tell there's an important choice to be made here which is the mic placement. The mic choice or the mic placement.

[00:24:00]>> Sure.

[00:24:01]>> Uh are you happy with the tone or do we do we need to move the mic?

[00:24:06]>> Can we hear it clean?

[00:24:09]Okay, definitely that's clean. That's the pedal turned off.

[00:24:12]>> Yeah, >> it was too much signal going uh into the amp in the reamp chain.

[00:24:42]Okay, cool. Yeah, I like it. Very playable.

[00:24:45]>> Cool. With the tone, we can move uh move on. Okay, and we're ready to capture.

[00:24:49]>> Okay, >> now the app is going to do its thing, which is sending an input file through the the chain. This is the input file.

[00:24:57]And then we we're going to get an output file and then what's the the neural network is going to compare. So output versus input and uh it's going to create a model >> of the behavior of the of the rig. It's a it's called blackbox modeling.

[00:25:15]>> You want to hear it? Uh I do.

[00:25:19]>> Yeah. This is a specially designed let me say mix of uh sounds going into the amplifier.

[00:25:25]>> Sure. that you know will then be used by the neural network to understand how the amplifier is behaving. You know the feeling, the touch, the compression, the harmonic content just you know to try to mimic it as closely as as I can.

[00:25:47]>> Okay.

[00:25:49]>> And you know while it while it does it thing and let me just jump in what Marco was saying. So basically uh he said uh white box black box this is two terms that we use just just let me say just a little theory just to understand uh IK is very famous for analog modeling let me say with amplitude stuff >> and uh it's basically amplitude is the state-of-the-art of analog modeling but still you know some players will say the feeling is still a bit off we want something more we can tell the So with let me say Tonx as a technology ampwise simulating the amp is designed as an ecosystem first. So the result you get are fully transferable between hardware and uh software and also so you know we have a range of products between the plug so you can jam on the couch or practice and the pedals that you can bring in the practice uh room or on the stage again. So Tonx is designed around this ecosystem concept and also around this blackbox modeling.

[00:27:03]>> Okay. So black box means uh the neural network is just observing what the rig is doing and trying to replicate it again from the output of it. While the traditional analog modeling is white box approach so you know exactly what is inside the amplifier and you try to replicate that with mathematics and you know computer programming to try to emulate that. But that has some limitation in trying to emulate the nonlinearities that this kind of rig has. While the artificial intelligence stuff can really, you know, cover the last mile in uh how basically the armp behaves at different, you know, uh if you pick lightly, if you pick with more strength, you know, that kind of stuff.

[00:27:49]Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:50]>> It really comes down to whether it's got that sort of ability we're talking about to play softly and it to be basically clean and then a crunch and then heavy.

[00:27:58]You know, 99% of the amp captures I played over the years haven't can't quite get that right.

[00:28:04]>> So, >> yeah, absolutely. And you know one important part to say is that all the work done on amplitude and which is you know yes it's a technical and mathematical process but there also a lot of back and forth between engineers some designers product managers and that kind of knowhow built in 30 years of the company was put into how the neural network of tonx is built because you need to give it you know some uh directions let me say to really understand what what do I need to capture there? So all that kind of know how was put into X. It is one of the reasons of how why it sounds uh so great and let me say one of best things is that the file is is compact and we we don't let me say do any reduction in quality to put it on the small pedals.

[00:28:55]The same audio quality is from the desktop to the other door product. So you get like consistency.

[00:29:02]>> All right. Well the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So, let's see how it sounds.

[00:29:07]>> Now, we have uh the model, the Tonx model, and we're going to compare it to the real amp in the other room.

[00:29:13]>> And uh let's see if you can guess which is which.

[00:29:16]>> Okay, you need to uh turn the screen away from me or I have to look the other way.

[00:29:30]Close enough for jazz. I can tell you which one's which.

[00:29:59]I think when I was when I heard the click, it was fooling my brain. But as soon as I uh I I'll play it and stop and just change it without telling me you're changing it.

[00:30:29]What's that?

[00:30:31]That's the tonics. For some reason, my brain thinks that that one has slightly more low end on it. Change every chord sequence, but don't tell me which one you're on, and then I'll ask you again.

[00:30:41]So, I'll go change, but I don't know which one. I don't want to know which one you started on. You know what I mean?

[00:31:00]What was that?

[00:31:01]>> That's the amp.

[00:31:02]>> Then they're identical because I guessed one time the Tone X and one time the amp. So everything's just my brain fooling me.

[00:31:10]>> Mission accomplished.

[00:31:11]>> Yeah. Yeah. Great.

[00:31:13]>> That's amazing.

[00:31:13]>> That's what it does.

[00:31:14]>> Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. God bless it. And what's the average time to to do this, do you think?

[00:31:21]>> It depends on the machine you're on.

[00:31:23]>> Uh with the modern computer like u um the ultimate silicon max like M4, M5, >> uh you can get to around 10 minutes.

[00:31:33]>> And when you're on Windows with an Nvidia um GPU, you can um you can get to down to 5 minutes or even less.

[00:31:41]>> It depends.

[00:31:43]>> Amazing. Absolutely amazing. It's very impressive. And so that's how guys like Pat Matheni and uh Alex Lifson are basically modeling. They're in their studio with their nice mic pres and their beautiful mic collection and everything and getting the sound they want and then modeling it.

[00:31:58]>> Yeah. And they can uh leave their priced amplifiers at home and bring just the tonics on stage and have great sounds everywhere consistent every night. And what's good I suppose not suppose well definitely is if you're a producer two advantages for so for a guitar player guitar player comes in you spend hours getting the great sound sometimes days getting the great sound then you can model it and take it on the road know you're getting the same sound every night that you got on your record number one but from a producer perspective which is so many of people watching it's great because if you spend a day getting an amazing guitar sound now you can store it and the next time somebody comes in and go hear this. See what you think.

[00:32:39]>> Yeah.

[00:32:40]>> Yeah. They become basically immortal.

[00:32:42]And you can share them also with model >> immortal guitar sound >> with with friends with other users on the on the tonet platform where you can find uh all the like 50,000 to models shared by users and many many collections created by by us by AK by our partners like Alex Lson Joseani and many other like brands also Mesabooi angle and uh we also have to partners like professional guitar tone own makers and uh we have like 40 uh on our platform and they're selling on their own shop.

[00:33:19]>> Wow.

[00:33:19]>> So that's what you can find in X and in the Tonet platform which goes on next.

[00:33:25]>> Great work. Thank you very much.

[00:33:28]>> Thanks for coming.

[00:33:29]>> Thank you.

[00:33:30]>> So we'll put a link down below to all of this. This has been a lot of fun. Like I say, I I've tried so much of your stuff over the years. Interfaces, speakers, plugins. Of course, I've been using T-Rex since I think since it came out, so 26 years ago. Um, but this is the first time I've tried Tonax. Very impressive.

[00:33:48]>> Yeah, good to know. Thank you. Thank you. So long. Farewell or adios. Ciao.

[00:33:54]Ciao. Goodbye.