Atomic Tonocracy (Inc NAM support)

You guys really know your shit. Are any of you full-time recording engineers, or you just spent a lot of time on this? I've done everything music-related part-time in my life for MANY years, including having a studio, live sound business, and being a weekend barband guitarist, but man you guys are either awfully intelligent , or this has to be your career! Take that as what you will, but I live in a small State and have MANY guitarist friends, but I only know 2 guys that could probably understand your stuff! I'm ruling out 1 of my friends who even has a full-time studio as it'd be over his head!
I can't speak for the others, but I'm just a hobby guitarist with an above-average guitar gear collection. The technical audio knowledge I have gathered over the last decade comes from books, internet articles as well as forum posts and youtube videos. Not very sophisticated but it's enough to know a thing or two about subjects that really interest you. If you put me up against a real mix engineer and studio professional, my lack of knowledge would become fairly obvious, though :D

BTW: I've uploaded the latest NAM Preamp capture set of my Synergy BE DLX module to tonehunt:


I'll start with the last Vai Tonocracy captures in about an hour+ or so, the serveres will probably get clogged up for a bit :D
 
Last edited:
Yea when I tried out the Tonacracy software and realized it took all of 10 minutes to prove it was going to replace ToneX for me
I don't think I'm quite there yet.

The effects in Amplitube 5 are quite a lot better than what we get in Tonocracy. Broader choice too. for me even though the NAM loading and ToneSnap captures sound closer than ToneX does, ToneX is close enough for me to get on with, and since I can load those up into AT5 and then build nice sounding rigs.... I'm just not there with Tonocracy. It is cool though.
 
I don't think I'm quite there yet.

The effects in Amplitube 5 are quite a lot better than what we get in Tonocracy. Broader choice too. for me even though the NAM loading and ToneSnap captures sound closer than ToneX does, ToneX is close enough for me to get on with, and since I can load those up into AT5 and then build nice sounding rigs.... I'm just not there with Tonocracy. It is cool though.
I agree the effects are better in Amplitube 5 and it is the reason I bought into TONEX right away. It was my foolish belief I could load a TONEX/Amplitube preset into the TONEX pedal. Because of course that was the obvious choice for IK to make…And then, after buying Max A5 and TONEX and the TONEX pedal I found out they wouldn’t allow that,
Instead they had numerous effects pedals for sale to put beside the TONEX I looked at the FM9 sitting there as it was laughing at me and realized my super versatile, super portable solution wasn’t there after all.

Fortunately Kemper came to the rescue with the Player and now my FM9 is giving me side eye like an ex girlfriend every time I come in the room.
 
I have a big problem with IK Multimedia's business model. I've written them twice about their upgrade policies and got polite, but BS replies about why I should pay as much as everyone else ($199USD) even though I already have licenses for over half the products included in the upgrade. I have purchased a bunch of their stuff and at one time considered myself a loyal customer. Then reality set in, and I realized that customer loyalty with this company is not a thing. I'm just a piggy bank to them, to shake, squeeze and break. Plus their perpetual "Sales" are manipulative, rather than offering the occasional value. Izotope is the same. Bastards . . .

paying no money GIF by Noam Sussman


Sorry for the thread derail . . .
 
I have a big problem with IK Multimedia's business model. I've written them twice about their upgrade policies and got polite, but BS replies about why I should pay as much as everyone else ($199USD) even though I already have licenses for over half the products included in the upgrade. I have purchased a bunch of their stuff and at one time considered myself a loyal customer. Then reality set in, and I realized that customer loyalty with this company is not a thing. I'm just a piggy bank to them, to shake, squeeze and break. Plus their perpetual "Sales" are manipulative, rather than offering the occasional value. Izotope is the same. Bastards . . .

paying no money GIF by Noam Sussman


Sorry for the thread derail . . .
Aye, I've whinged about this before too. It is why I haven't bought anything else from them.

I do like their products in general, but I'm not making a habit of giving them money.
 
I really like Tonocracy, it's one of the most realistic feeling plugins. AIDA-X is also going to be good as re that--the feel. I like ones that feel like I am playing a real amp.
 
2203 sounds good, nicely done. On par with the EVH 5150 models which were excellent too.

Still hoping the same care and attention go into aspects of the UI. I had another look at the tuner today and it just sums up the imbalance between the quality of sound (excellent) and attention to detail elsewhere (room to improve). The amp sims alone are worth so much more than being freebies but the presentation doesn't give a sense of value.

I hope whatever HW is on the way gets a tuner made with more enthusiasm than this:

Screen Recording 2024-02-27 at 14.47.20.gif


Here is a free tuner that is very good:

 
Last edited:
Tonocracy has been incredible for my work. But for some reason it's glitching like crazy. Regardless if it's at 44100 or 48k. Can't buffer below 96 or it just isn't usuable. And at 96 it's really not(for real time playing/tracking). Standalone or plugin...same result. Any suggestion? Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen and Reaper. No issue with any other software.
 
Tonocracy has been incredible for my work. But for some reason it's glitching like crazy. Regardless if it's at 44100 or 48k. Can't buffer below 96 or it just isn't usuable. And at 96 it's really not(for real time playing/tracking). Standalone or plugin...same result. Any suggestion? Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen and Reaper. No issue with any other software.
I was just installing and checking all my pluggins on a new laptop and was getting weird stuff cutting out etc with Tonocracy so I switched from my 'laptop/iPad' interface (Apogee Jam+) to my MOTU Ultralite Mk5 and had no issues. So I'm guessing its the drivers for the interface
 
I was just installing and checking all my pluggins on a new laptop and was getting weird stuff cutting out etc with Tonocracy so I switched from my 'laptop/iPad' interface (Apogee Jam+) to my MOTU Ultralite Mk5 and had no issues. So I'm guessing its the drivers for the interface
Gotcha. I am running it on my laptop. Shows Tonocracy is using 20%cpu and 10% memory. And just updated drivers on the Focusrite. It just doesn't seem to like something w the laptop. Can't complain since it's free. Heh
*edit*
If I run one of my presets "bare bones" with just amp/cab there's no problem. If I throw a pedal and fx in the chain...glitches.
Easy workaround for tracking. Keep it simple.
 
Last edited:
Gotcha. I am running it on my laptop. Shows Tonocracy is using 20%cpu and 10% memory. And just updated drivers on the Focusrite. It just doesn't seem to like something w the laptop. Can't complain since it's free. Heh
*edit*
If I run one of my presets "bare bones" with just amp/cab there's no problem. If I throw a pedal and fx in the chain...glitches.

Easy workaround for tracking. Keep it simple.

I have a 2012 Macbookpro laptop which is the only place I've used Tonocracy for the past 3 months. It's worked 100% perfectly using 128 samples with 48,000 hz as the settings. I have an Audient ID4 interface. The Mac does have an SSD, and 16gb ram and an I7 quad-core 2.3 ghz processor. I'm going to upgrade someday, but pretty much none of my Audio Software progams has as much of a hiccup running at the 128 rate, and no perceivable latency at all. When I first installed it I tried the 32, 64 samples etc and it had some bleeps, but 0 at 128
 
Similar to Ericb, most of my Mac's I run on 128 samples.
  • 2015 MBP, i7 16GB RAM,
  • 2015 MB AIR 8GB RAM i7 CPU - I don't use this often, but it runs fine at 128 samples.
  • 2017 iMac with 64 GB RAM - If I have my browser (with 150+ tabs open) closed I can run at 32 - 64 pretty well, but 128 samples is always the safe bet and I notice zero latency.
Helix is my interface. It's been solid but, it definitely doesn't have the best latency numbers like some other interfaces. - it works fine for me.
 
with new base model MacBooks getting relatively inexpensive, its a good buy. I find the base model M2 MacBook Air runs Tonocracy at 32 Samples and 48K with no glitches. 12-15% CPU and 68% RAM used total with a few other things running as well, like Safari, notes, Transcribe. 8gb RAM 256GB SSD.

It does glitch at 16 samples. But not Tonex or A5, those run but I run everything at 32 now. I had to run at 256 on my old 2014 MBA.
 
I see a lot of comments on CPU usage. Do you think I could run 1 or 2 instances of Tonacracy on an old i7 2600k desktop? I’ve got access to a MBP, but still primary use the acient desktop for music.
 
I see a lot of comments on CPU usage. Do you think I could run 1 or 2 instances of Tonacracy on an old i7 2600k desktop? I’ve got access to a MBP, but still primary use the acient desktop for music.
No idea; can't hurt giving it a try
 
with new base model MacBooks getting relatively inexpensive, its a good buy. I find the base model M2 MacBook Air runs Tonocracy at 32 Samples and 48K with no glitches. 12-15% CPU and 68% RAM used total with a few other things running as well, like Safari, notes, Transcribe. 8gb RAM 256GB SSD.

It does glitch at 16 samples. But not Tonex or A5, those run but I run everything at 32 now. I had to run at 256 on my old 2014 MBA.
True, but I wouldn't spec a DAW system without a minimum of 16GB RAM, that's absolute minimum these days.

Even more so, with Apple's decision to make all new Macs with Soldered RAM and CPU - No end user upgrades and their RAM upgrade prices are very overpriced.
 
Back
Top