I hear the metronome, the audience doesn't

[troggg]

The sound of a click -- and there are quite a few of them to choose from today that aren't all that robotic -- doesn't bother me at all. I'm glad clicks exist because I interact remotely with players from all over the world, many of them studio pros who would never think of not using a click even though their timing is much better than mine.

The feel of a click remains to be seen

The Pederson device seems pretty bulky and ungainly and doesn't seem to include a tuner which is unexpected from them.

I generally don't like wearing rings or watches when I'm playing ... so who knows how I'd get on with the watch device. Though it seems like it might be an intriguing talking point, "what is that flashing watch thing you're using?"

[troggg]

Regarding my secondary question about the higher end acoustic amps, it turns out the Acus does include presets. There's "only" 8 ... though you'd think that's still plenty for a guy and a guitar and/or a guest.

Anyone familiar with Acus? Cause to my ears what I hear demonstrated on YouTube sounds at least as good as what I hear coming from the ToneDexter videos ... plus you just happen to get an amp and speaker with it. What am I missing?

If the answer is money, let's talk about for example the used Acus 6T asking $499 on reverb vs ToneDexter at $399.

I guess I'm talking about sonically, what sounds better, as opposed to the convenience of using a pedal vs. lugging an amp around even if the amp isn't all that heavy to lug around.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of the ToneDexter or its inspiring startup saga, just mentioning what one guy happens to hear.

[lschwart]

Originally Posted by troggg

Regarding my secondary question about the higher end acoustic amps, it turns out the Acus does include presets. There's "only" 8 ... though you'd think that's still plenty for a guy and a guitar and/or a guest.

Anyone familiar with Acus? Cause to my ears what I hear demonstrated on YouTube sounds at least as good as what I hear coming from the ToneDexter videos ... plus you just happen to get an amp and speaker with it. What am I missing?

If the answer is money, let's talk about for example the used Acus 6T asking $499 on reverb vs ToneDexter at $399.

I guess I'm talking about sonically, what sounds better, as opposed to the convenience of using a pedal vs. lugging an amp around even if the amp isn't all that heavy to lug around.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of the ToneDexter or its inspiring startup saga, just mentioning what one guy happens to hear.

I'm not sure I understand the comparison you're making here. The Acus 6T is a combo amp and the ToneDexter is a unit that digitally processes the signal from a pickup to match a recorded sample of the guitar playing acoustically. What do the two have to do with each other (besides the fact that you can use one to process the signal you send to the other)?

Louis

[troggg]

Originally Posted by lschwart

I'm not sure I understand the comparison you're making here. The Acus 6T is a combo amp and the ToneDexter is a unit that digitally processes the signal from a pickup to match a recorded sample of the guitar playing acoustically. What do the two have to do with each other (besides the fact that you can use one to process the signal you send to the other)?

Louis

Hi Louis, the point I'm trying to make is that it would appear that Acus and other acoustic amps seem to perform the same task as the ToneDexter as far as taking the quack out of acoustic pickups and enhancing their raw sound.

At this point, I'm looking for gear that will provide me the best sound, whether it comes from an amp, a pedal, or both.

Not to pick on the ToneDexter, but from the hype on this forum, you'd almost think no other devices have been around which minimize quack from piezo pickups. I certainly concede that the concept of training a mic is original. That doesn't mean the end result is necessarily superior to what was already out there or other contenders like Acus entering the market.

Even mid-price acoustic amps from Boss, Fishman, etc seem to remove quack as do pedals like TC Helicon.

So, as I investigate all possibilities, what I'm saying is that to my ears the most compelling acoustic sounds I've heard on youtube are the Acus amp demos.

However, I think I was wrong about the Acus having user-defined presets. It appears there are 3 built in presets, but you can't really save your own settings. That is a drawback but I am still attracted to basic sound.

[sdelsolray]

A problem with performing with a metronome is that you sound like you are playing with a metronome, i.e., robotic and metronomic. There is no place for the music to breathe, such as using rubato at cadences or section endings.

Practicing with a metronome is quite different. It teaches how to maintain a tempo which can easily be applied to performance.

[lschwart]

Originally Posted by troggg

Hi Louis, the point I'm trying to make is that it would appear that Acus and other acoustic amps seem to perform the same task as the ToneDexter as far as taking the quack out of acoustic pickups and enhancing their raw sound.

At this point, I'm looking for gear that will provide me the best sound, whether it comes from an amp, a pedal, or both.

Not to pick on the ToneDexter, but from the hype on this forum, you'd almost think no other devices have been around which minimize quack from piezo pickups. I certainly concede that the concept of training a mic is original. That doesn't mean the end result is necessarily superior to what was already out there or other contenders like Acus entering the market.

Even mid-price acoustic amps from Boss, Fishman, etc seem to remove quack as do pedals like TC Helicon.

So, as I investigate all possibilities, what I'm saying is that to my ears the most compelling acoustic sounds I've heard on youtube are the Acus amp demos.

However, I think I was wrong about the Acus having user-defined presets. It appears there are 3 built in presets, but you can't really save your own settings. That is a drawback but I am still attracted to basic sound.

I think you've misunderstood the mechanisms at play here. The standard ways for trying to make certain pickups sound more "natural" (that is more like the way an acoustic sounds unamplified) have been around a long time. They are EQ and various combinations of processes and effects--digital modeling, certain kinds of compression, even just a little reverb. Various combinations of these have been available on amps and preamp/DI units designed for acoustic guitar players for years.

All the Acus 6t has in that way, as far as I can tell, is a standard 3 band EQ and reverb. The fact that the demos on Youtube don't sound "quacky" to you does not really indicate that any guitar with any pickup plugged into that amp is going to sound as nice as the demos (there are a lot of reasons for that, starting with what sort of pickup is actually being used). The amp has a reputation for accurate sound, but that just means that it will faithfully reproduce whatever you send it, and if that signal has quack or some other unpleasant artifacts and the EQ controls on the amp cannot be set for the frequencies at which those artifacts are occurring, the amp will just make the sound you send it louder, quack and all.

Something like the ToneDexter and the other products out there that offer one kind or another of digital modeling do more than just adjust the sound frequencies to achieve a more pleasant or acoustic-like sound. They actually mix a digital model of a mic'd acoustic in with the pickup sound, one triggered by the pickup sound itself (in the case of the ToneDexter, the digital model entirely replaces the pickup's original sound).

The Acus would be a terrific tool for amplifying the sound of a ToneDexterized pickup signal for small gigs or stage monitoring, and I'm sure that it's a nice amp for amplifying any pickup signal that sounds good to a given player or that responds well to light EQ and maybe a little reverb (in a case like that, the player wouldn't need a ToneDexter--or anything else for that matter), but it is simply not something you can compare to the ToneDexter itself. They're just very different sorts of tools--compatible, but not really comparable.

Louis

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by sdelsolray

A problem with performing with a metronome is that you sound like you are playing with a metronome, i.e., robotic and metronomic. There is no place for the music to breathe, such as using rubato at cadences or section endings.

Practicing with a metronome is quite different. It teaches how to maintain a tempo which can easily be applied to performance.

My thoughts also, in the studio or in practice is one thing. In a live performance it is something I have honestly never even considered

[Tele1111]

In addition to what sdelsolray and kevwind have said, I would respectfully say that your belief that you need to perform with a metronome is indicitave of something else. Misplaced insecurity perhaps. I have no way of knowing.
But as it has been said, no one performs with a metronome, for good reason.

Mark

[troggg]

I think several of you would be surprised who performs with a metronome. While I imagine it's rare or nonexistent in the bluegrass world or the classical world, there are no end of pop groups that wear in ear or over ear monitors and you can bet there's a time reference in there.

I freely admit I'm insecure about my timing. It's not any problem to play in time with other players who have better timing than me. But there is no reason for me to feel secure about my own timing cause it's pretty good for a normal person, but nowhere the accuracy I've seen from pros. And I have improved my sense of timing considerably. It's just never going to be my strong suit.

Regarding sounding somehow like an automaton cause I'm thinking of playing to a click ... well perhaps several of you rarely if ever set foot in studios because almost all of the time you're going to be playing to a click. There are untold number of songs you love that were recorded to a click.

Additionally, there are adjustable clicks which change tempo if you program them to do so ... which doesn't intimidate me at all.

I'd go one step further and say that for certain types of music, being exactly on time makes the songs more compelling, as in dance music.

If I were playing classical or jazz, ok, a metronome probably really isn't a friend in those genres.

Back to the ToneDexter and what it does to eliminate quack. No one mentioned the quality of the HiZ (line) input as in budget devices often have ohms of less that 1M which seems to be the sweet spot for starting to negate quacky sounds. My Mackie Onyx Blackbird has the 1m Ohm inputs; my Neve Portico has 3M Ohms. The quality of these inputs definitely has a say in the sound.

I wouldn't presuppose to say all the ToneDexter fans are somehow "wrong." Just saying that the Peter Frampton demo on the company site to me is a triumph of songwriting, arangement and performance combined with an incredibly friendly audience, not so much a triumph of glorious acoustic guitar tone. There are all sorts of devices that could have been in the chain and that crowd still would have gone nuts.

[lschwart]

Originally Posted by troggg

Back to the ToneDexter and what it does to eliminate quack. No one mentioned the quality of the HiZ (line) input as in budget devices often have ohms of less that 1M which seems to be the sweet spot for starting to negate quacky sounds. My Mackie Onyx Blackbird has the 1m Ohm inputs; my Neve Portico has 3M Ohms. The quality of these inputs definitely has a say in the sound.

I wouldn't presuppose to say all the ToneDexter fans are somehow "wrong." Just saying that the Peter Frampton demo on the company site to me is a triumph of songwriting, arangement and performance combined with an incredibly friendly audience, not so much a triumph of glorious acoustic guitar tone. There are all sorts of devices that could have been in the chain and that crowd still would have gone nuts.

I agree that the ToneDexter is not the primary reason for the nice audience response in that video, and it's difficult to tell from a video like that just how much the unit improved upon the original pickup sound in that guitar.

My point wasn't to defend the ToneDexter, although from much more telling demos I've seen and heard, it seems to be a terrific unit and one I might invest in in the future. My point was that the Acus 6T is not designed to alter the character of a pickup signal, just to amplify it with reasonable accuracy, and with some modest EQ controls and a little (or a lot of) reverb to tailor it to a space, a mix, a style, or to modify, in a fairly limited way, the frequency balance of the signal itself. It's not designed to "remove quack."

A unit like the ToneDexter (and others like it), however, is designed to affect the signal in a far more radical way, which any given performer or audience member may or may not prefer, but which will pretty strikingly change what comes out of a pickup. It removes "quack" because that's an artifact of the way some pickups work, and the ToneDexter replaces the sound of the pickup with something that sounds like what a mic "hears" coming off of the guitar when it's played acoustically--and acoustic guitars on their own don't "quack."

Also: you're mischaracterizing the role of impedance and which units have the right input impedance and which ones don't. It's not a matter of cheap vs. expensive. There are plenty of cheap units with 1M or 10M etc. input impedance, and my Genz Benz ProLT, which is a fairly "high-end" acoustic amp as these things go, has only 220k, which is low for a passive piezo signal. You just want to make sure that you're going into the right impedance for the signal you're using--or use a buffer (as I do when I run a passive K&K mini into the Pro LT). And, as I understand it, "quack" is not an artifact of mismatched impedance, anyway, although it no doubt sounds worse--along with the rest of the signal--if the input impedance is too low.

Louis

[troggg]

Originally Posted by lschwart

My point was that the Acus 6T is not designed to alter the character of a pickup signal, just to amplify it with reasonable accuracy, and with some modest EQ controls and a little (or a lot of) reverb to tailor it to a space, a mix, a style, or to modify, in a fairly limited way, the frequency balance of the signal itself. It's not designed to "remove quack."

A unit like the ToneDexter (and others like it), however, is designed to affect the signal in a far more radical way, which any given performer or audience member may or may not prefer, but which will pretty strikingly change what comes out of a pickup. It removes "quack" because that's an artifact of the way some pickups work, and the ToneDexter replaces the sound of the pickup with something that sounds like what a mic "hears" coming off of the guitar when it's played acoustically--and acoustic guitars on their own don't "quack."

Also: you're mischaracterizing the role of impedance and which units have the right input impedance and which ones don't. It's not a matter of cheap vs. expensive. There are plenty of cheap units with 1M or 10M etc. input impedance, and my Genz Benz ProLT, which is a fairly "high-end" acoustic amp as these things go, has only 220k, which is low for a passive piezo signal. You just want to make sure that you're going into the right impedance for the signal you're using--or use a buffer (as I do when I run a passive K&K mini into the Pro LT). And, as I understand it, "quack" is not an artifact of mismatched impedance, anyway, although it no doubt sounds worse--along with the rest of the signal--if the input impedance is too low.

Louis

It is true that I don't quite understand enough about Ohms to speak authoritatively about them ... and you are right that cheap vs expensive is not the point ... but I do know that more Ohms are generally better for line signals and that impedance is important to the overall equation as you point out as well.

Once again, I will not argue that the theory behind ToneDexter is creative and inspired. But I will argue that I don't care how many people are gushing about the pedal, the video demos the company provides don't convince me that the theory is borne out in practice. And I don't need the company owner to tell me in the second sentence of the video that his invention sounds great; that is a given and can I please form my own opinion?

While it is also true that nowhere in the Acus hype does the company claim its amps "remove quack," the fact remains that there is no quack to be heard in that company's demos ... and it does not appear that other devices are altering the sound by removing piezo quack. That is why I brought up the point about Ohms ... albeit I'm not enough of an engineer to speak particularly intelligently about what the Acus inputs have going on in that area. There is just something flattering and a sense of rhythm going on with the entire Acus line and it's not just the reverb (which does seem quite nice sounding, but that's not the main appeal). Either that or the company just does better demos according to me than ToneDexter.

I do appreciate all the input I've received in this thread although I may not agree with all of it. I'd rather not get into debating the pros and cons of using a metronome source live ... how to do it should I decide to do it is what I'm researching.

[mattbn73]

Click tracks are just a thing now. I lead a band at my church, and at 46, I'm basically a dinosaur for not using them with our band. Most guys I know, my age and younger, use them with their bands. Most people who are using them, are doing things like integrating strings or horns etc. Some just like to lock in and tighten up teenage drummers or bass players I guess, but it's not necessarily a crutch, at least not the way people think of it now. I'm not necessarily there yet myself, but whatever.

"Click track" would probably be more specifically the topic, as opposed to metronome - for web searches and finding discussions pertinent. Making them is kind of its own thing. Not necessarily constant tempos or anything either. Pros use them in a lot of situations to really sync up rubato sounding sections and tempo changes/transitions, to keep everyone in sync etc. A cappella groups etc. get a lot more "information" about pitches etc. from their sophisticated click tracks.

[mattbn73]

By the way, if you're curious or interested, people record the in-ear monitor mixes of bigger groups. Some of these are pretty interesting to listen to. Different mix for each member of the band. You can find them on the web. Search "iem mix" on YouTube.

[Mischief]

Click tracks are indeed used by many. Sometimes just the drummer gets it and then the drums or partial drum mix into the other IEM, other times other band members may choose to have the click reference too. This is not just for recording but playing huge concerts and lots of venues inbetween.

It's a skill. One can learn to reference the track and stray where they want, then coming back to the reference and locking back in. You need not sound like a robot, if you do you need to keep practicing with a click or metronome until the click centers the timing and you are free to move around it where you wish. Like anything it's a tool and sometimes it's not needed other times it's just what I you want.

There are a few simple ways to do it but I would say it's best to pick a way that integrates it into your system. Remember every song has a different time signature so how do you deal with that on stage? You don't want a bunch of things you have to sort before you play your song. So if your using a tablet or other things in your show pick a system that works all together.


As far as the Tone Dexter goes. I believe it's a convolution process.

Basically it is using the sound you give it and it is applying tens of thousands of eq adjustments points by using the modeling recordings you provide as references to calculate the adjustments.

I could be wrong but I do not think it replaces the sound like other units in the past have. Instead it's like the hugest eq ever that is adjusted to match the recording you give it. The magic is in how to make all those adjustments correctly.

Convolution is a very cool process. Seek out Cuki for some in depth info. He has a few threads about it and has done convolution modeling himself. If memory serves me his used something like 70 thousand eq points.

Like I said I'm not a 100% sure on all the details how the Tonedexter works but to my knowledge it does use the convolution process similar to what Cuki was doing.

[troggg]

I have no doubt that using a ToneDexter vs. using a straight piezo (or K&K like electronics) signal results in superior sonics. My problem is that the company acts like no one else has figured out ways to achieve "less quacky" signals before. And that the real contest is not ToneDexter vs. nothing but ToneDexter vs the rest of the world including Baggs, Fishman, AER, Acus and so on down the line.

True I am using youtube as a reference as opposed to hearing various devices in person. But the fact of the matter is some minds have figured out how to sound pretty good on youtube ... so it's not impossible by any means. And if your company can't figure out how to sound as least as good as competitors on youtube, why should I believe it definitely sounds better in real life?

Once again, I'm not stuck up enough to state that people who love ToneDexters are "wrong" or that their ears aren't as good as mine. Just saying I hear stuff that sounds as good or better even if its not quite as au courant as ToneDexter.

I'm still staying out of the pros and cons of using clicks and metronomes I will hazard a guess however that most people weighing in heavily against using them have excellent timing themselves.