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XTONE Pro / Tone Shifter Mega
Anybody here familiar with the XSonic Xtone Pro or the MeloAudio Tone Shifter Mega? The specs are great and they are similar in price, but not much info available regarding durability, warranty, latency etc... seems like a neat concept to have an audio interface that’s also a midi foot controller, or is it actually a dumb idea to be stomping on your audio interface? Are there better devices of this type, and is it better just to get a separate midi foot controller?
Side note: Drambo and MiRack are giving me nightmares and my wife and son have lost me to the basement.
Currently using an Apogee Jam Plus with iPad Pro and my guitar, bass, and dynamic mic, sounds pristine, zero latency, and the headphone jack on the Jam+ solves iPad no audio jack issue. As a one man band the lone channel input on the Jam+ is fine by me and I have an old Fatar SR1-TB49 keyboard connected midi to usb hub via Mio cable, also monitored by the Jam+. Anyway the point is I need a good Midi foot controller for DAW control and switching guitar plugins, so considering replacing the Jam+ with the xtone pro or tone shifter mega. Really appealing in a performance setting that both have XLR outs, L/R outs, and headphone jacks, phantom power, 2 inputs and midi in/out in addition to stomp switches. Xtone only does CC but tone shifter does PC/CC and has two expression pedal ins to Xtone’s one. I could have the jam, midi keyboard, and foot controller all overloading one usb hub, or streamline it all with one of these bad boys. Anyone know about these units regarding sound quality, latency, durability, warranty... thanks in advance to anyone who cares to chime in. Rock on!
Comments
I've been using the smaller Xtone Stomp since the beginning of the year. My original unit had an issue but they replaced it with a new one right away. Since then, it's been totally reliable. I use a different interface (MOTU M4) when recording with mics or line level sources. A few observations about the Xtone:
If what it does suits your application, I'd recommend it highly. If you have any other questions, I'll try to answer them.
I have the Xtone Pro and an iPhone 11 Pro and the lightning cable provides enough power to the Xtone with no other power source. It does come with a dongle to connect another lightning cable to keep your phone/ipad from losing charge
I have the Pro and love it! I use it on PC and IOS! I use a CCK with the IPad and it powers on its own with the Laptop!
Here a happy user of the Melo Audio ToneShifter Mega. Using it live in combination with my oldish iPad Air for ambient guitar and I can’t complain about latency at all. Also the preamp and a/d are surprisingly good. In the Studio I only use it as a midi stomp box.
It’s a very solid construction and super handy to have 8 midi switches + 2 expression pedal connectors combined with a very good sounding audio interface.
It only sometimes has a little display freeze problem which isn’t a dealbreaker for me as it’s only happening every once in a while and I don’t really need to look at the display all the time.
Hopefully it will be fixed sometime in the future with a firmware update. But again not a big deal and maybe not every device is affected.
WOW, I like the details.... New to me. looks sweet.
Nice, I’ve never seen those before. What’s the price range?
$250 for Xtone Pro and $285 for the Tone Shifter Mega, which to me seems like just a good enough deal for 2 input audio interface midi foot combo. Main differences between the two are Tone Shifter has 2 expression pedal inputs instead of 1, Tone Shifter has 8 midi footswitches instead of 6, and Tone Shifter does PC/CC Midi instead of just CC. But it’s possible Tone Shifter has more limitation with simultaneous use of XLR out and L/R monitor out, it’s not quite clear. Tone Shifter has some knobs on top that mute and do other things, Xtone Pro has a grounding switch. They’re really similar but have some distinct differences. Aesthetically I’m into the Xtone Pro and it’s possible it’s more compatible with iOS, again not sure. I’m mostly concerned with the fact they’re unproven companies and what happens after amazon 30 day return period ends. But I think the price is just right, perhaps at least $50 under what you’d pay for a separate interface and midi foot, all specs considered...
Below some good demo reviews of each, both seem perfect for a guitar/midi foot centric 2 channel interface with phantom power, but is it a good idea to have your interface on the floor and stomp on it?
@Schmotown Yeah you are all set with an Xtone and Motu M4! I do have a question: have you tried the Xtone XLR out into the Motu M4? Is that a recommended method? What I’m thinking is that I have an iPhone and iPad. So can I set up my guitar rig with TH-U and Nembrini on the iPhone with an XTone and then XLR out into a Motu in? Because that would solve the iOS single interface at a time problem. I ordered an Xtone pro last week but already thinking ahead. My other thought was getting the Motu M4 plus a midi foot controller...
Is there any advantage to bringing the already processed and dialed in guitar tone from xtone that can be midi controlled, into a Motu input?
@JoyceRoadStudios We have to stop meeting like this... I wouldn’t use two interfaces in series like that but I’m not sure I understand. What are you trying to accomplish that can’t be done with a single interface?
I hadn’t thought this through. I was just curious about this because you mentioned you use the M4 to record mics or line level sources, but the xtone is also an interface, so what can the M4 do for you that the Xtone can’t? An extra xlr with phantom?
What I wanted was an audio interface and a midi foot controller, not necessarily as a combo. My apogee jam plus, while having great audio quality, is really limiting me (single channel input without phantom, minimum input gain not low enough, no outs besides headphone Jack, overdrive mode that’s useless to me, etc..). It seems like if you wanted footswitches with your M4 you’d need to plug in a midi foot pedal either into the midi in/out or into a multi usb hub. Couldn’t you use just the midi portion of the xtone in series with another interface?
Let’s say you’re in the studio and you have a guitar amp and pedal board and the whole set up sound is coming out of a cabinet. That sound is then captured with a mic and fed into the DAW via interface. So what about treating the xtone as that guitar sound and feeding it to the interface?
I suppose you could feed Xtone’s simultaneous guitar, mic, and midi keyboard into one Motu input, but yes that’s really convoluted...
Yeah. That's pretty convoluted. Not only unnecessarily redundant, but you'd be running the signal through three conversions instead of just one (Xtone A to D --> Xtone D to A --> MOTU A to D) which would affect the fidelity, no matter what cable you use.
Either of these interfaces will get the job done. If MIDI switching is important, you could easily add a foot controller to a MOTU rig, although I'm not sure why you need this unless you're playing live.
Here's why I own both. My main recording space is upstairs in a spare office/bedroom. The M4 is stationed up there with a set of nearfield monitors and a half dozen mics, stands, tube guitar amp, etc. Pre-pandemic, I sometimes recorded other people so having at least two mic inputs was important. (If you're interested, I produced this song in the office last year.)
The Xtone is usually downstairs at one end of the kitchen counter along with a guitar, an iPad, and a set of in ear monitors. That's where I practice and play most often. I also take the Xtone outside every week for "distanced" band rehearsals on the driveway. The M4 would work for that but the Xtone seems built to handle more abuse.
So I have two interfaces mostly because it's more convenient than unplugging and moving one around. In your situation, one should do just fine.
Yes, there’s no point to this. What you could do in theory though is send a dual mic signal (2 dynamics or dynamic and condenser) from xtone pro into another interface. I realize xtone has 1 input but pro has an extra xlr input and midi in/out, so up to 3 simultaneous tracks in theory. Regardless, one interface with 2-in is enough for me.
Well, two reasons specifically. For recording I want to be able to use the footswitches to start/stop, rewind, punch in, etc... it can be annoying holding the guitar and finger fiddling with the screen.
Another thing is I want to be able to record a guitar track in one take, both as a video capture and studio produced audio. This would include switching and toggling pedals on the fly. I know we can all get very clever with DAWs, adding amp sims to dry takes, multitracking all the guitar sections and merging them or sequencing them post, etc... but being able to record a take with your guitar and having the switches or exp. pedal as an option on the fly is important to me, it mimics not only the live show but also classic recordings that only had the luxury of one take. I suppose this is lofty and I’m recording guitar parts in pieces anyway. But I can’t play a dry sound and then sim it later, it changes completely how I play. I need the tone dialed in as well as my sequence of pedals within the song. This is a kind of automation I guess.
And of course I do want to be able to play this live. Looking at all the frfr options the Headrush seems ideal and a great value. Friedman makes an frfr now but it’s so overpriced and getting mixed reviews.
That’s beautifully done! Wonderful audio and recording quality, and I’ve been whistling this tune for about 10 minutes now.
@Schmotown the other thing I’m exploring is pairing the xtone pro with an A-B-Y pedal. The xtone doesn’t have a bypass switch, and I own a Fender tube amp. So I’m thinking I could run my guitar signal through the A-B-Y into the xtone and into the amp. At least that would give me an amp on stage plus the processed xlr out into a PA. But the other thing I could do is mic the fender amp and then plug the mic back into the xtone pro’s second xlr/1/4 input. So essentially I could get two separate guitar tracks into my DAW, one is the processed modeler and the other is the mic’d tube amp. I know, I’m full of shitty ideas...
Thanks a lot @JoyceRoadStudios. I really appreciate your saying that. King is a wonderful, enormously talented man, as are the other musicians, and the final mix was done by an old friend who’s a terrific engineer.
Since you liked that one, and I’m not above fishing for compliments, you may get a kick out of these, recorded in COVID isolation by a bunch of music friends up and down the East coast. I did about half the guitar parts and the young horn players are my sons. The three of us were tracked upstairs. Same mix engineer as the previous song. We all sent him our stems and he put everything together.
BTW, the 10 second solo on AYNIL was through a Kuassa amp sim on the Mac. Otherwise, Martin and Eastman acoustics and an old Tele through my one remaining tube amp — a ‘68 Fender Champ — mic’d up in the bathroom next to the office.
@JoyceRoadStudios I forgot to comment on this. I've had the Headrush 108 for a month or so and it's an incredibly good value. For outdoor (distanced) band rehearsals, I run the iPad through the Xtone and into one channel of the Headrush via XLR. My acoustic goes into the other channel to bring it up to band volume.
If I’m understanding right, the Xtone Pro can send 21 different Midi commands (3 for each foot-switch and 3 for the expression pedal) by toggling between the 3 different modes. Does that mean you could control 21 different parameters in multiple apps from within AUM at the same time. For example, if I wanted to set up some of the switches to control different pedals or presets inside THU in the 1st mode and also control different parameters of a looper in the 2nd mode and maybe even control a few things in AUM in the 3rd mode. Can I do that? I’ve watched some videos and read a few reviews but I haven’t really seen anything detailing that? It almost seems too goo to be true.
Thank you for sharing! So cool that your sons play horns!
I’m also on the East coast. Moved out of NYC recently for better pastures in Connecticut. Perfect weather these days...
That is correct, the manual confirms that you get 21 parameters to control at once. The way it works is you operate the first six plus expression pedal, but long pressing switch B gets you to the 2nd group of 7, or long pressing switch C gets you to the 3rd group of 7. So yes you can have up to 21 CC messages mapped at once. It doesn’t do PC, which isn’t actually a big deal unless a software or hardware you’re using only does PC. All the iOS stuff does CC mode.
If you’re using TH-U and a looper inside of AUM I believe you’ll have to midi map everything in AUM rather than TH-U standalone. So you can midi map any app you want in standalone, but you may have to make AUM the midi control host when you’re using it. My Xtone Pro arrives next week so I haven’t used it yet to know exactly how and where the midi should go. But it appears to be quite flexible on the midi, unlike some other devices that can only do patch changes or can’t switch banks. I believe with CC it can act as PC
as well as momentary and toggle. It also has 3 pre
Programmed modes for apps like amplitube or bias that you can access by combo pressing two buttons. These modes aren’t the same as the 3 groups of 21 parameters. I’ve done so much research and haven’t even received the unit yet!
So it was a close call between the Xtone Pro and Tone Shifter Mega, they’re both good devices but actually not as similar as they seem. I went with the XTone Pro for the following reasons:
The XLR output on the Xtone Pro can output both the instrument channel and the mic channel. On the tone shifter the XLR out only outputs the right channel which is the mic, so for the guitar output you have to use left channel out. In addition on the Xtone the XLR and monitor out L/R and headphones can all output at the same time, but on the tone shifter the XLR and right channel out cancel each other out.
Xtone Pro has 48V phantom power, tone shifter only has 12V phantom power
Tone shifter seems to have some pc/cc limitations with its midi implementation, such as only fixed CC values, and to me having a display on the device is just an extra thing that could go wrong.
Tone Shifter does have some advantages, like 2 expression pedal inputs instead of 1, separate gain control for each input, separate level control for each output. But at the end of the day I decided that I wanted the 48v phantom power and the xlr out for my guitar.
Mappings you make in TH-U standalone carry over in the AUv3 in AUM (or whatever host), you just need to direct the midi device in AUM's midi router.
That's very useful info comparing the 2 devices, 21 CC parameters very tempting. Watch out for Th-U in AUM not responding properly to PC's from some controllers at the moment.
Thanks for the great info. I also ordered one of these a few days ago and hopefully will get it in a week or so. I watched a ton of videos about the xtone pro and the tone shifter mega and like you, decided on the xtone. One thing I found in my research was that some reviewers were saying that sometimes parameters in some apps could only be mapped to a particular mode and would not work in another mode. I guess there could be some trial and error in the mapping of this thing. Mostly positive reviews though. I can’t wait to try it.
Thanks again!
https://www.thomann.de/de/harley_benton_mp_500_interface_foot_control.htm
This is where I bought the rebranded Toneshifter for 250€ - now for only 194€. Quite a steal...
It does look great and for that price. I’m not above returning the xtone if it doesn’t work out and getting this instead. I just have a feeling X will work better for me. Yes they are both the same kind of combo unit, but they’re actually a little different feature wise. What I like about tsm is the separate gain controls for the inputs, it seems xtone only has gain control for the xlr input. Also it seems that on the tsm you can route the output of the guitar channel and mic channel separately with L/out and XLR/R. Not sure if the xtone can. You also get three separate volume knobs with the tsm for each out. But tsm xlr out is not for the guitar channel. I mean there are so many tossups with these two devices.
Are you using tsm on iOS? I have read that with iOS you can’t switch the sample rate on the tsm, which wound seem strange if you can do it inside the DAW or host app. Have you experienced this problem, where you set a 48 or 96 sample rate in the DAW but tsm display still shows 44.1? Also I’ve read tsm doesn’t support midi momentary functions or that it’s a firmware fix, something you can’t update with just iOS. Have you experienced ant midi limitations or other issues with the device?
Thank you for the clarification! Xtone does only CC which is fine for me on iOS. I read your comment regarding midi in the other thread. Overloud are every active and responsive with addressing bugs, I’ve sent them a few issues over the months.
Here’s my question though: so let’s say I map everything out in TH-U and use all 21 parameters. Then I go into AUM and want to use midi to also operate other apps in the chain, or a looper, or simply the recording functions of a DAW. Doesn’t this mean there would be a midi pile-up, and I should therefore plan in advance which buttons to leave blank, and then map them inside the DAW anyway? So can AUM or another DAW operate simultaneously with midi buttons I set up in TH-U standalone AND midi buttons I set up inside the DAW?
Yes! They’re quite different devices aren’t they? There are a few features on the tone shifter that I actually wanted, but still decided on the xtone pro. What made you decide?
I think both devices have Pre programmed modes for specific apps, but my understanding is that they can also be programmed freestyle. I’ve read that even though tsm does pc/cc and xtone only does cc, that tsm has more limited midi programming. I don’t know the validity of this. My uneducated guess would be that somehow tsm is more limited outside of the pre-programmed, whereas with xtone pro you can just do whatever you want with the 18-21 parameters. The only downside I can imagine with xtone is hardware that only does PC can’t be controlled by it, and xtone may not be able to split the microphone and guitar out into the house as separate channels. Unclear if xtone monitor L/R is a stereo out or an out for each channel. Tbd.
What I've found good in Th-U is the ability to have 'global' and 'per preset' midi settings. I then have two banks of identical Th-U presets, one with core midi settings at the global level (4 stomps and a wah) and then another 'per preset' bank with additional settings (like looper controls). That way I can use either everything from my given midi controller with the 'per preset' bank, or hold some buttons back for other apps with the 'global' bank. 'Per preset' adds to and, if there is a clash, overrides 'global' (I'm pretty sure that's right).
You can of course achieve the same thing with different presets on your controller if it has the option, i.e. have half the buttons the same, half different.
I've not checked what parameters Th-U exposes to AUM, not having to do this was exactly why Th-U answered my prayers, though that's not to say I don't appreciate the ability to do it for other apps.
Otherwise, separate midi channels are your friend with AUM to avoid midi pile-ups. If you were to assign footswitches to two or more different channels on your controller then you can route them around as required within AUM.
Avoid routing midi to Th-U via AUM and direct in the AUv3. I got told off here for that, even though it's my current workaround for the PC bug I keep banging on about (and that Overloud support are indeed looking to squish). That does work if using 2 different controllers, but not good to do if you only have one.
Thank you for this. Since you mention global vs per preset, here’s something I would like to understand: so let’s say I have 7 switches and 3 banks to work with, for a total of 21 parameters. If I set up bank 1 to just have 7 different amp setups with all their unique pedals. Then I set up bank 2 to have 7 different on/off switches for pedals. So if I recall any preset in bank 1, can I then control the pedals of that preset using bank 2, even if each bank 1 preset has different pedals?
Does that make sense? Because if you can map global and per preset settings, and make the same switch do different things based on long press or whatever, that’s a hell of a lot more than 21 parameters. So in theory can on/off switches be flexible to work on different pedals based on what preset you have on the screen? It seems that people are using banks to map preset recall, and on/off, and looper function. It’s overwhelming!
Can I use bank 2 switches to toggle on/off bank 1 presets if each of the 7 presets has different pedals? Because that’s like exponentially more parameters than 21. If so, does this mean each pedal in a preset has a sort of “position”?
I guess the thing that put me over the top was the number of parameters you can map --Xtone Pro-21 vs. tone shifter-10. I suspect that I probably will rarely use more than 10 at any given time anyway, but with the Xtone I’ll have them if I need them. There really wasn’t any other significant enough reason In my mind to go with the tone shifter.
F**k me, you've blown a fuse in my brain with that one
I'll have to wait until Monday now til I get a reset... Generally though, all things are potentially possible. Your 'plan in advance plan' sounds a good one, though I am an endless sucker myself for 'what if I just...".
When I was talking 'bank' I meant bank of presets in Th-U, do you mean 'bank' as a controller preset or in the app?
In this case I was referring to “banks” as “groups”, as in the device I’m talking about has 6 switches plus expression pedal per group and 3 groups, so 21 total parameters that you can access on groups of 7 at a time, by long pressing a button
to switch between groups. So my real question would be, if I have mapped group 1 on my device to be 7 different THU rigs, and I have mapped group 2 to turn pedals on and off, would group two buttons apply to all thu rig pedals or just to one rig?
If I have to assign a button to each specific pedal, then that would mean something like 6 thu rigs with 15 pedals total to spread between them. But if each rig can have its pedals controlled with the remaining 2 groups of buttons and those buttons actually re-map based on each individual rig pedal chain.... does that make sense?