Does the FM3 have enough CPU Horsepower for me?

J

John Deschain

Member
Hi everyone,
I'm ready to step into the Fractal universe, but have a few questions.

I am currently running tube rig in wet dry wet, but need a silent solution for a weekly youtube show I'm involved with. I run a Friedman BE-100D with 3 mic'd cabs, power amp, effects into a parallel mixer. What I'm after a similar thing with a FM3.

I want to be able to run an amp and cab model with a detune effect and a sde 3000 type of delay in parallel after the cab block.

Is this possible with the FM3, and if so, would I be able to run a compressor and noise gate?

My silent now is a Friedman IRX with a DD-500 and Micropitch in the loop of the IRX, but it's not an inspiring thing to work with.

I'd really like to try and make a FM3 work, as I've never played a Fractal unit, but have had a lot of bad experiences with modelling in the past, last being a helix. I don't want spend or wait for the FM9 until I'm sure Fractal feels as good as it sounds.

Any help and guidance is mush appreciated.
 
John Deschain said:
Hi everyone,
I'm ready to step into the Fractal universe, but have a few questions.

I am currently running tube rig in wet dry wet, but need a silent solution for a weekly youtube show I'm involved with. I run a Friedman BE-100D with 3 mic'd cabs, power amp, effects into a parallel mixer. What I'm after a similar thing with a FM3.

I want to be able to run an amp and cab model with a detune effect and a sde 3000 type of delay in parallel after the cab block.

Is this possible with the FM3, and if so, would I be able to run a compressor and noise gate?
Click to expand...

Yes it will do that. Easily because you’re not asking for much. You would have good amount of room left.
 
This is awesome news! Thanks guys.

Any thoughts on the "feel" aspect? I've been playing tube amps my whole life, mainly Marshall based. When I had the Helix, it completely sucked the life out of playing for me. I suspect the fm3 will be a step up from that.
The IRX sounds great, but it's so immediate in its response that I can't deal with it compared to my tube amp.
 
John Deschain said:
This is awesome news! Thanks guys.

Any thoughts on the "feel" aspect? I've been playing tube amps my whole life, mainly Marshall based. When I had the Helix, it completely sucked the life out of playing for me. I suspect the fm3 will be a step up from that.
The IRX sounds great, but it's so immediate in its response that I can't deal with it compared to my tube amp.
Click to expand...


As for feel, I don’t miss playing my tube amps. I run a FR speaker and it’s satisfying to play. It took me awhile to get used to FRFR and to figure out how to dial things in. The big change for me is that I play a lot more than I ever did just because it sounds great and it’s fun. And it makes a really good headphone amp so I can have a good time without blowing out the house later at night.
 
John Deschain said:
This is awesome news! Thanks guys.

Any thoughts on the "feel" aspect? I've been playing tube amps my whole life, mainly Marshall based. When I had the Helix, it completely sucked the life out of playing for me. I suspect the fm3 will be a step up from that.
The IRX sounds great, but it's so immediate in its response that I can't deal with it compared to my tube amp.
Click to expand...
Also coming from tube amps and the only modeler that got me the closer of the feel of playing an amp is my FM3.
 
John Deschain said:
Any thoughts on the "feel" aspect? I've been playing tube amps my whole life, mainly Marshall based. When I had the Helix, it completely sucked the life out of playing for me. I suspect the fm3 will be a step up from that.
The IRX sounds great, but it's so immediate in its response that I can't deal with it compared to my tube amp.
Click to expand...
The amp models are accurate in sound and feel, but how you monitor matters. When you run direct you’re recreating the sound of a mic on a guitar cab in another room, i.e. pretty much every recorded guitar tone you’ve ever heard, monitored through whatever speakers you’re using. But no modeler can magically transform headphones, cheap plastic speakers, or even good studio monitors into a cranked 412 guitar cab in the room with you. If you want the fractal unit to sound like that you’ll need to bypass the cab block and run it into a good power amp and a cranked 412 guitar cab in the room with you.
 
The high quality Reverb and Ultra Res cabs are the killers of CPU. If you don't use those, or compromise on those, you can do a lot.
 
John Deschain said:
This is awesome news! Thanks guys.

Any thoughts on the "feel" aspect? I've been playing tube amps my whole life, mainly Marshall based. When I had the Helix, it completely sucked the life out of playing for me. I suspect the fm3 will be a step up from that.
The IRX sounds great, but it's so immediate in its response that I can't deal with it compared to my tube amp.
Click to expand...
Kinda funny you mention IRX. I know that is based on Synergy. I have been using my Synergy system a lot lately, and it has that very quick immediate attack to it. I can tell the FM3 feels more sluggish compared to that, especially in the low end. It is not quite as punchy either, but closer than any other digital unit I have used. It is more noticeable on higher gain.
 
Shask said:
Kinda funny you mention IRX. I know that is based on Synergy. I have been using my Synergy system a lot lately, and it has that very quick immediate attack to it. I can tell the FM3 feels more sluggish compared to that, especially in the low end. It is not quite as punchy either, but closer than any other digital unit I have used. It is more noticeable on higher gain.
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When using tube preamps, you can use the FM3's Amp Block as a tube power amp sim to create that feel, do a search here for tube power amp sim if interested.

That said, the FM3's Amp modeling is excellent, and I typically don't need my tube preamps with it anymore (as I did with earlier generation Fractal products).
 
DJD100 said:
When using tube preamps, you can use the FM3's Amp Block as a tube power amp sim to create that feel, do a search here for tube power amp sim if interested.

That said, the FM3's Amp modeling is excellent, and I typically don't need my tube preamps with it anymore (as I did with earlier generation Fractal products).
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My comparison is through a tube power amp, so I don't need extra Sims. I am not a big fan of playing through monitors with cab blocks.
 
Thanks for all the thoughts guys..

For me the fm3 is mainly for a silent solution for when I can't fire up my tube rig.
I'll be running the fm3 into a Rodecaster pro 2 then out to streamyard. I will be monitoring with Beyer dynamic DT700 Pro X cans. It's the same way I monitor my tube rig.

I suspect that I will be quite happy with the fm3. I believe a big part will be the parallel effects chain and the overall quality I hear with the fractal stuff.

If the effects are on par with the Eventide stuff I use, I might try and run the fm3 into my Parallelizer and use it with my tube rig.

How well does the fm3 take pedals run into the front of it? The possibilities are starting to excite me.
 
John Deschain said:
Rodecaster pro 2 then out to streamyard
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If you can run stereo into this setup I would highly recommend it. Mono with headphones is very uninspiring. The enhancer block can even help widen your dry.

John Deschain said:
How well does the fm3 take pedals run into the front of it? The
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The amps take pedals just like real amps, whether real pedals or their digital versions in the fractal. Many guys run a real pedalboard into the fractal amps. I primarily run a virtual pedalboard in my fractal into the front of stereo fractal amp models set clean to edge of breakup.
 
Shask said:
My comparison is through a tube power amp, so I don't need extra Sims. I am not a big fan of playing through monitors with cab blocks.
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Live I don't either, so in my case the cab sims are for FOH and IEM's.

The tube power amp sim removes the heat, weight, and sweet spot SPL limitations of the real deal while supporting real tube preamps.
 
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So I've searched around and can't find the answers to a few questions,

1) I understand that there is a gap between switching presets, but is there a gap between switching scenes and channels?

2) Is it possible to run wet/dry/wet into my Rodecaster pro 2 with the fm3? If so, do I do my panning with the Rodecaster or the fm3, or both? I know the fm3 has stereo out, so I suspect I'd run the stereo outs of the fm3 to separate channels of my Rodecaster..but as far as a dry centre channel goes, I don't know. Maybe just pan the parallel effect and leave amp and cab down the middle?
 
John Deschain said:
So I've searched around and can't find the answers to a few questions,

1) I understand that there is a gap between switching presets, but is there a gap between switching scenes and channels?

2) Is it possible to run wet/dry/wet into my Rodecaster pro 2 with the fm3? If so, do I do my panning with the Rodecaster or the fm3, or both? I know the fm3 has stereo out, so I suspect I'd run the stereo outs of the fm3 to separate channels of my Rodecaster..but as far as a dry centre channel goes, I don't know. Maybe just pan the parallel effect and leave amp and cab down the middle?
Click to expand...

The gap between scenes and channels isn’t bad. There’s a gap but it’s negligible. If you’re playing live then just time the changes right. FAS is working on FM3 updates and we are hoping the gap improvements make their way to the FM3.

You can pan out of the FM3 and there are 2 outputs. You could go out left and right on output 1 and dry out of output 2 I would think. I’ve never tried that but someone should be able to give you an answer.
 
If you want three separate output signals, then you could just insert an out 2 block before your wet fx. Then you'd have a dedicated dry output.
 
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