Hi Matt, nice to meet you on the board
As I've been trying to point out, the sound I got was like a guitar through a mixing board, or direct into a computer's audio interface.
What I did was taking a preset, excluding its effect bocks (as many times suggested on these pages), and tweaking. No way I was able to make it sound like an amp, were it mic'd or in the room.
This wide audio band, this thinness and lack of presence and thump which was exalted by the FRFR, is probably destined to become meaningless (or less meaningful) once a guitar cab is used, but this (very short) experience made me think. I also took advantage of the many pages I read on this as well as other boards in the last year, and the most common complaints I've come across in my learning process.
I started reflecting about the engineering idea behind the machine: is this flat, linear sonic behaviour useful to some application? Wouldn't it be better (genuine question here, no rhetoric) if the amps alone already sounded like amps, with a narrower band and more suited EQ settings?
If (like I think, but I may be wrong here) the linearity is just a heritage from the Axe's sonic accuracy an broad band, my impression is that this easily prevents many first users from appreciating the unit. You know, people not able to understand which trick to apply to get the magic, not able to deepen the subject or simply not willing to. I think the amps should by default be offered with realistic, tamed sounds.
If, instead, this linearity serves some purpose, I believe it might be effective (for increasing easiness of use, and a faster and wider appreciation of the unit) to introduce (in firmware) a new switch in the Global section:
FRFR/Guitar Cab, offering two roughly ready settings for one or the other use. If the setting could be overruled on a per-amp basis with another switch in the Amp block, it would also be of help to those who use both approaches in different situations, with the opportunity to save the switch state in each preset (in the Axe II, a connection with the X/Y tool easily comes to mind).
Given the hundreds of specific cases, exceptions, individual needs, tastes etc, I'm aware this solution would not automatically offer the best results to each and every user: but it might be a very good starting point for individual sonic quests, certainly statistically closer to the optimum than the current one which seems, to me, far from everything.
What do you guys think?
I'm aware my English translates sometimes strange, and may become involved when I try to build more than trivial concepts... I apologize for this.