Owned Axe FX 2, 3, FM3, and sold them all. Couldn't get decent tones. What was I doing wrong?

Kept coming back to see whether I was wrong but every time I felt the same.

I live in an apartment and play late at night, midnight, etc. Don't like using headphones so I would play through my JBL305 studio monitors at a low volume.

The tones just didn't feel right, especially clean tones.

My process was as follows:

Load up amp and cab

pull up the preset level meter and increase the amp level until I'm near the 0 db line.

A lot of times, even when I did this, the tones were still too quiet at times, on my audio interface (Scarlet 6i6) not even hitting -12 db.

Especially trying to get clean tones. I would be able to hear my guitar strings sometimes louder than the actual tones. Yet music and youtube videos coming out of my system were at a good volume.

Through headphones things would sound bad.

Some presets were so quiet, I couldn't even hear the effects on them if they were one of the weird ones with tons of effects. Presets that were ambient pads, I couldn't hear at all at times.

All of this coming out of OUT 1, with the knob at about noon.

I then switched to OUT 2, set the mode to "Unity Gain" dimed the OUT 2 knob to max (On FM3), set the preset level using the meter, but it would still be extremely quiet.

However if I were to record the tones into a DAW and play it back, it would sound better than what I was hearing live.

I would get so frustrated that I sold them. 3 different units, at 3 different periods of time. All sold.

  1. Low volume. Volume matters. Very low volumes late at night just won't sound good, period. Use headphones instead.
  2. Even lower volumes with the wrong output settings. Unity gain on Output 2 is mostly meant for running into amps or pedals or whatever, you want to use the line level setting. But you should use either Output 1 with line level +4 dB or use SPDIF.
I use a Scarlett 6i6 2nd gen with my FM3 just for convenience so I don't have to change where my studio monitors and headphones are hooked up and using either SPDIF or Output 1 to line in on the Scarlett I can get more than enough volume. The volume knobs on the unit are there for a reason. You may have to turn down YT or music apps on your computer to compensate if you want to play along to backing tracks.

Your output devices quality will also matter here. Headphones are wildly varying and none of them are anywhere close to flat. Global EQ corrections can help, e.g. using AutoEQ recommended settings. Of the headphones I have, the Sennheiser HD6XX have been the ones that work best without correction and both the Scarlett and FM3 can drive them just fine.

With headphones add some room reverb in there to make them sound more natural.
 
Have you ever had a tone you liked? If so, what with? If your experiences were all using the JBL monitors, that's the single constant and it shouldn't be hard to figure out where the problem is.
 
Kept coming back to see whether I was wrong but every time I felt the same.

I live in an apartment and play late at night, midnight, etc. Don't like using headphones so I would play through my JBL305 studio monitors at a low volume.

The tones just didn't feel right, especially clean tones.

My process was as follows:

Load up amp and cab

pull up the preset level meter and increase the amp level until I'm near the 0 db line.

A lot of times, even when I did this, the tones were still too quiet at times, on my audio interface (Scarlet 6i6) not even hitting -12 db.

Especially trying to get clean tones. I would be able to hear my guitar strings sometimes louder than the actual tones. Yet music and youtube videos coming out of my system were at a good volume.

Through headphones things would sound bad.

Some presets were so quiet, I couldn't even hear the effects on them if they were one of the weird ones with tons of effects. Presets that were ambient pads, I couldn't hear at all at times.

All of this coming out of OUT 1, with the knob at about noon.

I then switched to OUT 2, set the mode to "Unity Gain" dimed the OUT 2 knob to max (On FM3), set the preset level using the meter, but it would still be extremely quiet.

However if I were to record the tones into a DAW and play it back, it would sound better than what I was hearing live.

I would get so frustrated that I sold them. 3 different units, at 3 different periods of time. All sold.
Just asking.... Did you have similar issues with your Kemper profiler (if you had any)?
 
I was looking at the post history too. I see he did bring up level issues in the past, sometimes with no responses. Maybe he even owned a III and FM3 but never wrote about it on this forum; regardless, I almost feel like he just has a bad cable, and a tech support person would spot that in less than a minute.

The thing is, you're not obliged to get an answer to your technical problem on this forum. I've gained so much great knowledge here, but it's just because people chose to post their knowledge, and it was for the betterment of all who are interested in this technology. If you do post a problem here and don't find an answer, FAS tech support is always there to help. I've never gone to them, so I can't vouch for this personally, but that is the logical next step, not just selling everything and posting your disappointment with the company's products in general.
 
I'm with @laxu on the second bullet. It's pretty typical for new users to post on here about low volume and they have the output set at -10 dBv (default) and they need to change it to +4 dBu. I guess that is the safe way to go for a default but I'm pretty sure nearly everyone here needs to run at +4 dBU. Funny that the Fractal units are the only modelers I've ever been consistently amazed by and more impressed by the longer I've owned and used it. Most others I seem to fatigue on over time but not the Fractal family. If this is not a trolling post do you remember what you had the output set to?
 
My initial thought wasn’t a troll post. The OP selling his units before posting meant we can’t really help him troubleshoot, but he didn’t seem as combative as a typical troll. Many of the responses to the OP seemed a bit harsh.

Seems the problem was too little volume/level. He said he could hear his strings louder than the amp tone through his monitors. He also said he had the Out1 volume knob at noon, which is definitely too low. All the way up is unity gain and what should be used for sending sound to anything other than headphones.

Speaking of which, getting good sound from headphones takes a bit of work too: selecting good headphones, using a FullRes IR or room reverb, adding gain enhancer, etc.
 
OP you’ve been around these forums for six years. You’ve probably noticed by now thst 95% of the users here are pretty happy. I looked at your previous postings and it just seems like there’s always a problem and I’ve concluded that you’re never going to be satisfied and you keep thinking that we in the community are going to magically somehow help you see the light.

You've had your spin with modelers and it’s not working for you. Go find an amp you like and get some pedals or whatever and live your life. Stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Vaya con dios.
 
Kept coming back to see whether I was wrong but every time I felt the same.

I live in an apartment and play late at night, midnight, etc. Don't like using headphones so I would play through my JBL305 studio monitors at a low volume.

The tones just didn't feel right, especially clean tones.

My process was as follows:

Load up amp and cab

pull up the preset level meter and increase the amp level until I'm near the 0 db line.

A lot of times, even when I did this, the tones were still too quiet at times, on my audio interface (Scarlet 6i6) not even hitting -12 db.

Especially trying to get clean tones. I would be able to hear my guitar strings sometimes louder than the actual tones. Yet music and youtube videos coming out of my system were at a good volume.

Through headphones things would sound bad.

Some presets were so quiet, I couldn't even hear the effects on them if they were one of the weird ones with tons of effects. Presets that were ambient pads, I couldn't hear at all at times.

All of this coming out of OUT 1, with the knob at about noon.

I then switched to OUT 2, set the mode to "Unity Gain" dimed the OUT 2 knob to max (On FM3), set the preset level using the meter, but it would still be extremely quiet.

However if I were to record the tones into a DAW and play it back, it would sound better than what I was hearing live.

I would get so frustrated that I sold them. 3 different units, at 3 different periods of time. All sold.
How does your guitar sound?
 
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