Fractal vs Capture

York Audio said:
NOTE: This post isn't meant to speak negatively of anyone's product. It's simply meant to show different attributes found in two types of modeling.



All this talk about amp captures lately has made me curious about a couple things. Even though amps, models, and captures are all supposed to sound the same, Fractal has always had a "feel" that I haven't been able to get out of other modelers. People have said the Quad Cortex models aren't great, but the captures are amazing... so I (literally) dusted off my Quad Cortex and decided to make a capture of my '77 Marshall JMP to see how it stacked up.

Tonally, it's way better than the Kemper, but still has some excited frequencies. Not exactly apples to apples, but more like an apple vs a different kind of apple if that makes sense. It's not bad by any means... just a little different. I remember Cliff saying something a while back about hearing the quality of the modeling by rolling off the guitar's volume knob and comparing it to what a real amp does, so that's what I did.

It seems like captures can "sound" close when the guitar is on 10, but they still don't "feel" close in my opinion, so I played something on my looper pedal with the guitar's volume really low with a swell to 10 at the end and recorded it through my Marshall JMP with the LB-2 load box, the Fractal Brit 800 model with the LB-2 impedance curve, and a QC capture I made of the JMP through the LB-2. Disclaimer... I'm recovering from Covid, so my ears are still plugged up which made it a little tricky to match the Fractal with my amp by ear, but today it isn't about a direct "tone match," it's about what makes a digital recreation "feel" right or not. The capture was not changed or altered in any way, and I even captured it twice to make sure my results were consistent.

I'm going to do this in two parts. Part 1 is "Full Volume" where we hear all three examples with the guitar's volume all the way up. There's similar tonality and gain structure. They aren't identical, but that's what we're listening for here. The capture is a bit of an outlier, but it's still in the ballpark and would probably work well for some players. I notice the chord bloom with the amp and Fractal, but it's much more linear with the QC. This is when things should sound the closest.


Order: Marshall, Fractal, Capture



Part 2 is "Volume Rolloff" where we hear all three examples with the guitar's volume knob rolled off and turned up at the end. This is where the magic happens in my opinion. Even lightly picked with the volume rolled off, you hear this angry volatility in the amp like it can't wait to explode. The Fractal does a great job of replicating it; like you can hear the components in the amp working with and against each other as if it's trying to figure out what going to happen next. When we hear the capture, all of that chaos is gone. It's soft, polite, and doesn't really have any of those swirling elements we hear in the other two. I think this is why models and captures feel so different.


Order: Marshall, Fractal, Capture



All that to say, I think the crazy nonlinear behavior we hear in the Volume Rolloff clip ends up being the stuff that makes a model respond more accurately to our playing and what gives us an authentic playing experience. We may not hear it with our guitars on 10, but we can definitely feel it.
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This is exactly my problem with the approach that the Kemper and QC take - as soon as you play with a profile/capture in any way, it stops acting like the amp it's meant to be simulating. In theory, the profiling/capture process should work correctly when you roll back the guitar volume but they never seem to. I play with my fingers a lot and the profilers do not respond as well as a Fractal.

The Fractal amp models respond like an amp - plain and simple. Recently, I've been doing more gigs sitting in with a few different groups due to cancelations. To keep it simple, I have just used a single 1987x Marshall preset all night - I've not touched the preset in a couple years. I can roll back the volume and get a great clean tone and wide open is enough dirt to play hair metal - I also have a drive and delay to switch in and out. This is exactly how I played for many years with a real amp and a couple pedals. The Fractal platform just works. I never got this from the Kemper or QC.
 
hippietim said:
This is exactly my problem with the approach that the Kemper and QC take - as soon as you play with a profile/capture in any way, it stops acting like the amp it's meant to be simulating...
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Exactly, profiling may work great for a static setting, but that's pretty much it. Once you go messing with it everything changes.
 
hippietim said:
This is exactly my problem with the approach that the Kemper and QC take - as soon as you play with a profile/capture in any way, it stops acting like the amp it's meant to be simulating. In theory, the profiling/capture process should work correctly when you roll back the guitar volume but they never seem to. I play with my fingers a lot and the profilers do not respond as well as a Fractal.

The Fractal amp models respond like an amp - plain and simple. Recently, I've been doing more gigs sitting in with a few different groups due to cancelations. To keep it simple, I have just used a single 1987x Marshall preset all night - I've not touched the preset in a couple years. I can roll back the volume and get a great clean tone and wide open is enough dirt to play hair metal - I also have a drive and delay to switch in and out. This is exactly how I played for many years with a real amp and a couple pedals. The Fractal platform just works. I never got this from the Kemper or QC.
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I couldn't agree more. After making Kemper profiles and QC captures, they're probably "good enough" when it comes to ball-parking the general sound of the amp, but the feeling under the fingers and playing dynamics aren't anywhere near what the real amps do. I've been called a Fractal fanboy over my (well-deserved) enthusiastic appreciation for their amp modeling simply because it's the only modeler I've tried that not only replicates the sound of my real amps, but also replicates the feel and dynamics of my real amps. People have done A/B comparisons with amps and profiles/captures that sound really similar, but the playing experience is pretty lackluster when it comes down to how they respond to a player's touch.
 
stdout said:
Someone on TGF in the Helix 3.6 thread wrote - “Add a new block to play Steve Ack’s NAM Neural Amp Modeler captures! Is it even possible?” NAM is under the MIT licence so it poses no problem in terms of code exposure. And the cpu demands would be light so having multiple instances in a preset should be no problem.
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Fractal should look at doing this with NAM. Let NAM on people’s computers do the heavy lifting just like ToneX does, then add a player block on the Fractals to add more options for end users. IMO that would be very cool.
 
fcs101 said:
Exactly, profiling may work great for a static setting, but that's pretty much it. Once you go messing with it everything changes.
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Thats understood though - and EQ still does just fine. It's not like you can't change anything or that changing anything ruins it - it's just that you're doing post EQ instead of preamp EQ.
 
northern_fox said:
Thats understood though - and EQ still does just fine. It's not like you can't change anything or that changing anything ruins it - it's just that you're doing post EQ instead of preamp EQ.
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EQ is pretty much all you've got. Just pointing out that it's not that flexible. Not sure about your statement about changing things not ruining it. I was commenting on HippieTim's comment that once you mess with it too much it no longer sounds like the amp you wanted, so I probably disagree with you there.
 
fcs101 said:
EQ is pretty much all you've got. Just pointing out that it's not that flexible. Not sure about your statement about changing things not ruining it. I was commenting on HippieTim's comment that once you mess with it too much it no longer sounds like the amp you wanted, so I probably disagree with you there.
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EQ + gain is pretty much all you've got on real amps too. You can obviously ruin any tone with EQ if you do it too aggressively. Plus you still have the IR at your disposal which is really the most critical part of the chain (assuming you use direct captures). IR + EQ + gain are the most important aspects of amp tone anyways, so as long as you have a capture that's close-ish in gain and broad tone to what you want it'll get you there as easily as models. But obviously if your goal was to be able to tweak, you wouldn't be using captures anyways so it's kind of a moot point.

Heck, if you care that much you can use PEQ to replicate the original tonestack eq too even though it won't actually be in the pre stack
 
northern_fox said:
...so as long as you have a capture that's close-ish in gain and broad tone to what you want it'll get you there as easily as models. But obviously if your goal was to be able to tweak, you wouldn't be using captures anyways so it's kind of a moot point.
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You're saying the capture already needs to be basically where you want it and therefore making my point for me. With a modeler like FAS produces, it's a non-issue.

Then there's the whole lack of responsiveness in the capture vs what a modeler can provide; we haven't even gone there yet (which I think was integral to the OP, but yes, the point is moot, if that's not important to you).
 
fcs101 said:
You're saying the capture already needs to be basically where you want it and therefore making my point for me. With a modeler like FAS produces, it's a non-issue.

Then there's the whole lack of responsiveness in the capture vs what a modeler can provide; we haven't even gone there yet (which I think was integral to the OP, but yes, the point is moot, if that's not important to you).
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Captures and responsiveness are not mutually exclusive - the QC simply isn't as good at it. Training is very short and the data set is very small

unix-guy said:
Sorry, but no... Not even close.
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Okay - so what then - depth, presence, master?
 
northern_fox said:
Captures and responsiveness are not mutually exclusive - the QC simply isn't as good at it. Training is very short and the data set is very small

Okay - so what then - depth, presence, master?
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To your first point, I have yet to find or hear of a profiler that responds like FAS (or maybe even Line 6); your own comments back this up . So yes, it does seem to be exclusive. Which again leads us back to the OP, which I thought was being very diplomatic. No one is dissing profiling. If that suits you, then great.

To your second point, if you're seriously asking that, then you're not spending much time getting to know the product. There is so much more you can do with a high quality modeler vs a profiler.
 
unix-guy said:
Compression, sag, transients, interaction between the various components, etc...

Depth and Presence, yes. Though they are really still mostly EQ of sorts, but their place in the signal chain is not the same as a pre or post EQ that you can add later.
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fcs101 said:
To your second point, if you're seriously asking that, then you're not spending much time getting to know the product. There is so much more you can do with a high quality modeler vs a profiler.
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I was referring to actual amps, not modelers. I'm well familiar with fractal models.
 
unix-guy said:
Everything I mentioned applies to real amps and to Fractal models.
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You don't tweak them on real amps though. That was my point - the effects of all such interactions should still be captured via ML and the net result should be the same, if it's good. On real amps you mostly tweak eq - and the effects of that can be replicated in post on or after a capture. The biggest reason they don't sound like the original knobs is because it's just a generic EQ and not adjusted to match the real preamp filters. If you're in the same ballpark as where you want to be, using EQ will get you there just as well as turning the knobs in a model.
 
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northern_fox said:
You don't tweak them on real amps though. That was my point - the effects of all such interactions should still be captured via ML and the net result should be the same, if it's good. On real amps you mostly tweak eq - and the effects of that can be replicated in post on or after a capture. The biggest reason they don't sound like the original knobs is because it's just a generic EQ and not adjusted to match the real preamp filters. If you're in the same ballpark as where you want to be, using EQ will get you there just as well as turning the knobs in a model.
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The problem I think is that tweaking the EQ on a real amp alters those interactions, so putting an (even identical) eq pre or post the amp doesn't behave exactly the same.

EDIT: as an example, depth and presence controls usually act on the negative feedback circuit, so when you turn those up you're not only shelving hi or low frequencies, but you're actually cutting them from the negative feedback network, causing the power tubes to clip differently at those frequencies.
 
DLC86 said:
The problem I think is that tweaking the EQ on a real amp alters those interactions, so putting an (even identical) eq pre or post the amp doesn't behave exactly the same.

EDIT: as an example, depth and presence controls usually act on the negative feedback circuit, so when you turn those up you're not only shelving hi or low frequencies, but you're actually cutting them from the negative feedback network, causing the power tubes to clip differently at those frequencies.
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Yes, or many amps where adjusting the Treble knob interacts with the entire tone circuit, not just the Treble. A capture approach will not emulate that.

Or the effect of turning MV up or down...
 
unix-guy said:
Yes, or many amps where adjusting the Treble knob interacts with the entire tone circuit, not just the Treble. A capture approach will not emulate that.

Or the effect of turning MV up or down...
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Even putting the amp out block EQ pre Power Amp gives a different sound.
 
Yes, but the point isn't that it's doing the same thing, the point is whether you can get the same sound - or near as makes no difference - using just post. And IME, in many cases, you can. The net result of all the interaction is mostly changes in EQ or perception of EQ that can be copied after the fact pretty damn closely as long as the original sound isn't way off (e.g., tone match).
 
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