“Jesus, is there anything you people don’t bitch about”

FractalAudio said:
It's society today. We're all spoiled. We want instant gratification and we usually get it. When we don't get it we feel like we're being cheated.

I think society was better when life was harder. I grew up with nothing. Most of us did. I remember one of the best "toys" we ever got was the huge cardboard box the refrigerator came in. We spent hours in that thing pretending it was a spaceship. We would spend hours playing baseball with a worn out ball or walk along the railroad tracks looking for smushed pennies we left the day before. We didn't have any fancy electronics or social media or much of anything. We ate government issued cheese and powdered milk. And yet we were happy.

I really think social media was one of the worst things to happen to society. It had the power to be a useful tool but that power has been abused in the name of greed. People's brains are being rewired intentionally to addict them to it so they can generate more advertising revenue. People are accustomed to getting hundreds of little dopamine hits every day and it's made them irrational and demanding. Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey will go down in history as two of the most evil pricks the world has ever seen (Sheryl Sandberg will be right behind them at the gates of hell).
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Completely agree, my mum is nearly 80 and says the 50s were a happy time because people appreciated what they had so much whereas today with everyone posting about themselves all the time they're so more narcissistic than before and feed off of those dopamine hits and want everything they want NOW
 
100% agree. Fractal makes an incredible tone generator for your guitar. WTF whine about wanting this and that. It’s okay to wish for yet.... another amp. (Like we have to have it... almost 300 isn’t enough) lol

But seriously, everything you need to craft amazing tones from you ax is here.
Firmware updates will come... so will new products. (That doesn’t make what you have now obsolete nor suck). We have the best... appreciate it.

Thank you Cliff for you relentless pursuit for perfection! You’re a tech genius sir.
 
look at the bright side; u.s. priority mail costs more to take longer now. no, really. that's a good thing to me. sometimes you should not do something just because you can. sometimes we should stop going forward and go backwards.
 
ak301 said:
Completely agree, my mum is nearly 80 and says the 50s were a happy time because people appreciated what they had so much whereas today with everyone posting about themselves all the time they're so more narcissistic than before and feed off of those dopamine hits and want everything they want NOW
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That should give you a hint, actually.

Bitching about "kids these days" is an eternal phenomenon.

And yes, it is bitching. :)
 
Summer of '67 kid here.

I was a relatively spoiled kid who grew up middle class suburbs. I always wanted the 'best' stereo, bike, or whatever, or it at least had to be a notch better than what my younger brother had. One Christmas I learned my parents were getting us the same stereo and I asked if I could put some of my own money into it to get the next model up with turntable and 8-track. It might have been Realistic or Sears or something. Not actually good but better than my boombox.

Anyway, I really dug my 8-track tapes of Chicago, Kansas, Billy Joel, Styx, KC & SB, etc. And I'd play 2112, AFTK, Hemispheres, PW, MP LPs over and over and over. That was next level shit and my little adolescent brain orgasmed not able to process the wall of sound and the emotion combined. The music transcended the gear.

I proceeded to become a glasses-wearing introverted nerd and not as much into things as ideas. My C=64 was the coolest device to play with every day after school, but I did pine for an Amiga.

Decades later, after the career/success path (and attendant lifestyle) started to feel hollow, by my mid-40s I didn't want to own anything. I sold or gave away almost everything (not the Axe or my fav guitar) and downsized to an amount that could fit in a U-haul trailer.

I live on way less and am happier for it. My psychic load around things is 1% of what it used to be. I appreciate the few things I have a lot more. I don't have much FOMO or RAMO (rage about...). I mean there's a lot of actual terrible shit going down all over the world and sadly even between very privileged people. The Axe release schedule is about 100th on my list of hopes, concerns, fears. And giving Cliff/FAS shit for creating more options in the world doesn't compute in my brain.
 
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All this talk about playing with the neighbor kids, scrounging for toys, getting into mischief, alleys behind stores, and 1967...

Reminds me of one night around 1967. A friend was sleeping over. We snuck out after midnight to see what we could get into and see what we could find to mess with. We wound up in an alley behind a store, playing baseball with a 2-by-4 and a dead blackbird. (Hint: grab that little guy by the feet and pitch underhand. ;))
 
StuntGuitar said:
sometimes you should not do something just because you can. sometimes we should stop going forward and go backwards.
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-1! Thank you.

Our society thrive on progress clamoring for more, better, faster. It scorns stasis, tradition, and conservatism (orientation not politics) or it relegates those antiquated, boring, restrictive things to a corner. And going slower or 'backwards' can be failure to the point of shame and disgrace. And while cycles are happening all the time, we can't see them or otherwise deny them.

I think some in the West are realizing that speed and progress is slowly/quickly killing us and the planet. We can get to more and more goals/things faster and faster but we're more greedy and impatient and less present and aware.

Sometimes subtracting is adding. Sometimes nothing is something.
 
vangrieg said:
That should give you a hint, actually.

Bitching about "kids these days" is an eternal phenomenon.

And yes, it is bitching. :)
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Buy Cliffs point still stands, as soon as any upgrade or new model are announced for every positive or constructive comments there are many many more bitching "why can't it do this, why can't it do that"
 
Ok... I have to chime in, even though this is all crap us old people say..... I was born in 69 and was thinking about this the other day, our generation and even a bit earlier was really the first to have a childhood. We'd ride bikes to Thrifty's and get a 35 cent triple decker ice cream cone, and play outside til the street lights came on... Of course we also were the first to get video games with our Atari, I can remember being so impressed that you could just reset the game and didn't have to put a quarter in...

Nowadays all the communities online gaming and otherwise are sooooo toxic. Just last night I was working on helping my son with music for a game mod he wants to do, and he warned me about all the death threats other mod makers have gotten. I think on top of being the most affluent generation yet, much of the bad theories on raising kids is coming to full fruition and biting society on the keister. Social media is simply the platform that gives the ill-behaved the chance to let it out the quickest. My kids are 27, 24, 21 and a 4 year old grandchild... I still get resistance from my wife over making them take responsibility in life, it's ridiculous. Kids have to learn things in your house or else life will teach it to them (maybe). It's ok for the daddy lion to tell the cubs what's ok behavior and what's not. I have to stay off the soap box...

Anyway, keep at it Cliff, I'm glad to be part of the family and appreciate your dedication.
 
vangrieg said:
That should give you a hint, actually.

Bitching about "kids these days" is an eternal phenomenon.

And yes, it is bitching. :)
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It's not just bitching though... things have reached a fever pitch where kids don't even know who or what they are anymore, and much of the behavior is entirely self defeating and destructive. Some of us are willing to go against the grain and make a difference.
 
PRSfreak4 said:
  • Hard times make strong men
  • Strong men create good times
  • Good times create weak men
  • Weak men create hard times
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That's true.

My father - who passed away recently - was born in 1933 in the eastern part of Germany.
He was 5 years old when the an evil bastard started the war. He was 8 when his father - a farmer - died in the battlefield somewhere in the Ukraine. He was 16 when his mother died.
He was 17 when he drove 800 kilometers with his bicycle westward and found friends and a job as a truck driver in the US ARMY in Ramstein.
He found my mother, who was working as a houskeeper for an US Air Force pilot.
He started with nothing and with hard work he managed to lead a decent life.

His life made me strong. Probably not as strong as he was. And I hope my both sons will not forget where their prosperity came from.
 
I used to be in photography and at the high end of tech companies would not replace there flagship pro model until tech had advanced enough to warrant it's overhaul . For instance with Nikon it only had six pro film cameras from 1959 to the end of film and even with digital we are only up to the 6 with a few minor mods in between and that is from 1999 to date.
Music gear at the top end is traditionally timeless as good tone does not go out of style but Axe is constantly redesigning hardware. I think the issue is that when a new "better" unit comes out people feel that the one they have is not different but worse and this is not true with traditional amps. I think that people would expect a good few years out of each iteration before the next (more than 3).
In computer game consoles a generation is considered 8 to 10 years and the capability of the hardware usually takes most of that time to fully realise.
Back to the axe;
The tendency that Fractal have of making a MK2 or a ultra (turbo) xl or xl+ distinction when these things don't actually progress the core sound of the device is my only complaint about Fractal. I am happy to buy the full revisions but not the marketing lead ones in between.
I think my problem is me as without a marketing strategy that wants (or maybe needs) to sell more hardware to it's core user base every two years or so is the consequence of staying at the top .
 
Another way to look at it is a £3K Digital guitar preamp/processor is a small market and only so many people are going to bite what ever you do so in order to stay and grow you need to tap in to them every two or so years. Apple do it every year and car companies since forever.
It taps in to the vanity of ownership of the latest thing and makes us all buy new stuff that in real world practical terms are the same as the things we already have.
 
I haven't taken time to read all the comments, but I have a feeling others have said it - the fact that we continue to receive these firmware updates with new models of amps/pedals, etc. is extremely rare in this business. Most companies would call these expansion packs or equivalent and charge a pretty penny. Not to mention all the companies that have adopted a subscription model. I have nothing but gratitude for Cliff and FAS and all they've done for tone shaping. For over ten years a FAS device has been my primary go to signal path for guitar and bass and I don't see that changing.
 
la noise said:
Lean into it. ;)

I have to say that government cheese was some of the best I have had in my life. It was
always white, and we would get massive chunks my Mom would freeze. It made the best
Mac and Cheese. Or maybe I was just really hungry.

I can't say as many nice tings about the powdered milk. I can recall running out of
milk weekly and then would have to go to the powdered stuff and mix with water
to put on a bowl of cereal. No nostalgia for that. :)
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We always had the yellow government cheese. If you got to the food bank early enough on certain days, you could score a block of Velveta and that was like a legit celebratory event in my house. I felt like royalty to have a big chunk of it to eat and my sister and I would always fight over who had the biggest piece, as if having a few extra centimeters of Velveta, not even a bite's worth, made you the better kid.

And powdered milk and Frosted Flakes; never a more deceiving cereal. If you don't mix all the powdered milk up until it's dissolved and you get some chunks or milk sludge, the way it coats the flakes makes it look like you're going to get an extra sugary one, only to get that weird I-think-it's-milk-but-I-dunno taste instead. :tearsofjoy:

Tagging onto what Cliff said, I saw a meme the other day that was a bunch of different sticks and the caption was something like "We Had The Best Toys In The 80's And 90's", there were some shaped like guns, some shaped like swords, some like wands or something. Dude, I used to spend hours in the woods trying to find the right stick to make a samurai sword with! I had one at one point that had the perfect curve to it and i whittled it down so it had an edge, wrapped the handle with leather rope and put a wrist-guard from a toy samurai sword on it, I had that thing for years!

To go back and have that much excitement over a stick again, I'd spend whatever amount of money I possibly could to do that.
 
There's almost always a business opportunity in every complaint that has some substantive content in it. Once you frame the complaint in the light of "Wouldn't it be nice if......", an opportunity will almost always reveal itself. As a software engineer who also deals with this daily, it's par for the course. Cliff knows what's up.
 
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