11Rack. So glad I have the Axe-FX

iocomposer said:
Forum newbie here... been playing guitar for 30 years; professional protools guy in the film/game industry for 17 years. Thanks for having me!

This topic is very interesting to me.

I have an 11R and am currently waiting for my Axe-FX Ultra to land on my doorstep (shipped on the 18th! Woohoo!).

I purchased the Ultra based on the ravings of a tonewhore friend and all of the impressive videos on YouTube. Don't interpret this as skepticism as it's not, but to be totally honest, I'm not expecting that much of a step up from the 11R. I understand brand loyalty and all of that but ultimately, the 11R is an incredible piece of machinery capable of most (if not all) of what the Ultra is at 1/3rd the cost. I'm really surprised to see the thrashing about and complaining of a $99 upgrade from people who willingly pay $2k for a very comparable machine. If you're really comparing apples with apples, the 11R allows you to save your settings in protools sessions and you can use it as a USB interface, so in terms of features, it is in a few big ways undeniably superior to the AxeFX.

Ultimately it comes down to the quality of the models, right? I will discover the AxeFX's superiority in that area, which I'm excitedly optimistic about but based on my understanding of the 11R over the past year of owning it and tweaking it, I'll be really surprised if it the models are 3x superior to the 11R as the price dictates. I hope I will be! :)

In the meantime, can anybody point me to some documented sound quality comparisons between the models in the 11R to the same models in the AxeFX? It would be much appreciated.

Best regards!
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Tee hee. We'll talk to you again in about 2 weeks. You'll be posting something very kool-aid like by that point. ;) :D
 
While we Axe-Fx owners can count ourselves lucky to have the extremely rare luxury of free firmware updates that expand our investment, can't really thrash a company for charging $ for theirs. People have to eat after all.
 
Dinkledorf said:
While we Axe-Fx owners can count ourselves lucky to have the extremely rare luxury of free firmware updates that expand our investment, can't really thrash a company for charging $ for theirs. People have to eat after all.
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You know if it was any other company than AVID I'd be a lot more understanding, but I hate them. It's personal at this point and time.

And the funny thing is that I get along great with the guys that actually work there; I've worked outside of AVID with a few of them and even those that I've met through AVID have been good dudes for the most part.

And yes, you can add up all the expansion packs that they will ever come up with and it will not equal the price of the AxeFX. Tonewise; I can't speak from experience, but I doubt that it sounds horrible. I'm sure that it's a pretty decent piece of gear and well worth the money.

But there is always some stupid caveat with these guys. There is a zero level of trust with them on my part and after almost 20 years of dealing with them they've had plenty of opportunity to prove otherwise. And they are out with global domination in mind in everything they touch. And they don't succeed because they offer something unique; it's because they buy out companies and bully their way to the forefront. They can have my workplace; but they aren't getting my home. :)

And yeah, there's just a little bit of over the top tongue in cheek in there.
 
Fair enough, shasha. For me, I've probably spent over $100k @ the Avid store over the years, but their tools have allowed me the good fortune of earning many magnitudes more than that, so I really don't sweat their corporate policy too much. When the rubber meets the road, they're the only company offering me the rock solid performance and capability that I need to do the work that I've chosen to do.*

The bottom line is that I judge all of this guitar modeling stuff on how it feels when I play my guitar through it. When I plug into the 11R, I get transported to that zone where I can just play all night and wish it wouldn't end. I used to tour with a Soldano/VHT rig in the 90s, so that's my frame of reference for good guitar tone with the kind of music I like to play (mostly hard edged Jazz). The 11R comes really close to that sound so I'm impressed. I'm excited to see what places the AxeFX will take me!
 
If you've got that kind of scratch and are happy with it that's all that matters. I know the merits of having a system that does what you want; I'm on the tech/engineering side of the AVID stuff and while my editors love using it, I hate working on it. :razz

Case in point we had nearly 250 AVID editing systems at our facility and we had bought a Unity server that would allow us to store all of our media from a centralized location so that you can edit any project from any machine in the building. Most times once you buy the SW and HW you are done...but they wanted us to pay an annual fee for each client to connect to the Unity. And once you go to another server based solution you lose a lot of capabilities. Not because those capabilities are unique to the AVID system, but because they locked them out via SW design in order to force you to use all AVID stuff. It's a brilliant business practice for them; not so much for the end user IMHO.

It just irritates me because there used to be more competition out there that didn't subscribe to the same types of practices. If we would have supported them instead of AVID things may be a lot different today. Most of those companies either folded or changed their direction so now you've got what's just short of a monopoly and that isn't good for anyone. Competition breeds innovation and improvement. I'd just appreciate having a realistic alternative or an option these days.
 
250 systems. Wow man... Now that is a massive facility. What kinds of things does a facility with 250 systems do exactly? Unity is a high end solution with a very limited client base for Avid to accommodate. I would think that R&D would be pretty costly for mostly custom enterprise level support like that. Not surprised that they would charge big $ actually.

OOC, isnt unity obsolete now? Are you using XSAN or iSCSI at all? I've always been interested in these techs but never had the infrastructure large enough to justify the cost.
 
iocomposer said:
250 systems. Wow man... Now that is a massive facility. What kinds of things does a facility with 250 systems do exactly? Unity is a high end solution with a very limited client base for Avid to accommodate. I would think that R&D would be pretty costly for mostly custom enterprise level support like that. Not surprised that they would charge big $ actually.

OOC, isnt unity obsolete now? Are you using XSAN or iSCSI at all? I've always been interested in these techs but never had the infrastructure large enough to justify the cost.
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Yeah, Unity's gone (actually it may have been re-utilized somewhere) and we've scaled down considerably in the number of machines; I don't know what the exact number of client machines are right now (we actually just upgraded a lot of them to some dual quad core machines and even some laptop Mac based ones. We went to an ISIS system and just installed an Interplay system which is kind of cool.

We're an instructional institution and my job is to teach these days so I'm not working on that side of the house right now. but I'm not stupid; I realize that in order to keep up with what's out there you need to get your hands on the new stuff so I spend just about anytime off the platform in the engineering shop and contract maintenance office and they appreciate the extra set of hands. I'm actually more of an expert on the radio side (my first love) and you'd laugh if you saw the system that we use for that. It's pretty impressive actually (AudioVault), but it's rather dated looking. People always come in there and bash it at first glance, but once we start digging into it they almost always end up amazed at what it can do.

I've been spending some time at a broadcast facility trying to get up to speed on iNews and Interplay and Titan and all the stuff because that's where my bread and butter is going to be made long term. It's pretty amazing how far things have changed over the years in terms of broadcast. Automation isn't just about spot insertion, it's about workflow and with so many different ways to get the product out (web, satellite, terrestrial transmission) it's only possible because of the integration of the entire process. I'm far from an expert on it right now, but I'm doing my best to make sure that I don't become a dinosaur. And I won't deny that once I got over the initial luddite/cranky old man syndrome I'm thoroughly impressed with what we can do. But it's wrought with a whole new level of problems that usually come down to one of two things:

1. compatability
2. build quality

And I chalk both of those up the infestation of IT based companies into broadcast. Back in the day you had one standard (NTSC) and if your product didn't meet that then no one would buy it. Nowadays we've all come to accept company's falling short of advertised claims and a lot of these companies that got ahead have done so by being proprietary and depending on you buying an entire solution from them. With so many flavors of HD and SDI in general, the changeover and not one clear cut established standard for all it's just a complete mess. And most facilities aren't interested in retooling from the ground up, they are trying to do it incrementally which creates a whole other mess.

I suppose I got way OT here, sorry.
 
Ok.. I've had the AxeFX plugged in and working for a few hours now and I have to say that it is much better than the 11R. I mean in very real, tangible ways, not just hyperbole. The way it responds to the volume knob and lighter touches... just like a real amp. The 11R does not do that even close to as well. The actual sound at the outputs is a much higher quality sound... this isn't some esoteric, mystical judgement... when I play the AxeFX loud it doesn't hurt my ears like the 11R does. I have a built in threshold where things start to get really uncomfortable at high volumes and the sound of the AxeFX is noticeably smoother and warmer, more tolerable at higher volumes... hard to describe, but I can play the AxeFX louder and longer than I could with the 11R. The emulations take me "that place" much more intensely than the 11R ever did. On top of all of that, the FX are amazing! Really, super high quality FX that I'm really surprised by. I'll be using the synth patches as vocoders for sure. They're really unique and malleable.

So.. from the perspective of someone not really expecting much, I'm happy to say that I'm pretty much blown away at how much better the AxeFX is than the 11R. If that helps someone make a purchase decision at some point... there you have it. :)
 
Scott Peterson said:
Tee hee. We'll talk to you again in about 2 weeks. You'll be posting something very kool-aid like by that point. ;) :D
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iocomposer said:
Ok.. I've had the AxeFX plugged in and working for a few hours now and I have to say that it is much better than the 11R. I mean in very real, tangible ways, not just hyperbole. The way it responds to the volume knob and lighter touches... just like a real amp. The 11R does not do that even close to as well. The actual sound at the outputs is a much higher quality sound... this isn't some esoteric, mystical judgement... when I play the AxeFX loud it doesn't hurt my ears like the 11R does. I have a built in threshold where things start to get really uncomfortable at high volumes and the sound of the AxeFX is noticeably smoother and warmer, more tolerable at higher volumes... hard to describe, but I can play the AxeFX louder and longer than I could with the 11R. The emulations take me "that place" much more intensely than the 11R ever did. On top of all of that, the FX are amazing! Really, super high quality FX that I'm really surprised by. I'll be using the synth patches as vocoders for sure. They're really unique and malleable.

So.. from the perspective of someone not really expecting much, I'm happy to say that I'm pretty much blown away at how much better the AxeFX is than the 11R. If that helps someone make a purchase decision at some point... there you have it. :)
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Hey, it hasn't been two weeks yet! ;) :D

Enjoy the journey!
 
:lol Great!

I've my Ultra now for almost three years and still don't get tired of those "just got my Axe - WOAH!" posts.
It's fun to read every single time. :)
 
The 11R is a nice unit and doesn't sound bad. It just doesn't sound as good as the Axe. The other guitar player in my band uses one. He sounded better than my old MTS/M13 setup. Now I sound better. :D
 
Unless you think Cliff works for free, the ironic fact is that you already paid for it when you bought the unit.

Avid users don´t have to pay in advance.

Not complaining, just pointing out a fact.
 
I had an 11 Rack....it had decent dirt sounds. But didnt have it all.
Then I bought $900+ of pedals - nope, still wasnt there.
Before that I had a Digitech 2101 (proly an earlier rendition of the axe fx - had algorithms)...I thought it was da Bomb.
Previous to that, I tried the Rocktron Prophesy...the Digitech 21 (yuk)...etc etc

~in sonic heaven now~
 
North said:
Unless you think Cliff works for free, the ironic fact is that you already paid for it when you bought the unit.

Avid users don´t have to pay in advance.

Not complaining, just pointing out a fact.
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I see your 'fact' and raise you one conspiracy theory and a bottle of bitchiness.
 
shasha said:
...First you buy the 11R, then you find out that the editor only works in ProTools and then you get charged for an upgrade....
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Man, I was thinking about getting the 11R to go with my Axe FX, but not if the editor only works with PT. That's stupid.

Thanks for posting.
 
Looking at the price differences between the Axe FX and 11 Rack, if you total up the number of sims for each unit Amp, Cab, Effects and mic (so coming purely from a sim quantity perspective) they work out to be almost the same. Using the Standard simply because it's closer in price to the 11 Rack, @ $1,500 and a total of 174 sims works out to be $8.62 per sim. 11 Rack @ $899 and a total of 48 sims (someone correct me if I'm wrong but that's all I could find) works out to $18.73 per sim. The Ultra works out to $10.58 per sim obviously the price per sim drops as new sims are added, more so for the Ultra then the Standard as the Standard is running out of space.

Having not owned an 11 Rack I can't comment on the quality of the sims but based on others that have I would have to say the Axe is a better deal but we already knew that didn't we 8).
 
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