AITR

I'm wondering how many here are really looking for the sound that many of us have become used to when playing through a real amp, that is actually not the design intent of a device like the Axe Fx is, assuming I understand the design intent, which if I do, is to have a unit capable of reproducing the sound of many different amps, close-mic'd,* in a quiet studio with no extra sound coming from the reflections, due to those extra reflections being unwanted to get a clear mix, and then adding them in in either post production or @ FOH, depending on the sound you desire on your recording, or what the venue/room your playing live in, requires for the band to sound good.

* From the manual/blocks guide: As guitarists, we are accustomed to the sound of a speaker “in the room,” but this is not what our audiences hear. For recording and performing, the close mic’d sound is essentially a universal standard. THIS is the sound that the Cab block is designed to reproduce, and this explains why not only guitarists, but recording and front-of-house engineers have embraced its use.

Of course, rules can be broken, especially to achieve new sounds and bolster the creative process. But in the context of AITR, are we looking for this sound simply to enjoy the "alone" playing experience, but it's not really the best use in the recording or live sound environment? Perhaps it's analogous to many of us creating that killer, scooped tone, that sounds amazing by itself, but in a band mix, fails to cut through, or to guitarists wanting to use their amp on stage, yet it fighting the FOH mix...?

Whatever the reasons for the desire by many here to alter the way the AF3 works in order to implement this feature, I'm quite interested to see how the next FW will handle the issue of the lack of NV memory in the MkI.
 
TSJMajesty said:
Of course, rules can be broken, especially to achieve new sounds and bolster the creative process. But in the context of AITR, are we looking for this sound simply to enjoy the "alone" playing experience, but it's not really the best use in the recording or live sound environment? Perhaps it's analogous to many of us creating that killer, scooped tone, that sounds amazing by itself, but in a band mix, fails to cut through, or to guitarists wanting to use their amp on stage, yet it fighting the FOH mix...?
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Exactly. Apart from playing alone or maybe as a very specific effect, I fail to see how this can be all that useful.

IEMs maybe?
 
Dave Merrill said:
In theory it's fine that they're on your computer not the device, but in practice, that means
a) Being connected to and working with a computer a lot of the time. You may do that already, but not everyone does.
b) Spending time shuffling IRs onto and off of the device, for zero added benefit
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a) Connect to your computer when you want to move IRs, then disconnect
b) Added benefit is a new bank of FullRes IRs
c) How is your b) any different than having to shuffle thru the directory of 1024 IRs in User bank 2? I still can't figure out why anyone needs 2048 User IRs on their FX3 at all times.
 
TSJMajesty said:
I'm wondering how many here are really looking for the sound that many of us have become used to when playing through a real amp, that is actually not the design intent of a device like the Axe Fx is, assuming I understand the design intent, which if I do, is to have a unit capable of reproducing the sound of many different amps, close-mic'd,* in a quiet studio with no extra sound coming from the reflections, due to those extra reflections being unwanted to get a clear mix, and then adding them in in either post production or @ FOH, depending on the sound you desire on your recording, or what the venue/room your playing live in, requires for the band to sound good.
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My understanding of the design intent of Axe FX is flexibility, not mic'd tone specifically (although of course it excels at that). I would phrase it that the intent of the Cab block and the IR Player block is to achieve mic'd sound, but for the entire unit, I think it's intended to be used in the myriad ways pros might need it to function, including using one's own cabinets. To me that's laid bare in the owner's manual, pages 26 - 30 all of which detail ways to use the unit with real guitar speakers. I think for many, the feeling of a cabinet rattling your bones is too much to give up, and I can't blame anyone who feels that way.

I think that flexibility is one of the incredible aspects of the unit. It was reading comments from users stating that they couldn't tell the difference A/Bing their real amp in the room to the unit that sold me.
 
vangrieg said:
Yeah, but that's Mk II which doesn't have the problem we're discussing to begin with.
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What @yek pointed out is that 2048 user slots could theoretically be only 6.25% of the required onboard storage for IRs if every slot in both cab blocks in all 1024 presets was filled with a unique IR. Even the Mk I, with only 512 presets, would only hold 12.5% of the required IRs in this scenario.
 
State of Epicicity said:
My understanding of the design intent of Axe FX is flexibility, not mic'd tone specifically (although of course it excels at that). I would phrase it that the intent of the Cab block and the IR Player block is to achieve mic'd sound, but for the entire unit, I think it's intended to be used in the myriad ways pros might need it to function, including using one's own cabinets. To me that's laid bare in the owner's manual, pages 26 - 30 all of which detail ways to use the unit with real guitar speakers. I think for many, the feeling of a cabinet rattling your bones is too much to give up, and I can't blame anyone who feels that way.

I think that flexibility is one of the incredible aspects of the unit. It was reading comments from users stating that they couldn't tell the difference A/Bing their real amp in the room to the unit that sold me.
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Sure. But wouldn't doing away with the IR User bank be taking away flexibility for those that use commercial IR's as well as the factory ones? What do those people do if moving those IR's to their computer is necessary, if they have several that are used in their existing presets? Maybe I don't quite understand how that would work, in real time/real use.
 
TSJMajesty said:
Sure. But wouldn't doing away with the IR User bank be taking away flexibility for those that use commercial IR's as well as the factory ones? What do those people do if moving those IR's to their computer is necessary, if they have several that are used in their existing presets? Maybe I don't quite understand how that would work, in real time/real use.
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just move those IRs to User 1 and edit the preset.
 
vangrieg said:
Exactly. Apart from playing alone or maybe as a very specific effect, I fail to see how this can be all that useful.

IEMs maybe?
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This is exactly why I was wondering if we could just sacrifice enough space for two or maybe four full res IRs and keep the rest of the bank for the normal stuff.
 
randyvanmartini said:
This is exactly why I was wondering if we could just sacrifice enough space for two or maybe four full res IRs and keep the rest of the bank for the normal stuff.
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My understanding is that for some technical reasons, it's all of the Bank 2 or nothing. Don't know why.

Also, from my personal point of view, just the fact that there's this enormous waste of space which, as it turns out could be used for something else, is kind of frustrating.
 
TSJMajesty said:
Sure. But wouldn't doing away with the IR User bank be taking away flexibility for those that use commercial IR's as well as the factory ones? What do those people do if moving those IR's to their computer is necessary, if they have several that are used in their existing presets? Maybe I don't quite understand how that would work, in real time/real use.
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I wasn't intending to enter the discussion about the new IR format and it's potential in the Mark I; I was just addressing the overall design intent because of the idea you wrote..

As for the use of IRs, from my understanding, if this was implemented in the way many are asking, User bank 1 would still be available, which still would provide enough room for most people.
 
AlbertA said:
One idea would be to just show the 32 parts occupied by a "FullRes" IR - i.e. like

User IR 1500:"MyRoomMic part 1",
User IR 1501:"MyRoomMic part 2", etc...

  • Internally there would be metadata so that if the user selects any of the 32 parts, the system is aware that any of those slots refer to the "FullRes" IR.
  • Similarly, when deleting/clearing the slots, if you delete any of the 32 parts, the system (Axe-Edit, Axe-Fx, etc) would delete the whole group.
  • When uploading a FullRes IR and you selected a slot number that did not have the following empty 31 contiguous slots - it would tell you "You need 32 empty slots" or something like that
    • Alternatively, it would warn you as normal, that you you are replacing whatever is currently existing in those slots
  • If you are uploading a normal IR, and you select any of the 32 slots of an existing FullRes IR it would warn you "If you put a normal IR here, this will get rid of the other 32 corresponding slots"

This way then, you could mix the normal IRs and the FullRes IRs and put them wherever you want; the cab block/IR Player would still work on the same index based system as it does currently.
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And where is that internal metadata stored? There isn't any additional memory available.

This approach mixes different types of IRs in a single bank, which means instead of doing a one-time conversion of presets/banks at firmware update time, the Axe-FX now has to check this stuff at runtime any time you're dealing with IRs. Additional user prompts/warnings when storing cabs... how is that better?

What happens when you have a preset that references user cab 12, and you later replace user cab 1 with a Fullres IR (overwriting the space in IR slots 1 thru 32)? Just think of how this approach complicates things, and the additional work it would take to address those complexities.

Do you know how the NV RAM is addressed? Is it one contiguous memory space, or is it possible that a FullRes cab might span address boundaries? Etc. There are more examples of how this would be overly complicated or infeasible, but you get the drift.

When Cliff says there's one way to do it, I believe him. Not necessarily because there isn't technically some other way that might be possible, but because this isn't an academic exercise -- Fractal is supporting a real-world product and have to contend with real-world constraints, including development time/complexity. I also believe him because he's undoubtedly the subject matter expert here, and he's done the best job of product support of any music company I've dealt with over the past decade I've been a Fractal Audio customer.
 
TSJMajesty said:
the close mic’d sound is essentially a universal standard.
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Before PA systems, cabs from the stage provided the volume; amp in the room. The size of the room or venue determined whether you needed a 2X12, 4X12 or a wall of 4X12's. With the development and advances in PA systems, silent or quiet stages have become more and more the standard leading to a need to discover how to get guitars into the mix.

Close mic'ing has been a standard born out of necessity, not out of what's ideal. It results in cutting out a lot of a guitar's tone or feel. We've just become accustomed to it, now defending it as the ideal guitar tone. I've seen rig rundowns of players that use as many as 4 to 6 mics in a live setting trying to replicate as many nuances of a cab/speaker they can.

I've spent countless hours trying to find a single mic position that replicated what I heard while playing at home through a PA system. I eventually found a position that worked but it still lacks what the FullRes seems to provide which I'm very excited about. With the new FullRes IRs, getting the complete sound of a cab through a PA appears to becoming more and more a reality.
 
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JoKeR III said:
Before PA systems, cabs from the stage provided the volume; amp in the room. The size of the room or venue determined whether you needed a 2X12, 4X12 or a wall of 4X12's. With the development and advances in PA systems, silent or quiet stages have become more and more the standard leading to a need to discover how to get guitars into the mix.

Close mic'ing has been a standard born out of necessity, not out of what's ideal. It results in cutting out a lot of a guitar's tone or feel. We've just become accustomed to it, now defending it as the ideal guitar tone. I've seen rig rundowns of players that use as many as 4 to 6 mics in a live setting trying to replicate as many nuances of a cab/speaker they can.

I've spent countless hours trying to find a single mic position that replicated what I heard while playing at home through a PA system. I eventually found a position that worked but it still lacks what the FullRes seems to provide which I'm very excited about. With the new FullRes IRs, getting the complete sound of a cab through a PA appears to becoming more and more a reality.
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Killer post! You are right. Close-micing has become a default for a lot of reasons,
and some of them are less than ideal, as you state. I love/hate close-micing. It can be
so immediate and in your face, which is great,. but that is not always what is wanted,
nor is it the best way to approximate the iconic and ideal tones many of us grew up
so inspired by.

I have been solely room-micing every band rehearsal and jam session for over a decade
now trying to refine my approach. While the guitar tones are not always as immediate
and direct as the modern approach gives us (whether DI'd or close mic'd) the tones I am
getting are a LOT closer to what you would hear in the room when the music is being played
and performed live.

I like where Full-Res is going----even if the stated "intended" uses are more limited than where I
can potentially see this going well into the future.
 
AJ Vargas said:
I just find funny how suddenly nobody needs more than 12 User IRs and are perfectly comfortable with losing an entire bank when right before the launch of the AFX III Mk2 everybody and their mother absolutely needed much more than the 2000+ user IRs the MK1 currently supports.

I, for one, am absolutely OK with whatever Cliff chooses to do. In the end, he always figures the best solution possible.
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Didn’t preset space double from the mk1 to mk2? IIRC, that’s what the “fuss” was about. Cab space may have increased too but I remember the chatter being about the preset space.
 
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