Am I Number 1?

Robboman said:
Out of box 1st impressions.. simply beautiful piece of hardware. Clean, solid, heavy. Looks great. Knobs and buttons feel good. Plastic over screen and aluminium sides. Printed manual (in this day and age). Love the 'handle'.. I think of it more as a stomp protector for the knobs, but I've already used it as a handle. Nice balance.

Same size as the MFC. The LCD looks sharper, clearer, brighter and greener than my MFC and my Axe-Fx II (both Mk 1 originals).

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I think you know what we all want Robboman. Vid, vids and more vids please lol. I know you've just got it and all that but we are dying to see it. Looks like an amazing piece of kit. You're making it very difficult for us to wait for ours now lol
 
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Paulg2uk said:
I think you know what we all want Robboman. Vid, vids and more vids please lol. I know you've just got it and all that but we are dying to see it. Looks like an amazing piece of kit. You're making it very difficult for us to wait for ours now lol
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Yeah, I wanna see vids too! But rather than pollute the Internet with the embarrassing FX8 presentation I'd make, we might be best to wait til the video pros get hands on these.
 
BTW, I played around with the FX8 a few more hours last night. I remain VERY impressed. What a great product.

It came with firmware 1.01 dated April 28th :) Control layout and menu navigation right on the panel is easy and intuitive. There's a lot that's familiar if you've used the Axe-Fx, but the things that work a little bit different are well thought-out. I love the X\Y and Scene LEDs, it will always be easy to see exactly what's what, right there at your feet. The switches and jacks are all laid out in the ideal place too. These are subtleties but overall you can see a lot of attention to detail went into this design.

Honestly, I was trying to find faults or red flags. I can usually find something to complain about in any product, but I came up empty. I thought I had one with FX8-Edit, it was super slow and timing out the first time I ran it while trying to scan and read block definitions. Then I woke up and realized my Win 7 PC hadn't been rebooted in weeks. After a reboot I ran it again and experienced a fast, flawless editor.

I was well aware of what these FX blocks actually sound like (absolutely stellar.. same as Axe-Fx II), but it struck me how many new buyers out there will get to experience this quality for the first time. I think there are still boatloads of guitarists who only want floor-based units and thus never tried the Axe-Fx. There's going to be a whole new community of minds blown when they try FX8 and later the AX8.
 
Robboman said:
BTW, I played around with the FX8 a few more hours last night. I remain VERY impressed. What a great product.

It came with firmware 1.01 dated April 28th :) Control layout and menu navigation right on the panel is easy and intuitive. There's a lot that's familiar if you've used the Axe-Fx, but the things that work a little bit different are well thought-out. I love the X\Y and Scene LEDs, it will always be easy to see exactly what's what, right there at your feet. The switches and jacks are all laid out in the ideal place too. These are subtleties but overall you can see a lot of attention to detail went into this design.

Honestly, I was trying to find faults or red flags. I can usually find something to complain about in any product, but I came up empty. I thought I had one with FX8-Edit, it was super slow and timing out the first time I ran it while trying to scan and read block definitions. Then I woke up and realized my Win 7 PC hadn't been rebooted in weeks. After a reboot I ran it again and experienced a fast, flawless editor.

I was well aware of what these FX blocks actually sound like (absolutely stellar.. same as Axe-Fx II), but it struck me how many new buyers out there will get to experience this quality for the first time. I think there are still boatloads of guitarists who only want floor-based units and thus never tried the Axe-Fx. There's going to be a whole new community of minds blown when they try FX8 and later the AX8.
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How is the tuner in it? Is it fast and accurate enough for me to get rid of my dedicated Korg tuner?
 
For the past few years, I've been using a M13 as a pre-fx directly into the Axe-FX, along with rotating some of my favorite stomp boxes in from of the Axe (for example, a Heptode Maestro phaser clone). I have a few different M13 pedal board set-up, including one that has about six different OD pedals, a chorus (CE-1), Phase 90 phase and Electrix Mistres Flanger and then a term, slow gear and one that I vary.

I was hoping the FX8 would allow more than just two drive blocks or two or any block per patch. Yes, I know you can use scene, but that is not the same functionality. Is there any reason why you cannot have 8 Drive blocks so that you can have a single pedal board preset that has all you favorite ODs? I suppose I can set up a few different patches that each have two different OD pedals, but I would think that there is no technical reason to only allow two of any particular block unless CPU usage runs out.

This is not a criticism, but more of a feature request for future firmware.

Note - yes, X/Y does get you half way there, but it would be even better to have sixteen different variations of ODs at the step of a foot.
 
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Adinfinitum said:
For the past few years, I've been using a M13 as a pre-fx directly into the Axe-FX, along with rotating some of my favorite stomp boxes in from of the Axe (for example, a Heptode Maestro phaser clone). I have a few different M13 pedal board set-up, including one that has about six different OD pedals, a chorus (CE-1), Phase 90 phase and Electrix Mistres Flanger and then a term, slow gear and one that I vary.

I was hoping the FX8 would allow more than just two drive blocks or two or any block per patch. Yes, I know you can use scene, but that is not the same functionality. Is there any reason why you cannot have 8 Drive blocks so that you can have a single pedal board preset that has all you favorite ODs? I suppose I can set up a few different patches that each have two different OD pedals, but I would the no that there is no technical reason to only allow two of any particular block unless CPU usage runs out.

This is not a criticism, but more of a feature request for future firmware.
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I believe with the X/Y switching, you can actually have 4 different drives. Not the 8 you were hoping for, but it gets you closer.
 
Rex said:
The effects sound identical to the effects in the Axe-Fx II. And the FX8 is all about effects, so there's no other comparison to make. :)
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Is it absolutely 1:1 sound quality of both?


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Irfan said:
Is it absolutely 1:1 sound quality of both?
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It's identical. Same algorithms. The only differences come from the gear you connect to it. If you create a preset with one reverb block, for instance, and hook it up to the same gear (amp, FRFR or whatever), it'll sound the same as as an Axe II preset with one reverb block.
 
Rex said:
It's identical. Same algorithms. The only differences come from the gear you connect to it. If you create a preset with one reverb block, for instance, and hook it up to the same gear (amp, FRFR or whatever), it'll sound the same as as an Axe II preset with one reverb block.
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i have an axe fx II and use it as an effects unit in front of a real amp (no amp or cabinet simulation is used). so there would be no reason to get this if you already have an axe fx II?
 
jb70 said:
i have an axe fx II and use it as an effects unit in front of a real amp (no amp or cabinet simulation is used). so there would be no reason to get this if you already have an axe fx II?
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That depends on how important it is to have a small floor unit instead of an Axe in a rack. That's a personal question that only you can answer.
 
The FX8 sound is NOT identical to the Axe-Fx II :)

1). The FX8 has no fan, so there is NO fan noise.
2). The FX8 relay switches make this tiny mechanical noise (Axe-Fx has no relays). In a quiet room you do hear a tiny little click when you power up the FX8 as it initialises, and any time you use the relays (for amp channel switching).
3). Seems to be NO power on/off pop noise (when the amp is on). Axe-Fx makes a noise.
4). Overall noisefloor in the audio path.. I'm not sure, it's not like I'm using lab measurement tools or anything, but it seems as if the FX8 has even lower noisefloor than my Axe-Fx II mark 1. I suppose I'd have to set up similar (FX only) preset chains in both units and then measure with a meter to confirm.. not gonna do that, but maybe Cliff could confirm?

As for the sound quality of the effects themselves, YES I can confirm they are identical. :)
 
Rex said:
That depends on how important it is to have a small floor unit instead of an Axe in a rack. That's a personal question that only you can answer.
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right on. i was talking more about the quality of the effects and the overall noisefloor. for example, if i had the exact effects chain setup in both units and was running both units into my amp, would it sound identical?
 
Robboman said:
The FX8 sound is NOT identical to the Axe-Fx II :)

4). Overall noisefloor in the audio path.. I'm not sure, it's not like I'm using lab measurement tools or anything, but it seems as if the FX8 has even lower noisefloor than my Axe-Fx II mark 1. I suppose I'd have to set up similar (FX only) preset chains in both units and then measure with a meter to confirm.. not gonna do that, but maybe Cliff could confirm?

As for the sound quality of the effects themselves, YES I can confirm they are identical. :)
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The FX-8 noise would be lower than an Axe-Fx II Mark I. It's comparable to an XL+. It's specifically designed for 4CM so the levels are optimized for connecting to an amp. Therefore the apparent noise will be even lower since the levels are matched.
 
jb70 said:
right on. i was talking more about the quality of the effects and the overall noisefloor. for example, if i had the exact effects chain setup in both units and was running both units into my amp, would it sound identical?
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Yes it would sound identical.

Of course you can't run more than 8 blocks in a single preset on the FX8, so the Axe-Fx has that advantage.
 
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