Another Axefx vs Amps thread

AngusV said:
Perhaps the missing something is similar to the difference between hearing a Spitfire Merlin engine roar as it it flies overhead and the sound hits you in the chest, vs a recording of the same event. The recording will never recreate the experience, just like recorded real amps cannot. Even at a live event where the guy has a marshal set up, you probably hear the miked up FOH sound anyway.

FWIW, I have a 800 watts rms custom built GRFR cab connected to my AXFXIII. Turn it up it and it sounds amazing!
I’ve had ‘‘em all. But the AXFX is so versatile and soo good, it is all I need.
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Tell us more!
 
mr_fender said:
Interestingly, in the block guide it says that when power amp modeling is turned off, Presence becomes a simple shelving filter (like Hi-Cut), but in testing with 20.02 Beta 1 it does not appear to do anything anymore when power amp modeling is turned off. It also says that since Cygnus the advanced page in the amp block shows both Presence and Hi-Cut for all models and that also does not appear to be the case. Seems to be some discrepancies there.
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Well, deactivating the Prescence knob, when power amp simulation is off, is the only thing that makes sense. So it might be wrongly described in the manual, but it is the right way it's been setup. 🙂

I believe it's been like this, at least since 19.00 🤔
 
mr_fender said:
Interestingly, in the block guide it says that when power amp modeling is turned off, Presence becomes a simple shelving filter (like Hi-Cut), but in testing with 20.02 Beta 1 it does not appear to do anything anymore when power amp modeling is turned off. It also says that since Cygnus the advanced page in the amp block shows both Presence and Hi-Cut for all models and that also does not appear to be the case. Seems to be some discrepancies there.
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The Block Guide is outdated on this. Since Quantum 9.03 and later, Presence is disabled when Power Amp Modeling is turned off.

@Admin M@
 
Well I think I'm done tweaking the Axe for awhile just can't get there and not looking to spend more money or time when I already have the tone I'm looking for. I'll just do like quite a few on here and have the best of both worlds and be happy!
 
Id just like to chime in and add that I dont believe there is a handwired tube amp on planet earth that sounds better than the tones I get from my fractal. Ive played A LOT of amps. All sound noisy, beamy, and imperfect. The best amp Ive ever heard live was an Egnater Armegeddon (high gain), but thats because it came close to sounding as good as my fractal 😅
 
First - Besides being a sound engineer, producer, studio owner and guitarist, I am and always will be a tube guy! I own many different tube amps and cabs, mostly high-gain, as that is where my interest lies (Metal).

When that is said, I am absolutely sold on the AXE3. Like OP I am interested in how close the AXE3 gets to my real amps, but I approached this quite the other way around;

Now I physically own the amps and cabs I consider the ultimate setup for my band needs:

Engl Savage 120 + Mesa Boogie Mrk V 90watt
into
Engl Pro Cab 4x12" + Mesa Rectifier XL Cab

But it's not practical for me to bring these out on gigs, as they sit in my Studio-setup, so my aim was to recreate my dialled in sound on the respective amps and cabs in the AXE3.

Also I knew I would always want to play thru cabs for monitor needs live, either bringing along my own, or borrow/rental my way on fly in gigs and the like.

Therefore I knew I would also have to bring a power-amp always. For more "local" gigs and rehearsal I use my Marshall 9200 Tube Power Amp, with 5881 tubes - insanely heavy, but I care more for the sound, less for the practicality. (For others I will most likely use the Palmer Macht 402, have not come up yet.)

I started out with matching the AXE3 amp blocks of the respectable amps (Angle Severe 2 + USA Lead Mid Gain Bright) to my physical amps, one by one - using the 4CM described in the Fractal Wiki - flipping between the physical pre-amp and the Amp Block from within the AXE3 . Using the physical amps actual power-amp, I obviously turned off Power Amp Modeling in Global.

The results was mildly speaking flabbergasting...

With almost the same settings in both amps, staying on the Tone page, I came incredibly close real fast. Did they sound the same 1:1? No, just like 2 identical amps never sound the same, due to electronic component tolerance, tube-bias and wear and tear. But no doubt it was the same amps, behaving exactly the same way - and they felt and responded exactly the same when playing them thru their respectable cabs. Amazing! And you couldn't really say one sounded better than the other, just slightly different.

Remember, I was using the physical amps power section for this!


Next step:

Now the AXE3 out of Output3, before any Cab Block, into the Marshall 9200 Power Amp into first the Engl Pro 4x12" Cab, Switching speaker cable back and forth between the Engl Savage 120 output and The AXE/9200 to compare. And then into the Mesa Rectifier XL 4x12", switching between the AXE3/9200 and the Mesa Mrk V.

This was more tricky - I found that the Marshall 9200 was letting thru way more high frequencies than when going into the physical amps Power section, thru Effect Return. I slammed a Filter Block before Output3 and found I had to do Lowpass all the way down to between 4K to 5K, to match the 9200 to the Engl Savage. Almost same thing with the Mesa Mrk V. That helped big time! Again - not 1:1, but obviously the same amps and very close. And when I started to play around with Speaker Impedance Curves, different Tubes, Speaker Compression and a little deep tweaking, the result was INCREDIBLE!

I ended up with a result sounding SUPERIOR to my physical amps!! Even though I love those 2 amps, nothing isn't so good, you can't wish for it to be a little better, haha! - Well, on the AXE3 versions I had SO MANY MORE parameters to play with, and then of course I now was free to build the perfect true stereo setup, when combining the AXE3 various effects.

I was, and still am, blown away!!


The last step:

I am now in the process of adjusting my IR's and what comes out from Output1 (direct to FOH/IEM) to replicate in the PA what I hear coming thru my cabs. I have no doubt it's doable, and when I listen thru my Genelec 1030A's, it already sounds better than anything I've ever heard - on all volume levels btw. It will probably take a couple of shows on real PA's before it's perfected in that regard, but that's the easy part. :)


For my part, I am now convinced Cliff has cracked it! - To my experience the AXE3 is 100% there.


Good for you FRACTAL, and thank you!!
- And remember, the reason why we all think the AXE sounds so amazing, is because it sounds like tubes! ;)
 
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Rasmus Toftlund said:
First - Besides being a sound engineer, producer, studio owner and guitarist, I am and always will be a tube guy! I own many different tube amps and cabs, mostly high-gain, as that is where my interest lies (Metal).

When that is said, I am absolutely sold on the AXE3. Like OP I am interested in how close the AXE3 gets to my real amps, but I approached this quite the other way around;

Now I physically own the amps and cabs I consider the ultimate setup for my band needs:

Engl Savage 120 + Mesa Boogie Mrk V 90watt
into
Engl Pro Cab 4x12" + Mesa Rectifier XL Cab

But it's not practical for me to bring these out on gigs, as they sit in my Studio-setup, so my aim was to recreate my dialled in sound on the respective amps and cabs in the AXE3.

Also I knew I would always want to play thru cabs for monitor needs live, either bringing along my own, or borrow/rental my way on fly in gigs and the like.

Therefore I knew I would also have to bring a power-amp always. For more "local" gigs and rehearsal I use my Marshall 9200 Tube Power Amp, with 5881 tubes - insanely heavy, but I care more for the sound, less for the practicality. (For others I will most likely use the Palmer Macht 402, have not come up yet.)

I started out with matching the AXE3 amp blocks of the respectable amps (Angle Severe 2 + USA Lead Mid Gain Bright) to my physical amps, one by one - using the 4CM described in the Fractal Wiki - flipping between the physical pre-amp and the Amp Block from within the AXE3 . Using the physical amps actual power-amp, I obviously turned off Power Amp Modeling in Global.

The results was mildly speaking flabbergasting...

With almost the same settings in both amps, staying on the Tone page, I came incredibly close real fast. Did they sound the same 1:1? No, just like 2 identical amps never sound the same, due to electronic component tolerance, tube-bias and wear and tear. But no doubt it was the same amps, behaving exactly the same way - and they felt and responded exactly the same when playing them thru their respectable cabs. Amazing! And you couldn't really say one sounded better than the other, just slightly different.

Remember, I was using the physical amps power section for this!


Next step:

Now the AXE3 out of Output3, before any Cab Block, into the Marshall 9200 Power Amp into first the Engl Pro 4x12" Cab, Switching speaker cable back and forth between the Engl Savage 120 output and The AXE/9200 to compare. And then into the Mesa Rectifier XL 4x12", switching between the AXE3/9200 and the Mesa Mrk V.

This was more tricky - I found that the Marshall 9200 was letting thru way more high frequencies than when going into the physical amps Power section, thru Effect Return. I slammed a Filter Block before Output3 and found I had to do Lowpass all the way down to between 4K to 5K, to match the 9200 to the Engl Savage. Almost same thing with the Mesa Mrk V. That helped big time! Again - not 1:1, but obviously the same amps and very close. And when I started to play around with Speaker Impedance Curves, different Tubes, Speaker Compression and a little deep tweaking, the result was INCREDIBLE!

I ended up with a result sounding SUPERIOR to my physical amps!! Even though I love those 2 amps, nothing isn't so good, you can't wish for it to be a little better, haha! - Well, on the AXE3 versions I had SO MANY MORE parameters to play with, and then of course I now was free to build the perfect true stereo setup, when combining the AXE3 various effects.

I was, and still am, blown away!!


The last step:

I am now in the process of adjusting my IR's and what comes out from Output1 (direct to FOH/IEM) to replicate in the PA what I hear coming thru my cabs. I have no doubt it's doable, and when I listen thru my Genelec 1030A's, it already sounds better than anything I've ever heard - on all volume levels btw. It will probably take a couple of shows on real PA's before it's perfected in that regard, but that's the easy part. :)


For my part, I am now convinced Cliff has cracked it! - To my experience the AXE3 is 100% there.


Good for you FRACTAL, and thank you!!
- And remember, the reason why we all think the AXE sounds so amazing, is because it sounds like tubes! ;)
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To sum this up - you're using he Axe as a preamp into the 9200 ?
If so, yeah I have this same set up in my basement, and it's crushing....but still hoping for the day a SS power amp can take the place of my 9200.
The 9200 is great for my basement, but not at all practical for gigging.
 
No, to sum up, the AXE3 was able to perfectly replace a setup, where I normally had to rely on 2 physical high end tube amps, to achieve the sound I was looking for. In fact, with the AXE I was even able to improve on that setup. 🙂

To my experience, no other digital profiler/modeler has been able to do this, including previous Fractal products.
 
BBN said:
...
The 9200 is great for my basement, but not at all practical for gigging.
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The 9200 is a heavy mother for sure. But mine sits in a rack on wheels, not that big an issue, if you're used to also bring 4x12" cabs in flightcases or the bassplayers Ampeg SVT Classic and 8x10" cab. 😂
 
Rasmus Toftlund said:
No, to sum up, the AXE3 was able to perfectly replace a setup, where I normally had to rely on 2 physical high end tube amps, to achieve the sound I was looking for. In fact, with the AXE I was even able to improve on that setup. 🙂

To my experience, no other digital profiler/modeler has been able to do this, including previous Fractal products.
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Not trying to challenge you, as I have the same amp and absolutely love it. I will never sell my 9200.

But the 9200 is 2 tube amps (in one rack), so not sure why you are describing your set up as 'replace 2 physical high end tube amps'.
Your set up is still two 100 watt tube amps.
Not saying its not awesome as I know it sounds amazing...but I just want to be fair about what you are calling it as this is a 'Axe vs (tube)Amp' thread.
 
Rasmus Toftlund said:
The 9200 is a heavy mother for sure. But mine sits in a rack on wheels, not that big an issue, if you're used to also bring 4x12" cabs in flightcases or the bassplayers Ampeg SVT Classic and 8x10" cab. 😂
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Yes, back in the day of big stages I was wheeling around a 20 space rack with 4x12's in cases. Nothing better than firing up a beast of a rig like that, but my days of the big rigs are over. Now it's small clubs and the smallest rig possible. Getting old sucks...
 
BBN said:
Not trying to challenge you, as I have the same amp and absolutely love it. I will never sell my 9200.

But the 9200 is 2 tube amps (in one rack), so not sure why you are describing your set up as 'replace 2 physical high end tube amps'.
Your set up is still two 100 watt tube amps.
Not saying its not awesome as I know it sounds amazing...but I just want to be fair about what you are calling it as this is a 'Axe vs (tube)Amp' thread.
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Well, the 9200 is just there for my enjoyment/monitor needs, I could certainly do the gig without it, if I had to. Whatever goes to the FOH and my IEM is directly from the AXE.
 
FractalAudio said:
The Axe-Fx models the full chain including speaker effects. Just using a loadbox will make the amp sound "beefier" because there will be more low end. A real amp into a real speaker causes compression and reduction of the low-frequency resonance. A loadbox won't replicate this because it doesn't have a moving coil.

Turn Speaker Compliance to zero and do a Tone Match and you'll be surprised.
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I have a AXE 3 and I run it through my real BE100 and into a Boss Waza TAE. This allows me in 4CM to have traditional pre and post effects inline with my BE100 and with the switch of a patch on the Fractal I can have any amp sim at my disposal. I tried this approach just now and compared my real BE100 with the BE100 amp sim and now they are virtually spot on. Speaker compliance to zero and a little Speaker Thump and perfect tone match. Thank you
 
Dave Merrill said:
Weight, out of curiosity?
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Never though about weighing it lol. But it compares to a couple of 20kg kettlebells I have so around 40kgs / 80lbs maybe? Same as a 4x12 Marshall cab I guess. It’s got castor wheels and lifting handles all round. Easy to cart around

3A12E7EB-6DBA-456B-8156-4E7B2F534C40.jpeg
 
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The reason these threads keep popping up is simple. Expectations aren't met. The expectations themselves maybe unrealistic or uninformed but they persist. It could be the amp in the room vs. recorded tone discussion, but who knows? It's tough to talk sound.
 
J.C said:
The reason these threads keep popping up is simple. Expectations aren't met. The expectations themselves maybe unrealistic or uninformed but they persist. It could be the amp in the room vs. recorded tone discussion, but who knows? It's tough to talk sound.
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Some guitarists think a phone recording is a good way to judge tone. So these things don't surprise me one bit.
 
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