Presets MASTER THREAD - AustinBuddy 1000+ LIVEGOLD TonePack - Partial Update (Bank 1 Marshalls) for Cygnus X3 firmware update now available

Third party presets and packs for Fractal Audio products
austinbuddy said:
The site has auto-security that if logins are unsuccessful (wrong password for example) after a few attempts, it assumes you are Bot and blocks you for about four hours... then resets. It’s an incovenience but you would not believe how many Bots try to create accounts and this works well to block them. Glad you got it sorted out.
Click to expand...
InfoSec can be a PITA, but not implementing it makes it seem like a massage with multiple happy endings....
 
Ok, some of you are adventurous and don't want to wait for Banks 2 and 3....you want to convert to Cygnus NOW...but if you do,. some firmware 15 presets will not sound the same, and if you do a soft amp reset, you will lose some of the custom LiveGold amp settings.

I put this together for someone who asked me:

"So I recommend you wait a little. FracTool is not yet updated for FM3 4.0 but will be very soon, hopefully next 48 hours. That needs to happen before this update process works. It can mess things up if you don't do it right.

The Great Axe-Fx WIKI by Yek explains all of this "hard reset" versus "soft reset" stuff.

The "quick" way to soft reset an amp for a preset is below. Note: you "lose" some LiveGold custom settings when you do a soft amp reset this method, so I do not recommend it for LIveGold Tonepack, but for your own presets, you guys know what to do to make your presets sound the way you like after a soft reset).

1. Update to Cygnus 4.0 after you've back everything up.

2. Go the amp block, and click on it. (You are going need to do this for each channel).

Go to Channel A. Click in the lower left side where you see the amp name.

a big selection window opens up with all the amps.

Now, click on a DIFFERENT amp type, then click BACK to your amp.

This is a "soft" amp reset, and loads Cygnus values for that amp type into the preset. Now play with your preset and reset presence, level, etc. and SAVE it. Done - it's now Cygnus preset.
http://The Great WIKI explains all of this:
The good news is a soft amp reset leaves MOST of your presets settings the same like Drive, Bass, Middle, Treble and some others -- so you don't have to re-enter those.

But the bad news is a soft amp reset will CHANGE some other parameters (some that I customize in LiveGold) to default value - things like like presence, saturation drive, amp boost amount (db), Level, input EQ, speaker impedance curve type, speaker compression (I use zero, it will go back 1), and others. So you "lose" some LiveGold custom settings when you do a soft amp reset.

The benefit of using FracTool, when it gets updated to work with FM3 Cygnus 4 (not yet, but soon!), is you can FREEZE any amp parameters you specify, so they do NOT go back to custom values while others do. This saves TONS of time when resetting amps to a new firmware so you don't lose custom settings. I wrote about that in this post here.

There is another process -- step-by-step y-- ou have to follow to use FracTool properly for resetting all your amp blocks to Cygnus AND keeping the key amp parameters intact, to work (once it gets updated to FM3 4.0, it is NOT right now).

The first part of that process is laid out here in this post; read this carefully!!!
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/tutorial-move-your-presets-from-15-01-to-16-01.172863/

If I recall correctly, have to convert your saved bank (pre-Cygnus), and FracTool convert the bank to the new firmware format, then you reload the bank, THEN you update to Cygnus firmware.

Then you can use FracTools' "Amp resetter" tab (you have to find it to right at top of program/scroll over) to reset all the amp blocks to Cygnus in all your presets, and you can set it to run over 512 presets in one go if you want to, or any subset of that. I made a post I can't find at the moment of all the LiveGold amp parameters I freeze when I use FracTool to reset amp blocks. If/when I'll find it and link later, or re-do in this post later. I freeze more than 50% of them, but let others reset.

The FracTool main thread is here, I regularly donate to support it and you should too if you use it - it's truly invaluable for us geeks. @AlGrenadine has been great in creating this wonderful tool.

This process of updating from firmware 15 to 16 really needs a good video to show everyone who to do it right, but I don't have a lot of time to make one since I'm spending that time doing TonPack updates!....maybe someone else on the Forum will? Hope so!
 
Still not so sure about resetting the amp block since I want the best of Cygnus, but with my hi gain pickup guitar, my clean tone (Princeton clean) turned super crunchy, so I’m guessing that it is doing what it’s supposed to do. Going to wait tomorrow and build one from scratch. I can say I feel Austin Buddy’s feel they got grittier if that makes sense.

I just hope that’s not me wanting to hear something I want to hear, so I guess I’ll just be playing Bank A until Buddy is done with the rest.

Plus as they say, if it sounds good to you, that’s all that matters. Can’t wait until Bank D where it makes me as good of a player as him.
 
Hi Austin, thanks for the amazing work. I used some of your updated presets on the rehearsal yesterday. They sound just great, I didn't need to change anything. Am looking forward to the other banks.
 
One error found in Bank 1, many thanks to Stephen S. for catching this.

In the Cygnus updated FAS Hot Road Marshall preset in bank 1, the Drive Block now used is Drive 1.

But it should instead be Drive 2 (not), consistent with the other presets. Nice catch Stephen!

I've fixed it for the next release...
 
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Thanks austinbuddy! These sound great!
One tiny remark: the lead scenes in preset 123 High Delivernc60 Fryette FM3 -c are a bit soft. You might want to check the levels there.
 
AB - I have updated to both Cygnus and the new Gold pack - Everything is great except this one preset has "static" sound.
#34 JCM800 (w/GrnBacks) FM3 -c
It is unaltered from when I loaded it. Not sure if it is just me. All other amps are perfect that I have tried.
Thanks!
 
If you guys do find a Cygnus LiveGold preset on FM3 has a static sound or crackly sound, first try disconnecting the CS controllers one by one and see if that fixes it. Some amps are crackly though (raspy!).

Here's a way to test: disconnect the CS4 brite switch first (most people don't use that), then CS6 low Cut, then try disconnecting Fat CS3, and CS5 Saturation. Save preset. Still crackle?

Leave Amp Boost CS2 alone, or for last - that is an essential thing to keep and use to get the Marshalls really sounding their best, fat and juicy.

Attaching CS controllers puts a load on the amp models CPU, and this was a past issue in FM3 (Not Axe-Fx III) sometime - back but Fractal team addressed it in firmware 3.x. It's possible the issue returned for a few amps under Cygnus that I did not detect, since I only played the presets on Axe-Fx III and then ported to the FM3 and spot checked some to make sure everything worked well.

Keep any issues you guys find coming here or you can PM me, and I can fix for the future update/final release. Thanks!
 
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