Axe FX II and feature creep

I started reading this thread at page 1 and various other posts by the OP and other people, though i refuse to read the rest of the 9 pages. However my 2 cents are as follows and are absolute

Can the AxeFx front panel and editor be more intuitive? Without a doubt
Should it ever satisfy my apple fanboy fiends with intuitive work flows? Not really

I say the above while totally agreeing with the OPs sentiments

See this really boils down to a couple of real life problems
Rarely do you get an intuitive design without further sacrificing the workflow of power users, or cannibalizing other good development for the sake of intuition
Sure there are things that can be done to streamline the product (ie a best of both worlds approach), however as a business decision, fractal has to weigh up cost to benefit ratio to their current and potential target market

There definitely is a ratio, and fractal are doing a mighty good job at that. Is it perfrect? no, can it be improved? yes, will it improve? yes. Does it really affect me? no

As much as it should be, emulating 100s of amps cabs and effects cant be intuitive, there are too many variables to many parameters to be tweaked
*Facetious warning* having 1 knob called awesome, just wont cut it (don't flay me for this it was a joke)

However spending millions and millions on research and development on the sociological aspects of intuition (like what apple does) i think, just doesn't make a lot of sense for fractal at this stage

Its not a plug and play device, or set and forget for that matter, its more akin to a scientific instrument, it needs to be calibrated and finessed, the sound you want just cant be dialed in with a couple of buttons and knobs, it just doesn't work that way

The people fractal built this thing for , are the people who know they need it, they have been there and done that with all sorts of equipment, understand a good subset of whats going on anyway, and don't need the apple style intuition you get in those devices
Rolland and line 6, do intuition well, however they do modelling realy bad. the AxeFX is orders of magnitude more configurable than anything on the market
The reason is simple, do you want to be easily able to get a sound you can get out of any entry-level device with a few turns of a knob, or do you want the power to be able to dial in anything you want

Or do you wan this device to be the jack of all trades, eventually you'll make someone unhappy, and i think fractal want to keep the working musicians, artists and professionals happy the most, which is why they are so successful with this product
 
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Note to fractal / Cliff, sorry for speaking for you. however email me and ill give the account where you can deposit the funds
 
Moltenmetalburn said:
Nothing should ever be dumbed down so ignorant users can be catered.

Ignorant users need to learn how to use the devices they choose to buy. RTFM. End of story.

No real benefit in " give a man a fish" menus.
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What? If everyone felt like you we'd still be using the DOS command line....

"Ignorant" (bit offensive btw) users manage to navigate the iPhone... An arguably very advanced piece of tech which comes with NO manual.

I'm a very experienced axe fx user since 2009, so for me it's a non issue, the point was driven home when I let my singer/guitarist use it, he struggled with it and he's not a dumbass. He certainly isn't ignorant. I wish people on here would take constructive ideas for what they are rather than shooting them down in flames. Cliff I would wager would be the first to say the UI/user experience is an ongoing thing, with any tech you can't sit still.
 
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I think the thread is suffering from the Clark Kent syndrome (well its not his, but a good example of a couple of his threads)

The title doesn't help (feature creep), implies A Cliff is doing something wrong, and B a dysphimstic term to describe unwanted content
There is also other Perls on the opening statement, unfortunately its hard to recover from that as people will just come in and start flame wars, willingly or not

Andrew Male said:
users manage to navigate the iPhone... An arguably very advanced piece of tech which comes with NO manual.
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Apple had an unlimited budget to achieve what they did (in ratio to fractal)
Also they had to cater for the lowest common denominator
I think this is a different device, targeting a different market, with different budget constraints, with 10000 less employees

Andrew Male said:
Cliff I would wager would be the first to say the UI/user experience is an ongoing thing, with any tech you can't sit still
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I think i stated that well a few posts ago
however i really think fractal is taking the right approach, spend more time on features for power users, less time on the lowest common denominator to achieve the former
Re-factor the interface when needed, don't spend too much money or effort on it (it works well), as there are bigger fish to fry
 
Bojangles said:
I think the thread is suffering from the Clark Kent syndrome (well its not his, but a good example of a couple of his threads)

The title doesn't help (feature creep), implies A Cliff is doing something wrong, and B a dysphimstic term to describe unwanted content
There is also other Perls on the opening statement, unfortunately its hard to recover from that as people will just come in and start flame wars, willingly or not



Apple had an unlimited budget to achieve what they did (in ratio to fractal)
Also they had to cater for the lowest common denominator
I think this is a different device, targeting a different market, with different budget constraints, with 10000 less employees



I think i stated that well a few posts ago
however i really think fractal is taking the right approach, spend more time on features for power users, less time on the lowest common denominator to achieve the former
Re-factor the interface when needed, don't spend too much money or effort on it (it works well), as there are bigger fish to fry
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So would it be fair to say UI improvements are a "nice to have" rather than a critical need? I agree if that's the case. I would say that there is no need to deprecate parameters if people are still using them.
 
Andrew Male said:
What? If everyone felt like you we'd still be using the DOS command line....

"Ignorant" (bit offensive btw) users manage to navigate the iPhone... An arguably very advanced piece of tech which comes with NO manual.

I'm a very experienced axe fx user since 2009, so for me it's a non issue, the point was driven home when I let my singer/guitarist use it, he struggled with it and he's not a dumbass. He certainly isn't ignorant. I wish people on here would take constructive ideas for what they are rather than shooting them down in flames. Cliff I would wager would be the first to say the UI/user experience is an ongoing thing, with any tech you can't sit still.
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The point being made though IMO from the majority is that even though your bass player is not a dumbass, understanding and learning how things work is his responsibility. Not reading the manual and then complaining you don't get it, well that is the definition of ignorance. Like the guy who didn't know about the Wiki. Sorry but again this is his own fault, as it is clearly posted in several places as well as one of the 1st three hits when you search for the Axe FX on any search engine. He didn't spend the time reading the sickies, or visiting the support page and looking over it thoroughly, so simply saying "I didn't know about it," is again, the definition of ignorance. (no offence intended, just using it as an example.)

If people want an easy mode, there are HUNDREDS of consumer electronics out there that cater to this already. I realize this was not really the OP's point, but it seems to be what the discussion has evolved into. IMO the Axe FX is not even really that advanced. I mean in this day and age, if you don't know what a parameter does, how hard is it to use the internet and actually spend 5 minutes learning??? Instead we see it again and again with all products, not just the Axe FX II, people will spend that 5 minutes complaining how they don't get it and ask for a hand holding.... basically "reward me for participation, not for action" mentality.
 
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Ill tell you what i think would be a great, having a help system inside axe edit, not just a help manual, but tool tips, and a help button that you can click on something and gives you access to latest help for the feature/component, maybe hooked up to a wiki or something.

Ie in-depth description, related information and such, but anyhow....
 
Tanax said:
The problem that occurs often for me is that I try to create a sound and it doesn't quite sound as good as I want it. So I try to dive into the advanced tab but get confused at all the options. The difficult learning curve isn't so much to learn the default tab settings but rather going from the default into the advanced the learning curve gets super steep. What's sag? I can hear that something is changing in the sound but what? Is it what I want to use to get the sound I want?

I think what is needed is a video tutorial explaining every commonly used advanced setting. This will decrease the learning curve between basic and advanced settings which is what I think is needed. I don't think that anyone here who has suggested a more "easy mode" skin have any troubles learning what the treble, bass, mids, gain and all the other things on the basic page do. It's the things in the advanced page that is difficult to understand and quite sadly, it's also those advanced settings you need in order to really get a *great* sound.
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Understood - the wiki has helped me a lot as well as the dedicated posts on specific subjects that come up from time to time from very experienced senior members here (Scott P, Yek ...). Cliff also posts these from time to time (short and packed with info - study every word).

A great resource is to dissect others' patches to see how they are set up (ie Yek's and Freman's + others are great).

May be old fashioned but the manual is very complete so can answer a lot of advanced stuff.

The trickiest aspect for me is to gain mastery over groups of parameters that are related in the sense that the level of one impacts how the another one affects tone at it's given level. The permutations / combinations become endless. I don't know any tricks to hone this skill other than keeping as much as possible constant while varying a limited number of parameters and listening carefully to what happens, then trying to apply that knowledge to get better tones in your environment.
 
Why this thread bothered me was I had no idea people were finding the ax fx 2 complicated. The excel comparison is perfect here. You can easily use excel only for basic things but can get incredibly advanced with it if you so choose. The AX especially with axe edit is just as straight forward if not more if you have a basic understanding of guitar equipment. Something that is bringing such joy in my life seems to be getting flamed for no good reason so I feel I must defend it. If the UI is never changed or updated I wouldn't be the least bit upset.

There seemed to be far less panic when AXE edit was broken for that year and we were all front paneling. Now that was a dark time. I kid I kid. Please don't flame me front panel lovers!
 
RONJONES2020 said:
Why this thread bothered me was I had no idea people were finding the ax fx 2 complicated. The excel comparison is perfect here. You can easily use excel only for basic things but can get incredibly advanced with it if you so choose. The AX especially with axe edit is just as straight forward if not more if you have a basic understanding of guitar equipment. Something that is bringing such joy in my life seems to be getting flamed for no good reason so I feel I must defend it. If the UI is never changed or updated I wouldn't be the least bit upset.
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I think a lot of people find the Axe FX II complicated. And that's part of the nature of the matter. I mean, it's a jack-of-all-trades kind of device.
The thing is, that means can be taken to make a complicated thing at least more intuitive to work with, so that inexperienced users at least "get there" driving at the street at the beginning and then can go for a walk into the forest later.
I have no problem dealing with the Axe. But then I'm both an engineer and a programmer. And in both field you will learn almost right from the beginning, that once you get a product working, the next step is always to make it more accessable.
I'm a tech-mind and I expect you to be that aswell. In fact, I expect most of the forum lurkers here to be tech-minds. But there's also the other crowd... and seeing that the Axe obviously attracts more tech-minds than casual users, I think there just has to be an issue with accessability.

Fractal has a free update policy, so they have to constantly sell more units to keep up their business. They can't take the service road once the market is satisfied. That's why you constantly have to acquire new customer bases. Having the most user friendly UI possible allows expanding the market to more people.

Deaj said:
Though I understand that your response and the message to which you responded are merely sarcasm intended to drive a point of view, I disagree with your sentiment 'exchanging opinions is frowned upon'.

The OP expressed an opinion in hopes to start a discussion. The respondents then expressed their opinions - mostly in disagreement. The OP then began to respond upset that others were not discussing the merits of his proposed idea(s) and stating that others were not sticking to the subject. More responses came with a majority in disagreement with the OP. The OP responded, appearing quite upset that others are still not discussing the merits of his proposed idea(s) ans stating that others were not sticking to the subject. Further replies were made in disagreement with the OP..... etc, etc, etc.

The bottom line here is that most do not feel there is any merit in the OP's proposed idea(s). Most feel that any effort placed towards redesigning the UI (in any way, for any reason) would be counter-productive. Most feel that, while certainly valid for him, the OP's opinion does not resonate with the majority of the AxeFX II user base here on this forum. The OP is upset because his subject did not generate the discussion he was hoping for and continues to try to re-introduce the subject hoping it will change the discussion. It is what it is. Getting upset won't change it.

I would submit then that an exchange of opinions definitely took place here.
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I wasn't upset about the lack of disagreement (seriously, lurking around these forums for two years now, I expected a lot of disagreement to begin with), I was upset about how people just trolled a serious topic by either throwing insults at me or (which is imho worse) just replied "no" without any further explanation. This is not how a discussion works in my book [and a quick apologize to barh for taking him as the example here... nothing personal].

But just to show you that it's not just me being upset, I searched through the pages of this thread and name you the posts that were just without any substance and can be considered flaming to varying extend (not including the +1 or comedic attempts):
#2, #34, #35, #44, #62, #68, #69, #71, #75, #105, #110, #137, #142

But to be perfectly fair, most of those posts came from the same two persons, so I kind of let myself get dragged down without noticing the obvious trolling. Shame on me here.

Also noticed how the density of posts without substance increased a lot after the first two pages? I feel that there actually was a valid discussion on the first pages before the thread got totally derailed.
 
The discussion of needing an easy mode on a piece of advanced audio gear to make it dumbed-down like a plug & play piece of gear astounds me.

It is kind of like buying a Ferarri and complaining that it isn't as fuel efficient, easy to park, has no automatic transmission, and that the dashboard is not like a Smart Car.

Those who buy a Ferrari are not the same audience with the same needs as those who buy a Smart Car.

If you want a Smart Car, then buy a Smart Car. Don't expect Ferrari to make their product behave like a smart car, otherwise Ferrrari would probably end up disappointing both sets of consumers.

Zwiebelchen seems to be dumbfounded that more of us don't agree with him and wants to continually engage & argue the point in this thread.

If we did agree with him, we would have bought other gear rather than the FAS unit.
 
Zwiebelchen has an opinion and wanted to discuss it here, nothing wrong with that. As somebody mentioned, the majority of people here seem to disagree with him, again, nothing wrong with that either. Does it make Zwiebelchens opinion unvalid? No, of course not, it is his opinion, it is valid for him, just as all other opinions are as valid, after all he is also not completely alone with this opinion. Did the topic get out of hand at some point? Yes, for sure it did, like any online discussion gets out of hand at some point (though I have to say that some of the posts you mentioned as "flaming posts" are no flaming at all in my opinion, but again, that is just my point of view, there definitely has been some flaming going on). There will always be people acting over cool, flaming others, because they can hide behind their monitors, staying anonymous, they think themselves cool and funny, while they are not. But with the nature of the internet, unfortunately in most cases this is bound to happen, so we either should be prepared for this and ignore those posts, or we should not start a discussion at all. I count myself to the first group, I can easily ignore such things, so I am pro discussing, whoever can't, well, nobody has to be part of this discussion.
 
Marcus Siepen said:
Zwiebelchen has an opinion and wanted to discuss it here, nothing wrong with that. As somebody mentioned, the majority of people here seem to disagree with him, again, nothing wrong with that either. Does it make Zwiebelchens opinion unvalid? No, of course not, it is his opinion, it is valid for him, just as all other opinions are as valid, after all he is also not completely alone with this opinion. Did the topic get out of hand at some point? Yes, for sure it did, like any online discussion gets out of hand at some point (though I have to say that some of the posts you mentioned as "flaming posts" are no flaming at all in my opinion, but again, that is just my point of view, there definitely has been some flaming going on). There will always be people acting over cool, flaming others, because they can hide behind their monitors, staying anonymous, they think themselves cool and funny, while they are not. But with the nature of the internet, unfortunately in most cases this is bound to happen, so we either should be prepared for this and ignore those posts, or we should not start a discussion at all. I count myself to the first group, I can easily ignore such things, so I am pro discussing, whoever can't, well, nobody has to be part of this discussion.
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True indeed. Very well, there's no more point in discussing this topic, as the majority of the forum users does not seem to like the idea (the forum crowd representing the general user base is a different story). And I guess when viewing this from a totally egoistic point of view, I can deal with the current design and rather see production resources spent on extending the content instead of fiddling with the UI.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
I searched through the pages of this thread and name you the posts that were just without any substance and can be considered flaming to varying extend (not including the +1 or comedic attempts):
#2, #34, #35, #44, #62, #68, #69, #71, #75, #105, #110, #137, #142
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Since my post (69) is on the list of "unsubstantial/flaming/trolling ones" I'll defend it here. Though flip, I believe my comment goes to the core of your concern and gives you an answer. You can currently use the Axe easily without the need to explore or recognize more complex parameters (features, if you wish to call them that). Your concern about the Axe (like your concern about my post) suggests you may actually want to have and explore the more complex parameters/features but need some guidance in that exploration. For some reason the challenge you experience leads you to reject those parameter/features all together.

As for useless responses: a handful of bad ones out of about 200 is a good average overall. You created a pretty successful thread in that you gathered a lot of insight, opinion, and suggestions. I'd be happy with that myself.
 
Andrew Male said:
What? If everyone felt like you we'd still be using the DOS command line...

Many still do. Those truly utilizing computers.





"Ignorant" (bit offensive btw) users manage to navigate the iPhone... An arguably very advanced piece of tech which comes with NO manual.

I meant no offense, ignorance is a state of being uniformed and that's how I meant it. Don't read the manual; you're uniformed.

Also the iPhone has manual albeit not included in the box to save trees. http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1565/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf

I read it and have FULL use of my iPhone, most people don't even know how to use 10% of the iPhone functions which is why articles like this one below proliferate. There are no hidden features if you RTFM.

50 Things You Didn't Know Your iPhone Could Do




I'm a very experienced axe fx user since 2009, so for me it's a non issue, the point was driven home when I let my singer/guitarist use it, he struggled with it and he's not a dumbass. He certainly isn't ignorant. I wish people on here would take constructive ideas for what they are rather than shooting them down in flames. Cliff I would wager would be the first to say the UI/user experience is an ongoing thing, with any tech you can't sit still.
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So you let your guitarist use the axe having no prior experience.

He fails to refer to the manual I assume, the manual that clearly explains in plain English the features and functions of the axe fx.

He has frustrations from not being able to self learn the features and functions of the axe , and blames the complexity of the unit ( what makes the unit so powerful and awe inspiring) .

His lack of effort is not an indicator that the tech need be dumbed down, it's an indicator that your friend need not be so lazy and RTFM. In your own words he's capable enough to understand it.



As for the constructive ideas comment, I have listened to lazy people complain for quite some time now that they would like to never put any effort forth or use their minds. That is not constructive, rather destructive.

I will not support a cry for idiocracy.
 
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