LOL! I thought exactly this same thing when I read that statement. I guess I'm just too optimistic. I agree that modeling is better than ever, but perfection even insofar as amp emulation isn't there yet. And I suspect Cliff and his crew are clever enough that they will be pushing for good sounds that could never have been done on a tube guitar amp.
Plenty of room to grow.
My point of that statement is, if two people are listening to two recordings, one with a real 1964 Vibroverb, and one with a Fractal doing a 64 Vibroverb, and they can't correctly identify the real amp from the fractal.... then how much more better can you get it? If it's so good that people can't tell the difference when listening to recordings, then what advantage is further "improvements" in the tone if you have to have bat hearing to notice it? Also... even if there are improvements, then at a certain point after the Axe sounds just like what ever amp fill in the blank, at that point it seems if any improvement occurs that is easily audibly noticeable then it would cease to be exactly like a recreation of a original amp and instead a deviation of said amp.
I don't want the 64 Vibroverbs to sound "better" than 64 vibroberbs or old plexi marshalls that VH used... what I'm saying is all I want from Fractal is a unit that can clone the sound of those old amps to perfection... once that's done, it's done in my book.
So all I was concluding is the majority of people in this forum seem to agree with me that the Fractal can produce recorded sounds that sound indistinguishable from the recorded sounds of amps it mimics.
It's great that Fractal continues to explore "new" sounds... but I only have interest in sounds on my favorite cds. I have very little interest in using any tone that hasn't already been used by Rhoads, EVH, Malmsteen, Vai etc.
So my bottom line point was, this is great that Fractal has now evolved to this point, because when I bought my Fractal back in 2006 or when ever the 1st units came out, it was close, but nowhere as near as close as it is now. Now I feel it's at a point to where real amps are literally obsolete. Just like Film cameras are obsolete to all except then a small niche community of people obessed with old prehistoric technology. I love digital, digital everything. I also prefer digital over vinyl any day... I've never heard vinyl that didn't have hiss, or all those snaps and pops and crackling statically sounds in it and I can't enjoy music with all that noise in it, I know that's slightly off my point, but just saying digital is at a point now where it's superior to analog.
My bottom line again, was it seems like now is the best time to buy Fractal because it's reached it's peak, no matter what happens in the future, I don't think the core of the amp tones will dramatically change from how they sound now.
When version 10 or whatever version came out and Mark Day did those demo's for Autograph Turn Up The Radio, and Van Halen Somebody Get Me A Doctor were uploaded to you tube, that's all I needed to hear Fractal has finally "arrived".
Even though now you are on ver 18, I can't hear a huge difference in the tones & distortion between what people are uploading of ver 18 vs what Mark Day was doing on those two particular videos he did.
It's great when something can be perfect just the way it is.
That was what I disagreed with. Most of the forum does not feel this way.
