Axe-Fx II Firmware "Ares" 1.00 Public Beta

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So I got back from a fun night at HippieTim's. We compared maybe 30 stock patches between the II and the III, back forth over and over.

Honestly, the units are very close tonally now. in some cases, I actually liked the II better than the III ... in some cases the III was better, in some cases they were nearly indistinguishable. The III often won, in my opinion, because it just sounded more full, for lack of a better word. Bigger, wider...

Tim had a friend over, who's a die-hard tube guy, and a great player. He got on the Ruby Rocket patch and got lost in it. You know when you and the gear are jivin' and all of a sudden 10 straight minutes of playing are gone and you look up and go "Whoa...". He raved about that patch, it was totally dynamic, expressive, cleaned up beautifully, and was gainy but perfectly clear and articulate. And this was at moderately loud volume, certainly not the volume it would take to get a real Ruby to sing like that.

We didn't even break out the CLR. Tim had these two, maybe 5", speakers ...

Great night, great tones. Thanks, Cliff, for the parting gift! Much appreciated!
 
Thank you Cliff and FAS team. all the efforts are noticed and much Appreciated. FAS user and customer for life.
 
Thanks to all the Fractal team. Best customer service ever.

I sure wish you ran an airline too.
 
Appreciation is a must here. As an ax8 owner, I really hope to see ares firmware ported to this unit too. Any chances ?
 
I think you don't need to worry. The AX8 is still supported and since Cliff already ported Ares stuff to this platform, it would be illogical to not bring it to the AX8. Except of course its memory is even smaller, which I highly doubt!
 
Thank you for both the update and the update about the update!

I took a favorite preset for a ride and spent an hour straight jamming over a Dorian backing track. The notes were singing beautifully.

Compared to other testimonials I’ve seen here I still feel like a relative newbie. I got my XL+ not quite three years ago. It came with some iteration of Quantum 2. I’ve been amazed and humbled by all the updates and support Cliff and this company have provided. Thank you all
 
I was very close to scoring a b-stock III to replace my IIxl+ Down In SoBe when this gift came down the pike.....
Another reason to to make my overdue Snowbird excursion ASAP....
Thanks yet again to all at FAS, ....

everyone enjoy today’s Fractal Football Halftime
Extravaganza
..............(can’t get outta my mind the image of Matt , Cliff and Cooper lurking under the field stage huddled over a remote FC12.........)
 
The Friedman and the Marshalls are sounding great with the new Beta. I just had a Holy **** moment when I plugged my Tele in using the Dirty Shirley. Beautiful tones.

Finding it's a bit more gainy in general and I needed to tweak a bit, particularly some clean and edge of break up presets but loving it so far.

Thanks again Cliff, this is as great as it was unexpected.
 
Recto 2 Red Modern (the amp model I use 90% of the time so I have no idea about the others) feels entirely different. More gain, tighter bass. Feels more like a real amp,IMO.

I wonder if when the Axe-FX III was being developed if any amp models were re-modeled/reworked or what.

Once the final firmware is posted, I look forward to discussing what advanced parameters you guys are tweaking in your high gain presets and why. I know Leon Todd has a video about this but I'm always curious about different perspectives.
 
New Axe FX II XL+ user here (used to have an Ultra, then Kemper).

This is just great: I can't believe how easy it is to get a good tone so fast! With the Ultra it took a lot more tweaking. Thank you so much for this update. I found the Quantum 10 firmware to be very good so I can't really compare but so far I LOVE the Friedman and TriXaxis preamps in the Ares 1.0.

The Kemper was another story: some profiles were excellent but couldn't be tweaked for different guitars/tunings... so I had to search for several profiles from the same amp to get that sorted out. With the right profile, the Kemper was just a joy to play, but I must say: the Axe FX II XL+ is so much more conveniant and coming from the Ultra I was used to tweak but found that with Quantum 10 en now Ares 1.0, the tweaking is something from the passed! Now i get lost in alle the FX the fractal has got..... amazing stuff indeed and on a whole different level than the Kemper FX section for sure...

Thank you very much indeed Mr. Chase and all beautiful people at Fractal Audio Systems!

Kindest of Regards,
Tijl
 
Love it . . . it's definitely clearer and more chewy. Clean tones seem a bit more transparent as well.

Weirdly I hear a tiny bit less latency? It just seems a tiny bit more immediate to my ears.

The load screen should say "ARES 1.0 - Thanks for the memories!"

Thanks @FAS and Cliff! You guys are the best!
 
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