Axe-Fx II Quantum 3.02 Firmware Release (3.01 We Hardly New Ye)

Migrating from 3.01 to 3.02 = holy crap!

What happened in there?

It's like having my old tube amps back.

Awesome sauce and pixie dust in one release!

....or is it all in my head........o_O
 
Migrating from 3.01 to 3.02 = holy crap!

What happened in there?

It's like having my old tube amps back.

Awesome sauce and pixie dust in one release!

....or is it all in my head........o_O
as long as it's in your ears now, that's all that matters :)
 
I gave it my all to try to get the feel and tone with this firmware. I guess I just don't get it and will stick with 1.6. The only thing seemed to get it close was the supply sag turned off and then notched up. I guess to me it feels a lot better boomy, liquid, and with sustain. A lot of that disappears in this firmware and the feel which makes it feel easy to play to me seems hard to recapture. i agree with everyone that it sounds more real, but also feel like the old sounds have feel more like a in the mix sound. I think there is more breakup and less brightness. im thinking possibly my complaint is the algorithm change that happened from 1.6 to 2 upgrade. I don't really know where it is or how to isolate it. Anyways, thank you all for the help. I can't really complain but apparently it's operator error.
 
I gave it my all to try to get the feel and tone with this firmware. I guess I just don't get it and will stick with 1.6. The only thing seemed to get it close was the supply sag turned off and then notched up. I guess to me it feels a lot better boomy, liquid, and with sustain. A lot of that disappears in this firmware and the feel which makes it feel easy to play to me seems hard to recapture. i agree with everyone that it sounds more real, but also feel like the old sounds have feel more like a in the mix sound. I think there is more breakup and less brightness. im thinking possibly my complaint is the algorithm change that happened from 1.6 to 2 upgrade. I don't really know where it is or how to isolate it. Anyways, thank you all for the help. I can't really complain but apparently it's operator error.
No operator error! You just really dig 1.6 with your guitar's/gear/taste/mix/sounds... and that's cool! Nothing wrong with a combination that works magic for you. I'm sure most of us have awesome memories/recordings of past gear/firmware and wish we could access that sound/feel once again. Now that it's mostly firmware, we can! Rejoice, you didn't have to buy back your old gear!
 
I've found the that longer I've gone without playing/recording tube amps, the more the "rose colored glasses" effect comes into play. When I do go into a studio, or even just to a buddies place who has a specific amp and plug in, it just doesn't sound nearly as good as I remember it sounding years ago.

I think as the Axe heads towards more and more realism, and some people have less an ideal impressions of this, its really an illustration of the face the Axe sounds just the amp its modeled off, and that amp doesn't always sound ideal.

Earlier firmware wasn't as accurate, but that isn't to say it didn't sound good. Some could even say it sounds "better" because its less accurate, and as such, no reproducing the flaws.

I remember back around FW7 or 9 when it was a pretty straight out of the box metal tone the unit could do. Didn't sound as "real" as it does now, but it sounded good. Sort of like a hot girl with implants....you could tell some things are fake but does anyone actually care ? LOL

Luckily we still can load older FW if that is what we like. You want idealized tone, or you want a purely realistic tone, which then might take some post mixing to get the "album sound"


I think we are really getting to a point where we can't have it both ways in one single FW. If we get as "real" and accurate as possible, its going to lose some of that polish. At the same time, that overly polished studio ready tone really isn't how plugging straight into a given amps sounds.
 
I think sometimes when people upgrade firmware they forget that all of the tweaks and adjustments they made with their previous presets, have to be adjusted again. I know I am guilty of thinking everything will just be the same. I always give it a few days.
 
I'm sure Cliff appreciates it, but there should be some self-acknowledgement for the attitude of the customers and the culture of this community that has empowered Cliff to take risks, try new stuff, and use a rolling release strategy. Some companies and products are locked in an old-world mentality of hunkering down and working out bugs and monolithic big-deal releases in a very slow and expensive way that might increase perception of quality/stability of the release, but only results in a few releases over the life of the product because it is so expensive to go through the cycle. Meanwhile, frustrated customers have to wait forever to get their updates and along the way they have less feedback to influence the outcome.

The culture that Cliff and you/we all have formed is a winning model, and I hope that other companies take note of it. It's closer to the model of open-source software like linux distributions- take Debian for example. People who are conservative and need the rock-solid stable release can hang back and use older stuff, while people who want latest pretty stable features can go newer and still have pretty low risk of problems, and the hobbyist/enthusiasts can track day to day changes and they accept that they may encounter bugs. Everyone gets what they want!

So thanks Cliff, and also thank you all for your positivity and support that creates the environment for Cliff and gang to do what they do.

Here here! For hardware, its almost a totally unique model in as far as I am aware; while some do release firmwares periodically (though usually not nearly as briskly) its basically more to correct things than to bring new or desired ideas onboard. They are not hot-swappable tuned into the user community in any meaningful way Some software companies have been doing better for awhile; others have begun to move in this direction, but too few. Meanwhile the goliath software giants are crooks, who attempted to rip the heart out of this model back in the late eighties/early nineties (Supporters and fans, many of them, being blissfully unaware).

So definitely this model needs attention.

Say, getting a few like-minded companies together and holding a support model beauty pageant. Pretty sure Fractal can win. A color LCD is a beautiful thing. But musicians like help making music. Its one thing to have a supermodel in a skimpily-supported bathing suit promote your gear, and its another to have skimpy support.
 
I remember back around FW7 or 9 when it was a pretty straight out of the box metal tone the unit could do. Didn't sound as "real" as it does now, but it sounded good. Sort of like a hot girl with implants....you could tell some things are fake but does anyone actually care ? LOL

Love the analogy! but...I prefer real lemons better than fake melons hehe...
Luckily there is a shoe for every foot
 
reinstall the FW and try the ideal setting in the AMP block

This got me close to the feel! I think if I tweak I may get there!!! Awesome. I think 1.6 was authentic not sure why all of the sudden the ideal compressor is making the difference in the attack. Thanks!!!

So I guess my next question is did the compressor settings change from 1.6 to 3.01? I never have messed with on any of my presets and it was always just perfect. Now switching to ideal is bringing back the feel. I wonder why the authentic no longer has the same feel?
 
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This got me close to the feel! I think if I tweak I may get there!!! Awesome. I think 1.6 was authentic not sure why all of the sudden the ideal compressor is making the difference in the attack. Thanks!!!

So I guess my next question is did the compressor settings change from 1.6 to 3.01? I never have messed with on any of my presets and it was always just perfect. Now switching to ideal is bringing back the feel. I wonder why the authentic no longer has the same feel?

Just a quick thought.. when you updated to the new FW (3.02), did you reset the amp model(s) you're working with? I do this after every update I load, no matter what.. at least for the models I use regularly.. then reload the old (Q1.6 in your case) and do it again. You may prefer 1.6, which is all good. But it seems to help for comparison (at least for me) to reset things between updates and start from "scratch".. I do think you should note some differ3nces between 1.6 and 3.02.. I think things evolved a bit between these updates.. to my ears anyway. I've learned to just move forward and not worry too much about it.. reset and adjust settings till it sounds/feels good, whatever that takes. Rarely takes any adjusting if I pick the right amp and cab model pairing, which sometimes has to change w/ FW udpates.
 
This got me close to the feel! I think if I tweak I may get there!!! Awesome. I think 1.6 was authentic not sure why all of the sudden the ideal compressor is making the difference in the attack. Thanks!!!

So I guess my next question is did the compressor settings change from 1.6 to 3.01? I never have messed with on any of my presets and it was always just perfect. Now switching to ideal is bringing back the feel. I wonder why the authentic no longer has the same feel?

IMHO ... !

I try to keep in mind that when Cliff first implements some of his "epiphanies" they might be somewhat "theoretical" in nature .... But as the idea evolves and his ability to measure the actual has gotten better and better, so has the authentic nature of the firmware versions.

So what we thought was "authentic" in the past might have actually been "theoretical" ( or a combination of both ), but as things develop the theoretical ( or ideal ) falls away in favor of authentic ( or accurate ) ....
 
I think it's interesting how all of us have had perception changes over time with regards to the little black box. I remember when I first got the unit, firmware 7 or something like that. I complained at the time that I couldn't get the high end right in particular, no matter what IRs I used. I got feedback like "that's how the amp sounds" or "the real amp is just like that" and other feedback basically saying I was wrong. I knew better, but it gets hard to argue with authority.

Now, many firmware iterations later, and the last several have had me very happy with the lack of stridency in the highs, and the ability to tweak the way the amp responds on the high end. You can get crisp and cutting without it being strident. Most of it is firmware, but also the IRs have improved a good deal, both in terms of quality and number...though I really feel we have quite enough Vintage 30 IRs and wish folks would focus on other speakers more.

Most recent epiphany for me was that, for the first time, I had a moment tweaking a patch in the studio where my brain momentarily forgot that there wasn't an amp dangling off the end of a mic and mic cable in the other room. My brain got genuinely fooled for the first time by the sound coming out of the studio monitors.

I am really grateful to the FAS team for their continued pursuit of great tone.
 
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