Axe-Fx II "Quantum" Rev 4.00 Firmware Release

Will all of the factory presets update to the new versions or do you have to manually change each one of them as well?

Thank you

Yes, they were made prior to Q3, so they will automatically update. Patches made on Q3 will require manual selection of latest firmware!
 
For those of you not sure if there is a difference between Q3.x and Q4.x I highly recommend you load up the Plexi 1970 with these settings and toggle between the 2 fw's.

I'm in love (yet again and again and again) with this black box o' magic).

Plexi%201970%20Q4.jpg
 
Last edited:
I've found any Fractal factory presets are automatically updated and use the latest Quantum 4.0 modelling.
Any presets you made yourself previous to updating will have to be manually set to 'latest', found in preamp tab of Amp block in Axe-Edit;)
Check it out with Axe-Edit.

Thank you, and thank you to RDH as well for the replies. Sounds great, I'll upgrade tomorrow. Since you can switch model revisions on user presets from 3.xx forward to 4.0 if desired I take it that both models exist in memory and you could toggle back and forth? Or is it once you decide to write a 4.0 model to your preset then you can't go back without reloading the older firmware? It would be cool if one could store 2 or 3 firmware revisions and take their time A/B comparing; like a couple of history states in the unit, but I don't know how much space there is for such a luxury.

Either way, as a player going on about 30 years experience I've been telling anyone who will listen that the AxeFX II is in my opinion one of if not the greatest piece of guitar gear ever created.
 
Thank you, and thank you to RDH as well for the replies. Sounds great, I'll upgrade tomorrow. Since you can switch model revisions on user presets from 3.xx forward to 4.0 if desired I take it that both models exist in memory and you could toggle back and forth? Or is it once you decide to write a 4.0 model to your preset then you can't go back without reloading the older firmware? It would be cool if one could store 2 or 3 firmware revisions and take their time A/B comparing; like a couple of history states in the unit, but I don't know how much space there is for such a luxury.

Either way, as a player going on about 30 years experience I've been telling anyone who will listen that the AxeFX II is in my opinion one of if not the greatest piece of guitar gear ever created.
Just change "Modelling version" and save. Simple as that.
 
Thank you, and thank you to RDH as well for the replies. Sounds great, I'll upgrade tomorrow. Since you can switch model revisions on user presets from 3.xx forward to 4.0 if desired I take it that both models exist in memory and you could toggle back and forth? Or is it once you decide to write a 4.0 model to your preset then you can't go back without reloading the older firmware? It would be cool if one could store 2 or 3 firmware revisions and take their time A/B comparing; like a couple of history states in the unit, but I don't know how much space there is for such a luxury.

Either way, as a player going on about 30 years experience I've been telling anyone who will listen that the AxeFX II is in my opinion one of if not the greatest piece of guitar gear ever created.
You can flip between them, there's actually a few FW's you can go back to.

And I tell anyone who will listen about the AxeFX. The greatest piece of gear ever created.
 
The new FW sounds outstanding!!! I switched to "latest" with my Friedman preset and has great tone. I'm not sure what it is called exactly (Sag maybe?) but I noticed this certain sound right before I hit a note that really adds to the realism like I'm playing thru a real amp. Hard to describe but is really cool. Not sure if it was in previous updates but definitely something I noticed.

I can't remember if I've been hitting "latest" as I've been updating. :) I guess that is the one downside to the way these updates are now. The technology is there and I'm forgetting to use it. :)
 
For those of you not sure if there is a difference between Q3.x and Q4.x I highly recommend you load up the Plexi 1970 with these settings and toggle between the 2 fw's.

I'm in love (yet again and again and again) with this black box o' magic).

Plexi%201970%20Q4.jpg

Could you also share your CAB and Drive block pages ?
I have always loved the 1970 since its been added - thanks !
 
I've found any Fractal factory presets are automatically updated and use the latest Quantum 4.0 modelling.
Any presets you made yourself previous to updating will have to be manually set to 'latest', found in preamp tab of Amp block in Axe-Edit;)
Check it out with Axe-Edit.

This is not what I am finding at all.

I loaded Q 4.0 and then scanned through my factory presets and for example, CE-1 Chorus shows 2.04, Comp Cln shows 2.04, 1959 SLP show 3.xx, after searching a bunch of them, I don't find any at Q 4.0 and yet my system and axe edit clearly show 4.0 is loaded. Even if I freshly import a factory preset it still shows Q3.xx.

I find this really frustrating. Does this mean I have to step through 384 factory presets to manually bring them all up to Q 4.0?

I get the feeling that I'm in the minority here but I think that if I load Q 4.0, I should expect to hear all my presets using Q 4.0 without having to spend hours telling each and every one of them that yes, I really do want to use 4.0!

For those people who have a small number of highly developed presets and want to compare 4.0 to 3.xx, they are already committed to spending hours if not days on a particular preset and will switch back and forth between 4.0 and 3.xx many times, so it doesn't really matter if the preset starts off in 4.0 or 3.xx or whatever.

Those of us who simply want to run with the best that Cliff has to offer and use that as our starting point, starting out in 4.0 saves us a lot of work especially if, for example, you rely on the factory presets as your starting point and want to hear them all in 4.0 or if you've purchased presets from an external source ( e.g. Fremen ) and want to hear them in 4.0.

One other point, if this is the way that we will be going in the future, it would be nice to have the Modeling Version Option at the top of Axe Edit, so that you don't have to drill down so far into Axe Edit (Preset->Amp->Pre-Amp->Revision ). With a small # of presets, no big deal. With having to convert 384 of them, it adds up.

Mentioned this earlier, but a batch conversion tool that reads a file with a list of presets and modeling version as data pairs, could make this approach work for everyone. At the very least, having a set of factory presets available that were set up to use 4.0 as a default could also save some time.

End of story --- back to manually converting the factory presets to 4.0!
 
Last edited:
I get the feeling that I'm in the minority here but I think that if I load Q 4.0, I should expect to hear all my presets using Q 4.0 without having to spend hours telling each and every one of them that yes, I really do want to use 4.0!

End of story --- back to manually converting the factory presets to 4.0!

Don't think it really takes hours even if your doing a few hundred presets. Basically press two buttons, turn a knob, hit save, move to the next preset. Pretty quick process.....

Now I do think the majority would of been okay with an auto update, and of course we don't have things like that anymore because of the few in the vocal minority that raise a fuss over "my patches sound different now", but with fairness to their point of view, its no doubt a lot more editing to get a tone to revert back to how it previously sounded than it is to just turn the modeling to the latest version. Probably have to go and edit multiple parameters to accomplish that verses one parameter.


Now one option that Cliff could perhaps offer (and I kind of hope he doesn't because he's already bent over enough for the vocal forum membership) is have TWO versions of the firmware. One version auto updates everything to the latest, for ALL the patches. The other version, it only will update if and when the user tells it to do it for each patch.

So essentially those that want everything done for them are happy, and those that don't want anything touched could also be happy....

That said, even with a 2 version firmware, I'm sure there will still be something someone will complain about
 
Don't think it really takes hours even if your doing a few hundred presets. Basically press two buttons, turn a knob, hit save, move to the next preset. Pretty quick process.....

Now I do think the majority would of been okay with an auto update, and of course we don't have things like that anymore because of the few in the vocal minority that raise a fuss over "my patches sound different now", but with fairness to their point of view, its no doubt a lot more editing to get a tone to revert back to how it previously sounded than it is to just turn the modeling to the latest version. Probably have to go and edit multiple parameters to accomplish that verses one parameter.


Now one option that Cliff could perhaps offer (and I kind of hope he doesn't because he's already bent over enough for the vocal forum membership) is have TWO versions of the firmware. One version auto updates everything to the latest, for ALL the patches. The other version, it only will update if and when the user tells it to do it for each patch.

So essentially those that want everything done for them are happy, and those that don't want anything touched could also be happy....

That said, even with a 2 version firmware, I'm sure there will still be something someone will complain about
The automatic update will never sound as good as the one you have to work for!
 
This is not what I am finding at all.

I loaded Q 4.0 and then scanned through my factory presets and for example, CE-1 Chorus shows 2.04, Comp Cln shows 2.04, 1959 SLP show 3.xx, after searching a bunch of them, I don't find any at Q 4.0 and yet my system and axe edit clearly show 4.0 is loaded. Even if I freshly import a factory preset it still shows Q3.xx.

I find this really frustrating. Does this mean I have to step through 384 factory presets to manually bring them all up to Q 4.0?

I get the feeling that I'm in the minority here but I think that if I load Q 4.0, I should expect to hear all my presets using Q 4.0 without having to spend hours telling each and every one of them that yes, I really do want to use 4.0!

For those people who have a small number of highly developed presets and want to compare 4.0 to 3.xx, they are already committed to spending hours if not days on a particular preset and will switch back and forth between 4.0 and 3.xx many times, so it doesn't really matter if the preset starts off in 4.0 or 3.xx or whatever.

Those of us who simply want to run with the best that Cliff has to offer and use that as our starting point, starting out in 4.0 saves us a lot of work especially if, for example, you rely on the factory presets as your starting point and want to hear them all in 4.0 or if you've purchased presets from an external source ( e.g. Fremen ) and want to hear them in 4.0.

One other point, if this is the way that we will be going in the future, it would be nice to have the Modeling Version Option at the top of Axe Edit, so that you don't have to drill down so far into Axe Edit (Preset->Amp->Pre-Amp->Revision ). With a small # of presets, no big deal. With having to convert 384 of them, it adds up.

Mentioned this earlier, but a batch conversion tool that reads a file with a list of presets and modeling version as data pairs, could make this approach work for everyone. At the very least, having a set of factory presets available that were set up to use 4.0 as a default could also save some time.

End of story --- back to manually converting the factory presets to 4.0!


Couldn't you just reinstall the Factory Presets?....According to what should happen is they should automatically update if they're Prior to 3.0?
 
Finally had time to update today and really love it. The bottom end is full and there's a nice improvement to feel IMHO.

Cliff and FAS are awesome! Thanks
 
Those of us who simply want to run with the best that Cliff has to offer and use that as our starting point, starting out in 4.0 saves us a lot of work especially if, for example, you rely on the factory presets as your starting point and want to hear them all in 4.0 or if you've purchased presets from an external source ( e.g. Fremen ) and want to hear them in 4.0.

One other point, if this is the way that we will be going in the future, it would be nice to have the Modeling Version Option at the top of Axe Edit, so that you don't have to drill down so far into Axe Edit (Preset->Amp->Pre-Amp->Revision ). With a small # of presets, no big deal. With having to convert 384 of them, it adds up.

Do you really "check out" all 384 presets after a firmware upgrade? I mean, a lot of them are only meant as an effect showcase or example, not something you would use as-is. Also, who's to say that a factory preset will even sound good after a firmware change? I'm not trying to be contentious, but man, I sure have the urge to offer some cheese here.
 
Back
Top Bottom