Axe-Fx II "Quantum" Rev 7.00 Firmware Release

Hmm - at the beginning of this video (you'll have to set the timeline back to 0 as it's set to start in the middle), the interviewer tells David that C.N. is the most played P.F. song with 330,000 plays since 1980!!! D.G. gives him kind of a strange look after this comment and I kinda wondered about that number.

Doing the math: 330,000 / (2012 - 1980) = 10315 times per year or 28 times per day on average in all of the US (I assume he meant radio plays). Don't know what you guys think but that number seems really low to me given that The Wall has sold 13+ million copies in the US.
It more like 330, 000,000 I would think
 
After I installed 7 I couldn't quite playing for about 4 hrs , Iam loving it
Thanks Cliff for all you a Fractal team do
Jack
 
It's been a great ride for several years with Fractal.

What I would say is with each FW enhancement- the difference in character between various amp models becomes more apparent.
Also - the Fenders keep getting better.

Thanks Cliff.
 
The only time I tend to use the advanced parameters is if I am on a Marshall, and it's usually to do things like change the pre amp tubes, or power tubes, or if I am trying to create a hot rodded Marshall sound that doesn't already exist in the Axe.
 
Perfect timing ! In less than two months, I'll be on stage in the island's nicest theater, playing songs from a band whose guitar player is known for his love of compression :cool:

Here's some tones I'm using right now, with Quantum 7 ; after that rehearsal, I tweaked some of them (like, using the "On the turning away" amp/cab/chorus settings on "Comfortably numb")

You all sound phenomenal.
 
Curious if the compressor is the rms or the peak? also, default settings? I want that compressor :)

I don't think you can think of optical compressors that way. Basically, they rectify the input signal to power a light source of some kind so that the brightness of the light follows the envelop of the input signal (more or less). Then they use a light sensitive variable resistor to control the gain of an amplification stage.

There's some kind of magic in the transition from rectified signal to light, and the back to the gain control that affects the sound in a very positive way. Obviously, different light sources are going to react differently, so an incandescent bulb will respond differently from an LED and so on.

I've always thought that optical compressors were pretty much a guitar stompbox only thing, as the whole light bulb part was a cheap-ass way of implementing an envelop follower in a totally analog circuit in the 1970's. Not something that you'd find in a piece of studio equipment, but good enough for a $50 stompbox. Obviously, the LA2A is an expensive piece of studio equipment, so I was wrong with that assumption.
 
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I don't think you can think of optical compressors that way. Basically, they rectify the input signal to power a light source of some kind so that the brightness of the light follows the envelop of the input signal (more or less). Then they use a light sensitive variable resistor to control the gain of an amplification stage.

There's some kind of magic in the transition from rectified signal to light, and the back to the gain control that affects the sound in a very positive way. Obviously, different light sources are going to react differently, so an incandescent bulb will respond differently from an LED and so on.

I've always thought that optical compressors were pretty much a guitar stompbox only thing, as the whole light bulb part was a cheap-ass way of implementing an envelop follower in a totally analog circuit in the 1970's. Not something that you'd find in a piece of studio equipment, but good enough for a $50 stompbox. Obviously, the LA2A is an expensive piece of studio equipment, so I was wrong with that assumption.

From Cliff in the AX8 forum:
Optical 1 uses a full-wave rectifier as a detector (peak detector). Optical 2 uses a true RMS detector. The LA-2A and many other compressors use rectifiers as detectors because it's easy and simple. Technically true-RMS detectors are "better" but they are difficult to implement in analog hardware. Whether or not true-RMS is better in actual real-world applications is debatable. There are those that claim that true-RMS detectors more closely replicate the natural compression behavior of the human auditory system. Peak detectors respond more rapidly to transients while RMS detectors have a smoother behavior. The only way to know which you like better is to try them.
 
I've always thought that optical compressors were pretty much a guitar stompbox only thing, as the whole light bulb part was a cheap-ass way of implementing an envelop follower in a totally analog circuit in the 1970's. Not something that you'd find in a piece of studio equipment, but good enough for a $50 stompbox.

Absolutely not. The LA-2A, CL1B, et. al. are high-end studio compressors that use optical circuits.
 
Mark II owner here. I browsed the thread, but couldn't find the answer to this: is the new LA2A style compressor coming in a subsequent release, or available only to XL users, or...? I'd love to use that!

Meanwhile, I am loving Q7. The 5E3...glorious. The Maz38 with a Tele...awesome for country now. Preamp tube variance seems to be a bit more now. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
 
Mark II owner here. I browsed the thread, but couldn't find the answer to this: is the new LA2A style compressor coming in a subsequent release, or available only to XL users, or...? I'd love to use that!

Meanwhile, I am loving Q7. The 5E3...glorious. The Maz38 with a Tele...awesome for country now. Preamp tube variance seems to be a bit more now. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Its currently only in the AX8 beta 7.01 version. So I'm sure its coming the the II shortly.
 
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