Axe-Fx III Amp Channels switching and gaps

Ahmad Morsi Abu Maizar

Ahmad Morsi Abu Maizar

Member
Edited
Hello All,
I have a question with regards to channel switching on amp. I am using same amp for two different presets scenes (Rhythm and lead) in the same program. now if I am playing rhythm and I have some chords that ringing out and I switch to lead I can hear the switch as an interruption. this behavior does not happen when I switch both scenes with same amp channel. the issue is that I have certain settings for my lead that I don't want to have in the rhythm amp preset.

Is this a normal behavior?

Thank you
 
Last edited:
Hi Ahmad,
Yes I’m confident it is normal behavior.
One way to mitigate that may be to put each different channel/amp into a scene in the same preset. It will probably not change the behavour (of the new amp sound coming on as soon as you change scene), but there will not be the extra overhead of changing the entire preset.
Thanks
Pauly
 
pauly said:
Hi Ahmad,
Yes I’m confident it is normal behavior.
One way to mitigate that may be to put each different channel/amp into a scene in the same preset. It will probably not change the behavour (of the new amp sound coming on as soon as you change scene), but there will not be the extra overhead of changing the entire preset.
Thanks
Pauly
Click to expand...
Thanks Pauly, I edited the question, I meant changing scenes within the same preset
 
Ahmad Morsi Abu Maizar said:
Hello All,
I have a question with regards to channel switching on amp. I am using same amp for two different presets (Rhythm and lead) in the same program. now if I am playing rhythm and I have some chords that ringing out and I switch to lead I can hear the switch as an interruption. this behavior does not happen when I switch both presets to the same amp channel. the issue is that I have certain settings for my lead that I don't want to have in the rhythm amp preset.

Is this a normal behavior?

Thank you
Click to expand...
You're changing presets or you're changing scenes within a preset?
 
unix-guy said:
Ok... There is a very small audio gap when changing amp channels.

As mentioned above you can use Scene Controllers.

Alternately you can use 2 Amp blocks and a Multiplexer for truly seamless transitions.
Click to expand...
Thanks so much, u guys definitely gave me a place to start from . I found this video and wanna leave it here as a reference for future too.



FractalAudio said:
This is a perfect application for Scene Controllers. That way you don't have to switch channels.
Click to expand...

thanks a ton
 
unix-guy said:
Ok... There is a very small audio gap when changing amp channels.

As mentioned above you can use Scene Controllers.

Alternately you can use 2 Amp blocks and a Multiplexer for truly seamless transitions.
Click to expand...
Please excuse the thread necro, but I'd like to dig into this topic a bit deeper.

My AFX3 is inbound (delivery tomorrow, per UPS), and I'm trying to plan out my basic setup to get up and running very quickly.

My intent is to build one main Preset with all of my most commonly used FX. I'll then have four buttons on my MIDI controller that use channel switching to select my amp channel. The remaining buttons will send a series of MIDI commands to select and enable the groups of FX settings, just like a regular FX preset on a MultiFX unit.

Here's the question - how much switching delay can I expect between the amp channels, and how can I minimize that gap? My intent was to use one amp block with 4 channels representing different gain levels (JC-120, Super Reverb, XTC Blue, XTC Red); would I be better served to use two or more amp blocks? How does the multiplexer address the switching gap?
 
It's as fast as hardware relays, instantly, just some ms.
When using two amp blocks and swiching from one to the other, there even is no gap at all.
 
From a previous thread:

Here's a short clip. Sustained Ab power chord using the factory Friedman BE100 preset. Stepping through the first 4 scenes (each uses a different amp channel and model).



I'm seeing about 25ms or so for the total fade out and back in. Super fast.
 
mr_fender said:
From a previous thread:

Here's a short clip. Sustained Ab power chord using the factory Friedman BE100 preset. Stepping through the first 4 scenes (each uses a different amp channel and model).



I'm seeing about 25ms or so for the total fade out and back in. Super fast.
Click to expand...

Thank you! That's definitely tolerable for a channel switch.

I won't be using scenes, though, so my question is whether it will be similar just changing channels within the block? Even faster, maybe?
 
Budda said:
Why not use scenes, exactly?
Click to expand...
Not flexible enough.

I want to be able to select amp channel completely independently of groups of FX presets.

What I do with my regular amp (Bogner XTC) is to use the amp's pedal to select gain (6 total settings available), then use a MIDI pedal to select complete FX presets in my rack. I keep 10 basic FX presets on my main page and another 10 each up and down one bank. That gives me instant access to 60 complete sounds with no more than 2 switch presses, and 180 if I add a third press to change FX bank.

Scene limitations are twofold:

1) 8 scenes doesn't come close to replicating what I have today.
2) I can't lock down a scene to only change the FX and leave the amp block alone, or vice versa.

By building one Preset that has all of my basic FX (chorus, flange, phaser, reverb, compressor, EQ), I can effectively build a whole bunch of presets by mixing and matching the various channels in each. The Liquidfoot MIDI pedal can do that by setting up its IA slots to send a string of messages - one for each block - to enable/disable and/or select the channel for each. That way, I can use the bottom row of switches to select amp gain (amp block channel), and the remaining switches to effectively create the FX presets using a command string.

The downside of this approach is that the FX programming effectively resides in the MIDI controller. The upside is that it's a lot more flexible than the basic Fractal approach.

If the FC-12 would allow programming multiple commands per press, it would be even better. Better still would be allowing the amp block to be controlled separately from Presets and Scenes. Both of those requests have been made in this forum, but neither has been done, so this is my planned work-around.
 
chestnut said:
You can use both in conjunction:
Use Scenes for the Amp and switch FX Blocks manually...
Click to expand...
As I understand it, that won't work. Changing Scene will change ALL of the blocks, not just the amp channel.

Say I'm running along in a clean channel with a light chorus and plate reverb. Now, I want to change to a higher gain amp channel. If I change the Scene, the chorus and reverb are going to change their setting to the default for that scene - not what I want to happen. Same in the other direction; if I want to stay on the clean amp channel but just change to a dry delay, changing the Scene will also change the amp channel (and the other FX blocks).
 
FullThrottle64 said:
As I understand it, that won't work. Changing Scene will change ALL of the blocks, not just the amp channel.

Say I'm running along in a clean channel with a light chorus and plate reverb. Now, I want to change to a higher gain amp channel. If I change the Scene, the chorus and reverb are going to change their setting to the default for that scene - not what I want to happen. Same in the other direction; if I want to stay on the clean amp channel but just change to a dry delay, changing the Scene will also change the amp channel (and the other FX blocks).
Click to expand...
That's a common new feature request. It's usually expressed as: "Add an option to cause the amp block to remain unchanged when switching scenes". That way you'd use amp channel switching to change your amp and scenes to change your effects.
 
GlennO said:
That's a common new feature request. It's usually expressed as: "Add an option to cause the amp block to remain unchanged when switching scenes". That way you'd use amp channel switching to change your amp and scenes to change your effects.
Click to expand...
Precisely!

In short, have it work the way a real channel-switching amp works.

Maybe I'm unusual in my approach, but I find it really odd that none of the top-tier digital rigs have this as a basic feature.
 
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