So nobody seems to agree....
To be clear I use Fractal product for nearly 15 years. Starting with the Ultra, then the AX8, then the FM9. Spending hundred of hours to tweak sounds with pretty satisfying results, allow me to learn lot of things about sound. I really like many a lot of the wonderful things that Fractal provide to us, speaking about sound quality and flexibility. So I'm not at all a "forum fanatic" but neither a newbie.
But we can really like a product/brand and make some constructive criticism don't we?
If we are honest the UX on the units (not speaking about edit software) has never been the main advantage of Fractal.
I'm a live player, to me the AX8 was a really good step on live usability.
The main "flaws" on the FM9 for me are:
- Not (for now) being able to navigate thru presets by foot with an easily readable list and more than 10 caracters to identify a preset
- When in effect mode the main screen does not display the edit page of the corresponding effect of the last pressed switch. Making a pain in the ass to edit on the fly (depending of the gig I sometimes use 80 presets in a gig or only one like a traditionnal pedalboard)
This 2 points were already implemented on the AX8 so I had even not imagine that these features would not be there on the FM9. It's like a regression to me.
- No custom labels by channel on mini-lcd, so we have to remember what setting was affected to each channel
On the paper the FM9 seems to be another step; More power, switchs layouts, more IOs (Headphones output for travel usage), USB Soundcard, named scenes, color screen, more channels, mini LCD, setlists... But in reality I'm disappointed on the UX point for now. May be I need to get used to another "workflow". That was the primary goal of my this thread, because I know there are plenty of really good players and users on the forum.
So sorry guys if I offense some of you by telling the product is not perfect. I hope some would give solutions or maybe Fractal will make updates...