Cygnus Is....Absolutely Magnificent!

[la szum]

In the vast majority of models the knobs behave the same as the amp. There are a handful of models where I've taken artistic license and changed the tapers to give a more useable response.

For example the Master Volume in a Blues Jr. is linear taper. This is ridiculous as it makes it very difficult to find the sweet spot. The model uses an audio taper instead which makes finding the sweet spot easier.

The manual is outdated in this regard. While this was true for earlier firmwares the later Ares and now Cygnus firmwares have authentic behavior for most models except in a handful of cases where the manufacturer's choice of taper is dumb.

As someone who has owned Mark series amps since a III in 1986 (and still owns a Mark V) I love how
authentic the "virtual" pots are in replicating the actual pots and their locations on those Mesa Boogie
amps.

 

[SiggyCertified]

Yeah but those dumb things all become part of the amp, I understand why and it doesn't hurt my feelings on the unit, hell you actually add the depth knob, not 1 other company even adds that but they will model the presence. Just as a purist my only thing I could say at this point as I said about, cygnus could probably get rawer and as a nit picky observation all controls could behave correctly.

My track record with Fractal since the standard has been I'll keep the unit for 3 months find its weakness and off it. I've been holding on for Cygnus and literally took all the plastic off it and decided it stays, I've had it for 4 months now. I'm happy either way

Roflmao, so how far down the rabbit hole would you like to go, in terms of having the amps within Fractal products mimic the actual amp itself? Cliff is focused on sound and feel as a whole. To nit pick about this is like getting mad that Cliff doesn't have future plans for VR implementation, and having the knobs on the unit morph into the actual knobs of said amp, every time you switch to it. C'mon now. Ease up.

 

[CT76]

Roflmao, so how far down the rabbit hole would you like to go, in terms of having the amps within Fractal products mimic the actual amp itself? Cliff is focused on sound and feel as a whole. To nit pick about this is like getting mad that Cliff doesn't have future plans for VR implementation, and having the knobs on the unit morph into the actual knobs of said amp, every time you switch to it. C'mon now. Ease up.

Did you miss the part where I said it was a nit pick thing, jesus

 

[Namewastakendamn]

What shocked me is the note seperation. I play some high gain stuff, and that feed back always interfered with hearing the other note. I can clearly hear it all now and this was the same Mesa model I used on ARES that just couldn’t quiet get it.

Those Fenders are absolutely AMAZING as well!

 

[Eman7422]

Simply amazing. What was already fantastic and world class is now off the charts.

thank you so much.

almost couldn’t stop playing. The tone and the FEEL are incredible!

did I say thank you?

 

[Stratoblaster]

What shocked me is the note seperation. I play some high gain stuff, and that feed back always interfered with hearing the other note. I can clearly hear it all now and this was the same Mesa model I used on ARES that just couldn’t quiet get it.

Those Fenders are absolutely AMAZING as well!

Yea, you can really pile on the gain and it doesn't fall apart; you retain chunk and clarity throughout, and what's interesting is that this also applies to the drives as well as the amp modeling I'm finding. The new drive modeling is astounding....so much punch with clarity and body.

 

[Stratoblaster]

almost couldn’t stop playing. The tone and the FEEL are incredible!

Yea man....I had a very long session today and started going through every amp in the box...I only got thru a few as every time I went to the next amp I ended up simply playing and enjoying it for some time...incredible feel and tone indeed. From a clean Fender/Vox to an unruly cranked Fender/Vox to a cranky old-school 70's Marshall circuit to a raging modern hi-gain offering every one is unique in character and demands deep exploration I'm finding.

It's going to take me hours to go through every amp since I'm getting hung up playing and tweaking each amp to see what it can do. I'm especially loving how the Drive and Master Volume controls work together in Cygnus to really change the character of the amp like never before.

I landed on a clean Fender amp and got a very sweet Stones-type of Strat rhythm tone and enterered 'the zone'...when I came up for air I thought I'd check out the new drive modeling...and ended up in another time-warp simply enjoying the whole experience. Much love for Cygnus here...the drives....the drives...ahhhh yea.

Users weren't kidding when they said they were finding that they loved amps they didn't before...I never got on with any of the Cameron amps/channels in the various Fractal devices and found that I loved a few of them now...same with a couple other amps. Cygnus is going to be a fun ride...

I read a comment where somebody said that Cygnus provides an overall body to the tone that EQ'ing alone cannot give....I'd agree with that. There is something magnificent going on here under the hood here...

 

[Admin M@]

Fractal states in the manual that amps that had weird behavior, like didn't do much of anything through halfway of the rotation, then fractal took the liberty of making it react how they see it should.

I'm not sure where you saw that, but I did find these three statements in the manuals. Each is accurate, if a little open ended.

(Tone Controls) In most cases, knob positions can even be matched to settings on the original amps.

(Master Volume) Settings for Master don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

(Presence) Settings for Presence don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

 

[CT76]

I'm not sure where you saw that, but I did find these three statements in the manuals. Each is accurate, if a little open ended.

(Tone Controls) In most cases, knob positions can even be matched to settings on the original amps.

(Master Volume) Settings for Master don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

(Presence) Settings for Presence don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

Yes

 

[CT76]

I'm not sure where you saw that, but I did find these three statements in the manuals. Each is accurate, if a little open ended.

(Tone Controls) In most cases, knob positions can even be matched to settings on the original amps.

(Master Volume) Settings for Master don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

(Presence) Settings for Presence don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

As stated, it's a nit picky little thing, but the only thing I can find fault meaning I think Cygnus is very good. People are so sensitive on this board, say 1 thing that an idiot takes wrong and every fanboy comes out. Like I said, this is why I quit being here, it's a compliment take it and that's it

 

[Jumpback]

Most my amps sound like they're under water so bummed, and hissy with more latency than normal, I have the Live Gold pack so I will update the 1st bank and see if that does it RATS>>>>>>.

 

[Randalljax]

Most my amps sound like they're under water so bummed, and hissy with more latency than normal, I have the Live Gold pack so I will update the 1st bank and see if that does it RATS>>>>>>.

I am guessing you have already reset the amp blocks
if not go to axe edits and reset the channel , then dial it in w the authentic controls

 

[Jumpback]

I am guessing you have already reset the amp blocks
if not go to axe edits and reset the channel , then dial it in w the authentic controls

Yes I did but I must be missing something bcuz it sounds Crap

 

[Greg Ferguson]

...that an idiot takes wrong...

Ahem. Care to take a different run at it?

 

[Dave Merrill]

Personally, after reading a lot about reset tools and likely adjustment to existing patches, I've just been going through the prerelease factory patches, checking out the new modeling, with an eye to rebuilding my patches from scratch.

EDIT: A better way to say that is with an eye to rebuilding a new set of patches to hang with. I'm not trying to update my existing presets so they sound like they did pre-Cygnus but better. I'm looking at it like a new box to figure out and find my happy places in. I might revisit my previous generation tones later, but for now I'm in exploration mode, and really digging it. A fresh eye, and all that. If I was in a band, or had a bunch of recording dates booked, I might not have the luxury of being able to do that, but absent those constraints, I'm taking advantage of this as an opportunity for rebirth.

Lots of amps sound and feel really great, including many I've never listened to, or never gravitated to much. I've been making a list of favorites, trying not to add everything, mostly succeeding.

Some standouts:
40 Buddha Duomaster
50 Herbie
75 TX Star!!!
76 Jumped Plexi

I'm not even saving my on the fly changes for now, just collecting notes on amps I want to dig into later. I have a backup from 16.0 and one from 16.01 if I want to go back, but I doubt I will.

Short version: Big fun! Great unit! Great firmware!

 

[Stratoblaster]

Personally, after reading a lot about reset tools and likely adjustment to existing patches, I've just been going through the prerelease factory patches, checking out the new modeling, with an eye to rebuilding my patches from scratch.

I did a complete System and AMP block reset on all of my user presets before I struck a note in Cygnus. I like to start completely from a new, clean slate, especially with an upgrade that is this big, and after experimenting with Cygnus I'll be able to dial in my presets back in literally seconds for each amp/channel. Right out of the gate Cygnus has all sorts of mojo that I've had to try and dial in with the advanced parameters previously and never have gotten as fantastic results as I can now in about 15 seconds.....boom....done.

Generally speaking, I'd suspect the vast majority of users who completely reset their AMP blocks/channels will get back to where they were before faster then ever and with better results with Cygnus.

Lots of amps sound and feel really great, including many I've either never listened to, or never gravitated to much. I've been making a list of favorites, trying not to add everything, mostly succeeding.

I hear that. I started from the beginning of the amp list in the FM3 and found, after about 20 minutes, I needed to reset all my FM3-Edit Amp Picker color assignments as pretty much every amp I landed on was a 'favorite'. I'm thinking it might even be futile to color my favorites as I was getting seriously hooked on every one.

My go-to amp/channels are the Euro Blue, Euro Green, Euro Red, and after extensively beating on those they will all still remain in my main preset. The big problem I'm going to have is narrowing down some Fenders/ClassA/boutique/Vox type amps for my Bluesy preset. I'm only about 15% through the amps and I wanted to tag nearly every one of those types of amps as a favorite....nice problem to have though.

Short version: Big fun! Great unit! Great firmware!

Yea...I get really enthused and wordy describing this stuff....but that really sums it all up in '10 words or less'

 

[fcs101]

I'm not sure where you saw that, but I did find these three statements in the manuals. Each is accurate, if a little open ended.

(Tone Controls) In most cases, knob positions can even be matched to settings on the original amps.

(Master Volume) Settings for Master don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

(Presence) Settings for Presence don’t necessarily correspond to knob positions on the amp being modeled.

I think he's getting that from the Wiki (not the manuals). I found these excerpted statements. These are just a few examples which he may have been referring to:

"The only controls that do not necessarily match are the Presence and Master Volume. The Master Volume taper is the same for every amp. This was done to provide some consistency in finding the "sweet spot" of power amp break up and to prevent wildly fluctuating volume levels. The Presence control has a reverse log taper which gives the control a more reasonable behavior than that of most tube amps. A typical tube amp's Presence control does nothing over the first 80% of it's rotation which is stupid."

"Presence and Depth controls may not match the taper of the actual amp. On most amps the Presence control does nothing until you turn it almost all the way up. This seems a bit silly so we make the Presence behave more logically."

"We therefore model all amps assuming the tone controls are "perfect" ((IOW if the amp was designed with a 500K pot we use 500K even if our reference amp is off by some percentage). We also don't match the Presence and MV tapers for previously discussed reasons."

 

[Admin M@]

I think he's getting that from the Wiki (not the manuals).

I thought that too. Like the forum, that's a historical record. In any case, @CT76 we're happy you're happy with almost everything. Let's have everyone else set aside their responses to this for now and stay focused on the "absolutely magnificent" part again

"Cygnus is what I have been after for years." —@CT76

 

[Floge]

Yes I did but I must be missing something bcuz it sounds Crap

This is really weird because I have the same Live Gold pack and it sounds amazing! Austinbuddy has released bank 1 (first 128 presets) for Cygnus as well so you should download those. Mine sounded a bit weird before resetting the amp channels.

 

[Postretro]

Cygnus is a huge difference. I would often add a tube or transformer preamp to the cab block to add a little more complexity, or harmonics maybe, to the amp model. I needed that. But, that is completely unneeded now. In fact, I feel it actually takes away from the amp model's sound. I now use a "Modern" preamp. And it does add some complexity. But, the Cygnus amp model is great without it. I use the "Modern" "High Quality" preamp in the cab block as a more natural way to enhance the sound overall. I am so impressed. Even the pick transients, which I have always considered a major weak point in digital modeling, have improved dramatically. The dynamics in general are huge, great and natural. This is a clear turning point in digital modeling to me. I was more than satisfied before. But, I also felt there were tradeoffs involved in choosing the FM3 over tubes -- well worth it, but still trade-offs. For the rest of my life, I will always hear something that I want to change. That is who I am. But, I no longer feel like I am trading-off anything that I really miss anymore. Congratulations! Extremely well done!

I completely agree with everything Statoblaster said in the first post.

Make sure to play around with the speaker compression. It got a big overhaul in Cygnus but a lot of people aren't experiencing the glory because their speaker compression is set at the default of 0. Time constant (lower for light or higher for heavy feel), and compliance (turn it up to simulate a broken-in speaker) are also well worth tweaking.

And, thank you for pointing this out, Giantslayer.