Cygnus Poll - Honest Question - Improvement?

Do you notice an improvement with Cygnus amp modeling?

  • Yes, right out of the box

    Votes: 264 61.5%
  • No, even after attempting to tweak presets

    Votes: 10 2.3%
  • Yes, but it takes effort to tweak presets

    Votes: 66 15.4%
  • I can't tell

    Votes: 39 9.1%
  • No vote, just show results

    Votes: 50 11.7%

  • Total voters
    429

JRod4928

Power User
At the risk of being tossed out a window, I gotta ask the question.

There's a lot of hype around Cygnus, but numerous threads / comments complaining that things sound muddy in the low-mids and generally not 'good' (subjective), even after resetting amps and trying to tweak. I've seen amp modeling updates in the past and I know there's always some complaining, but Cygnus criticism seems a little louder than in past updates.

I'm sure there's some 'user error' here, but I suspect the (minority) criticism is drowning out the (silent majority) praise for Cygnus.

What are your thoughts? Check out the poll/comment.
 
Most of the amps I use sound and feel better. The Friedman BE V2 that I've used for longer than I can remember has changed in a less pleasing way that I can't seem to fix. Plus side is it made me find how much I love the solo 100 lead...I and the rest of the band really dig what its done for my main preset.
 
Most of the amps I use sound and feel better. The Friedman BE V2 that I've used for longer than I can remember has changed in a less pleasing way that I can't seem to fix. Plus side is it made me find how much I love the solo 100 lead...I and the rest of the band really dig what its done for my main preset.

How would you describe the issue you're having on the BE?
 
It feels more tangibly real and immediate than before...right out of the box...but it does require some tweaking to get to where I want to go...

So it is between "right out of the box" and "requires tweaking"...

Isn't the love of tweaking and endless variety the reason we have these instead of real amps...?
 
At the risk of being tossed out a window, I gotta ask the question.

There's a lot of hype around Cygnus, but numerous threads / comments complaining that things sound muddy in the low-mids and generally not 'good' (subjective), even after resetting amps and trying to tweak. I've seen amp modeling updates in the past and I know there's always some complaining, but Cygnus criticism seems a little louder than in past updates.

I'm sure there's some 'user error' here, but I suspect the (minority) criticism is drowning out the (silent majority) praise for Cygnus.

What are your thoughts? Check out the poll/comment.
On forums i think the only issues talked about are the classA and the Freidman all the other models seem to get rave reviews and improvements
 
My ears probably aren't as good as many of you, and I would be hard pressed to say there was a massive difference - plus I've been keeping up with all the betas so perhaps it's been more gradual. However, when I compared exactly the same preset between the Axe FX III and the FM3, the Axe FX was definitely better (at least for the one preset I A/B'd like that).
 
This new firmware is a bit more honest than the past. It's more raw, and more like a real live amp in the room, and a little less like a recorded amp to me. That is going to bring about some work and a bit of a "wake up call" if you've been using just high end modeling for a while.
But I love it. AXE FX is the easiest and best live tone EVER. But now you really do get to achieve much more of a sense of what it is to buy a couple hundred tube amps and put them side by side. You are not supposed to like ALL OF THEM. I mean, would you love every real amp on that list? Would they all fit you? No way. They are different, and supposed to be. (not to mention like 1000 cabs... which is another animal altogether.)
There is an amp in there that will fit you, and sound like you. Find that one. The ones you hate, someone else loves. That's the beauty, and I think Cygnus has taken a great step forward towards recreating that bit of reality in modeling.

I'm pretty sure the mission of Fractal is to recreate tube amps as closely to the real thing as possible, until you can't discern any difference at all. Some of those real amps are a PITA and have unique issues. Cygnus is pretty amazing in this regard, and it sounds simply fantastic. I believe it is an improvement over past firmwares (that were already awesome) and the best AXE FX product ever - even though it did require me to rethink a few things - including my choices in favorite amps.
 
I have noticed that it did make a change in how my presets sounded. I can't say for sure that it was a positive improvement or not since I don't have the appropriate reference amplifiers, but I trust Cliff's assessment that it is more accurate now.

I voted "I can't tell."
 
This new firmware is a bit more honest than the past. It's more raw, and more like a real live amp in the room, and a little less like a recorded amp to me. That is going to bring about some work and a bit of a "wake up call" if you've been using just high end modeling for a while.
But I love it. AXE FX is the easiest and best live tone EVER. But now you really do get to achieve much more of a sense of what it is to buy a couple hundred tube amps and put them side by side. You are not supposed to like ALL OF THEM. I mean, would you love every real amp on that list? Would they all fit you? No way. They are different, and supposed to be. (not to mention like 1000 cabs... which is another animal altogether.)
There is an amp in there that will fit you, and sound like you. Find that one. The ones you hate, someone else loves. That's the beauty, and I think Cygnus has taken a great step forward towards recreating that bit of reality in modeling.

I'm pretty sure the mission of Fractal is to recreate tube amps as closely to the real thing as possible, until you can't discern any difference at all. Some of those real amps are a PITA and have unique issues. Cygnus is pretty amazing in this regard, and it sounds simply fantastic. I believe it is an improvement over past firmwares (that were already awesome) and the best AXE FX product ever - even though it did require me to rethink a few things - including my choices in favorite amps.
This is a great view point. A good example of this is before Fractal came along (and I've been a user since Cliff was pedaling the Standards (Ultra's didn't exist yet lol) on the Huge Racks forums) every forum you would visit would have mixed reviews about every single amp available. Harmony Central Amp Forum, Rig-Talk, TGP, SSO, etc. Every one of them had hugely differing opinions of different amps. And the common story of every single thread was:

You just have to try it for yourself.
 
I pretty much only use the Brit 800 and various 5150 sims. They sounded fine before and sound fine now. Brit 800 is very very close to my Marshall 2204 (maybe indistinguishable). The 5150 and 5152 sims are definitely in the ballpark of my 5150 and 6505+, but I can immediately tell the difference with those (AFX is much more polished/tame, even after Cygnus).
 
I pretty much only use the Brit 800 and various 5150 sims. They sounded fine before and sound fine now. Brit 800 is very very close to my Marshall 2204 (maybe indistinguishable). The 5150 and 5152 sims are definitely in the ballpark of my 5150 and 6505+, but I can immediately tell the difference with those (AFX is much more polished/tame, even after Cygnus).

Me too + Plexi's and Morgan AC20 for cleans. Not sure how it's been impacted by Cygnus.
 
I noticed the Slo(Solo 100) sounds better and is easy to tweak. I couldn't ever get the Slo to sound the way I wanted before. Probably just user error but its easy to tweak now. I think the 5153 Blue has improved also.. Still learning and lots more to explore.
 
The Plexi and Band Commander are the first two amps that convinced me that Cygnus made a noticeable improvement. I also noticed that my existing AC-20 and SOLO 100 presets also sounded better without any adjustments. The Plexi and Band Commander sounded great when first dialed up with just a cab block and a reverb block with a touch of verb. I made only a few tweaks to BMT and gain for both and spent hours with stank face happily driving my wife nuts. Overall, the amps I tried definitely sound and feel better to my ears.
 
......I m surprised of the actual result of the Poll , today i ve tried to update a few presets ...
here s an example ....preset attached ...had resetted the amp block with fractool , also tried with Axe Edit and did also a sof reset ,
i had a ....bad resut to my ears ... the preset sound so different and for myself ... the difficulty is to find the right things to tweak to make it sound even better than in 15.01...
.... It would be nice and great to have a few ideas , hints .......
Fafa :) ;)
 

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I admittedly have a handful of amps that I basically stay with all the time and I don't do a ton of exploration with the others (hey if it works it works). But the Mesa and 5150 III amp models sound and feel more like the real amps to me than previous firmware. Some moreso than others. Like the JP-2C came to life for me with Cygnus when I actually didn't care for it much before (despite being a Petrucci tone fan). So yeah, I'm very pleased with Cygnus.
 
Very pleased with Cygnus. Amps that required a lot of tweaking with previous FW don't require as much tweaking now. The Brit-Pre with some tweaks (variac, speaker drive) with a bit of delay and reverb sound like I'm at soundcheck in the 80s ... Love it!!
 
I tried one of the Betas a few weeks ago and reset the amp block in one of my go-to presets with the Nuclear Tone. The tone became really dark but I didn't have time to spend working with it so I reverted back to 15.01. Updated to the final release last week and played through the same preset without any tweaking and, with the exception of a 'thicker' midrange, sounded very much like FW 15.01. Might be confirmation bias after reading some of the reviews, but it did feel more responsive as well.

Having more time to spend with it, I duplicated Channel A to Channel B and reset Channel B. The tone sounded similar to when I tried the Beta. Going back and forth between Channels A and B, I adjusted the parameters from A to match B and they sounded identical. It still sounds to me to have more prominent lower mids, which I didn't know if I liked or not, but the more I played it the more it 'felt' better.

Bottom line; the jury may still be out for some but I believe overall that FW 16 is an improvement in tone and feel. It could be that some users are struggling, maybe trying to avoid their go to settings and parameters since it's supposed to be so much different.

My advice, don't overthink it and don't over-analyze. My experience has led me to keep using the same parameters in the same way I did before Cygnus. It's not like the wheel was reinvented, it's just a newer high performance version was created. It's easy to get your tone so locked in your head as sounding good that when you hear something better, it doesn't sound right but it sounds the way it should.
 
Voted Yes, but need to tweak presets. And so far every tweak gave me better results in feel and sound than 15.01. I'm a tone chaser, that's why I got a fractal. You can get any tone you want if you know how and are willing to put the time in. Some of these guys complaining about Cygnus are probably guys that are typically Plug in and play guys, not tone tweakers. Lol
 
Is this, once again, proof that negative comments get more traction than positive ones
in the public realm?

Seems like the poll results suggest so.... and quite emphatically.

One thread by one user in a public space can skew things to make it seem
that an whole bunch of folks had their Cheerios pissed in by the latest FW update. :)
 
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