Dealing with scenes?

[Aeser]

So i finally made the breakthrough of getting my first preset to sound good/the way i want it to (was pretty bummed before no matter what i did it sounded like crap to me but i figured out how to tweak it to sound the way i wanted) but now i'm perplexed on setting up different scenes (it's a mostly clean amp with a fender champ and fender deluxe panned hard L and R and i had one setting that was rather clean and wanted one i labeled "salty" to be a bit more gritty, but so first was the salty scene and when i clicked on scene 2 it spat out a completely different sounding preset to me, different random amps and everything, don't get why it would do that since i just want to make modifications to the original preset sound and then save them as a different scene. so then i did copy scene 1 to scene 2 and made the modifications to make it more clean and everything but when i go back to scene 1 now it's the same clean one as scene 2 and i appear to have lost the "salty" settings (though the scene is still named "salty").

not sure where i'm messing up. how are you supposed to go about making new scenes on a preset?

Thanks!

 

[chris]

Scenes change Block On/Off and Channel select.

to edit a Scene, you click the new scene number first, then adjust the blocks as desired. you could also use the Scene menu (near the Scene number) in Axe-Edit to copy your first Scene (assuming you're on Scene 1 now) to all other Scenes. this serves a starting point for everything else being the same.

then click Scene 2, and adjust what you want there.

remember, Scenes change Block On/Off and Channel Select. if you want different settings in a block, you need to change Channels in that block while in the new Scene.

judging from your description, perhaps you weren't on Channel A for some blocks in your current "good" sounding Scene, and when you changed Scenes, the channels all changed as well. you can also copy Channels within a block so they all have the same starting point as well. this menu is near the ABCD area on the lower left side of Axe-Edit, the little triangle near the letters.

so just look at your Blocks in your good sounding Scene, note what Channels they're on. you can use the Block Info button to quickly see all Channel status.

Scenes are very powerful and super straight forward. you just set the Blocks on or off and Channels as desired.

 

[GlennO]

You're at least the 10,000th person who has had this same confusion about scenes. It's quite common, if not universal, to expect parameter values to vary between scenes (without use of channels). The AxeFX/FM3 have a learning curve and it's to be expected you have to learn some things to use it, but at some point, when an issue is a point of confusion this often, you have to admit it signals a problem. Maybe the problem is the design of the software (the scene controller interface), but another possible culprit is the terminology. If scenes had a name something like "bypass snapshot" it would help avoid this problem. Or maybe the https://www.fractalaudio.com/getting-help/ page just needs an FAQ page to answer common questions like this that keeping coming up over and over and over.

 

[chris]

You're at least the 10,000th person who has had this same confusion about scenes. It's quite common, if not universal, to expect parameter values to vary between scenes (without use of channels). The AxeFX/FM3 have a learning curve and it's to be expected you have to learn some things to use it, but at some point, when an issue is a point of confusion this often, you have to admit it signals a problem. Maybe the problem is the design of the software (the scene controller interface), but another possible culprit is the terminology. If scenes had a name something like "bypass snapshot" it would help avoid this problem. Or maybe the https://www.fractalaudio.com/getting-help/ page just needs an FAQ page to answer common questions like this that keeping coming up over and over and over.

i'm not sure this is the same "problem", unless i'm misreading; it's not too clear what's happened either.

i think the main "gotcha" is that you change Scenes first then adjust it as desired. a concept that is assumed is that Scenes aren't active until you choose to click them - this is not true, they're always there, and always set "somehow" until you design it the way you want.

to avoid this, we'd have to assume that everyone always starts on Scene 1, and then after they're done designing Scene 1 (when is that exactly?) it somehow copies to all other Scenes as a starting point. but then what happens? does Scene 2 copy to Scene 3, etc. etc.

ideas have been suggested over time, like making ALL Scenes default to every block off and Channel A selected, but people had issue with adding blocks or going to Scenes and having no sound and wondering what is going wrong. nothing is going wrong, but the blocks are all off, and you'd have to turn them on.

so at least for now, any idea that has been suggested requires the user to select the Scene and adjust it the way they want, whether it's everything off and channel A, everything on, or some random setting.

Scenes aren't automatically set to "the last setup you made" and i think that's the part people are expecting. there's no way for the Axe to know the last thing you did, and then when to stop copying the last thing you did so you don't automatically mess up a different Scene.

you'll just have to choose the new Scene, set it up the way you want, and you're good to go.

as for Parameters changing when you change Scenes, that's just not how it's ever worked. before Line 6 gear had Snapshots - which do change parameters - there really wasn't this much of an issue. Scenes were always presented as "changing Block On/Off and Channel select" only.

many users are coming from Line 6 gear with Snapshots, seeing people in videos or on forums casually say "Scenes are the Axe version of Snapshots" and expecting it to work the same. it doesn't though. so that's not an issue with how Fractal is communicating their feature set, it's other users saying the wrong information, or just being casual with their description.

when i teach the Axe, i always say "Scenes turn blocks on and off and change channels, that's it." and once i do, people get it.

Axe Scenes are not the same thing as Helix Snapshots. Scenes were introduced on the Axe2, Firmware 9.0 in 2012 and pretty much still work the same way today.

people tend to stick with habits they develop from their first piece of gear. it's human nature. many people start with Line 6, maybe the HX Stomp, as it has the lowest price point. then they want to upgrade or try something else, and Fractal has ~$1000 devices which allow more people to buy them vs a ~$2000 price point. since they're used to Line 6, they might think that other gear works the same way and have that headache when they try something and it doesn't work the same. i think that's what's happening in most of these cases.

i see "scenes aren't changing parameters like snapshots did on my helix." i explain what Scenes do. they say oh so that's worse than the Helix. then i explain Channels and changing them with Scenes, and they go OHHHH that's amazing and just as, if not more, powerful and saves CPU.

so it's an adjustment like most anything new.

 

[GlennO]

so then i did copy scene 1 to scene 2 and made the modifications to make it more clean and everything but when i go back to scene 1 now it's the same clean one as scene 2 and i appear to have lost the "salty" settings (though the scene is still named "salty").

Yeah, it's the same old confusion that gets reported on this forum ad nauseam.

Helix doesn't suffer this confusion problem anywhere near this degree because the snapshot interface is more intuitive than scene controllers. I realize it may not be a good idea to change the scene controller interface to work like Helix to avoid this confusion problem at this point. If not, then change the scene terminology, or at the very least start an FAQ page at https://www.fractalaudio.com/getting-help/ to help these poor new users who get tripped up by this issue over and over and over.

Like I said, a learning curve is to be expected, but there are a couple of issues that come up so often that it should be taken a signal that new users need some more help.

 

[chris]

Yeah, it's the same old confusion that gets reported on this forum ad nauseam.

Helix doesn't suffer this confusion problem anywhere near this degree because the snapshot interface is more intuitive than scene controllers. I realize it may not be a good idea to change the scene controller interface to work like Helix to avoid this confusion problem at this point. If not, then change the scene terminology, or at the very least start an FAQ page at https://www.fractalaudio.com/getting-help/ to help these poor new users who get tripped up by this issue over and over over.

well i think that idea starts with the user thinking Scenes should change parameters, which it never has. before Snapshots, i don't think many users thought it would do that, because they read the manual and saw it doesn't do that.

with Snapshots now existing, people think Scenes do change parameters, because the Helix did that with a similar function.

from what i see these days, when people haven't used a Helix at all and don't know about it, they don't think Scenes change parameters most of the time. when they do think it changes parameters, they've previously used a Helix in most cases. always an exception, but that's my observation.

for this post specifically, i don't really read that he tried to change parameters in scenes, but just changed scene and it was different than what he just had. this makes sense if channels and block on/off changed to some "default" state when he changed Scenes. all he has to do is change to the Channels he wants and turns on/off blocks as desired.

 

[GlennO]

from what i see these days, when people haven't used a Helix at all and don't know about it, they don't think Scenes change parameters most of the time. when they do think it changes parameters, they've previously used a Helix in most cases. always an exception, but that's my observation.

That's possible, but I find it very unlikely that all these new AxeFX/FM3 users have used a Helix before and that's why they expect scenes to work differently. The more likely explanation is "scene" intuitively implies a new scene of parameter values which may be adjusted independently.

Again, I'm not saying the design should change. I'm merely observing the question comes up over and over and over. Doing nothing in the face of that seems silly.

 

[chris]

The more likely explanation is "scene" intuitively implies a new scene of parameter values which may be adjusted independently.

Hmm, maybe, maybe not, hard to say what is in people’s minds.

I’ve only heard of Scenes used as a term with Digital Mixers before the Axe had them in 2012. This usually did allow the change of all parameters.

But when it was introduced, it was pretty clearly stated it’s Block on/off and XY change only (along with Scene level in Out and FX Loop blocks). I’m sure people thought or asked for parameters to be changed too, but it is not a feature of Scenes as we’ve said.

All this said, I think if they read the owners manual, there’s a clear definition of what it does:

A Scene can be thought of as a preset within a preset. Scenes can turn blocks on or off, change block Channels, and more. Scenes don’t need to be created—they’re already there, ready to be set as desired.

....

DON'T: Set a parameter (for example, Amp Treble to “6”) then change to a new scene and change the value of that parameter (ex: Amp Treble to “10”). The change will affect all scenes!

—

So the info is there, but we know that many try to avoid manuals which is somewhat understandable. Yet if they did, many common questions posted on the forum wouldn’t need to be asked

Of course we’re here to help, but just reading the intro sections of each topic could clear up a lot of things.

 

[GlennO]

If RTFM was the answer, then the same issue wouldn't be coming up over and over and over on this forum. You can document something in a deep in the reference manual, but if it's unintuitive, that's not going to help much. If the design or terminology isn't going to change, then, for crissakes, at least start an FAQ on the FAS support page. That's an excellent and time-tested way to deal with issues like this.

 

[Aeser]

when i teach the Axe, i always say "Scenes turn blocks on and off and change channels, that's it." and once i do, people get it.

oh ok so they are NOT for the purpose I had assumed they were for i guess. I thought scenes were different settings on the same preset like you set an amp up and one scene is that amp as is, another scene is that amp plus a delay pedal if you wanted one, another scene is delay plus reverb, another is the original scene plus distortion, etc.

So is it channels I should be thinking of? and like channel A is clean and channel B i set up like the clean setting plus a distortion, etc.?

So it is supposed to be that every new scene is just you build the entire amp setup from scratch for that scene? so in one preset you could have scenes with completely different amps/cabs, in addition to say, delays, distortions, etc.? cos from the existing presets i was browsing it seemed like each scene was just a variation on that main amp setup, so i'd naturally assumed when creating a new scene it should keep the settings you've already set for the first scene in the preset and just save the changes you'd made to that one scene when you hit save, and obviously that didn't happen.

 

[Danny W.]

All the scenes in preset will have the same layout, with all the same blocks in the same order. Within the blocks you can use different channels to produce different sounds--the amp block could have four different amps or the same amp with different settings, for example. You don't have to build each scene from scratch; just copy the first scene and modify the blocks by selecting different channels.

Danny W.

 

[jefferski]

If RTFM was the answer, then the same issue wouldn't be coming up over and over and over on this forum. You can document something in a deep in the reference manual, but if it's unintuitive, that's not going to help much. If the design or terminology isn't going to change, then, for crissakes, at least start an FAQ on the FAS support page. That's an excellent and time-tested way to deal with issues like this.

Yep. Most people don't read manuals, FAQs, or even search the forum. Our current culture is "just ask a question." So it keeps coming up here over and over. And the fact that you can adjust parameters using Scene Controllers means that a lot of people have heard/read or seen in a video someone who does have parameters changing, except that there's no explanation. So it's no wonder that new users think you can do it. And any who come from the Helix will of course be used to that paradigm as well. I was here when scenes were introduced; so of course they make sense to those of us who've been around that long. New users weren't here for those discussions. And most don't read the manual. Not everyone is a techie... they're guitarists who want to plug, tweak, and play.

As a former tech writer and QA, that leads me to think there needs to be something that tells them right up front about scenes. A sticker covering the front panel? A big piece of paper on top of the unit in the box? The first screen on load that they have to read and hit Accept that says "Scenes DO NOT allow you to change values"?

 

[LiamH]

Strangely scenes made instant sense to me, because they behave so much like a switching system that can select stomp boxes, but cannot turn the knobs on anything. Back then maybe switch an amp channel or 2 as well, or even select different amps. And now we have 4 channels for blocks, and I didn't bother to count how many blocks we can have for each effects type because 4 channels on 2 blocks is plenty for me, scenes really are pretty powerful. Most important bit of advice from my POV, remember to save your changes, and remember that may mean you don't get the default scene you intended when you select that preset next time. I used to spend hours setting up scenes, and then swap presets without hitting "save" on the Axe FX II. Just to prove I don't have complete learning difficulties, I don't often do it on the Axe FX III.

Liam

 

[GlennO]

As a former tech writer and QA, that leads me to think there needs to be something that tells them right up front about scenes. A sticker covering the front panel? A big piece of paper on top of the unit in the box? The first screen on load that they have to read and hit Accept that says "Scenes DO NOT allow you to change values"?

As I mentioned above, the up front way to address their preconceptions about the way scenes work should start with asking why they have those preconceptions in the first place. I suspect the answer lies in the use of the term "scenes". That term naturally leads people to think the parameters should vary from scene to scene.

If the scene controller interface was more intuitive, that would certainly help. I kind of like the way scenes work though, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. So, if you're not going to change the design, change the terminology and call scenes something else. If you're not going to change the terminology, then give people a way to help themselves with an FAQ page on the FAS support page.

Yep. Most people don't read manuals, FAQs, or even search the forum.

I can only share my experience with musician customers for Spectrasonics products. The FAQ web page has been an extremely successful way to help customers figure out issues that aren't really appropriate for the user manual instead forcing them to ask for help. For every person who comes here and asks the question, there are probably 10 people who don't ask, and never get the issue resolved. I can tell you musician customers will use any tools, like FAQs, that you give them to help them help themselves.

Anyway, I'm just sharing an observation that there are a few questions that keep coming up again and again on the forum, and wondering out loud if there's a better way to help people who are getting stuck on these issues.

 

[TravisG406]

oh ok so they are NOT for the purpose I had assumed they were for i guess. I thought scenes were different settings on the same preset like you set an amp up and one scene is that amp as is, another scene is that amp plus a delay pedal if you wanted one, another scene is delay plus reverb, another is the original scene plus distortion, etc.

So is it channels I should be thinking of? and like channel A is clean and channel B i set up like the clean setting plus a distortion, etc.?

So it is supposed to be that every new scene is just you build the entire amp setup from scratch for that scene? so in one preset you could have scenes with completely different amps/cabs, in addition to say, delays, distortions, etc.? cos from the existing presets i was browsing it seemed like each scene was just a variation on that main amp setup, so i'd naturally assumed when creating a new scene it should keep the settings you've already set for the first scene in the preset and just save the changes you'd made to that one scene when you hit save, and obviously that didn't happen.

You got it! Scenes set which blocks are engaged and which channel all blocks are set to - even bypassed blocks in that scene.

 

[∞Fractals]

Frankly, if you don’t wanna read the manual… It’s kind a like voting; you really don’t have a legitimate gripe. My two pesos.

Asking other people to figure it out for you without you cracking the manual seems awfully lazy to me. It’s well written and quite clear.

 

[the.godfather]

Frankly, if you don’t wanna read the manual… It’s kind a like voting; you really don’t have a legitimate gripe. My two pesos.

Agreed. I got my FM3 a couple of months back now and I made sure to read the manual from front to back twice before I did anything, I even printed it out and got it bound at work. That way I've always got a physical copy to hand. That may just be me being old-fashioned with that though! I didn't come from a Fractal background, so this is my first Fractal product and without reading the manual thoroughly I would have been totally lost. It's a steep learning curve for sure but once you've got the basics down I've found it easy enough and Scenes are so ridiculously powerful.