Downgrading to FW9

The factory amp settings work pretty damned well straight out of the box. I don't think you have to lift the hood (or 'bonnet' as we say in the UK) to get great sounds.
 
rdymond said:
Hello,

My first post expressed more frustration with FW11 than good solutions. However it certainly seems that there are a significant number of customers and users who, like me, have found v10 and v11 frustrating. I will try the changes suggested by the moderator.

In response to a few comments: When I say unity gain, I mean unity gain as it makes sense in this context. That would likely be a power based measurement with a broadband signal, not a sinusoid.

I think it would be great if Fractal published some broadband test signals here that we could use to establish "loudness/gain" standards for each block/preset.

I would like to see much more user friendly information on the model's features. For example the triode discussion above. I think the community can create this if Fractal provides the guidance.

My POV: I am not interested in reproductions today's or yesterday's amps. I am interested in tomorrow's amps. :)

cheers,
Robin.
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Please... when you say a "significant number of customers" , provide us with a number. Are we talking about ten customers out of many thousands.
This is internet!!!???!!!
 
rdymond said:
Hello,

My first post expressed more frustration with FW11 than good solutions. However it certainly seems that there are a significant number of customers and users who, like me, have found v10 and v11 frustrating. I will try the changes suggested by the moderator.

In response to a few comments: When I say unity gain, I mean unity gain as it makes sense in this context. That would likely be a power based measurement with a broadband signal, not a sinusoid.

I think it would be great if Fractal published some broadband test signals here that we could use to establish "loudness/gain" standards for each block/preset.

I would like to see much more user friendly information on the model's features. For example the triode discussion above. I think the community can create this if Fractal provides the guidance.

My POV: I am not interested in reproductions today's or yesterday's amps. I am interested in tomorrow's amps. :)

cheers,
Robin.
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TBH, you may be asking for more than you'll get. Just do the testing on your own if your sure there is something wrong with your unit, or maybe send it to g66 if your not so inclined. You'll notice quickly that the guys on this forum are very helpful and actually go out of their way to test all sorts of gear and report back about it. Join that club, do the testing and report back to us :) It sounds like you know what you want to test for anyway, so grab a signal gen that does broadband noise, shoot it into the axe fx, and see what happens. Id be curious, hell, knowledge is power right?
 
Cliff has mentioned in the past that firmware jumps occur when there is a change to the amp model (power amp modeling, etc)... the options Cliff posted seem to be more of a 'quick settings' option (which is great)... What changes have been done to the amp model to warrant a fw jump to 12?
 
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Bodde said:
It is getting really complicated here. I think this is gone a bit out of hand. Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate all the effort and hard work of FAS and am very happy with all the updates. But I think for the average guitar player there are too many options and parameters to really understand the amp and cab section. Seems like you need a master degree in amp science to know exactly what you are doing. Can we have a dummy button for the next FW update please? :)
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I think just the opposite is true. The modeling mode parameter is an extremely simple way to change many advanced parameters without having to know the details of what you are doing.

FWIW, after using the Ultra for years, I bought the II after firmware 11. I clearly hear the difference in tone betwee the two. But I doubt that I'd ever want to use the Ideal/Smooth mode. The accuracy of the II blows my socks off. The "raw" tone is the result of a more complicated model. I absolutely love it.
 
>TBH, you may be asking for more than you'll get.

Are you a representative of Fractal? If not then TBH I think statements like these only serve to aggravate.

>Just do the testing on your own if your sure there is something wrong with your unit, or maybe send it to g66 if your not so inclined.

The assumptions in this statement that I am "sure" there is something wrong with my unit is incorrect. I only assume that my unit is behaving as engineered.

>You'll notice quickly that the guys on this forum are very helpful and actually go out of their way to test all sorts of gear and report back about it. Join that club, do the testing and report back to us :)

Thanks for informing me, that is surely what I needed. The corollary being that I have no information, and I need to join a club and report to you.

> It sounds like you know what you want to test for anyway, so grab a signal gen that does broadband noise, shoot it into the axe fx, and see what happens. Id be curious, hell, knowledge is power right?

Yes, after 23 years in software development business and 8 in various fixed point DSP, audio and R&D projects, knowledge is power.

I have a simple goal in joining these discussions. To provide feedback, and make some suggestions that may or may not be taken by the developers, and may or may not be useful. Certainly the Fractal team know their technology and business very well. I do not presume to tell them how to do it. However a good developer listens closely to what users are saying, and treats that as valuable input. Certainly the Axe II is far ahead of many other products in many dimensions, including raw DSP horsepower. However we rely on the software to turn cycles into guitar magic. I have been having problems with the software upgrades, and that is why I am here at this time. The future amps I mentioned, well that is for another time :).

cheers,
Robin.
 
rdymond said:
I have a simple goal in joining these discussions. To provide feedback, and make some suggestions that may or may not be taken by the developers, and may or may not be useful. Certainly the Fractal team know their technology and business very well. I do not presume to tell them how to do it.
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You know what, you're right :) Who am I to step on your freedom of speech. Go nuts.
 
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jeppekristoffer said:
Please... when you say a "significant number of customers" , provide us with a number. Are we talking about ten customers out of many thousands.
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I did not count the respondents to this thread who had similar concerns. You are welcome to do that if you want a number. Keep in mind that a person who will bother to get on these forums, register, and post a complaint or negative feedback that goes against the gungho fan attitude here takes a lot. So any pattern of complaints in forums usually represents a much larger group of customers who are silent.

There are many ways to get a representative number of users who have these issues if you have the time and desire. I don't, its not my product. I am just a user in this case.

regards,
Robin.
 
rdymond said:
Hello,

My first post expressed more frustration with FW11 than good solutions. However it certainly seems that there are a significant number of customers and users who, like me, have found v10 and v11 frustrating. I will try the changes suggested by the moderator.

In response to a few comments: When I say unity gain, I mean unity gain as it makes sense in this context. That would likely be a power based measurement with a broadband signal, not a sinusoid.

I think it would be great if Fractal published some broadband test signals here that we could use to establish "loudness/gain" standards for each block/preset.

I would like to see much more user friendly information on the model's features. For example the triode discussion above. I think the community can create this if Fractal provides the guidance.

My POV: I am not interested in reproductions today's or yesterday's amps. I am interested in tomorrow's amps. :)

cheers,
Robin.
Click to expand...

Great Robin, Then you bought the right tool to achieve just that!
Interesting that you mention the "Tomorrow's amp" aspect. (Which I think is as Awesome as perfect emulations) At Axe-Fest 2 - Cliff challenged us to do just that. He genuinely seemed to underscore his desire to see us using the Axe to create "the amps of the future". I believe that he will be introducing more ways to go there in the not to distant future - Right now you can do things with the Axe which are absolutely impossible with a real amp - Some tweeks you can do right now would smolder a real amp in a matter of seconds. I believe, based on his words at Axe-Fest, that Cliff will continue equipping the Axe with new creative ways to make your own Frankenstein amp creations, "which could never exist outside of the Axe". Evolutionary amp routings and creation is at your fingertips. If you are serious about creating tomorrows amps, dig in - it's in there now to some degree. I have a feeling that future FW's will be bringing exciting new tools for this task. Emulation has been substantially achieved, now the next frontier is to provide tools for evolutionary and hybrid creations.
 
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You can make V11 sound nearly identical to V9 with just a few adjustments:
1. Turn MIMIC to Off
2. Set Triode Hardness to 0.0
3. Increase Xfrmr Match to 1.2 or so
4. Use the cabs labeled (V9)
5. Set Power Supply Type to DC
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Thank you!

I tried implementing these changes on:

Holdsy Lead v11
ID1884
Author simeon
Fractal ProductAxe-Fx II
Firmware Version11.x
Axe-Change - Download Preset - Holdsy Lead v11 - by simeon

The changes above when made the Holdsy Lead preset resulted in smoother sound, eliminated some of the sudden gain changes that happened when playing, and still kept the singing sustain. Turning up my guitar (usually run it around 5-7 in this patch) increases the distortion and breakup, however the volume hardly changes, and the patch behaves consistent with the lower gain setting when playing. I do not have the MFC controller, so I deleted the controllers and set a fixed parameter value.

I think this kind of high gain tone that has loads of sustain, yet still behaves like an easy to use mid gain patch is what sets the Axe II apart from all the old school amps. This is definitely a direction that has lots of room to grow. Personally I don't care about all the gnarly non-idealities of yester-year's circuits, because I don't think they take us forward. So many artists have demonstrated really interesting innovations in guitar sound. I'd much prefer Fractal follow the artist's lead instead of the amp designers.

Will likely start a new thread on this topic...

cheers,
Robin.
 
Robin, glad you have found your way on the Axe now! I also don't care too much for exact amp replica's and am much more interested in just a good sound. Whether this is amp A or B I don't care. It has to be a sound that suits my playing style and taste and not someone else. Glad that with FW12 we will have the options but also a bit concerned that we have too many options and that it is harder to keep the overview. Too much tweaking can distract you from playing.
 
After some high volume tests with a Matrix GT1000fx and two NL212, I highly prefer the sound without Mimic and Triode hardness at Zero.
High frequencies are more natural in my cabs, and more dynamic sounding.
I'll love V12 :)
 
Bodde said:
Robin, glad you have found your way on the Axe now! I also don't care too much for exact amp replica's and am much more interested in just a good sound. Whether this is amp A or B I don't care. It has to be a sound that suits my playing style and taste and not someone else. Glad that with FW12 we will have the options but also a bit concerned that we have too many options and that it is harder to keep the overview. Too much tweaking can distract you from playing.
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There are many advanced parameters yes, but there are so many different guitars out there and so many styles and players and that's the option for everyone to make the system fit to ones personel needs. I always touch the same advanced knobs and let always the same knobs untouched. I guess I iron out my personel problems with my outboard gear and make the sound my personel sound how I want it. You don't need to touch all advanced knobs, learn wich ones you need to touch, they might be always the same.
 
Bodde said:
Robin, glad you have found your way on the Axe now! I also don't care too much for exact amp replica's and am much more interested in just a good sound. Whether this is amp A or B I don't care. It has to be a sound that suits my playing style and taste and not someone else. Glad that with FW12 we will have the options but also a bit concerned that we have too many options and that it is harder to keep the overview. Too much tweaking can distract you from playing.
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Completely agree. In the 80s and early 90s I spent many many hours trying to get DX FM synthesis create good sounds, then the Roland D50, Korg M, etc. etc. These days I simply don't have the time or patience to dedicate 5-20 hours designing one guitar preset. Playing is far more important. The other issue is the time required to simply understand how the model works, what all the parameters do, how they interact, etc. For example, in the Axe 2 amp model I can adjust the capacitance of a part of the circuit. That's nice. Why? If it is 100pf 10pf or 1nf, what's the difference? Do I need to get a schematic of the model and break out SPICE (analog circuit simulator) to calculate what each change does? How does that help me become a better guitarist or be inspired musically?

I got into electrical engineering because it was the closest thing to music that I could make a good living at. After a few years (I'm slow) I realized that engineering is engineering, be it audio, hearing aids, telco, and music is music. Spending hours trying to get a set of parameters to line up to create the sound you want isn't engineering, and it isn't music either. Its trying to close the gap between what the engineers delivered and what the musicians (users) can actually make use of. With the amount of tech we have to deal with every day, I think there is much less patience for product that doesn't close that gap and make it easy for the users to get what they need. In my opinion the Axe 2 is a platform where this can happen for guitarists, but its not there yet.

cheers,
Robin
 
rdymond said:
. For example, in the Axe 2 amp model I can adjust the capacitance of a part of the circuit. That's nice. Why? If it is 100pf 10pf or 1nf, what's the difference? Do I need to get a schematic of the model and break out SPICE (analog circuit simulator) to calculate what each change does? How does that help me become a better guitarist or be inspired musically?

cheers,
Robin
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I agree and what's to say the change won't be something that just could be done with just turning an eq knob or close enough.

Look alone at the power of tone matching/match eq.
You can get near identical tones with just an eq curve alone.

That's what makes me laugh when I see 'guides' that completely ignore touching the basic controls you would use on an amp in real life. Why the need to do complex IR mixes (which is basically an eq curve) that you couldn't just do with basic eq controls or maybe para eq?!?!

Who is honestly going to be able to pinpoint some of these controls with there hearing alone?!?

I'd like to see an AB test done with some of the advanced parameters tweaked and some of the "experts" point out which is which.
 
You be a geek - or not. It's up to you! The factory amps sound fine right off.

No discussion like this is complete without mention of Yek. His system works straight off too. Also, he uses amp settings pretty well unaltered.

But let's not complain about having choices. Computer modelling that exceeds the ability and variability of the real world items it emulates are going to increase across the board from now on - in all spheres. Everything will be modelled, improved and pushed beyond its real world limits. I can't see what's wrong with that. We'll probably all end up living inside some Age of Empires creation that's more detailed than the real world (Maybe a musical version of Grand Theft Auto...).

When my 1963 AC-30 went dead, I'd take it to Nobby Durbridge who knew all about its arcane circuitry. All I could say was that "It went dead and made a bit more of a smell than normal". He'd replace a capacitor (if I was lucky). He persuaded me to get the Axe, on the basis that my amp had gigged for for more years than me (just), so didn't it need a rest...?

Nobby could tweak all this stuff we're talking about. I dare he'd get off on what the Axe can too as well. Me - I just turn the knobs on the front and play the guitar.
 
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