Fm9 is amazing BUT...

M

momogris

Member
Hi everybody.

I've used my Fm9 Turbo for two years now (time flies!!) and I've never been happier with a modeler.

But as time pass and there are new kids on the block (Fender Tone Master Pro and others) you realize that your Fractal Unit still lacks (in my opinion) in three areas:

- Design language: Fm9 is like having dinner in a three Michelin Star restaurant but without enjoying the presentation of the dishes... Yes, the meal is amazing, but the look of it, it's not. Look at the Tone Master Pro: the graphical representation is gorgeous and you are instantly more connected to the gear it represents. Also, it's like having all those beautiful amps and pedals with you for future, the way they looked. Is it necessary? NO. It is cool? YEAH.

Just imagine our editor, where you have the amps control (for example), below the grid, with graphics like the TMP, is beautiful and I don't think we would lose any functionality, it would be easy to implement the rest of the pages with an advanced mode.

Same goes with pedals. There are so many I've never heard about that is a very sterile experience to only see the same knobs through all of them.

I´m not an software engineer and don't want to underestimate the difficulty of implementing something like this, but the TMP has done it beautifully and I would bet that the Fractal Team is WAYYYYY BETTER. I guess the philosophy of the company, but this is one of the few arguments against Fracrtal products. They look over complicated and the navigation is not the best.

-Scenes: I get the power of the scenes, I understand how to use them and the benefits of the different things you can do with just one Scene controller, but man, sometimes you just want to change the decay, or the mix control of a delay and the reverb, and maybe the gain on the drive pedal... and it is a pain in the ...

Come on, let us just adjust any parameter from one scene to another with a single click, Helix it's been doing for seven years, TMP has already implemented, and already have something similar in the editor, because you can save and recall any change you've done to a preset.

It is another company decision that I don't understand, because, again, The Fractal Team is freaking awesome and surely this can't be that hard to implement.

We could have scenes for more complicate things, like ramping up effects, and so on and photographs (cool name) for simple parameters adjustments.

- Cool Pedals: I would love to have a more diverse selection of pedals, exotic ones to experiment. I wouldn't mind to pay for new ones because the quality of everything that Fractal does with second to none.


Obviously, I am not in possession of the thrust (jejejeje) and can be completely wrong, but I do think that having conversations like this helps to think about things that can be used to take the product we love to another level, not sonically because we are already THE BEST, but to enjoy much more the experience and help to be more creative.

I hope nobody gets annoyed with me. Just a reflexion and a kind of a wish-list because I love my Fm9 and I would like to see it evolve in the near future.

Peace!!!
 
A few thoughts on each:

1. Many of us don’t care how it looks. I care only how it functions, so I can’t comment further on this one.

2. I can change virtually any parameter on the fly - whether using control switches, expression pedals, or otherwise. I don’t understand the issue you’re explaining. Can you give some specific examples?

3. What are the ‘cool pedal’ functions you are missing? There are limitations when it comes to things like capturing/triggering samples, but again can you give some specific examples (as they may be in there, just not under a name or combination you’d recognize)?
 
Rumbletone said:
A few thoughts on each:

1. Many of us don’t care how it looks. I care only how it functions, so I can’t comment further on this one.

2. I can change virtually any parameter on the fly - whether using control switches, expression pedals, or otherwise. I don’t understand the issue you’re explaining. Can you give some specific examples?

3. What are the ‘cool pedal’ functions you are missing? There are limitations when it comes to things like capturing/triggering samples, but again can you give some specific examples (as they may be in there, just not under a name or combination you’d recognize)?
Click to expand...
RE #2, i think maybe what he means is that on Helix for example, scenes are block on-off setting like Fractal, but also actual block settings, rather than channel assignments. You can just the delay level for a scene directly, rather than setting the delay to a different channel, and customizing delay settings for that channel.

It amounts to something pretty similar, except if you need more variations than there are block channels.

Flip side is that it's easier to reuse the delay settings from scene 1 in scenes 2 and 3, just set the delay to the same channel.
 
I am not going to poo poo on what you wrote, that is your opinion. Mine, for what its worth, don't have an issue with the GUI, could it be a little quicker from the unit itself- probably. But I also think the TMP looks cheap and child like. Again just my .02c worth. I don't have a problem with scenes, I can get them to do what you said and more reasonably quickly with the editor and expression pedals, I do not find it a pain in the arse. For me, there are more than enough pedals, I literally use about 3, pretty much always the same ones. I would rather Fractal spend their time on the actual sounds and modeling tech, than spend the money, time and resources to make it look prettier or add even more stuff. But hey, like I said this is all just my .02c
 
The look of the GUI argument goes back to the original unit. It wasn’t until the III they got any actual color in the display. Please correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the II and below were all monochrome displays, right? This was worn as a sort of badge of honor. Personally how it looks is pretty far down the list for me. Sound and functionality are far more important. A cartoon representation of an amp does me no good.
 
I get the GUI wish. Really. It's a matter of comfort.

But Fractal gear has a unique challenge. It has to give you access to hundreds of parameters that other units don't. And pictures of amps use up valuable screen real estate. The more graphics you use, the less room you have to display all those parameters. That forces you into deep menu dives to get at everything.

There's a tradeoff there, and i think Fractal has done a good job of finding that balance. But I'm sure that there's always room for improvement.
 
Fractal Audio scenes are quite different than Helix or Quad Cortex, both of which allow you to configure any parameter for scene control. That’s great, but Fractal Audio scenes support channels on blocks that give you parameter control (although somewhat less flexible than Helix and Quad Cortex) in addition to the ability to load different models into the blocks. Helix and Quad Cortex don’t support that (although the plugin amp models on Quad Cortex do provide different models for the same amp configuration, See the Soldano 100 plugin - bright switch and OD channel are different models in the same block. But switching them has a big dropout that makes this somewhat unusable in gigging situations). This is a huge advantage for Fractal Audio because it gives way more tonal options through channels than would be available in just parameter changes on a single block.
 
I'm gonna put my strong hard vote in against skeumorphism. We dont need it to look like a pedal because it can do and have things that the real pedal could never fit. We also don't need it to look accurate to the pedal look because we have 5 encoder knobs to do everything so it should above all work swiftly within that workflow.
 
Dave Merrill said:
RE #2, i think maybe what he means is that on Helix for example, scenes are block on-off setting like Fractal, but also actual block settings, rather than channel assignments. You can just the delay level for a scene directly, rather than setting the delay to a different channel, and customizing delay settings for that channel.

It amounts to something pretty similar, except if you need more variations than there are block channels.

Flip side is that it's easier to reuse the delay settings from scene 1 in scenes 2 and 3, just set the delay to the same channel.
Click to expand...

Thanks - that would make sense. Then I would propose scene controllers may be a solution for having scene-specific settings within blocks (i.e., if 4 channels isn’t enough to cover the 8 scenes or where the user doesn’t want to use more than one channel of the block).
 
Jim Amsden said:
Fractal Audio scenes are quite different than Helix or Quad Cortex, both of which allow you to configure any parameter for scene control. That’s great, but Fractal Audio scenes support channels on blocks that give you parameter control (although somewhat less flexible than Helix and Quad Cortex) in addition to the ability to load different models into the blocks. Helix and Quad Cortex don’t support that (although the plugin amp models on Quad Cortex do provide different models for the same amp configuration, See the Soldano 100 plugin - bright switch and OD channel are different models in the same block. But switching them has a big dropout that makes this somewhat unusable in gigging situations). This is a huge advantage for Fractal Audio because it gives way more tonal options through channels than would be available in just parameter changes on a single block.
Click to expand...
I suspect this is the root of it. Given that not only can we change models with scene change (via channel change), we can change channels inside a scene, parameters between scenes would make no sense. You can't adjust a parameter that no longer exists, or didn't exist. The bookkeeping here would be a chore.
 
I’m very happy that all of the Fractal controls are visually consistent. I’d hate to have to stare at a few hundred different representations of devices and figure out how each is laid out, not to mention coping with differing readability of the various pretty pictures under sketchy lighting.
 
Rumbletone said:
Thanks - that would make sense. Then I would propose scene controllers may be a solution for having scene-specific settings within blocks (i.e., if 4 channels isn’t enough to cover the 8 scenes or where the user doesn’t want to use more than one channel of the block).
Click to expand...
I think it's more a different way of thinking about scenes. On Helix you just go to a scene and set the controls how you want them, that's all. No "controllers" etc.

Fractal's way is more powerful in that you can reuse block settings in another scene just by using the same channel.

But the Helix way is simpler. I bet that's what folks are reacting to.
 
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TwinbornAxis said:
+1. I have a headrush for a living room practice amp it has the cute icons but sounds horrendous. Fractal has their priorities in order imo.
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I had one and flipped it quick a few years back. That headrush is a nasty excuse for a bare bones rig. The interface is cute tho.

I have had helix and still have a HX stomp they still sound kinda plastic to me. I have a tonex and it's capture box. They are pretty limited. And with the new firmware update for ToneX that does effects... the reverb sounds like crap. And the interface is actual ..crap.

The Fractal stuff gets my vote. Mostly for the tone and feel. I could give rats ass what the interface looks like. 🤣
 
TwinbornAxis said:
lol so true. I admit this is my reality. My mx5 into a Bluetooth speaker Is my excuse for not buying a spark go/mini just to run scales on.
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Custom 3rd party IRs were that things only saving grace for me. I made some money playing out with it and then later with the HX ..while waiting like 11 months for the FM3 to become available.
 
momogris said:
- Design language: Fm9 is like having dinner in a three Michelin Star restaurant but without enjoying the presentation of the dishes... Yes, the meal is amazing, but the look of it, it's not. Look at the Tone Master Pro: the graphical representation is gorgeous and you are instantly more connected to the gear it represents. Also, it's like having all those beautiful amps and pedals with you for future, the way they looked. Is it necessary? NO. It is cool? YEAH.
Click to expand...

That is the very essence of the FAS design aesthetic. That's apparent from the moment you open the plain brown box it comes in. Everything about FAS products screams that they don't put much emphasis on what it looks like. And it attracts customers who feel the same way. So, you should expect a lot of replies that say they don't care about the appearance.



momogris said:
-Scenes: I get the power of the scenes, I understand how to use them and the benefits of the different things you can do with just one Scene controller, but man, sometimes you just want to change the decay, or the mix control of a delay and the reverb, and maybe the gain on the drive pedal... and it is a pain in the ...

Come on, let us just adjust any parameter from one scene to another with a single click, Helix it's been doing for seven years, TMP has already implemented, and already have something similar in the editor, because you can save and recall any change you've done to a preset.
Click to expand...

This forum has literally hundreds of posts by newcomers who are confused about how scenes work because of this. There are pros and cons to the FAS design, but the undeniable fact is FAS puts more emphasis on offering powerful features over making the user experience clear and intuitive. Just like the design aesthetic issue, FAS attracts people who feel the same way, so again, you'll find it difficult to find people who agree with you on this forum.
 
All I know is that the Fender Mustang amps were plenty sufficient for my teaching studio years ago. The investment was well worth it.

Fractal have achieved an ultra high level with everything, and I don't think anyone is stopping any time soon.
 
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