zerocrossing
Member
Lately I’ve been going down the NAM, and to a lesser degree, Tonex, rabbit hole. Here’s my take…
Modeling is ”better.” It is for me, at least. I should say that Fractal modeling, at least. I’ve not really tried the latest from Line6, though I have heard some good things. Anyway, I’m very impressed with the Tonex and NAM capture tech. It’s definitely much better than Kemper or Neural’s, IMO, and I had a Kemper for a decade. Kemper could be very good, but sometimes the captures could have that weird “distant” quality to them, and like a strange grainy mush in the lower ranges of high gain sounds. I’m hearing none of that with the newer tech.
So why am I pro Fractal, and modeling in general? A few reasons. First off, I’ve been able to put my AxeFX 3 up against every amp capture where there’s a Fractal model and get equally good results. Same? Sometimes. Hard to really match them as you rarely know what the settings were. Even the gain into the amp can have huge differences in the sound, as we all know. Often I just forgot about trying to match the sound and instead just set about making a similar sound that I liked, and I always ended up liking the one I made more.
That’s the point, isn’t it? The ability to craft something like an actual amp (and effects, cab, etc) as opposed to a static snap shot of one. I’d trade accuracy for control, any day, as long as the results were equally good, and I definitely feel like they are. So, there’s my second reason. Control. Maybe you’re a dude who wants to just find someone else’s preset and be happy. Sometimes that’s me too, but more often I’m setting out to get a sound and then later crafting it further to make it fit nicely in the mix.
My third point is sort of related to the second. There are now thousands of these Tonex and NAM captures. Many sound very similar. Fun fact: people love about 10 common amps and seem to be trying to get the same sounds from them. I got on a kick to see what the best NAM models were, and after a while it occurred to me that had I spent that time actually making presets from the models in the Fractal, I’d have a bunch of fully ready to use sounds that include everything one would want in a guitar sound. So now what do I have? A bunch of amp only files that are someone else’s idea of what a great amp sounds like, though to be honest, I only kept the ones that I agreed with. The truth is, they can really sound great, as they’re very close copies of the great sounding amps themselves.
Lastly, my AxeFX 3 is like that scene in The Matrix, when Neo enter’s the ship’s construct program to choose his load out. “Guns, lots of guns…” and a whoosh of racks full of weaponry appear. I’ve got everything from a box cutter to an ICBM at my disposal. People on the NAM Facebook group are constantly crying about CPU use, or getting two amp slots, etc. Or my personal favorite, the people who are setting out to build PC based boxes to run NAM at a gig, because we all know how that’s going to be cheaper and more rugged than something Fractal makes.
I even saw someone mentioning he was selling his AxeFX 3, though he oddly mentioned he had two. Sure, if you have two, I can see selling off one, but I can’t imagine selling mine and having to deal with something so limited as NAM. You can actually load Tonex models into Amplitube, so that’s a bit better, but man, has that software become a sh!t show. I can’t believe it went from something so intuitive to what it is now.
Modeling is ”better.” It is for me, at least. I should say that Fractal modeling, at least. I’ve not really tried the latest from Line6, though I have heard some good things. Anyway, I’m very impressed with the Tonex and NAM capture tech. It’s definitely much better than Kemper or Neural’s, IMO, and I had a Kemper for a decade. Kemper could be very good, but sometimes the captures could have that weird “distant” quality to them, and like a strange grainy mush in the lower ranges of high gain sounds. I’m hearing none of that with the newer tech.
So why am I pro Fractal, and modeling in general? A few reasons. First off, I’ve been able to put my AxeFX 3 up against every amp capture where there’s a Fractal model and get equally good results. Same? Sometimes. Hard to really match them as you rarely know what the settings were. Even the gain into the amp can have huge differences in the sound, as we all know. Often I just forgot about trying to match the sound and instead just set about making a similar sound that I liked, and I always ended up liking the one I made more.
That’s the point, isn’t it? The ability to craft something like an actual amp (and effects, cab, etc) as opposed to a static snap shot of one. I’d trade accuracy for control, any day, as long as the results were equally good, and I definitely feel like they are. So, there’s my second reason. Control. Maybe you’re a dude who wants to just find someone else’s preset and be happy. Sometimes that’s me too, but more often I’m setting out to get a sound and then later crafting it further to make it fit nicely in the mix.
My third point is sort of related to the second. There are now thousands of these Tonex and NAM captures. Many sound very similar. Fun fact: people love about 10 common amps and seem to be trying to get the same sounds from them. I got on a kick to see what the best NAM models were, and after a while it occurred to me that had I spent that time actually making presets from the models in the Fractal, I’d have a bunch of fully ready to use sounds that include everything one would want in a guitar sound. So now what do I have? A bunch of amp only files that are someone else’s idea of what a great amp sounds like, though to be honest, I only kept the ones that I agreed with. The truth is, they can really sound great, as they’re very close copies of the great sounding amps themselves.
Lastly, my AxeFX 3 is like that scene in The Matrix, when Neo enter’s the ship’s construct program to choose his load out. “Guns, lots of guns…” and a whoosh of racks full of weaponry appear. I’ve got everything from a box cutter to an ICBM at my disposal. People on the NAM Facebook group are constantly crying about CPU use, or getting two amp slots, etc. Or my personal favorite, the people who are setting out to build PC based boxes to run NAM at a gig, because we all know how that’s going to be cheaper and more rugged than something Fractal makes.
I even saw someone mentioning he was selling his AxeFX 3, though he oddly mentioned he had two. Sure, if you have two, I can see selling off one, but I can’t imagine selling mine and having to deal with something so limited as NAM. You can actually load Tonex models into Amplitube, so that’s a bit better, but man, has that software become a sh!t show. I can’t believe it went from something so intuitive to what it is now.