AlbertA
Fractal Fanatic
Well you guys were not kidding.
I originally signed up for the waiting list as soon as it was announced back in June. I got my coupon on August I believe but decided to pass at that point I didn't hear enough of an improvement to justify to myself the price delta. However, I decided to add myself into the waitlist again on december after hearing newer sound clips from users; When I heard some of the 5.x clips I thought they sounded great.
I received the unit with 5.03 and upgraded to 5.04b before even starting to evaluate the unit. It's definitely a major update to the Axe-Fx ULTRA/standard in the amp sim department. There is a certain bark, krank and chime (though to describe with words) that just missing from the ULTRA/Standard.
The biggest improvement by far is how good the amps sound just with straight defaults.
It takes just 3-5 minutes to dial something that's entirely usable. In the ULTRA/standard I would have to always go into the advanced parameters to dial something good.
Contributing to this ease of use is the inclusion of good sounding stock cabs from RW, OH and JM.
I found most of the cabs in the ULTRA/standard subpar most of the time so I always went with custom IRs; not so with the Axe-Fx 2.
My favorite cab from RW was the uberkab so I'm glad some version of it is included by default.
Also the first 40 or so stock patches are actually usable if you have a single coil guitar; lots of good settings you can borrow from.
This clip is a stock plexi patch - just changed the cab and room verb parameters.
http://guitarlogic.org/axe-fx2/plexigroove.mp3
I then created a couple of patches from scratch, maybe spend 3-4 minutes on each. I didn't even touch any advanced parameters.
http://guitarlogic.org/axe-fx2/picking_dynamics_JCM800Mod.mp3
http://guitarlogic.org/axe-fx2/highgain_uber.mp3
There's a heck of a lot more advanced parameters this time around - the speaker tab is specially useful. I'm slowly getting familiarized with the rest of them. There's so much control there's no way you couldn't find a pleasant sound.
USB recording worked flawlessly for me (into Reaper, using ASIO). I had no issue installing drivers and getting Axe-Edit to work either.
A big improvement as well is MIDI over USB. It works faster, but I was slightly disappointed it wasn't faster (mainly on firmware updates, yes they are quicker, but this is USB, it should be able to transmit a heck of lot faster than it does now). At least I don't have to worry about a MIDI interface anymore. So far USB-MIDI has been very stable for me (Windows 7 64-bit).
Reamping is a snap now (but I wish you could select the Input mode from Axe-Edit instead of having to go the the front panel to select USB input). I no longer have to involve a s/pdif interface and worry about clock sources, just flip a setting and you are re-amping in no time.
So far I'm very happy with the purchase and I haven't even delved into the effect upgrades yet.
I originally signed up for the waiting list as soon as it was announced back in June. I got my coupon on August I believe but decided to pass at that point I didn't hear enough of an improvement to justify to myself the price delta. However, I decided to add myself into the waitlist again on december after hearing newer sound clips from users; When I heard some of the 5.x clips I thought they sounded great.
I received the unit with 5.03 and upgraded to 5.04b before even starting to evaluate the unit. It's definitely a major update to the Axe-Fx ULTRA/standard in the amp sim department. There is a certain bark, krank and chime (though to describe with words) that just missing from the ULTRA/Standard.
The biggest improvement by far is how good the amps sound just with straight defaults.
It takes just 3-5 minutes to dial something that's entirely usable. In the ULTRA/standard I would have to always go into the advanced parameters to dial something good.
Contributing to this ease of use is the inclusion of good sounding stock cabs from RW, OH and JM.
I found most of the cabs in the ULTRA/standard subpar most of the time so I always went with custom IRs; not so with the Axe-Fx 2.
My favorite cab from RW was the uberkab so I'm glad some version of it is included by default.
Also the first 40 or so stock patches are actually usable if you have a single coil guitar; lots of good settings you can borrow from.
This clip is a stock plexi patch - just changed the cab and room verb parameters.
http://guitarlogic.org/axe-fx2/plexigroove.mp3
I then created a couple of patches from scratch, maybe spend 3-4 minutes on each. I didn't even touch any advanced parameters.
http://guitarlogic.org/axe-fx2/picking_dynamics_JCM800Mod.mp3
http://guitarlogic.org/axe-fx2/highgain_uber.mp3
There's a heck of a lot more advanced parameters this time around - the speaker tab is specially useful. I'm slowly getting familiarized with the rest of them. There's so much control there's no way you couldn't find a pleasant sound.
USB recording worked flawlessly for me (into Reaper, using ASIO). I had no issue installing drivers and getting Axe-Edit to work either.
A big improvement as well is MIDI over USB. It works faster, but I was slightly disappointed it wasn't faster (mainly on firmware updates, yes they are quicker, but this is USB, it should be able to transmit a heck of lot faster than it does now). At least I don't have to worry about a MIDI interface anymore. So far USB-MIDI has been very stable for me (Windows 7 64-bit).
Reamping is a snap now (but I wish you could select the Input mode from Axe-Edit instead of having to go the the front panel to select USB input). I no longer have to involve a s/pdif interface and worry about clock sources, just flip a setting and you are re-amping in no time.
So far I'm very happy with the purchase and I haven't even delved into the effect upgrades yet.
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