Helix 3.5 New Cab Engine is Awesome! Fractal needs to catch up!

How am I just seeing this? I cannot wait for this to release as Im sure it’ll sound outstanding. This sounds a lot like how IK Multimedia did Amplitube 5’s speaker cabs. I use just the cabs in Amp5 pretty often when I cant get what I want from 3rd Party IRs. What’s even more nuts in their system is that you can choose from any of the available speakers in any of the cabs. I can’t imagine how long that took but I guess the upside is you only have to do it once. Here’s a video of IK’s robot in action:
 
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Guessing this new thing Fractal is working on will be a stand alone app along the lines of cab lab. Would make sense to be a stand alone app or DAW plugin that's not Fractal specific and runs on Windows, Mac.
 
Tom Morris said:
Guessing this new thing Fractal is working on will be a stand alone app along the lines of cab lab. Would make sense to be a stand alone app or DAW plugin that's not Fractal specific and runs on Windows, Mac.
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Why? So they can sell it? Maybe but doubtful for the same reason there isn't a full on AxeFX VST. Makes most sense to me for them to put it in the box.
 
Will Chen said:
Why? So they can sell it? Maybe but doubtful for the same reason there isn't a full on AxeFX VST. Makes most sense to me for them to put it in the box.
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On the next gen hardware almost certainly but I doubt it will be feasable on the current ones.
The thing that they're cooking (unless it is a physically modeled thing) would require quite a bit of IRs for each cab and mic combination.

I might be wrong but I think there's not enough memory on the units to do that.
 
alcyppa said:
On the next gen hardware almost certainly but I doubt it will be feasable on the current ones.
The thing that they're cooking (unless it is a physically modeled thing) would require quite a bit of IRs for each cab and mic combination.

I might be wrong but I think there's not enough memory on the units to do that.
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The "Next Gen" kinda already happened with the Turbo. From the Turbo marketing "Increased flash memory for future updates". Now...whether it makes it into the FM3 may certainly be a question, but I'd bet the FM9 and III have plenty of room to spare. IRs are small, and I'm betting Fractal is going to additionally figure out a way to interpolate things to require fewer IRs yet still provide the whole aural picture.
 
unix-guy said:
They haven't said anything about that, so you're making a leap there...
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Agreed.

One thing I was thinking about is that MPEG compression could be used against a series of IRs made in sequence using a robot to move the microphones to preprogrammed positions for each IR created. The MPEG compressor looks at sequential frames and only stores the changes between them. The actual IR used by the modeler would be precomputed when the preset is saved, so subsequent loads and scene/channel changes were preloaded. The .syx file for backups or exported presets would have to change to accommodate the added IR information when backed up, or maybe it'd contain a pointer to the IR and the "frame" needed.

It'd be an interesting whiteboard to see.
 
Will Chen said:
The "Next Gen" kinda already happened with the Turbo. From the Turbo marketing "Increased flash memory for future updates".
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Actually not. The expansion happened with the introduction of the Mk II…

"It's not extra firmware space. There's already plenty of that. It's extra FLASH for "future expansion". This might be factory or user cabs or some other data. I have several ideas I'm kicking around that would use it." [40]
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The only difference between the Mark II and the Turbo is CPU speed and "Turbo" appearing on the splash screen…

"Everything is the same except the processor speed. The Turbo module has a 1.25 GHz processor. The standard module has a 1.00 GHz processor. Some of the supporting components (power supply stuff) are also different but that's not visible to the user." [44]
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hoping its
more than just a graphical IR selector. I'm quite happy using Mikko for that already so it would not be anything new. Authentic baked in ICs along with grahical IR selection would make it more interesting.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Actually not. The expansion happened with the introduction of the Mk II…



The only difference between the Mark II and the Turbo is CPU speed and "Turbo" appearing on the splash screen…
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Ok, so still Mk II implemented that but has anything been done with that extra flash memory? I as just pointing out that the Axe III physical build was to try and "future proof" the box for some time, so my bet is there is enough space left for something like this. NO idea how much of that philosophy trickled down to the 3/9, but hopefully they aren't tapped out.
 
Tom Morris said:
Guessing this new thing Fractal is working on will be a stand alone app along the lines of cab lab. Would make sense to be a stand alone app or DAW plugin that's not Fractal specific and runs on Windows, Mac.
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I would tend to agree. It would make zero sense to store all these new IR's on the device when the interface would require the interactivity of a computer app to do the mic positioning anyway (I can't imagine anything more painful than something like IK VIR on the Axe-FX front panel).

A better approach might be to store the IRs on your your computer so the app (which might be Axe-Edit) can access them. You would then use the app in a loop from the Axe-FX in place of a cab block to listen to the effect of moving the mic. When you save your preset, you save the single interpolated IR onto the device so you no longer need the computer to listen to it. That would require relatively little storage on the device, yet would give you a large number of cabinet/mic combination IRs to work with for cabinet/mic selection and your mic positioning.

You can do this now by putting IR apps like Mikko Player into a fx loop from the Axe-FX, but most people would find it challenging to set up the audio routing and save the resulting IR onto the device and in the preset. If it was a dedicated app for the Axe-FX, it could make all of that automatic.
 
Will Chen said:
Ok, so still Mk II implemented that but has anything been done with that extra flash memory?
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Don't know.

At the time Cliff said he was kicking around several ideas. If they were implemented using that memory they wouldn't be available on the Mk I only the Fullres IRs are in that category, and they were implemented by taking over the last User Cab bank.

I think having variable IRs would be interesting but in my actual experience using the Fractals I kinda doubt it'd be something earthshaking. I get sounds I want now using the variety of IRs we have. When I had various Helixii I didn't find their UI overly useful, nor were their IRs anything special, so I used my Ownhammer, Redwirez, and Celestion IRs instead which had enough variety to keep me happy.

That said, Cliff's preview IR has me intrigued by itself, simply because it sounds, as is, really good with each preset I've thrown it at. I adjust the low cut when I don't want it to sound too much like a 4x12. Whether it's a new microphone or a whole new process I don't know, but that one whetted my appetite.
 
alcyppa said:
You're right, I should have said "The thing that I believe they're cooking [...]".

I still hope that Cliff will come up with something unique and revolutionary.
As I stated a while ago: if there's someone who can enhance the cab part of the modeling wolrd, that's Cliff.
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It's always interesting when he posts one of his "I was thinking the other day…" messages and the next thing we know is something big is unleashed.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Don't know.

At the time Cliff said he was kicking around several ideas. If they were implemented using that memory they wouldn't be available on the Mk I only the Fullres IRs are in that category, and they were implemented by taking over the last User Cab bank.

I think having variable IRs would be interesting but in my actual experience using the Fractals I kinda doubt it'd be something earthshaking. I get sounds I want now using the variety of IRs we have. When I had various Helixii I didn't find their UI overly useful, nor were their IRs anything special, so I used my Ownhammer, Redwirez, and Celestion IRs instead which had enough variety to keep me happy.

That said, Cliff's preview IR has me intrigued by itself, simply because it sounds, as is, really good with each preset I've thrown it at. I adjust the low cut when I don't want it to sound too much like a 4x12. Whether it's a new microphone or a whole new process I don't know, but that one whetted my appetite.
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Where is this preview IR you speak of?
 
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