DLC86
Fractal Fanatic
Title and subject inspired by another recent thread.
I'm currently putting together a "small" analog rig, just for the pleasure of playing it from time to time and to have something where friends occasionally coming to our rehearsal room can plug and jam along.
So I took the chance to make some analog vs digital comparisons and the amps came out as virtually indistinguishable from the real deal (no surprises here).
The drive sims, on the other hand, don't "feel" as good as the real ones to me.
Mind you, I don't have pedals that correspond exactly to the ones modeled in the axe (closer ones are pretty different revisions), so I can't really make a direct comparison, and posting samples would be pointless imho, but I can definitely hear something that's different across all of them.
The analog ones seem to be more "organic" and dynamic, even when using a lot of gain they respond well to the picking dynamics while the simulations, in that scenario, almost feel like there's a brick wall limiter engaged. Also, they seem to have smoother bottom and top end, kinda an increased bandwidth.
I think for some models this is more evident than other models (e.g. diode based models seem to behave better than others) and probably you can perceive the difference only if you, like me, use the drives to generate distortion going into a clean amp, using them as clean boosters would probably mask these nuances.
Just to be clear, I'm not typing this to bash Fractal in any way, I've been using their modelers happily for six years now and still consider their drive models the best currently on the market, I will continue to use them cuz they sound exceptionally well regardless.
The Axe FX III is and will be my main rig for a long time.
I'm just reporting my (hopefully) constructive critics and I'd like to know what you guys' opinion is on this subject.
Peace
I'm currently putting together a "small" analog rig, just for the pleasure of playing it from time to time and to have something where friends occasionally coming to our rehearsal room can plug and jam along.
So I took the chance to make some analog vs digital comparisons and the amps came out as virtually indistinguishable from the real deal (no surprises here).
The drive sims, on the other hand, don't "feel" as good as the real ones to me.
Mind you, I don't have pedals that correspond exactly to the ones modeled in the axe (closer ones are pretty different revisions), so I can't really make a direct comparison, and posting samples would be pointless imho, but I can definitely hear something that's different across all of them.
The analog ones seem to be more "organic" and dynamic, even when using a lot of gain they respond well to the picking dynamics while the simulations, in that scenario, almost feel like there's a brick wall limiter engaged. Also, they seem to have smoother bottom and top end, kinda an increased bandwidth.
I think for some models this is more evident than other models (e.g. diode based models seem to behave better than others) and probably you can perceive the difference only if you, like me, use the drives to generate distortion going into a clean amp, using them as clean boosters would probably mask these nuances.
Just to be clear, I'm not typing this to bash Fractal in any way, I've been using their modelers happily for six years now and still consider their drive models the best currently on the market, I will continue to use them cuz they sound exceptionally well regardless.
The Axe FX III is and will be my main rig for a long time.
I'm just reporting my (hopefully) constructive critics and I'd like to know what you guys' opinion is on this subject.
Peace
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