Closed I wish Fractal Allows Me to Overwrite All Factory IRs

[iaresee]

There is clearly a better way to do this, shown by Mikko, Helix and RedWirez. I think Fractal could pull this off, Axe III could greatly benefit from this approach, don't you agree?

Not really. But I’m open to being wrong.

 

[Mark Al]

Not really. But I’m open to being wrong.

With all the obvious benefits discussed so far, there is no down-side of having an interface like this, as it doesn't prevent users from continuing using the current factory IRs or importing their own IRs.

I think it's the logical next step/evolution of Axe III, and could risk being a glaring disadvantage for future competition if left unmitigated, as amp modeling is only half of the tonal story, the other half lies in cab modeling (excluding effect), just my opinion of course

 

[yeky83]

If Fractal implemented such an interface, it may or may not require more IRs underneath its engine, but it's largely hidden from user, and user can just experiment/enjoy them by picking a cab, picking a mic and play with mic positions and mixing them etc.

It would require many more IRs. And since the hardware has a limited amount of memory allocated to IR storage, it would lessen the number of user IRs which would be worse for me.

 

[lqdsnddist]

Certainly, in the physical world we are greatly limited, and in ancient times we were even more grossly/primitively limited, but those are not the benchmark/standard of what we could have achieved right now in modern technology, right? I understand some people may not need all those combinations, partially it's such a hassle and mission impossible currently to even imagine managing them manually. Once they are implemented and hidden under a slick interface, I am sure all will appreciate the sheer power and flexibility of it, e.g. you will find a variety of excellent tones, all sounds good but different, which will fuel and inspire your creativity.

Fundamentally, a good tone is a good tone because it inspires you to play and create. Now tonal variety, provided they are easy/effortless to dial in, will inspire you to do exactly that.

I think we can all agree we've never been a point in time as guitarist when we've had it better in terms of sheer tonal options essentially within reach of anyone...... You can do more with a $2000 Axe than you could with all the gear in most well-to-do studio's of the day, even though those amp collections and pedal collections are well above $100K in gear.....

But... and this is where we won't all agree.... is the music coming out today, especially guitar music, any better to show for it ??

We all have a billion fantastic tones as the press of a button, but what are we doing with it ? How are we using this gear ? A good many of us are just using it to recreate classic tones from decades ago.....

Are we creating icon albums and guitar tones that 50 years from now guys are going to talk nostalgically about with a generation of kids trying to emulate the guitar heros of today, and do we even have guitar heroes these days, save for the original guitar heros who are still around ?

A guy would get a used JCM800 and a 4 track and write the songs most of us grew up with and still love to this day.... and what do we all have now and what do we do with it ? Did those 4 noisy tracks on a $99 Porta-studio cassette tape trump anything we can do on an endless amount of 96kHz Ableton Live tracks ?

If there was one in a million IR's which, if found, would inspire to create the next Comfortably Numb 2nd solo, then I'd probably be sitting here going through a million IR's, like hitting the lotto, but realistically, I don't think the IR really makes that real difference, and maybe in searching for it, I'm missing out of what actually does result in creating great music.... playing guitar

 

[lqdsnddist]

With all the obvious benefits discussed so far, there is no down-side of having an interface like this, as it doesn't prevent users from continuing using the current factory IRs or importing their own IRs.

I think it's the logical next step/evolution of Axe III, and could risk being a glaring disadvantage for future competition if left unmitigated, as amp modeling is only half of the tonal story, the other half lies in cab modeling (excluding effect), just my opinion of course

Downside is FAS is a very small company and what you purpose is a massive undertaking, so that means time and company resources that can't be allocated elsewhere......

Want performance page knobs on the FM3 ? It's going to have to wait 8 months while they redo the IR system..... That isn't fact obviously, but simply making a hypothetical point that nothing in terms of development is down-side free, there is always an opportunity cost

 

[chris]

It seems people want a faster way to choose an IR. That’s understandable.

An interface where you drag a mic around, I think people might be lost in the thought of “I’m moving it around to where I would put it and because it’s physically in that position, it must be right. Yup. That’s the sound I want because the picture of the mic is there.”

I do see how the movement of the mic in the GUI can speed up going through a list one by one. Just that physicality does speed it up.

But I’m not sure I agree that the result of that movement is actually what someone would want. We’ve seen it said often: use your ears and not your eyes. I think this would make people use their eyes way more. To me, this method is no better than randomly clicking around the list of IRs till you find what you like.

Now that’s solely because of the collection of IRs that have little relation to each other currently. For this GUI method to work, as mentioned earlier, the collection of IRs has to correspond to each other and be limited just to those few per GUI session. Maybe you choose a 2x12 blackface and it takes 1000 IRs to give the range needed to move the mic around. That’s a lot of work with precise workflow to even arrange the IR files to work with something like that. All IR makers would have to follow the same procedure and protocol for it to work as well.

Maybe we could just get a “Choose random IR button” that jumps around the list. Play, click, play, click. I think you’re bound to find something you like that way.

Of course it’s been said before that IRs have names for a reason, describing the mic used and placement and speakers etc. it would make sense that if I’m looking for a 57 off axis on a 2x12 blackface to search for IRs with that in the name. But often I find that going with the name of something doesn’t give me the result I think it would even if it’s “correct.”

I’ve seen time and time again where someone has trouble making a tone because they stick with the words they know - I play a real recto with a 4x12 and 57, so I can’t use anything else. Should the modeling sound close to what they think it should sound like? Sure. But this isn’t your recto, your cab, your mic and specific placement and signal chain from the mic. It’s bound to be different. Maybe a Marshall sound would be better for the situation.

There are a ton if IRs. I’ve seen more threads about too many how do I choose vs there aren’t enough. the current process of course could be updated to be easier and faster. But I don’t think the GUI mic method is the way. Sure, maybe it helps you decide faster, but underlying that, are you actually choosing the one you’re looking for? Hard to say.

 

[Mark Al]

I think we can all agree we've never been a point in time as guitarist when we've had it better in terms of sheer tonal options essentially within reach of anyone...... You can do more with a $2000 Axe than you could with all the gear in most well-to-do studio's of the day, even though those amp collections and pedal collections are well above $100K in gear.....

But... and this is where we won't all agree.... is the music coming out today, especially guitar music, any better to show for it ??

We all have a billion fantastic tones as the press of a button, but what are we doing with it ? How are we using this gear ? A good many of us are just using it to recreate classic tones from decades ago.....

Are we creating icon albums and guitar tones that 50 years from now guys are going to talk nostalgically about with a generation of kids trying to emulate the guitar heros of today, and do we even have guitar heroes these days, save for the original guitar heros who are still around ?

A guy would get a used JCM800 and a 4 track and write the songs most of us grew up with and still love to this day.... and what do we all have now and what do we do with it ? Did those 4 noisy tracks on a $99 Porta-studio cassette tape trump anything we can do on an endless amount of 96kHz Ableton Live tracks ?

If there was one in a million IR's which, if found, would inspire to create the next Comfortably Numb 2nd solo, then I'd probably be sitting here going through a million IR's, like hitting the lotto, but realistically, I don't think the IR really makes that real difference, and maybe in searching for it, I'm missing out of what actually does result in creating great music.... playing guitar

In some sense, I don't disagree with you, but on the other hand, we also know the story how SRV placed over a hundred amps (all amps he could lay his hands on) in his NY home/studio, trying them out shaking the whole building, or other guitarist, too many examples... The point is that, almost all successful guitarists are dead serious about his tones, do everything within their resources to chase it! They invest time to search through tonal varieties, less to convince anybody else but more inspire themselves for creation.

Fractal is at a point of having the best amp modeling on the market, making hundreds of amps available to our fingertips, something never possible before, I feel a similarly satisfying experience is within reach for the other half of the equation as well, e.g. cab/IR modeling, which compared to Axe III's amp modeling is at a glaring/unbalanced/less-satisfying status.

Downside is FAS is a very small company and what you purpose is a massive undertaking, so that means time and company resources that can't be allocated elsewhere......

Want performance page knobs on the FM3 ? It's going to have to wait 8 months while they redo the IR system..... That isn't fact obviously, but simply making a hypothetical point that nothing in terms of development is down-side free, there is always an opportunity cost

Priority wise, it's up to Cliff and his team to decide, and that'd be a different topic and orthogonal discussion. Regardless, priority does not invalidate the feedback/idea

 

[jefferski]

With all the obvious benefits discussed so far,

Obvious to you. And I respect that you feel this is a great idea. Clearly, not everyone else agrees.

As was mentioned, who exactly is going to implement this process? That's a whole lot of tagging, possible re-shooting IRs, and not to mention coding this all into the Axe.

we also know the story how SRV placed over a hundred amps... The point is that, almost all successful guitarists are dead serious about his tones, do everything within their resources to chase it! They invest time to search through tonal varieties, less to convince anybody else but more inspire themselves for creation.

You answered my previous statement. You're serious about this; get to it! ;-)

 

[Mark Al]

It seems people want a faster way to choose an IR. That’s understandable.

An interface where you drag a mic around, I think people might be lost in the thought of “I’m moving it around to where I would put it and because it’s physically in that position, it must be right. Yup. That’s the sound I want because the picture of the mic is there.”

I do see how the movement of the mic in the GUI can speed up going through a list one by one. Just that physicality does speed it up.

But I’m not sure I agree that the result of that movement is actually what someone would want. We’ve seen it said often: use your ears and not your eyes. I think this would make people use their eyes way more. To me, this method is no better than randomly clicking around the list of IRs till you find what you like.

Now that’s solely because of the collection of IRs that have little relation to each other currently. For this GUI method to work, as mentioned earlier, the collection of IRs has to correspond to each other and be limited just to those few per GUI session. Maybe you choose a 2x12 blackface and it takes 1000 IRs to give the range needed to move the mic around. That’s a lot of work with precise workflow to even arrange the IR files to work with something like that. All IR makers would have to follow the same procedure and protocol for it to work as well.

Maybe we could just get a “Choose random IR button” that jumps around the list. Play, click, play, click. I think you’re bound to find something you like that way.

Of course it’s been said before that IRs have names for a reason, describing the mic used and placement and speakers etc. it would make sense that if I’m looking for a 57 off axis on a 2x12 blackface to search for IRs with that in the name. But often I find that going with the name of something doesn’t give me the result I think it would even if it’s “correct.”

I’ve seen time and time again where someone has trouble making a tone because they stick with the words they know - I play a real recto with a 4x12 and 57, so I can’t use anything else. Should the modeling sound close to what they think it should sound like? Sure. But this isn’t your recto, your cab, your mic and specific placement and signal chain from the mic. It’s bound to be different. Maybe a Marshall sound would be better for the situation.

There are a ton if IRs. I’ve seen more threads about too many how do I choose vs there aren’t enough. the current process of course could be updated to be easier and faster. But I don’t think the GUI mic method is the way. Sure, maybe it helps you decide faster, but underlying that, are you actually choosing the one you’re looking for? Hard to say.

That's a valid point. Not sure if you have spend enough time with Helix's stock cabs, I did. Dialing in tone by eye instead of by ear is a REAL trap in Helix as its amp control often does not match real amps (Axe III is a lot better in this regard). However, dialing by eye remains an issue/trap regardless. What HX cabs provides to me is a consistent approach to select IRs. For example:

1. I picked a rector cab with v30, I know that's what I want to start with.
2. Then I experiment with mics, I know based on experience, I'd normally put a 57 from 3" to 6" away, and for 409 I can start from 2" without being too boomy etc, if I want more low end, I put it closer. If I want more clarity, I put it farther away. At this point, I am dialing by ear, not necessarily by eye, and I can do so systematically. If want more bites, switch the mic to 421 on the same cab, and I will get exactly what I envisioned to get. It's consistent.
3. Or I will fix my two mics, 57 at 4" and 121 at 6", then start playing with different cabs with this mic combo, then you start hearing the tonal variation brought in by cabs instead of mics.

The real power comes after I becomes quite familiarized with all the cabs and mics and how they responds at different distances. I can start imagine how certain (cab, mic, position) to allow me to get the tone in my head before doing any selection/tweaking.

 

[Mark Al]

Obvious to you. And I respect that you feel this is a great idea. Clearly, not everyone else agrees.

As was mentioned, who exactly is going to implement this process? That's a whole lot of tagging, possible re-shooting IRs, and not to mention coding this all into the Axe.

You answered my previous statement. You're serious about this; get to it! ;-)

Don’t underestimate Cliff and his team, they are the market leader of amp modeling with good reasons

 

[chris]

Not sure if you have spend enough time with Helix's stock cabs

I've spent 0 time

The real power comes after I becomes quite familiarized with all the cabs and mics

you could say this about the axe as well, or any gear. once you're familiar with it, anything is easy.

for me, i still use only a few "Legacy" cabs because that's what i know. i haven't tried even 5% of the new cabs personally, because that's not time i want to spend. am i missing out on a better sound? maybe. but i really enjoy what i have based on what i know. i think this is the key to anything with 1000s of choices like IRs.

if you want to use 100s of IRs in your presets, you're setting yourself up to audition 1000s of them to find the ones you like. that's just how it is. my base of knowledge comes from the original selection of 187 (now called Legacy) and i'm fine with that. sure i've tried other IRs from packs i've purchased and i do like them. but i personally haven't found the need to keep searching. some others do want that, and that's cool. but that sets up the work they must do from that point on.

i remember back when i first started on the axe ultra. i did spend hours going through the small list of IRs there until i found what i liked. then i just stuck with those choices and the Cab block took 4 seconds if i made a new preset. i think that's the sort of progression that happens with any gear, unless like i said you always want to search for more or new, then that's just the choice being made. some people can't "settle" on a choice, and again that's fine. but that's a choice being made.

 

[Mark Al]

I've spent 0 time


you could say this about the axe as well, or any gear. once you're familiar with it, anything is easy.

Except the IR selection workflow ;-)

for me, i still use only a few "Legacy" cabs because that's what i know. i haven't tried even 5% of the new cabs personally, because that's not time i want to spend. am i missing out on a better sound? maybe. but i really enjoy what i have based on what i know. i think this is the key to anything with 1000s of choices like IRs.

if you want to use 100s of IRs in your presets, you're setting yourself up to audition 1000s of them to find the ones you like. that's just how it is. my base of knowledge comes from the original selection of 187 (now called Legacy) and i'm fine with that. sure i've tried other IRs from packs i've purchased and i do like them. but i personally haven't found the need to keep searching. some others do want that, and that's cool. but that sets up the work they must do from that point on.

i remember back when i first started on the axe ultra. i did spend hours going through the small list of IRs there until i found what i liked. then i just stuck with those choices and the Cab block took 4 seconds if i made a new preset. i think that's the sort of progression that happens with any gear, unless like i said you always want to search for more or new, then that's just the choice being made.

Randomly auditioning IRs from different venders? You'd be VERY lucky to find 100 useful ones after playing through 1000 of them!

I understand why you and other folks settled on a small list of IRs It's largely and simply because the alternative prospect of spending money buying and then auditioning TONS of IRs is so freaking hard, time-consuming, counter productive, not fun... So you do it once or twice and give up the sea of IRs and the tonal opportunities hidden in them.

Now imagine:
1 . You are familiar with 50 different cabs, e.g. 1x12, 2x12 and 4x12.
2. And you know the sound signature of different mic models, e.g. dynamic mics gives you more bites, 421 yields clearer low ends than 57 and 409 is one of the warmest dynamic mics; ribbon mics are warmer, 121 provides more body around 250Hz than 160; U87 has certain mid range hump which might work well for certain applications, and the hump mitigated by placing the mic a bit further while U47 has similar tones as U87 but without that hump (these are some hypothetic examples)
3. And you also sort of know how each mic works with different size of cabs by putting them at certain range of distances/positions, e.g. you won't put a 57 at 0" in front of most 4x12 for example, and you know ribben mics generally works better when placed 3" or further away.
4. And you have natural intuition on what cab/speaker might works better with certain amp.

Then by directly jumping into a combination that makes sense to you based on your experience/assumptions above, and tweaking near that combo with merely a few clicks, you'd be selecting an IR configuration much closer to what you imagined/intended (than randomly selecting from inconsistent 3-rd party IRs), and that's filtering out over 98% of other IRs which likely wont work for you, speeding up your IR selection and increase IR selection success prospects by magnitudes!

Help customer to find what works for them faster, more effectively and efficiently is crucial, it's all these AI-based recommendation system aims for, it's the real money.

 

[yeky83]

Now imagine:
1 . You are familiar with 50 different cabs, e.g. 1x12, 2x12 and 4x12.
2. And you know the sound signature of different mic models, e.g. dynamic mics gives you more bites, 421 yields clearer low ends than 57 and 409 is one of the warmest dynamic mics; ribbon mics are warmer, 121 provides more body around 250Hz than 160; U87 has certain mid range hump which might work well for certain applications, and the hump mitigated by placing the mic a bit further while U47 has similar tones as U87 but without that hump (these are some hypothetic examples)
3. And you also sort of know how each mic works with different size of cabs by putting them at certain range of distances/positions, e.g. you won't put a 57 at 0" in front of most 4x12 for example, and you know ribben mics generally works better when placed 3" or further away.
4. And you have natural intuition on what cab/speaker might works better with certain amp.

Then by directly jumping into a combination that makes sense to you based on your experience/assumptions above, you'd be selecting an IR configuration much closer to what you imagined/intended (than randomly selecting from inconsistent 3-rd party IRs), and that's filtering out over 98% of other IRs which likely wont work for you, speeding up your IR selection and increase IR selection success prospects by magnitudes!

I'm confused, everything you just said makes a case for a filtered out user defined IR library, not a gigantic everything-including-crap library. If you figure out what cabs work with what mics at what distance, and that filters out over 98% of crap IRs that'd be in a gigantic IR pack, why do you want to have all the crap IRs still in the hardware?

"directly jumping into a combination that makes sense to you based on your experience/assumptions above, you'd be selecting an IR configuration much closer to what you imagined/intended"
That's... exactly what you do with a user defined library of IRs. You keep stuff you like, keep crap out. Jump directly to the stuff you like.

 

[Mark Al]

I'm confused, everything you just said makes a case for a filtered out user defined IR library, not a gigantic everything-including-crap library. If you figure out what cabs work with what mics at what distance, and that filters our over 98% of crap IRs that'd be in a gigantic IR pack, why do you want to have them all in the hardware?

57@3" in front of a DR P12R cab works well for me yesterday, but now I am craving for a warmer tone, so I switched to a 160@5" in front of the same cab. Tomorrow, I want to try a v30 cab(cause I watch AskZac's youtube video) but compare how it sounds with either a 57 and a 160, and realize it sounds really good with 57@5" and 160@6", all excellent tones, sounds different, and inspires for different reasons.

And next week, I'd like to try a cab with Creamback with the same amp, and realize Shure sm7@4" works really well, and is exactly what I want at that moment...

I do this all the time with Helix, it's easy, it's fun and it often inspires. Imagine achieving the same workflow via random IR auditioning with the current Axe IR management, it'd DRASTICALLY slow down the process and make it near impossible, and guess what? your user banks will end up being a mess

 

[yeky83]

57@3" in front of a DR P12R cab works well for me yesterday, but now I am craving for a warmer tone, so I switched to a 160@5" in front of the same cab. Tomorrow, I want to try a v30 cab(cause I watch AskZac's youtube video) but compare how it sounds with either a 57 and a 160, and realize it sounds really good with 57@5" and 160@6", all excellent tones, sounds different, and inspires for different reasons.

And next week, I'd like to try a cab with Creamback with the same amp, and realize Shure sm7@4" works really well, and is exactly what I want at that moment...

I do this all the time with Helix, it's easy, it's fun and it often inspires. Imagine doing so with random IR auditioning with the current Axe IR management, it'd DRASTICALLY slow down the process and make it near impossible...

So currently you're selecting at random and you haven't filtered out 98% of IRs yet, so you want the axe-fx to help you do so, is that what you're saying?

 

[Mark Al]

So currently you're selecting at random and you haven't filtered out 98% of IRs yet, so you want the axe-fx to help you do so, is that what you're saying?

Nope, I know how to filtering out 98% of them, and that 98% is different per different amp and different situation. It's just not possible to do so effectively and efficiently right now with Axe III.

Following the same example above:
1. I'd open up the IR manager, import and audition the IRs, find what I like import/save it to user bank. First of all, this process is A LOT slower and less efficient than what it could be.
2. Tomorrow I do similar things with different patches, and next week as well.
3. After a while, look at my user banks, it becomes a mess, that is impossible to navigate around!
4. If I am not careful and start import batches of IRs, I'd be running out space at certain point, and not knowing how to delete or re-organizing them.

 

[Mark Al]

Look, so far, it seems some folks here are suspicious of this idea. While I am happy to continue to discuss, I have a feeling some of you have made up your mind

That's fine, discussion like this help us to thoroughly expand all the points on this topic, it's not meant to get everyone convinced (like that ever happens ) I hope whoever is reading this is somewhat entertained, and Fractal might have noticed this discussion and give it some thought.

I understand the potential complexity of this ask, which is partially why some folks are suspicious of it. Who knows? Fractal being the leader of this space might as well surprise us with something in the end

 

[jefferski]

Don’t underestimate Cliff and his team, they are the market leader of amp modeling with good reasons

Lol. I stopped underestimating Cliff about 8 years ago.

 

[yeky83]

Nope, I know how to filtering out 98% of them, and that 98% is different per different amp and different situation. It's just not possible to do so effectively and efficiently right now with Axe III.

How many amps do you use, and how many different situations(?) are there? Just trying to figure out how you use more than 2048 IRs if you've filtered out 98% of your library, even if they're different for different amps and different situations. On average, how many cabs and mics work for you per an amp, and how many amps do you use?

 

[Mark Al]

How many amps do you use, and how many different situations(?) are there? Just trying to figure out how you use more than 2048 IRs if you've filtered out 98% of your library, even if they're different for different amps and different situations. On average, how many cabs and mics work for you per an amp, and how many amps do you use?

Good/fair question. Let's see, HX provides about 40 stock cabs. Sometimes when I play around with a DR amp, I'd be curious to try out 15/40 of those cabs and majorly 1x12 and 2x12s, and when playing with a Tweed amp, I may be curious to try out 25/40 cabs, etc. When trying different cabs, I'd sometimes try out 5~6/17 mics at their typical distances, which is super easy in Helix by scrolling.

When one's ears are relatively trained and familiarized with the cabs, one can generally discern the different tonal characters brought in by different cabs v.s. by different mics and positions, will learn how to carved out the tone by switching either cab, mics or positions with some final low/high cuts, just like in a studio (That being said, I have also tried to heavily leverage (parametric) EQs which does the job as well, but takes a lot more efforts and could cause more troubles/problems).

4038 Ribbon @4" may sounds horrible right now as it's too boomy, but later you may realize it's responds really well with certain EQ and provides an incredible warm tone, just what you need for certain ambient mix! (Ah, searching a tone for a mix is also very different when auditioning IR with just your guitar alone, e.g. you are much more targeted on what you want/need and you can't afford wasting time to audition IR randomly at all!)

You see:
1. The point is not to have the pre-knowledge of all the possible tones you will ever need and then go find the right IRs for each and save them in the user bank to be done with it, as this is clearly unrealistic, and chasing a moving target. And user bank is super bad for re-organizing IRs, as patchs pointed to numbers instead of IR names. (By the way, Helix 2.9 finally made the change to link preset to IR name instead of IR slot number so HX users can now re-organize IRs without breaking their presets, @FractalAudio may want to consider that as well )
2. The point is to have an interface that covers a wide range of tonal possibility that allows you to effectively and efficiently find what you need
at any time.