h.c.e.
Power User
Received my AxeFX III mid week, and finally had a chance to spend several hours with it, and I have to say that I'm, once again, completely blown away by a Fractal product. The AFX III really does take almost everything that I could have been wanting form the II and addresses it. They've pretty much thought of everything.
The display is gorgeous and really readable, the front panel UI and workflow are really great, I've been rebuilding some patches from the AFX II and haven't reached for AxeEdit once. The 5 value knobs and push buttons make for really quick moving around and entering/tweaking of parameters. The interaction to move between presets and scenes is really straight forward and laid out well with the nav buttons, I didn't quite get why preset forward back was left/right and scene was up down from reading about it before hand, til I sat at the front panel, quickly going through the first 40 or so factory presets, and it was immediately intuitive.
The metering options are fantastic and make sorting out level/balance issues really great, leveling blocks from the zoomed out layout view with the C knob and keeping the preset at a unity output is extremely helpful, it’s like the Utility Output tab on the II but even more granular. Nice touch!
With he expanded CPU power, channels and the ease of stepping through scenes from the front panel, I think I'm really going to get alot of use out of scenes more now than ever before. I had several presets that were 2 amp blocks before (to cover all my preferred channels of the Captain Hook model for example), that can now be just 1 amp with 4 channels, and name the scenes for each one. Amazing.
The extra I/O connections and blocks makes for setting up external gear in dedicated FX loops dead simple, and allows for some really flexible routing options in a patch for sure.
And, oh man, the shear number of cab IRs in this thing! I have purchased a ton of CabPacks and third party IRs in the past, and it's really great to see how many cabs, and quality cabs at that, come with the AxeFx III now.. I've been having alot of fun just going through and seeing all the various cabs that are available stock in the machine now. it's astounding and seemingly limitless. New users should easily be able to find IRs that they love in either of the Factory banks now.
As for the sound, the descriptions floating around are pretty accurate, it actually is an improvement on the II (yes, that's possible apparently). I still have both the II and the III in the rack, and when I did some quick A/B comparisons of patches i was recreating, there's just this extra bit of presence to the III with more clarity and openness in the upper mids and highs, and a tighter low end, that too me really makes the AxeFx III sparkle when going back and forth between the two.
Outstanding work Fractal, this thing proves why I had no reservations cracking open my wallet just as soon as I could for one. Truly a world class product!
The display is gorgeous and really readable, the front panel UI and workflow are really great, I've been rebuilding some patches from the AFX II and haven't reached for AxeEdit once. The 5 value knobs and push buttons make for really quick moving around and entering/tweaking of parameters. The interaction to move between presets and scenes is really straight forward and laid out well with the nav buttons, I didn't quite get why preset forward back was left/right and scene was up down from reading about it before hand, til I sat at the front panel, quickly going through the first 40 or so factory presets, and it was immediately intuitive.
The metering options are fantastic and make sorting out level/balance issues really great, leveling blocks from the zoomed out layout view with the C knob and keeping the preset at a unity output is extremely helpful, it’s like the Utility Output tab on the II but even more granular. Nice touch!
With he expanded CPU power, channels and the ease of stepping through scenes from the front panel, I think I'm really going to get alot of use out of scenes more now than ever before. I had several presets that were 2 amp blocks before (to cover all my preferred channels of the Captain Hook model for example), that can now be just 1 amp with 4 channels, and name the scenes for each one. Amazing.
The extra I/O connections and blocks makes for setting up external gear in dedicated FX loops dead simple, and allows for some really flexible routing options in a patch for sure.
And, oh man, the shear number of cab IRs in this thing! I have purchased a ton of CabPacks and third party IRs in the past, and it's really great to see how many cabs, and quality cabs at that, come with the AxeFx III now.. I've been having alot of fun just going through and seeing all the various cabs that are available stock in the machine now. it's astounding and seemingly limitless. New users should easily be able to find IRs that they love in either of the Factory banks now.
As for the sound, the descriptions floating around are pretty accurate, it actually is an improvement on the II (yes, that's possible apparently). I still have both the II and the III in the rack, and when I did some quick A/B comparisons of patches i was recreating, there's just this extra bit of presence to the III with more clarity and openness in the upper mids and highs, and a tighter low end, that too me really makes the AxeFx III sparkle when going back and forth between the two.
Outstanding work Fractal, this thing proves why I had no reservations cracking open my wallet just as soon as I could for one. Truly a world class product!
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