John Nathan Cordy's latest Fractal thoughts

[fcs101]

It's been really interesting to watch JNC's embracing of Fractal. Nothing new here for Fractal users other than to rest assured FAS is still leading the way. Lots of good sound bits in here though, especially regarding the quality of the factory presets.


EDIT: I'd love to see JNC's contribution to a Gift of Tone preset.

 

[JTI]

Cordy is cool.

 

[sprint]

always great content from JNC, however, I'm quickly tiring of hearing the "usability" criticism all over the place recently which I find quite unfounded.

 

[fcs101]

always great content from JNC, however, I'm quickly tiring of hearing the "usability" criticism all over the place recently which I find quite unfounded.

Yeah, I'll cut him some slack though as I find him very even handed and open minded.

Difficulty of use is a common misperception of the FAS system and it probably won't go away anytime soon. Once you get used to it, it's easy (unless you're Rhett Shull trying to build a preset during a live performance ).

 

[Will Chen]

always great content from JNC, however, I'm quickly tiring of hearing the "usability" criticism all over the place recently which I find quite unfounded.

I think it's slightly applicable to most of the modulation effects. Like the "Basic" page for the Chorus block is pretty in depth, Flange and Phaser are even worse. That's a way different experience than Line 6 who dumb things down to mimic a typical stomp with only 3 or 4 parameters. But on the whole I agree that criticism is pretty overblown (especially since those mod effects sound pretty damn good at stock settings only requiring minor tweaks).

 

[la szum]

I think it's slightly applicable to most of the modulation effects. Like the "Basic" page for the Chorus block is pretty in depth, Flange and Phaser are even worse. That's a way different experience than Line 6 who dumb things down to mimic a typical stomp with only 3 or 4 parameters. But on the whole I agree that criticism is pretty overblown (especially since those mod effects sound pretty damn good at stock settings only requiring minor tweaks).

I made a thread about that offering what I thought was a valid critique and got my balls busted
for it on here 2 posts in.


I still stand by it, though. I see NO reason why there shouldn't be an "Authentic" Tab if it is for
say, an MXR Pahse 90 or even a Deluxe Memory Man. Could still keep the extended parameters
on another Tab. Then again, no idea how my assumption of a simple request would be to implement.

 

[Stratman68]

always great content from JNC, however, I'm quickly tiring of hearing the "usability" criticism all over the place recently which I find quite unfounded.

I agree but also I believe that "usability" stuff really only appies if you dig into every parameter, etc, etc, etc. Not everyone does that. I don't and I never will because I don't see the need. But I understand that others might want to do this and that's great.
But that should NOT be mistaken for "hard to use" claims and conversations!

 

[Stratman68]

I made a thread about that offering what I thought was a valid critique and got my balls busted
for it on here 2 posts in.


I still stand by it, though. I see NO reason why there shouldn't be an "Authentic" Tab if it is for
say, an MXR Pahse 90 or even a Deluxe Memory Man. Could still keep the extended parameters
on another Tab. Then again, no idea how my assumption of a simple request would be to implement.

I agree with that 100%. Guess I am just old school but I played for 40+ years using an amp, Chorus, delay and compressor. I get totally lost with all the parameters on many of the FX. so I don't use them.

 

[AlexMania]

I made a thread about that offering what I thought was a valid critique and got my balls busted
for it on here 2 posts in.


I still stand by it, though. I see NO reason why there shouldn't be an "Authentic" Tab if it is for
say, an MXR Pahse 90 or even a Deluxe Memory Man. Could still keep the extended parameters
on another Tab. Then again, no idea how my assumption of a simple request would be to implement.

Alrighty Ia, I'll join you in the pariah corner. +1 for me on this.

 

[marsonic]

I'm really not sure why people complain about the usability.

The knobs mostly do what they say, the manual is awesome, and it gives much better realtime feedback to what you're doing than many popular digital effects pedals. And if you don't want to deal with it, people share block presets several places.

It's a very complex device, and I think they "dumbed it down" extremely well.

 

[Anthony76]

Who?

 

[sprint]

Authentic tabs in the mods would be cool I guess - I just don't see the lack of some things like that as a reason for the pretty frequent statements we see now that eou is somehow an overall "issue" with Axfx, and, the comparing to Helix etc which makes no sense to me since Helix does not have near the overall depth of tweakability that Axfx does, requiring a much more complex eou design strategy to serve both the deep diver and the dropinblocksngo crowds. (aside: that "manual" control on flangers always confuses me no matter what - even on analogue pedals with 2 knobs - for me, dialing in any flanger / phaser / chorus pedal or model type to what I want within the overal pedal / model flavour, has required me to learn (and constantly relearn, cuz I forget lol) the concepts of how mods function - eou won't help me that much on this, but I do appreciate a lot, having the types which provide the popular mod formulas (ie an MXR117 vs an Electric Mistress ...) which I would have never been able to work out on my own in Axfx using the native raw parameters.

I also look forward to the expected possibility of having a more graphical / intuitive cab selection process, but I don't see the current state as warrenting the generalized "Axfx is great, but eou can be a challenge (full stop)" type tags.

Not a fanboi here at all, just seems like one of those opinions that's spreading around more due to s.m. "group think" rather than truely factual.

Anyway - no offense to JNC here as I think he's got one of the best guitar gear channels on YT, and I respect a lot what he does and says.

 

[marsonic]

I also look forward to the expected possibility of having a more graphical / intuitive cab selection process, but I don't see the current state as warrenting the generalized "Axfx is great, but eou can be a challenge (full stop)" type tags.

I think there's something valid for the graphical approach of a UAD Ox (or others). But...IDK. I'm very much of the mind that the great many people who say "the IR is everything" are both a) correct and b) missing something very fundamental about what IRs actually do.

I do think it would be cool if Fractal (or somebody) came up with software that would make it simple to generate FulRes IRs from 1-2 normal cab IRs and a reverb plugin. IDK...maybe it exists. Or, I guess you could just shoot an IR through a plugin chain. That kind of thing seems just complicated enough that I haven't bothered looking into it.

I also very much wouldn't mind something that would generate IRs from physically modeling speakers, cabs, and rooms without starting from actually recording a cab. But, that's more about curiosity than anything else. Plus, there's such good simulation software out there (including the Fractal itself) that I can't help but think that the results would be really cool or at least extremely informative.

seems like one of those opinions that's spreading around more due to s.m. "group think" rather than truely factual.

Yeah...that happens a lot.

I did that on forums when I was young and stupid, and I'm almost glad. I kept getting proven wrong by people who were wiling to take the time, and I'm more knowledgeable because of it. Now...it's pretty easy to see it when it happens. It's just irksome when someone like JNC (or a LOT of popular musician/studio YTers) seems to do the same thing. It's like announcing that you want to make a (monetized) video about a thing without actually putting in the work to add to the conversation.

I really don't mean to insult JNC as much as that sentence came out.

I do enjoy many of his videos. It's just that one thing that bugs me. He is nowhere near the worst about it. There are a lot of YTers in the mixing & mastering spaces (which I understand a lot better) that appear to have absolutely no idea what they're doing....but they appear to still get work apart from YT. It confuses me to no end how that happens.

 

[AlexMania]

There's an old saying I can't take credit for:

Rottweilers, Airplanes and Computers require a higher level of owner proficiency if one expects predictable results otherwise bad things happen. I would unapologetically put FAS in that category as well with one huge caveat: FAS shines with the BEST out of the box presets, many of which are immediately usable.

Ladies, gentlemen, whiners (let the hate begin): get over it the way you got over the weird sweep of the volume control on your guitar or the weird tone in your amp that required you to actually turn a knob. Yes, the GUI needs love. I'll be the first to agree, however context matters. It feels a lot like obsessing about the socks and forgetting which suit you're wearing.

I happen to be silly Fractal fanboy, so take the following presumed statement with a grain of salt, as I have no FAS workings knowledge. I do, however, presume they don't have operators standing by to just work on everything at the same time. Like many companies, they triage their product roadmap because they can't do it all. I'm happy to be in the FAS clunky GUI family over the Line6 Helix nicer GUI family. I'm glad Cliff and crew focused on the sound. Sure, a nicer GUI would be nicer, but in context the usability issues are overstated once you spend a few hours with the unit. Problems come in when one tries to build a crazy super preset because he / she can, even though it has no analog to what he / she has used in the past or is familiar with.

Remember, Rottweilers, Airplanes and Computers require a higher level of owner proficiency.

 

[Hoot]

I've been a happy owner of FM3 for a full week now (damn, it's so good!) and the only 2 things I miss so far are factory sort/filter for the massive lists of amps, cabs and effects in some blocks (like, amps sorted by their base gain/drive as it is done in Hotone Ampero 2) and some note about what the effect is based on. Everything else is rather intuitive and all the knobs turning and buttons pressing is rather satisfactory.

Having watched YT I expected way more complicated controls.

 

[JTI]

Degrees of difficulty exist. It's ok

I continue to maintain that it really only rears it's head for me when it comes to setting up my footswitching methods. Complex routing and most importantly sounding killer come super easy.

 

[Brewce]

Great player, but after hearing the self-pity a few times about the Neural people not supporting him, I can hear it any time he speaks...

always great content from JNC, however, I'm quickly tiring of hearing the "usability" criticism all over the place recently which I find quite unfounded.

He's actually the one that put up a vid countering Rhett Shull about that.

 

[Will Chen]

I agree but also I believe that "usability" stuff really only appies if you dig into every parameter, etc, etc, etc. Not everyone does that. I don't and I never will because I don't see the need. But I understand that others might want to do this and that's great.
But that should NOT be mistaken for "hard to use" claims and conversations!

Authentic tabs in the mods would be cool I guess - I just don't see the lack of some things like that as a reason for the pretty frequent statements we see now that eou is somehow an overall "issue" with Axfx

Right...it's overblown. I'm fairly certain most of the modulation effect types are more like "presets" of the a available parameters so selecting a type and focusing only on the rate and depth controls will get most to where they need to be. Just the options can overwhelm some. I mean, I've been using MFX pretty much forever long before GUI, programming the old Digitech RP1 was a real pain but we just had to grit our teeth and dive in. That said, the Amp "Tone" page is just easier for me even though all those parameters are also on the Ideal page. It's all about presentation when it comes to GUI.

I continue to maintain that it really only rears it's head for me when it comes to setting up my footswitching methods. Complex routing and most importantly sounding killer come super easy.

That's one area where I'll take the complexity. I mean, maybe there's an improvement they could make in terms of programming but I prefer having the footswitches do pretty much anything I want rather than be locked into a specific function set.

 

[AlexMania]

Truly, I wish for more complexity.

RJM products have the ability to remember state and perform multiple functions. While we can do that by assigning different controls to the same control switch or controller, it's more limiting. I would love for effects, for example, to respond to the same MIDI CC number and value, whether the effect is on or off.

In other words, if I assign CC 100 to the drive block, I can send it a value of 127 from my controller to turn it on and a value of 0 to turn it off.

I would like to send it value 64 (for example), and have the effect reverse whatever state it's on. This would allow my MIDI controller to send a single value that would toggle effects. This is for me a more streamlined way of programming complex scene type actions (with as many 'scenes' as I my controller can manage) without actually changing scenes.


If this is in here and I missed it, please tell me, otherwise this goes into the wish list.

 

[marsonic]

some note about what the effect is based on

A lot of that is actually in Yek's guides or the Wiki, just not on the device itself.