Lag on the AX8 when switching presets.

Baba said:
My problem with accepting this is, this was never a problem with any of the gear I've used over the years, whether it be rack gear from the 80's, tube amps, or consumer or pro-sumer modeling gear, and ALL of that gear was vastly inferior to the AX8.

I understand WHY it happens, but I'm used to having gear that DOESN'T do that, it's hard to swallow paying more for up-to-date gear that does. You're buying state of the art, top of the mountain gear, paying the price for it, and suffering a 'problem' that you've never had before.

The AX8 has a LONG list of amps, I don't want to hear that I have to stay on one amp model and use drive pedals, or any other bo-bo solution, I want to step on one switch and change my entire sound, without a sound dropout, like I have been doing for decades now, with lesser gear than the AX8.

That, to me, is like buying a 2016 Lexus that doesn't come with an airbag, and someone telling you that you have to adjust your driving, and if you don't get into an accident, it won't be a problem, when a Ford Fiesta comes standard with an airbag. Yeah, the Lexus is a MUCH better vehicle, and has a lot of bells and whistles, but . . .
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With dedicated audio units in a guitar chain everything is ON all the time ready to go when switched, so of course there's no lag.
As you said, that worked for you before so why move on to the AX8?
I think it's price (at $1399) is specifically aimed at players who find it "hard to swallow paying more for up-to-date gear..state of the art, top of the mountain gear".... because that would be the XL+ (at $2249)
Now, maybe define "dropout" or "lag".... how many milliseconds can you tolerate? Zero??? Because that brings us back to my first question "What kind of music you need to play to need 0ms lag?" (Would love to see, hear an example)
Because in my experience (loud, fast, heavy rock), with drums and cymbals, vocals, bass, other guitars? keyboards? Horns?.... if you switch on the beat, there's no way a few milliseconds its going to be a noticeable dropout, much less to the audience.
YMMV
 
JayCM800XL said:
With dedicated audio units in a guitar chain everything is ON all the time ready to go when switched, so of course there's no lag.
As you said, that worked for you before so why move on to the AX8?
I think it's price (at $1399) is specifically aimed at players who find it "hard to swallow paying more for up-to-date gear..state of the art, top of the mountain gear".... because that would be the XL+ (at $2249)
Now, maybe define "dropout" or "lag".... how many milliseconds can you tolerate? Zero??? Because that brings us back to my first question "What kind of music you need to play to need 0ms lag?" (Would love to see, hear an example)
Because in my experience (loud, fast, heavy rock), with drums and cymbals, vocals, bass, other guitars? keyboards? Horns?.... if you switch on the beat, there's no way a few milliseconds its going to be a noticeable dropout, much less to the audience.
YMMV
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1. Good question about why move on to the AX8, and I think I have decided not to (not just because of this).
2. As far as how many ms can I tolerate? Well, since my previous and current gear doesn't lag, I guess the answer is zero.
3. I don't think it's a question of what kind of music, I think it's more of a question of, is that something you want to tolerate or not, and/or is it important to you or not. (I play everything from Elvis to Adele in a cover band).

Seems like it's important to some, not so much to others.

I've played with other peoples' gear that lagged in the past, and you either put up with your sound dropping out once in a while, or you adjust your playing to work around that. I don't want to adjust my playing to fit gear, I want to adjust my gear to fit my playing, that's all.

At the end of the day, it IS a small issue, it wouldn't kill a performance for me, but it's not something I've ever had to put up with, so I don't know why I should.

Also, and this might be an argument AGAINST my points, but I've never measured dropouts in gear, maybe 20ms is hardly noticable and/or maybe my past gear has had a 10-20 ms dropout and I'm just used to it, and it starts getting to me at 50-100 ms? I don't know.
 
Baba said:
Also, and this might be an argument AGAINST my points, but I've never measured dropouts in gear, maybe 20ms is hardly noticable and/or maybe my past gear has had a 10-20 ms dropout and I'm just used to it, and it starts getting to me at 50-100 ms? I don't know.
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I think this is a valid benchmark for those who are looking for fast transitions. I've been in situations where there were critical solo passages with fx/tone transitions making audible gaps a non-starter, but that was well before the AxeFxII with Scenes and Scene Controllers, which really changed my approach to preset creation. But that's the AxeFxII, and not the AX8, so short of ponying up for a second AX8, at the moment we have to deal with things as-is, or dedicate the time to some more sophisticated work-around programming to get the job done.

My long view on this is that we're pretty spoiled these days. Personally, I find a sort of satisfaction in finding ways to solve a problem, even if it is slightly complex or convoluted. Once it is tackled, it just becomes another bit of programming knowledge to call upon. This is also one of the remarkable features of the Fractal products: that it allows you to exercise creative muscle in ways that very few other individual products - if any - will allow.

Baba, I'm curious about your full gigging rig, its switching, and the complexity of your presets and fx programming, more or less as a benchmark so we can all tell where you're coming from, precisely.

FWIW, the AX8 is the flagship FLOOR BOARD featuring Fractal Audio amp modeling and speaker emulation, though it is not the flagship product with respect to ultimate flexibility and programmability. That, of course is the AxeFxII (whatever version) combined with either the MFC101 or some other full-featured MIDI pedal board. You likely CAN "have it all" with Fractal products if you really want, but it'll cost you just a bit more to get the very best that FAS offers to suit your purposes. JMHO.
 
Chris@AxeFxTutorials said:
what gear did you use before/currently? are they all separate components?
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I had a rack system in the late 80's/early 90's that was all separate components that didn't dropout, (I avoided units that had sound dropouts), but I shrunk that down to a Rocktron Chameleon around 1996 that didn't lag. Most recently, I was using a Digitech GSP1101 that doesn't have a sound dropout, and neither did my BOSS ME-70.

Again, that's like comparing apples to oranges, with what you're getting with top of the line gear/processing nowadays, so maybe it's more of a philosophical issue than anything else.
 
Baba said:
Again, that's like comparing apples to oranges, with what you're getting with top of the line gear/processing nowadays, so maybe it's more of a philosophical issue than anything else.
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it's more like comparing cars to apples. it's not about the quality of the processing, it's about the actual function and what it is doing.

the ME-70 does effects only and its processor usage is VERY low compared to what the AX8 is doing. the AX8 is doing all that the ME-70 does AND amp modeling (and many other things). we only see similar screens with switches and knobs, but inside the AX8, there are many more processes happening at the same time than in the ME-70.

again, not about quality of sound, but function.

i would think that you understand why the separate components in your rack system have no dropout when changing things vs a single unit that is doing all of that same function in one unit. once again, nothing to do with quality, but that 1 unit is doing the job of many.

the chameleon seems to be an amp modeler, again just one of the functions all by itself. with this, perhaps quality can cause the difference as the AX8 models are of such high quality, they use their own dedicated processor. still, the AX8 is doing more at the same time than the chameleon. the GSP1101 would be similar.

let's say you have a tow truck and a motorcycle. the tow truck is designed to lift a heavy car and move it. you wouldn't expect the motorcycle to be able to do that. that would be like yelling at the ME-70 for not doing amp modeling - it's obvious.

but a motorcycle can accelerate and drive much faster than a tow truck because that's how it was designed. expecting the tow truck to be as fast as the motorcycle is similar to expecting the AX8 to switch as fast as less-processor intensive devices.
 
JayCM800XL said:
With dedicated audio units in a guitar chain everything is ON all the time ready to go when switched, so of course there's no lag.
As you said, that worked for you before so why move on to the AX8?
I think it's price (at $1399) is specifically aimed at players who find it "hard to swallow paying more for up-to-date gear..state of the art, top of the mountain gear".... because that would be the XL+ (at $2249)
Now, maybe define "dropout" or "lag".... how many milliseconds can you tolerate? Zero??? Because that brings us back to my first question "What kind of music you need to play to need 0ms lag?" (Would love to see, hear an example)
Because in my experience (loud, fast, heavy rock), with drums and cymbals, vocals, bass, other guitars? keyboards? Horns?.... if you switch on the beat, there's no way a few milliseconds its going to be a noticeable dropout, much less to the audience.
YMMV
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Personally if a few milliseconds is unnoticeable to me and the audience with ax8; i can deal with that.
Right now I am setting up a duo with a keyboard player. We will play different stuff and some ballads. More intimate music.
I don't want the strings vibrating and then have a dropout when i change amp preset. It's ugly (even if i'm the only one noticing it); i just don't like it. Specially if you record the gig.
In other words i don't want to have to think i should palm mute the strings in whatever advance to change the amp. I want to play without such limitations :)

By no means am I underestimating ax8. To me it's be best modeler/effects complete pedal-board in the market. Cliff Chase is a genius and i am grateful for the effort he's put into making probably the best portable guitar rig on the planet.

To end my contribution to this topic. Thanks for everybody's time in clearing our doubts and actually getting to compare the gear.
Much appreciated guys!
 
Isn't it kind of simple? If the gear doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you?

Just because a fender Bassman has the tone soooooo many players out there seek doesn't mean it'll work for me and what I want it to do. For the record, I can't get a usable tone (I like) out of a real one, in any year, any model. Is it fender's problem? Should I complain to fender? No, of course not, I just find something else that works for me.

If the audio dropout is a dealbreaker, so be it. Life's too short to complain about 10-20ms dropouts, find what works for you and play some guitar and write some great music :)
 
RoshRoslin said:
Isn't it kind of simple? If the gear doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you?

Just because a fender Bassman has the tone soooooo many players out there seek doesn't mean it'll work for me and what I want it to do. For the record, I can't get a usable tone (I like) out of a real one, in any year, any model. Is it fender's problem? Should I complain to fender? No, of course not, I just find something else that works for me.

If the audio dropout is a dealbreaker, so be it. Life's too short to complain about 10-20ms dropouts, find what works for you and play some guitar and write some great music :)
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Agreed.

In before the typical rebuttal of "but it's expensive so it should do everything." :)
 
John Atanasoff said:
There is flexibility to vary amp sound without lag, even with AX8.
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Yeah, plenty of options in there to get the job done.

I use the scene controller method to cram as many tonal options as I can into a preset. Makes it a bit more useable if I just want to sit on a single preset for an entire set. If you take into account X/Y switching you could potentially have 4 base amp tones to build from using the effect blocks.
 
dbun said:
Yeah, plenty of options in there to get the job done.

I use the scene controller method to cram as many tonal options as I can into a preset. Makes it a bit more useable if I just want to sit on a single preset for an entire set. If you take into account X/Y switching you could potentially have 4 base amp tones to build from using the effect blocks.
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How could you have 4 base amp tones if you only have 2 amps to choose from in a given preset? :confused:
-
Austin
 
atquinn said:
How could you have 4 base amp tones if you only have 2 amps to choose from in a given preset?
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if you use scene controllers you can vary the amp gain, which gives you the potential for a clean and crunch tone per amp. Combined with the X/Y switching to completely change your amp model, you can have 4 possible tones:
- Amp X clean/crunch
- Amp y clean/crunch
 
Chris@AxeFxTutorials said:
you may want to look at using a Drive pedal for some tones if you really need no delay when switching. the Ruckus drive type is pretty high gain and i've used it for those moments i need absolute seamless switching. you can see it in that video somewhere :)

other than that, the Axe-Fx II allows 2 amp blocks and you can Bypass/Engage them so there is also no delay between sounds.

i definitely understand why so many people want seamless switching. but most gear does NOT have seamless switching. even real amps. many pros and big shows use multiple heads dedicated to certain tones and switch the Audio signal, not channels on the amps. my mesa roadster head even popped and had gaps when switching between channels. i've even heard live recordings of Dream Theater where JP had delay and glitching when changing through his old rigs (no axe involved).

sure, some gear has seamless switching. but much does not. if you are the sole guitarist in a trio for example, you may need to switch seamlessly. use 2 amp blocks on the Axe-Fx, or use a Drive pedal on the AX8 and/or Axe-Fx. but changing XY on an Amp block, or changing presets does have an audio delay. it is what it is, again, similar to other gear.

i've gotten into a habit of changing presets about an 1/8th note early or similar. but even when i forget, the gap is really short and usually doesn't cause any issues.

i personally think it's a bit much to ask processors to execute 100s of operations instantly on the downbeat without any glitching or delay. it's just how computers work currently. as the tech gets better, perhaps this can be improved upon. FAS has definitely worked on improving the delay time over the years and it's gotten better and better.

some people view this as "it's digital, it should do whatever we need it to since it's 1s and 0s." but this is a hardware limitation not unique to FAS products. again Drive pedals or 2 Amp blocks (on Axe) can help out here. or hit the switch just a bit early. we have so much available to us already, i'm sure we can adjust things a bit.
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dead on Chris....I use a Tc Electronic Nova System live at times and it has a very big pain in the butt delay when switching presets but it sounds awesome to me...so that being said you learn to do the 1/8th note shuffle..after awhile it becomes second nature......but the TC....switch's on the upstroke of the switch..which makes it more fun..
 
Baba said:
1. Good question about why move on to the AX8, and I think I have decided not to (not just because of this).
2. As far as how many ms can I tolerate? Well, since my previous and current gear doesn't lag, I guess the answer is zero.
3. I don't think it's a question of what kind of music, I think it's more of a question of, is that something you want to tolerate or not, and/or is it important to you or not. (I play everything from Elvis to Adele in a cover band).

Seems like it's important to some, not so much to others.

I've played with other peoples' gear that lagged in the past, and you either put up with your sound dropping out once in a while, or you adjust your playing to work around that. I don't want to adjust my playing to fit gear, I want to adjust my gear to fit my playing, that's all.

At the end of the day, it IS a small issue, it wouldn't kill a performance for me, but it's not something I've ever had to put up with, so I don't know why I should.

Also, and this might be an argument AGAINST my points, but I've never measured dropouts in gear, maybe 20ms is hardly noticable and/or maybe my past gear has had a 10-20 ms dropout and I'm just used to it, and it starts getting to me at 50-100 ms? I don't know.
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Hey Baba! I guess the first question to ask is why are you looking at changing your rig if your current rig fits your needs and provides the sound and feel you want? G.A.S? Or is there something missing that you're trying to fill? Maybe trying to reduce the rig or go direct and leave the amp at home etc...? The answers to these questions may answer your question as to why move to the AX8. If there's a compelling reason to do so, maybe you adjust a bit. If there's no reason to change, don't change. If you want quality amp modeling without any audio gap when changing presets and you are willing to add a controller and other outboard effects (if needed), Austin presented an option.

It's a good thing to have choices these days. Not every piece of gear will work for everyone. Good luck in your quest!
 
Baba said:
Most recently, I was using a Digitech GSP1101 that doesn't have a sound dropout, and neither did my BOSS ME-70.
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Can't speak for the ME-70, but I recall "Stan Ripley" of MBB forum fame stating the GSP1101 utilized the 2nd CPU to manage a smooth seamless transition from one preset to another.
 
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