This is how I see it:
Fractal is a small company trying to out-perform much bigger competitors who have much deeper pockets, a David taking on multiple Goliaths basically. Revealing their cycles isn't to the company's benefit because other companies could try to release some marginal improvement just ahead of something from Fractal to steal the attention and dollars resulting from the dealer-chain advertising. They give hints and let us be surprised and delighted as improvements get dropped.
Cliff totally reworked drive modeling, then amp modeling followed by changes to cab modeling, reverb and then delay modeling, all within the last... six months? That's unheard of, and the changes are substantial improvements; Ares was very good already but Cygnus is incredible. At the same time they've been rolling out fixes and improvements to the editors and documentation when they have time. We're not going to get a timeline because schedules slip and then people whine and competitor's shills make chowderheaded videos decrying the woeful lack of progress.
We have the evidence of what Fractal's done and can trust them to keep doing it. Cliff plays his cards pretty close to his chest, but when he's excited about an improvement he'll drop a little comment and we get hints of what he later delivers on.
I love the product, service and commitment to improvement.
And here comes the "but."
In my opinion, the good folks at Fractal seemingly spend most of their time doing things like improving the sounds of the amps and effects. It's hard to quibble with the results, as they make the best product in the world. And it seems to be what they love doing the most. Their product, their right.
But I feel, after owning four of their products for years, that they give short shrift to the user experience. If there is any area that falls short of being world-class, this is it.
So there is no guarantee that they are going to get around to it. The AXE-FX III has been out for three years now. They very well may discover another amazing idea that makes the amps sound better next month, and so making the units more user-friendly gets pushed off into the future again.
So if I sound like a broken record, I apologize to everyone. But I will keep bringing it up because user improvements are far more important to me than improving an amp modeler that I think already sounds amazing. That 3 percent better delay or 4 percent drive block improvement doesn't mean much to me, or the audience, when I can't see what scene I'm on.
In the end, I hope that you are right, Greg.
