Doug Bryan
Member
Hi Everyone:
I hope everyone here is doing well and your tones are everything you imagined they would or could ever be (or damm close for that matter).
Happily, after a three-year absence from Fractal Land, I am coming back and very excited to do so. This weekend I will be purchasing the AxeFx III, I will be starting with a single FC6 controller that if need be I will add another one later on down the road and in addition I will be purchasing two expression pedals and the Cab Lab.
I was in trusting the help of the forum members here and your ears as well as your experience for those of you using FRFR systems to help comb thru the weeds in regard to what exactly I should be looking at. I think it would help you all to a great degree in helping me if you better understood my situation so let me give you a brief background and I can tell you then exactly what I am looking for .............
Predominantly, I can be labeled as a Blues Rock / Bluesmetal original guitarist, singer songwriter. My debut album will be out tentatively January 17, 2020 and I will be touring in support of my album shortly thereafter. All the guitar tones heard on the album will be from the AxeFX III. I also own a recording studio running several Universal Audio Apollo X Series units along with their entire library of plug ins with both Pro Tools and Studio One 4.5 Professional as my DAW options into an extremely powerful host computer with both Tannoy and Focal Studio Monitors. To ensure the absolute most flat, most accurate mixes in studio possible, the faculty has been properly acoustically treated and in addition iK Multimedia's ARC 2.5 Room Correction administered and employed.
In addition to the above, I am also a hired gun for many bands of every genre you can imagine on the live end both covers and originals respectively, a fill in for wedding bands, hire for studio sessions of anything you can think of working from my studio or another facility for anything from bands to solo artists to television and film and even advertisement companies. So now you see why I came back to Fractal Audio.
I will be using my system everywhere I go and for everything that I do. This will include the FRFR system. From a live perspective, I intend to have said FRFR system with me at every live show possible. In situations where that is not possible I use my JH Audio Roxanne IEM's when necessary. So I will essentially always have a stereo feed running to Front Of House while running the FRFR system or IEM's simultaneously.
Phew! that was alot to explain.
So now with that being said, let me explain EXACTLY what I'm looking for to all of you and I want to know if this even exists in an active powered FRFR product.
One word : CONSISTENCY
How exactly? Well, in the sense that when I make a patch or scene and I walk away from the stage where my FRFR system is and I go out front to hear the FOH the audience hears, I don't want to hear a difference, I don't want to hear coloration because if I do and it is majorly, decisively different, knowing how I am I will tweak on the fly to compensate and then suddenly my end of what I hear or the crowd end of what they hear will undoubtedly suffer to a degree.
Now I fully understand that nothing will be exact and I get that, but how about as close to the same as possible barely detectable to the human ear? In that sense there has to be something out there. Please do not include the Meyer System here as I don't have that kind of money. This dame scenario I would like to have in my own studio and other studios as well.
My total budget for this I would like to see not get past $2,000 but I can go as high as $3,000 max. I know that the most expensive doesn't always mean the best either.
I am looking for answers from those with extensive experience. My last FRFR system was with my AxeFx II XL+ and consisted of a Matrix GT1600 Power Amp powering two Matrix Passive FR 212's. While this was a massive system that moved a tornado worth of air that could take down a barn, the sound was too different from what I heard compared to what the audience heard. Also it was too big and too heavy. Those 212's were like picking up a 412 Oversized Recto Cabinet. The AxeFx III will have a permanent home inside a portable 3 space padded rack shoulder bag. With that being said, a pair of 112 active wedges or square cabs would be perfect with a good amount of headroom or the same in an active 212 BUT that is provided the speakers are off axis on the baffle at least by 80 degrees to avoid phase issues which I otherwise would not get with the active 112 systems. They can be Coaxial or discreet Woofer, Tweeter, FR Horn Systems but I probably would prefer Coaxial for the mere fact that should I ever need to mic each cabinet up I can do so.
Aside of my former Matrix system, I have only heard the Friedman ASM12's and just like the Matrix system I had, there was a massive difference in terms of what I heard on my end and what the audience heard. So again, the keys here are......
1.) Consistency from FRFR to FOH Systems in terms of what is heard
2.) Must be an Active Powered System
3.) As flat as possible
4.) Headroom is very important
5.) Can be wedge or cabinet format
I don't care who the manufacturer is be it Line 6, Xitone, Mission, Matrix, Atomic.
Finally, I apologize for the length of this post, I just wanted to be as detailed as possible to avoid as many follow up questions as possible but if anything was missed and imperative to you all helping me then please by all means ask me anything you need to.
I look forward to getting back to this and hope everyone is doing great. Thank You in advance for whatever help you all can provide. I appreciate you all.
All The Best:
DB
I hope everyone here is doing well and your tones are everything you imagined they would or could ever be (or damm close for that matter).
Happily, after a three-year absence from Fractal Land, I am coming back and very excited to do so. This weekend I will be purchasing the AxeFx III, I will be starting with a single FC6 controller that if need be I will add another one later on down the road and in addition I will be purchasing two expression pedals and the Cab Lab.
I was in trusting the help of the forum members here and your ears as well as your experience for those of you using FRFR systems to help comb thru the weeds in regard to what exactly I should be looking at. I think it would help you all to a great degree in helping me if you better understood my situation so let me give you a brief background and I can tell you then exactly what I am looking for .............
Predominantly, I can be labeled as a Blues Rock / Bluesmetal original guitarist, singer songwriter. My debut album will be out tentatively January 17, 2020 and I will be touring in support of my album shortly thereafter. All the guitar tones heard on the album will be from the AxeFX III. I also own a recording studio running several Universal Audio Apollo X Series units along with their entire library of plug ins with both Pro Tools and Studio One 4.5 Professional as my DAW options into an extremely powerful host computer with both Tannoy and Focal Studio Monitors. To ensure the absolute most flat, most accurate mixes in studio possible, the faculty has been properly acoustically treated and in addition iK Multimedia's ARC 2.5 Room Correction administered and employed.
In addition to the above, I am also a hired gun for many bands of every genre you can imagine on the live end both covers and originals respectively, a fill in for wedding bands, hire for studio sessions of anything you can think of working from my studio or another facility for anything from bands to solo artists to television and film and even advertisement companies. So now you see why I came back to Fractal Audio.
I will be using my system everywhere I go and for everything that I do. This will include the FRFR system. From a live perspective, I intend to have said FRFR system with me at every live show possible. In situations where that is not possible I use my JH Audio Roxanne IEM's when necessary. So I will essentially always have a stereo feed running to Front Of House while running the FRFR system or IEM's simultaneously.
Phew! that was alot to explain.
So now with that being said, let me explain EXACTLY what I'm looking for to all of you and I want to know if this even exists in an active powered FRFR product.
One word : CONSISTENCY
How exactly? Well, in the sense that when I make a patch or scene and I walk away from the stage where my FRFR system is and I go out front to hear the FOH the audience hears, I don't want to hear a difference, I don't want to hear coloration because if I do and it is majorly, decisively different, knowing how I am I will tweak on the fly to compensate and then suddenly my end of what I hear or the crowd end of what they hear will undoubtedly suffer to a degree.
Now I fully understand that nothing will be exact and I get that, but how about as close to the same as possible barely detectable to the human ear? In that sense there has to be something out there. Please do not include the Meyer System here as I don't have that kind of money. This dame scenario I would like to have in my own studio and other studios as well.
My total budget for this I would like to see not get past $2,000 but I can go as high as $3,000 max. I know that the most expensive doesn't always mean the best either.
I am looking for answers from those with extensive experience. My last FRFR system was with my AxeFx II XL+ and consisted of a Matrix GT1600 Power Amp powering two Matrix Passive FR 212's. While this was a massive system that moved a tornado worth of air that could take down a barn, the sound was too different from what I heard compared to what the audience heard. Also it was too big and too heavy. Those 212's were like picking up a 412 Oversized Recto Cabinet. The AxeFx III will have a permanent home inside a portable 3 space padded rack shoulder bag. With that being said, a pair of 112 active wedges or square cabs would be perfect with a good amount of headroom or the same in an active 212 BUT that is provided the speakers are off axis on the baffle at least by 80 degrees to avoid phase issues which I otherwise would not get with the active 112 systems. They can be Coaxial or discreet Woofer, Tweeter, FR Horn Systems but I probably would prefer Coaxial for the mere fact that should I ever need to mic each cabinet up I can do so.
Aside of my former Matrix system, I have only heard the Friedman ASM12's and just like the Matrix system I had, there was a massive difference in terms of what I heard on my end and what the audience heard. So again, the keys here are......
1.) Consistency from FRFR to FOH Systems in terms of what is heard
2.) Must be an Active Powered System
3.) As flat as possible
4.) Headroom is very important
5.) Can be wedge or cabinet format
I don't care who the manufacturer is be it Line 6, Xitone, Mission, Matrix, Atomic.
Finally, I apologize for the length of this post, I just wanted to be as detailed as possible to avoid as many follow up questions as possible but if anything was missed and imperative to you all helping me then please by all means ask me anything you need to.
I look forward to getting back to this and hope everyone is doing great. Thank You in advance for whatever help you all can provide. I appreciate you all.
All The Best:
DB