New Fractal product coming!!

toneseeker911 said:
FX8 successor : FX8 did not sell enough. Today, with more people moving into modeling solutions, there’s no sense in catering exclusively to tube amp users.
Click to expand...
What you're not accounting for is that...true - more people are moving into "modeling solutions", but MANY of those new solutions are smaller "amp sim only" pedalboard friendly sized units. Tonex, the tiny Tonex, Kemper Player, etc etc. And preamp options are gaining traction such as the two Friedman units, Victory stuff, the rackmount Synergy. It seems to be creating a move away from "all in one" units?Pairing these tone generators with separate effects pedals and such. I'd freaking be over the moon for an updated FX8.
 
Yvanbloomberg said:
More focused and probable predictions :
1- Pedal sized amp+cab block only, $800
(Would be quite « easy » for FAS to bring it, would be a nice entry level stuff, and would fit in existing pedalboards, also is a trend today, ToneX Pedal, Kemper Player, UAFX excellent amp pedals)
Click to expand...
I'm not really understanding some of the suggestions. Aren't the Kemper Player, Tonex and others much more than 1 amp and cab? Kemper offers 5 banks of 10 rigs with effects. Tonex offers 150 preset slots complete with amps and effects. Why would FAS jump into that market with a product that is only one amp and cab? Even if the amp and cab are better, the features list would so overwhelmingly favor the competition that only Fractal enthusiasts would consider it.
 
guitarjim said:
I'm not really understanding some of the suggestions. Aren't the Kemper Player, Tonex and others much more than 1 amp and cab? Kemper offers 5 banks of 10 rigs with effects. Tonex offers 150 preset slots complete with amps and effects. Why would FAS jump into that market with a product that is only one amp and cab? Even if the amp and cab are better, the features list would so overwhelmingly favor the competition that only Fractal enthusiasts would consider it.
Click to expand...
Ok let’s dig a little. When I talked about a « only AMP/Dynacab pedal I was thinking about one little pedal to be part of a full pedalboard with favorite effect pedals. We could imagine FAS would bring Amp+cab+low quality rev/dly and maybe a drive/comp pre effect if UI can allow it but I fear that with a smaller/cheaper DSP without active cooling they won’t va able to bring more.
If they do more they would be obliged to make it too close to an FM3… you have to make the new pedal less expensive than a kemper player and not too big. And not cannibalise the FM3, of course.
But that’s my speculation.
It would have benefits for FAS :
  • they would sell a lot more units
  • it could bring a lot of new customers
  • it would compete with other products
 
Here is a new guess:

A 1U Faslink connected controller with a bunch of knobs and programmable display strips.

Think about it: they have a captive audience of AxeFx3 owners. I would guess that a high % of us would buy this just because it's cool as hell. Margins would be high because it doesn't need much net new innovation and the parts are cheapish (I think?).
 
unix-guy said:
I'm not so sure about that.

The modeling requires a minimal amount of DSP. The smallest and least powerful Fractal, the FM3, requires one core of it's dual core DSP just for Amp modeling. It also requires another processor to offload Cab modeling.

We've been told before that there needs to be a certain sized chassis to allow proper cooling...

Maybe there has been some significant recent improvement in DSP capability but based on comments from Cliff not too long ago, I don't think so.

I'd be really surprised to see this be announced.
Click to expand...
Well, there have been some significant improvements in the last year on the Analog Devices offering. Last year they released some chips on their Sharc+ architecture which basically doubled the performance of the chips you find on the fm3 and fm9 turbo, basically the same DSP but at 1 GHz instead of 500 MHz.
Recently they also announced their Sharc-FX architecture where a single 1 GHz core offers up to 24 GFLOPS, compared to the 3 GFLOPS per core on the fm3/fm9 chips that's an 8x performance increase on paper!

I don't know if this means that a small fractal amp-cab pedal is already possible, but I guess we'll see a huge horsepower increase in the next generation of floor modelers.
 
fuzzyoctaves said:
Here is a new guess:

A 1U Faslink connected controller with a bunch of knobs and programmable display strips.

Think about it: they have a captive audience of AxeFx3 owners. I would guess that a high % of us would buy this just because it's cool as hell. Margins would be high because it doesn't need much net new innovation and the parts are cheapish (I think?).
Click to expand...
Kind of doubt it but hell yes I'd be all over something like this. Also integrated Bluetooth for optional app editor capability!
 
Yvanbloomberg said:
Ok let’s dig a little. When I talked about a « only AMP/Dynacab pedal I was thinking about one little pedal to be part of a full pedalboard with favorite effect pedals. We could imagine FAS would bring Amp+cab+low quality rev/dly and maybe a drive/comp pre effect if UI can allow it but I fear that with a smaller/cheaper DSP without active cooling they won’t va able to bring more.
If they do more they would be obliged to make it too close to an FM3… you have to make the new pedal less expensive than a kemper player and not too big. And not cannibalise the FM3, of course.
But that’s my speculation.
It would have benefits for FAS :
  • they would sell a lot more units
  • it could bring a lot of new customers
  • it would compete with other products
Click to expand...
Why do you think they want to sell a lot more to a lot more of customers and compete with other products?

Sell lot more units : supply chain problems. Quality control problems.
Lot of new customers : lot of new complaints, returned products etc.
Compete with other products : they’re already considered as the alpha company of modeling.
 
fuzzyoctaves said:
Here is a new guess:

A 1U Faslink connected controller with a bunch of knobs and programmable display strips.

Think about it: they have a captive audience of AxeFx3 owners. I would guess that a high % of us would buy this just because it's cool as hell. Margins would be high because it doesn't need much net new innovation and the parts are cheapish (I think?).
Click to expand...
You mean like a recreation of RAC12 for the current generation hardware?

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/rac12-new-1u-rack-controller-for-axe-fx-ii-xl.92325/

Granted that was midi and only a single display, but sounds like what you're thinking of.

@AlGrenadine @sebastos08
 
DLC86 said:
Well, there have been some significant improvements in the last year on the Analog Devices offering. Last year they released some chips on their Sharc+ architecture which basically doubled the performance of the chips you find on the fm3 and fm9 turbo, basically the same DSP but at 1 GHz instead of 500 MHz.
Recently they also announced their Sharc-FX architecture where a single 1 GHz core offers up to 24 GFLOPS, compared to the 3 GFLOPS per core on the fm3/fm9 chips that's an 8x performance increase on paper!

I don't know if this means that a small fractal amp-cab pedal is already possible, but I guess we'll see a huge horsepower increase in the next generation of floor modelers.
Click to expand...
That's pretty cool and definitely seems like we could see something more powerful in the future!

But I don't think it helps for making something smaller / less powerful such as a pedal format device...
 
unix-guy said:
But I don't think it helps for making something smaller / less powerful such as a pedal format device...
Click to expand...
I haven't checked but I guess even their smaller and less demanding chips might have increased performances compared to the past. Don't the HX Stomp and Strymon pedals all use SHARC dsps?
 
DLC86 said:
Well, there have been some significant improvements in the last year on the Analog Devices offering. Last year they released some chips on their Sharc+ architecture which basically doubled the performance of the chips you find on the fm3 and fm9 turbo, basically the same DSP but at 1 GHz instead of 500 MHz.
Recently they also announced their Sharc-FX architecture where a single 1 GHz core offers up to 24 GFLOPS, compared to the 3 GFLOPS per core on the fm3/fm9 chips that's an 8x performance increase on paper!

I don't know if this means that a small fractal amp-cab pedal is already possible, but I guess we'll see a huge horsepower increase in the next generation of floor modelers.
Click to expand...
I thought gen3 used TI chips?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom