Odd situation - downloads being changed without edits.

wnicholson

wnicholson

Member
I have tried to troubleshoot this in past threads... and found out I had TWO Problems. 1 was a light dimmer which was interfering with my signal... which I solved.
The second issue is this "ghost in the machine" issue I have with my AxeFx2 XL.

My patches used to work fine, but then started sounding wacky. Here's what I've experienced:

Downloads / patches I am intimately familiar with - and have played for years are:

1. Extending the reverb trail for 15 seconds on most everything I download. It's one long echo!
2. Out of nowhere I came back to my unit and same patch as I left, and it was as if I put an MXR phaser on it at full sweep.
3. I have lost nuance in my patches - all my high gain patches sound like double gain.
4. Patches that I'm downloading immediately clip and I get a "cpu overload" on a number of them. These are patches that have been downloaded by others thousands of times... which are literally unplayable because they just clip immediately.
5. Even though I'm not clipping on my meters (which normally tickle red), the OUT 1 is clipping on any number of patches now.
6. I can hear the tone of pretty much all the presets that don't overload the CPU - and the tone is still there - but there's an extra layer of harsh tones and breakup over it. To the average ear - it's sounds decent... but if you're an axe player - you can totally tell the preset has too much gain and is off.

I have reset my unit completely. Cleared the ram, presets, everything... restored factory presets with no problem. And a lot of low / no gain patches sound fine. But once I get into high gain ones, everything goes wacky like above.

I have switched guitars and cables and even just taken the unit out of my studio into a different room and only used headphones. Same issues.
I know the Axe extremely well from a tone standpoint - been playing it for 5 years. This thing is off. Before I send it in for service... I wanted to list the above issues in case anyone might be able to tell me what's going on.

I speculate that even though the ram tests ok, that somewhere in the chip set (RAM or otherwise) - something got fried - and although the unit partially works... it also chokes when accessing bigger patches or certain blocks.

Thanks for the help!
 
wnicholson said:
1. Extending the reverb trail for 15 seconds on most everything I download. It's one long echo!
Click to expand...
someone recently found that the factory presets which he never touches have long reverb times. this is only the 2nd time i've heard of this.

what firmware are you on? the latest "Ares" version?
 
Here's a few more examples from the Axe change... i don't know if these settings are correct, but here goes:
Download 1966 - Iron Maiden (Sim) - has a reverb time of 12.15 seconds. It gets muddy.
Download 1800 - EVH Brown Sound - has a reverb time of 15.96 seconds. Again...everything runs together when playing.
Download 5075 - steve van jam 7vh basic sound - won't even produce a sound: Says: excess CPU usage! Reduce load!
 
chris said:
someone recently found that the factory presets which he never touches have long reverb times. this is only the 2nd time i've heard of this.

what firmware are you on? the latest "Ares" version?
Click to expand...

Yes. Latest firmware. Ares.
Also, I've been getting times where the unit sucks at communicating with Axe-Edit / AxeChange. Never had communication issues before, and ever since this sound thing has started... it will communicate for a while, but if I audition more than 6-7 patches on axe change (through the axe-edit) it stops communicating. Have to restart the software completely. During this time, I have no issue using the front panel axe controls.
 
On another note - the gain thing. I used to be able to palm mute my strings between songs, and it would remain quiet.
Now? When I palm mute - it's like the gate / gain is messed up and it lets lots of noise and crackling through. Never had this issue either.
Keep in mind... everything is set correctly in the unit... I have reset the thing 3x completely. It may not be perfect when you take it out of the box with the factory settings... but it sounds good. These issues make it sound horrible.
 
Aaaand last notes: It seems the longer I play a song on guitar - the crappier the patch sounds. Yes, the reverb plays a part in that... but It's like I'm throwing too much at the processor.... and it starts to overwhelm the unit. And when changing patches, I get massive clipping for about 1/2 of a second between patches.
 
people have used the latest firmware for a while now and i've not seen issues like this. however with the other person just yesterday talking about the Reverb times being increased on presets he's never used before, i have to wonder.

i'll play around with the Axe 2 with the latest Ares firmware and see if anything like that happens to me. this might be hard to track if it's not happening to everyone the same.

notalemming said:
The first 2 especially are really old presets. The thread I think Chris was referring to is this one: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/all-preset-reverb-times-seem-really-long.161768/#post-1937776
He was loading a really old factory preset file & having the same reverb issues you are. It may be these older presets just don't work well on Ares & need to be re-tweaked.
Click to expand...
good point. this thread talks about presets "used for years" so maybe something with old presets just doesn't work well with the newer firmware. that shouldn't be an issue, but might be a place to start. especially with downloading old presets from axechange.

@wnicholson when did you update to the latest Ares firmware? recently?
 
I understand. That can happen. But these are tried and true presets I have used in the past on Ares with zero issues, and I've never had any type of bit-crushed clipping noise when I hit a power chord, then immediately palm mute it... and then the trail breaks up. I've not had the OUT1 clip all the time as it does now. I've not had problems palm muting the guitar to have zero sound on my patches, but now it's crackling hard.
 
chris said:
people have used the latest firmware for a while now and i've not seen issues like this. however with the other person just yesterday talking about the Reverb times being increased on presets he's never used before, i have to wonder.

i'll play around with the Axe 2 with the latest Ares firmware and see if anything like that happens to me. this might be hard to track if it's not happening to everyone the same.


good point. this thread talks about presets "used for years" so maybe something with old presets just doesn't work well with the newer firmware. that shouldn't be an issue, but might be a place to start. especially with downloading old presets from axechange.

@wnicholson when did you update to the latest Ares firmware? recently?
Click to expand...

I've been on Ares since the day it came out... not a single issue before this. Now it's basically the same sound issues across every high gain patch.
 
wnicholson said:
I understand. That can happen. But these are tried and true presets I have used in the past on Ares with zero issues, and I've never had any type of bit-crushed clipping noise when I hit a power chord, then immediately palm mute it... and then the trail breaks up. I've not had the OUT1 clip all the time as it does now. I've not had problems palm muting the guitar to have zero sound on my patches, but now it's crackling hard.
Click to expand...
understood. but honestly nothing should have changed in the unit if no changes were made. of course that's the question here, but that shouldn't be possible.

have you used this exact firmware for a while and it sounded good before? or have you recently updated firmware?
 
Check this riff out. I play it twice.
When I hold the last note you can hear it - it sounds like a phasing issue but there's also a little bit of overloading - digital noise clipping that's in the sound.
chris said:
understood. but honestly nothing should have changed in the unit if no changes were made. of course that's the question here, but that shouldn't be possible.

have you used this exact firmware for a while and it sounded good before? or have you recently updated firmware?
Click to expand...

Yep. I loved the Ares update for all my sounds. I just recorded a short riff where I hold the last note... and you can hear it. It sounds like someone put a comb filter on top of a phaser and clipped the sound digitally.... ON TOP of the regular preset sound. Is there a way I can get the MP3 to you? No new firmware updates or changes... I've been on Ares since it came out with ZERO problems.
 
The preset "Download 1966 - Iron Maiden" goes all the way back to firmware v15.x which dates back to June of 2014. Interestingly, in the other thread I mentioned, he was loading factory presets from v15.x which was causing the reverb issue. The newest version of the factory presets solved his issue. Has this particular preset always been on your Axe & has been updated through various firmwares or did you just reload it?
 
I have downloaded patches from way back to 7 with no issues...
When I was using Ares I had no problems with any of the patches for the longest time.
One day - this sound problem started.
That's when I reset everything to try and solve it.
I reset everything, loaded the latest presets from fractal into the unit and had the same exact issue.
The issue seems to be global... here's why:

When I hold a high gain note... (and it's most obvious on the D G B strings) there is this pattern that happens at the exact same timing no matter what high gain preset I play. It's as if I was moving the pickup switch in an odd-timed pattern on the guitar... the sound sometimes "sucks down" and then clips in a pattern best explained like this....

---x------x-----------x---------------------x-----------

Where the line represents the held note... and the "x" stands for phase clipping weirdness.
 
wnicholson said:
Check this riff out. I play it twice.
When I hold the last note you can hear it - it sounds like a phasing issue but there's also a little bit of overloading - digital noise clipping that's in the sound.


Yep. I loved the Ares update for all my sounds. I just recorded a short riff where I hold the last note... and you can hear it. It sounds like someone put a comb filter on top of a phaser and clipped the sound digitally.... ON TOP of the regular preset sound. Is there a way I can get the MP3 to you? No new firmware updates or changes... I've been on Ares since it came out with ZERO problems.
Click to expand...
you can post a dropbox link or soundcloud link if you use those. otherwise you can send me the mp3 directly at this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/request/k1KMjyGjbYUSEF24pskj

it goes directly to my dropbox. i'll investigate some tonight.
 
I just sent a second file which might be a better example. Notice it does the SAME Thing in the same timing as the first sample.
Thank you so much for helping me with this.
 
And just to be double sure... I just got patch 7884 which is an ARES version patch. You can hear that while the tone / sound is different... it does the SAME thing as the other two sounds. I've uploaded that as the 3rd test. I won't upload anymore until I hear from you. I don't want to drown your dropbox in files!
 
wnicholson said:
And just to be double sure... I just got patch 7884 which is an ARES version patch. You can hear that while the tone / sound is different... it does the SAME thing as the other two sounds. I've uploaded that as the 3rd test. I won't upload anymore until I hear from you. I don't want to drown your dropbox in files!
Click to expand...
hehe i'll check that out too and try to figure things out in a bit. might not hear from me more tonight as i need to work through things.
 
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