Open presets without Axe-FX II connected?

It would be a nice feature to save downloaded state from AxeFX, then be able to open AxeEdit offline and edit or at least take screenshots of layouts.
 
6stringscott said:
It would be a nice feature to save downloaded state from AxeFX, then be able to open AxeEdit offline and edit or at least take screenshots of layouts.
Click to expand...

Yes, it seems like it would be a huge benefit if you could use the edit software while not attached to the hardware. You could then download patches, load them into AXE-Edit, and study how they are laid out and what blocks and settings they use so you could re-create them on your AXE, even if it was not directly compatible. Is it feasible that this could be possible at some point?
 
Definitely something I miss. The old Axe Edit allowed this but in all fairness was no where near as robust as the current versions. Small price to pay but it was cool.
 
smfelton said:
I'm sure I read somewhere that this was "never going happen" but I could be wrong, I hope I am..
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You are [probably] not wrong.. I have written lengthy explanations on this topic in prior years, but it's really pretty simple.
AE v3.* stores the firmware block definitions locally - you'll note that it updates them when you first open it after a new firmware is installed. The definitions contain parameters/features for blocks in the current firmware and as most know, CAN change quite a bit from release to release.

If you run AE offline.. which firmware version should it emulate? The f/w that matches the current local blocks definitions?
OK.. sounds great.
What if the preset you are loading offline into AE is from a different f/ware version than that currently emulated? You can't use the latest blocks because they may contain features that were not present in the firmware under which that preset was saved. Setting those to default values, may alter the sound of the preset under the newer firmware.
Do you want to shut AE down, pick an offline f/ware to emulate upon re-opening then open that preset to view?
IMHO - that's very user UN-friendly. Can you imagine your frustration if you had to do that for every preset you wanted to preview/look at???? Ughhhh!
It's a logistics problem really, and why AE 3.*.* no longer supports offline editing.

FWIW- the Std/Ultra and AF2 versions of AE (0.9.* thru 1.*.*) used to support offline editing/viewing and contained a lot of code to support that functionality. It did this by reading external defintions of blocks that were firmware specific.. so those definition files had to updated with every new release. That delayed new AE releases, made it a s-l-o-w load, and created other challenges. In AE v3 (which I worked extensively with the developers + Matt on) the decision was made o remove this functionality. The install package size dropped from 9MB to about 3MB !!

To return to that model would require a local definition of EVERY firmware version supported by AE for EVERY device! Not really a valid application architecture.

I can't say with absolute definition that it will never happen - that's up to FAS - but IME don't hold your breath!
 
s0c9 said:
so those definition files had to updated with every new release. That delayed new AE releases, made it a s-l-o-w load, and created other challenges
Click to expand...

IMHO that's not true. The real reason is it's more work and there is only a small team of devs to do said work.

Really having the block definitions around to match up with preset files is a matter of caching. You could keep the block defs from any firmware that the user has connected to in a cache folder somewhere. Or you could pull them from a webserver owned by fractal on demand. Because it's not bundled with the installer it doesn't impact the software's download size.

Slow loading time? Really... don't make me laugh. AxeEdit doesn't need to scan through all the block defs for every firmware/product combo on startup. So whether there is 1 or 100 it doesn't change the load time unless the devs are doing it wrong. Probably the only time they are needed is when interpreting a preset and if you name the block defs with the right file name it should just be a matter of constructing a path to said cache and load the right file.

Just because it doesn't seem easy in the current architecture doesn't mean there isn't some other architecture that wouldn't support offline mode without any of the downsides you mention.
 
fret said:
IMHO that's not true. The real reason is it's more work and there is only a small team of devs to do said work.

Really having the block definitions around to match up with preset files is a matter of caching. You could keep the block defs from any firmware that the user has connected to in a cache folder somewhere. Or you could pull them from a webserver owned by fractal on demand. Because it's not bundled with the installer it doesn't impact the software's download size.

Slow loading time? Really... don't make me laugh. AxeEdit doesn't need to scan through all the block defs for every firmware/product combo on startup. So whether there is 1 or 100 it doesn't change the load time unless the devs are doing it wrong. Probably the only time they are needed is when interpreting a preset and if you name the block defs with the right file name it should just be a matter of constructing a path to said cache and load the right file.

Just because it doesn't seem easy in the current architecture doesn't mean there isn't some other architecture that wouldn't support offline mode without any of the downsides you mention.
Click to expand...
sounds like you could write a better Axe-Edit program than the current one. we're waiting :)
 
s0c9 said:
You are [probably] not wrong.. I have written lengthy explanations on this topic in prior years, but it's really pretty simple.
AE v3.* stores the firmware block definitions locally - you'll note that it updates them when you first open it after a new firmware is installed. The definitions contain parameters/features for blocks in the current firmware and as most know, CAN change quite a bit from release to release.

If you run AE offline.. which firmware version should it emulate? The f/w that matches the current local blocks definitions?
OK.. sounds great.
What if the preset you are loading offline into AE is from a different f/ware version than that currently emulated? You can't use the latest blocks because they may contain features that were not present in the firmware under which that preset was saved. Setting those to default values, may alter the sound of the preset under the newer firmware.
Do you want to shut AE down, pick an offline f/ware to emulate upon re-opening then open that preset to view?
IMHO - that's very user UN-friendly. Can you imagine your frustration if you had to do that for every preset you wanted to preview/look at???? Ughhhh!
It's a logistics problem really, and why AE 3.*.* no longer supports offline editing.

FWIW- the Std/Ultra and AF2 versions of AE (0.9.* thru 1.*.*) used to support offline editing/viewing and contained a lot of code to support that functionality. It did this by reading external defintions of blocks that were firmware specific.. so those definition files had to updated with every new release. That delayed new AE releases, made it a s-l-o-w load, and created other challenges. In AE v3 (which I worked extensively with the developers + Matt on) the decision was made o remove this functionality. The install package size dropped from 9MB to about 3MB !!

To return to that model would require a local definition of EVERY firmware version supported by AE for EVERY device! Not really a valid application architecture.

I can't say with absolute definition that it will never happen - that's up to FAS - but IME don't hold your breath!
Click to expand...
Thanks for clarifying this! I was wondering about this myself (if you could open a preset in Axe-Edit without connectivity). Admittedly, I don't use AE that much, but I've been using it more lately. The other day, I tried to view a preset in AE without being connected and found that, while navigating around the program, there wasn't a way to load presets. I kinda figured this was due to the major changes made to AE a while back where it reads block defintions from the Axe-Fx unit.
 
Chris@AxeFxTutorials said:
sounds like you could write a better Axe-Edit program than the current one. we're waiting :)
Click to expand...

If Fractal wanna share the preset specs (under NDA) then I would consider it. But reverse engineering everything from scratch doesn't seem worth it for time investment required. Although I've got a lot of free time coming up after being made redundant from my day job. I am planning to do some work on figuring out the current preset format. I wonder how much it's changed since the Ultra days? I had worked out a rough overview of the preset file format back then. i.e. where the preset name was, where the blocks where and then their settings etc. Which I guess is the foundation work for writing something like AxeEdit. That came out of wanting to get the preset name for my foot controller, but then they implemented a specific message to get just that and I didn't need the whole preset anymore.

Or maybe it's better I DON'T get the preset specs and my code can then be open source and the whole community of users benefits long term. Although if someone reverse engineered the preset format to the point where they could write an AxeEdit competitor than I wouldn't be surprised if Fractal then encrypted the preset to stifle that. They seem really open about certain things and really closed about others.
 
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