Open Sourced Axe-Fx 2

Open source code is awesome until you actually have to use it or others want to contribute. I realize there is some decent code out there but so much of it is utter crap. The stuff I see that is consistently good code tends to be the stuff contributed by businesses (IOW, developers getting paid) but they are not open repositories for the general public to contribute to without review.
 
hippietim said:
Open source code is awesome until you actually have to use it or others want to contribute. I realize there is some decent code out there but so much of it is utter crap. The stuff I see that is consistently good code tends to be the stuff contributed by businesses (IOW, developers getting paid) but they are not open repositories for the general public to contribute to without review.
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The worse code I see is usually paid Dev.... Generalization on personal experience is always dangerous business
 
Want open-source firmware? Reverse-engineer the hardware and write new firmware from scratch[1]. How long could it take...? ;)

Cliff has written about his process. It's not just thinking hard and making up code; things like the AFX happen because someone has the chops to design, conduct and refine experiments to measure the differences between the device and the model, to generate theories about how to reduce the difference (for something like guitar-amp modeling, this is *not* at all obvious), and to generate code from theory. Iterate that a few thousand times and you're done... I have a strong suspicion that 99.9999% of software people in the open-source community wouldn't have a clue as to how to make anything other than cosmetic changes to the AFX code base.

Personally, I find value in using software which has been shepherded throughout its development by someone with a vision of what the project should be. Too many open-source projects grow by an accretion of features until they fall over.

Seriously, though... There *are* open-source DSP projects for guitar. Cut your teeth on those; work up to a custom hardware platform. Or start small: reverse-engineer a cheap guitar processor and improve that.

There are business arguments to be made, for certain. Like others in this thread, I fail to imagine a scenario in which opening the AFX source code would benefit Fractal Audio. But I also believe that it's a pipe dream to think that enough people in the community would be willing to invest the time and effort required to make a meaningful improvement to the firmware.

Cliff strikes me as the kind of engineer who doesn't want to leave a project until he has done everything he can before moving on. If you had AFX source code, how long do you think it would take you to (a) understand it at a Cliff Chase level, then (b) find an improvement that he missed?

[1] Not sure it's applicable here, but look into how (whether) DMCA applies.
 
I think this could work, if it was possible (Probably isn't):
Leaving the amp modelling side of the axe fx closed, but the UI code open.
Since there is no more space in Axe FX 2, there is no way to improve amp modelling, so there is no positive point to make it open sourse. The secrets will be kept safe.
But UI in the Axe FX 2 was always kinda goofy and complicated (Which is mostly fixed in Axe 3), and, I assume, it's possible to still improve it or design it for individual needs, as it would be mostly a substitution of code.

Was always really jelly of Axe FX 3 input/output blocks, for example :D
 
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FreeMind said:
I think this could work, if it was possible (Probably isn't):
Leaving the amp modelling side of the axe fx closed, but the UI code open.
Since there is no more space in Axe FX 2, there is no way to improve amp modelling, so there is no positive point. Also, the secrets will be kept safe.
But UI in the Axe FX 2 was always kinda goofy and complicated (Which is mostly fixed in Axe 3), and, I assume, it's possible to still improve it or design it for individual needs, as it would be mostly a substitution of code.

Was always really jelly of Axe FX 3 input/output blocks, for example :D
Click to expand...

Isn't it possible to free up firmware space by removing older firmware? I remember that being an issue in the past, that space was freed up by eliminating the possibility to revert back to older firmware versions.
 
I suppose that if there has been possibility to further devellop the Axe FX II, it would have been done by fractal directly.
An AXE FX II is a combination of software and hardware.

Open source is a nice thing . It breaks monopoles, it allow genious people to bring software at some level they could never reach (look for example at Assetto corsa racing simulation + SOL weather and night/day as an example).
Sometime, imaginative people manage to find solutions to improves thing which has been considered as impossible at start.
Let's see arduino. It is also a fair example. A lot of crap, but some genious creations by talented guys.

I don't see in this case the point for Fractal audio to make the Axe FX II firmware open source, but Fractal has for sure used open source DSP Knowledges to devellop its own DSP code.
Mathematic and a lot of DSP models are open source.
It is easy to find for free tons of publication on DSP theory , algorythm, ...
The genious part of people like Cliff is to work on that to create a powerful commercial product after a lot of work. I don't see the point on sharing that experience for free.

As an Engineer myself , I can maybe understand a lot of what is written about DSP Theory in books, but I am totally unable to transfer that into a final product like an Axe FX II.

Let's start with open source documentation !
http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/sprp499/sprp499.pdf

or a "very small" Axe FX II !!
 
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Cliff will probably skip the release of the II source code go straight to the III.

Load "*",8,1
 
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If FAS ever did open-source anything the first order of business should be to add a Pong game...displaying on the front panel and using expression controllers to move the paddles....just....because.
 
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