Possible Future Blocks

Rajnar

Inspired
Other may have offered the same idea, but I've written to Fractal suggesting a guitar emulation block as a possibility for future AXE units. Perhaps something similar to SIM1's XT-1, which after sampling your guitar, will take the resulting tone imprint and apply a compensating IR to convert the sound of your guitar to any in a library of guitar models and pickups. The XT-1 also does some amp and effect modeling, but I'd be surprised if Fractal isn't far superior in that department.
 
I would like a headphone block - to add the CAB block room settings, an unique EQ to adjust the headphone out feed. Would make setting up patches to use with either FRFR or phones easier. I hate having to set the Room settings in every scene of the cab block everytime I make a new patch.

Would also be great to have a binaural processor effect in there to mix L and R feeds to make a real "amp in the room" effect in headphones.
 
I would like a headphone block - to add the CAB block room settings, an unique EQ to adjust the headphone out feed. Would make setting up patches to use with either FRFR or phones easier. I hate having to set the Room settings in every scene of the cab block everytime I make a new patch.

Would also be great to have a binaural processor effect in there to mix L and R feeds to make a real "amp in the room" effect in headphones.

And have it also mute everything except for the headphone out. I leave my monitors on 24/7. Only time they've been turned off is during a hurricane. I'm that lazy lol
 
After spending way too many hours EQing my split coil Les Paul to get it to sound like a strat - I think it would be a great idea too --

Maybe add it to the wishlist forum?
 
OP, I think you're describing tone matching.
Tone matching seems different to me, Pumpkin, a way of emulating the total sound coming from an real amp and the connected speakers. SIM1's modeler can make, for example, a Fender Strat sound, and in several ways, behave like a Les Paul.
 
Tone matching seems different to me, Pumpkin, a way of emulating the total sound coming from an real amp and the connected speakers. SIM1's modeler can make, for example, a Fender Strat sound, and in several ways, behave like a Les Paul.
There's a thread here about using ToneMatch to do the same thing as SIM1.

It's the first result in the search link I previously posted, but I'll put it here directly:

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/thre...ner-guitar-vault-season-iii-sim1-xt-1.164124/

The ToneMatch is nothing more than an EQ (as far as I'm aware) and isn't restricted to the application of matching amps and cabs.
 
I thought this thread was gonna be about a new block that would look into the future...I think FAS could pull it off.
 
would like a block that lets me custom write my own blocks (like Eventide’s vsig)

Sounds cool... imagine a custom Axe block builder IDE and custom blocks exchange, kind of like Steam Workshop for game mods.

Of course Cliff ain't gonna let us peanut-gallery hackers/developers willy-nilly into the FAS ecosystem. Imagine the support calls and headaches.
Any "developer" probably has to sign an NDA and agree to be killed if they violated it.
 
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...imagine a custom Axe block builder IDE and custom blocks exchange, kind of like Steam Workshop...
Of course Cliff ain't gonna let us peanut-gallery hackers/developers willy-nilly into the FAS ecosystem. Imagine the support calls and headaches.
I don't think the "write your own custom blocks" idea would involve "letting peanut-gallery hackers/developers willy-nilly into the FAS ecosystem." (What I mean is: That phrasing makes it sound unsafe, like it was brain-surgery done by a million monkeys with code-editors. But I don't see why it should be unsafe.)

I can envision the kind of IDE you described. I think it would be, for the innards of a Block, much like what the Grid is, for the innards of a Preset. If letting a user design his own preset isn't unsafe to the ecosystem, I don't see why letting a user design a block to put INTO the preset would be.

If you look in the FAS manuals at how each block is described, and at the signal flow diagrams which describe what each block does, you're basically looking at a very rough wireframe of how you'd need the IDE to work.

If this ever happens, I think it'd take the form of an Axe-Edit-like tool, which allowed a user to build a new block out of the types of "sub-block components" that all the existing blocks are made from, and wire them together with feedbacks, etc.

Once assembled in the tool, the newly-defined block would be exported into a file format which could then be uploaded into the Axe III. Since the current blocks in the Axe III are arranged into an "Inventory" and categorized into different block types (with a maximum number of instances of each type available on the Grid at any time), I suspect the firmware would need to be modified to allow a new "Custom (CST)" block type, with an inventory of four CST block-instances placeable on the grid.

(I'm not wedded to the above-proposed details; I'm just trying to float some possible implementations of the idea. If we can flesh it out enough, maybe we can transform it into a do-able "WISH" item.)

I'm pretty sure Cliff would substantially benefit, if he could provide us the ability to invent our own custom block types in this way. Specifically: He would never again have to hear people asking for a Klon or a FreqOut or some other missing block type. He could just answer, "Hey, you have the custom-block designer tool. Go build it yourself and stop buggin' me." :laughing:
 
Of course, my request in essence is what would be nice to see, but something I’d probably NEVER use, ever. I own Eventide gear and never even launched Vsig. For my use anyway, there’s more than enough in both the Fractal and Eventide processors to keep me busy for 10 lifetimes. I know some of you would come up with some amazing stuff with this kind of editor, so its why I floated the idea.
In short, yep. I was talking out of my ass!
 
@Dr. Dipwad, nice brainstorming.

Yeah, ideally custom blocks wouldn't be compiled as such into a single FW binary (which would grow to be too big). However that might be a technical challenge in itself to be able load blocks as "DLLs" or extensions (which would also require matching the installed FW version).

It seems like there would be two main categories of custom blocks:
  1. Those that use existing templates to add new types/versions, e.g. new drive types
  2. Those that are entirely new, e.g. a glitch block, a lo-fi block, an acoustic sim block
In the example of drives, the first approach would allow changing certain components and parts of the circuit. However I'm not sure it's as simple as an "Axe-Edit-like tool" if FASpice and particular mathematical tricks and tools need to be utilized at different points. Also if the drag & drop tool was too simplistic there wouldn't be enough "degrees of freedom" to design something really new, although it could be fun to play with.

The second approach would be "freeform" using any functions and classes available and would effectively be exposing the Axe code base to developers (likely minus proprietary AMP stuff) -- basically the FAS IDE. This is the NDA situation and would also be risky from a QA standpoint.

Except for something like drives (which seem to fit into two different templates), I'm not sure a "tool" based custom block designer would be able to create entirely new blocks. It would also make sense for FAS to not allow users to touch existing blocks, e.g. custom drives would be a new block type.
 
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Half asleep today I realized there is a third option between 1 & 2 above that is perhaps what @Dr. Dipwad was thinking: a comprehensive toolbox with some of the signal processing functions exposed as "blocks" or transforms. This would require a lot of work to create a "safe" UI + sandbox so as not to configure it to go into unrecoverable feedbacks, spikes, NANs, divide by zero etc. It's cool in principle...
 
I work a lot in the EU, and got my hands on the SIM1 back last March. Risked COVID for this box. It is brilliant. Worlds better than a Variax. Exponentially better. If this were possible within Fractal’s block ecosystem, it would be huge. Somebody is going to do it eventually. Fractal would do it best.
 
I work a lot in the EU, and got my hands on the SIM1 back last March. Risked COVID for this box. It is brilliant. Worlds better than a Variax. Exponentially better. If this were possible within Fractal’s block ecosystem, it would be huge. Somebody is going to do it eventually. Fractal would do it best.
That thing looks way cool. I’ve not been interested in any pedals since getting the FX3, but I have been thinking about getting another guitar or two. Maybe I’ll look into this instead.
 
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