QC, ToneX and the future of Fractal

J

janleonardi

New Member
Hi! At the moment with the Quad Cortex, which is very portable and powerful in DSP, and with the upcoming launch of the ToneX Pedal, which way do you think Fractal will go? Personally, I would love to see an "FM6", compact like the Quad Cortex, and with as much DSP as an AX FX3. Although I love and prefer Fractal, I sold my AXE FX3 and bought a QC for the simple equation between size and DSP. For my use, the rack is too big, the FM3 has too little DSP and the FM9 is kind of big. What do you think?
 
Hardware dictates what gear is designed and available.

Use what works for you at the time and change it if you want when something new comes out.

FM0, FM4, FM6, FM8 and others have been desired here - all of course with the Axe3 power of more.

We’ll have to wait and see what gear manufacturers deem possible and go from there.
 
I own a Kemper and an HX Stomp, and had a QC for a little bit. Now I am in the honeymoon period with my first Fractal product, the FM9.

I also use and love Amplitube 5, Tonex, and Helix Native.

Each offers things the others lack.

Sound quality is the least important part of all this I believe. I get quality tones from all of these products. What it boils down to - for me - is usability/UI and size.

The QC has by far my favorite UI, but when I had it it was still half baked.

I think Fractal should jump into the profiling ring.

But anyone who succeeds in combining the best aspects of each platform into one unit will dominate. The trouble is deciding what the “best aspects” are.
 
I personally hope that Fractal never wastes any resources doing the capture thing.
I had a Kemper once and realized really quick how it is a much better idea to have the world's best model of an amp than have a picture of one that sounds about 85% there and without the feel.
 
I’m with @Budda on this one.

Plus, the Axe-Fx III does everything I need it to do. The only thing I thought about the QC is that I wouldn’t want my whole rig at my feet ever again. If something happens to the FC12, I can still get thru a night. If someone spills a giant drink on the QC, FM9, or a pedalboard of analog fx, might not be so lucky.
 
Quad Cortex has been out for what, 1.5 or 2 years? But it is still way behind Line6 or Fractal in features and has made surprisingly little progress. I do enjoy its onboard user experience, hardware and form factor but otherwise I have no interest in buying one again.

ToneX, the app, is just a turd. It's just so badly designed overall. The tone models in best case scenario sound really good, but finding the right ones is a complete chore because the user interface is a pile of garbage in so many ways.

Which brings me to the rumored ToneX pedal. It ticks a lot of boxes for a compact amp/cab sim box to put on your pedalboard that is easy to work with, but if you have to use the ToneX app to cram things in there then it's probably a "find what you need, put them on the pedal and avoid the app like plague. I was way more interested in it until I used the ToneX app for any length of time.

I'd probably enjoy ToneX more if I had some real amps to capture but I no longer do. I liked that on the QC, packing my favorite amp with my favorite settings into a digital box worked well.

I tried one of the ToneX Dumble models and got things I liked out of it, then went to see what I could get out of Fractal Dumble models and it was so much more satisfying to come back to a system where you pick an amp, tweak it like it's the real thing etc. Made me also appreciate Axe-Edit in a new way.
 
laxu said:
Quad Cortex has been out for what, 1.5 or 2 years? But it is still way behind Line6 or Fractal in features and has made surprisingly little progress. I do enjoy its onboard user experience, hardware and form factor but otherwise I have no interest in buying one again.

ToneX, the app, is just a turd. It's just so badly designed overall. The tone models in best case scenario sound really good, but finding the right ones is a complete chore because the user interface is a pile of garbage in so many ways.

Which brings me to the rumored ToneX pedal. It ticks a lot of boxes for a compact amp/cab sim box to put on your pedalboard that is easy to work with, but if you have to use the ToneX app to cram things in there then it's probably a "find what you need, put them on the pedal and avoid the app like plague. I was way more interested in it until I used the ToneX app for any length of time.

I'd probably enjoy ToneX more if I had some real amps to capture but I no longer do. I liked that on the QC, packing my favorite amp with my favorite settings into a digital box worked well.

I tried one of the ToneX Dumble models and got things I liked out of it, then went to see what I could get out of Fractal Dumble models and it was so much more satisfying to come back to a system where you pick an amp, tweak it like it's the real thing etc. Made me also appreciate Axe-Edit in a new way.
Click to expand...
Just for the hell of it I tried the ToneX and you are right about IU. I tried some ML Sound amps and some are really good and not much more price wise than a dozen golf balls. They need post effects. Their customer response is extra quick and they helped me with ML Drums because I’m a newbie.
The neural DSP stand-alones are good but sound a lot alike. I think the best is THu.
All that being said, I’ll take my Mark II Turbo anytime, every time. Never a compromise!
 
laxu said:
ToneX, the app, is just a turd. It's just so badly designed overall. The tone models in best case scenario sound really good, but finding the right ones is a complete chore because the user interface is a pile of garbage in so many ways.
Click to expand...
It's all relative, right? The browsers in amp modelers present a pretty low bar :). By that standard it's not half bad, especially for a v1. It needs some obvious enhancements, but you can search/sort/filter tonenet and you have even more options for your local tone models. It does make one reflect on how the Axe-Edit picker and browser could certainly stand some improvement.
 
I guess at the end of the day you just have to decide what's more important to you - a product with a proven track record of support, improvement, ridiculous amounts of free updates, best in class latency, a company owner that communicates on his own forum, and world class quality and design ORRRRR - 9 inches.
 
Personally, I can't understand all the fuss about capturing amps and combos. While in theory it's nice to be able to capture things like Dumbles or whatever, how many people actually have access to the real thing? And for most of us, even those with a few amps, we're still limited to how many we have access to. Unless we buy pre-made captures from a 3rd party.

And to be honest, although I have some really nice amps, I couldn't be bothered with all the hassle of trying to capture the sound of, say, my Musicman 212HD, then working on all the variations and tweaks and tones, mike placements etc etc. And still be limited to just what was captured unless we then modify that using digital modeling controls.

I just don't get it - when we have, in our Fractals or whatever other modeling devices we have, just about perfect models of hundreds of amps, effects, pedals, speakers, mike placements, etc etc, and can tweak them to hell and back - and they all sound fantastic, in either a studio setting or a live playing situation.

I don't know about you lot, but my ears are most definitely not what they used to be, and although I can tell the differences between presets, amps, etc in isolation in the studio, in a mix or live band situation, none of those finer points are audible.

Instead of wasting time capturing amps etc, I prefer to simply select one of the bazillion options in my AxeFX3, then tweak it and play it like I would with a real amp. When all said and done, it's the music that emerges at the end of the chain that matters.....
 
Here is what I think;
20+ odd years ago I flew to play at festivals with my guitar on my back using whatever backline was available. There were these funny kidney shaped things that were in vogue at the time and which for high gain sounds were seriously lacking compared to the real deal they were emulating, but we got by, somehow. If a time traveller had appeared to me and demoed an Fm3 I would have whacked him over the head with my Les Paul Studio which is my heaviest blunt instrument (I think I just made a pun!?) and done a runner with it which would have been completely out of character for me as I am not prone to violence. An Fm3 and FC6 would have fit nicely in my small travel bag alongside my emergency underwears (anything can happen on the road) and been far more powerful, versatile and, well, awesome sounding than anyone could have conceived.
In the cold hard light of day I acknowledge that until the Axe Fx 4 brings us quadruple the power of the 3 in a footprint the size of a matchbox (you know, a large matchbox, the Fx 5 will be small matchbox sized that quadruples the power of the 4) things will remain trying but my New Years resolution is to be more stoic in the face of adversity.
tl;dr
21st century 1st world musician problems, or something...
 
I’m going to throw this out there…I’d rather see more effects models than more amps.
One idea I think would be cool but I’m no programmer…the Edit…when you click on a block, say amp, you actually see the model with the controls on it. Not sure how you’d handle the deeper dives…don’t want to have to virtually solder in new bright caps!😂
 
I hear people raving about the QC like they did Kemper. But most of the demo videos I see, well don’t sound that good to me. Sound and feel for me is what it’s about. I second the no resources put into the capture thing and also don’t like the idea of my entire rig on the floor.
 
jellodog said:
Ah, so you're really talking more about tones and not focussing on sound quality, then?
Click to expand...

They all also have great sound quality. Line6, Kemper, Fractal, QC. I have owned them all, and all are great.

I’m mostly interested in UI, and I wish the QC had been complete or a lot closer to it at launch. For me (I guess I need to keep stating this is my opinion?) The QC UI is by far the best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom