Read The Manual

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Getting into the Fractal world was the first time that referencing the manual was a must for me. Like many others, other pieces of gear were more intuitive or straightforward and I was able to figure them out quickly. After going through the process with the FX8, using the AX8 and Axe-Fx III was much easier since there was a better understanding of the terminology and workflow.

I don't believe it's a matter of Fractal products being difficult to use, there is simply a lot of information to absorb for a new user that it isn't typically done with a quick perusal of the manual. They're pretty straight forward if you simply want to go through the factory presets, click on blocks and go through the pages of parameters. If you want to start from scratch, then you'll need more of an informed approach to get up and running faster. That's not to say that one can't sit down and figure it out, the manual just shortens the learning curve if one will simply take the time to RTF(lippin')M.
 
axedude said:
I get what everyone is saying about reading the manual. And I have read it more than twice, and some sections more than that.

What I find most interesting, is that almost everyone in these forums, and in this thread specially even mentioned reading the manual at least 2 times, and some 3 or 4 times. I don't know about most of you, but when I buy electronics or guitar gear, I rarely read manuals once let alone more than once. And I'm able to get up and running on my own, with the rare exception where I might need to refer to a specific part in a manual when necessary.

This alone should tell everyone that this is NOT a straight forward product to understand if it requires reading a manual several times!

Personally speaking I'm very tech savvy and understand even more difficult technical concepts. With that said I'm a much more visual learner and it helps me personally to have videos (picture is worth a thousand words). Videos and better visual diagrams would help me tremendously. I suspect based on the number of people that read the manual multiples times, many AF3 users would also benefit greatly from these as well.

IMO FAS needs to improve the documentation rather than always relying on the forums to provide information to customers. Especially since I've often been told something that was incorrect or an approach that didn't work for my configuration.

With all this said, I love the Axe FX III, I love the tones and its powerful capabilities. Which is exactly why I bought it in the first place. I just wish it had better visual and example documentation so it was easier to get and running more quickly.
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The real issue with needing multiple reads is not usually comprehension of the details, it is retention of those details as well as the relationship between things. This is because it's a deep, deep device.

And once you understand one part, another related part will make more sense when rereading it.

I personally don't think there's much room for improvement in either the Axe Fx III or FC manuals.
 
axedude said:
What I find most interesting, is that almost everyone in these forums, and in this thread specially even mentioned reading the manual at least 2 times, and some 3 or 4 times. I don't know about most of you, but when I buy electronics or guitar gear, I rarely read manuals once let alone more than once. And I'm able to get up and running on my own, with the rare exception where I might need to refer to a specific part in a manual when necessary.

This alone should tell everyone that this is NOT a straight forward product to understand if it requires reading a manual several times!
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It’s as straightforward as it can be and still do all that it does. You don’t need the manual to get great sound out of it, but if you really want to know what it can do, then yeah, The Manual! :p
 
axedude said:
...there should be a section in support with visual examples of rig set ups and different scenarios as posted in the forums or just commonly used applications.!
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If you checked the manual, you'd see that it actually does contain a section "with visual examples of rig set ups and different scenarios as posted in the forums or just commonly used applications." :)
 
I think the other rationale of using the manual frequently is very simple in so much that most guitar players know “their rig” and that’s where they start on the axefx.

For instance, he may never have used looper before, or a rotary fx. Or something like a new amp, or Plex verb, tape delay modulation via the sequencer. It can get deep in a hurry… Or you can slow walk it.

Or let’s kick it up a notch and say someone’s never uses modifiers e.g. Scene controllers to raise and input gain per scene while managing amp output level. That takes just a little know how. But not difficult once you know the concept.

Then there is the trick for letting a little unpitched pick attack through ( envelope follower) with the volume block on the virtual capo; also with the trick of using the pitch follower on the drive control of a drive block.

Little knowledge nuggets are available here in there often times either in the forum or in the wiki outside the manual. The manual can’t contain it all, But without it it would be difficult to understand and/or even implement some of the concepts that I mentioned above.

You can imagine all kinds of use cases where someone is exploring something new and just needs to read the manual on it. I don’t think it’s a case of poor documentation. I’ve seen tons of that, and this isn’t it.
 
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I have RTFM'ed a few times, and have MTFM'ed for a few bits, but still discover new bits now and again that 'click' only after being pointed back at a particular spot in the manual. Of course, I am also prone to asking, "Hey, where is the __?" just before literally bumping into whatever it was, because Murphy is a b**** and loves making me look dumb....
 
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