Strymon Night Sky is out... Have we heard it all?

Saw some demos of the Night Sky. Looks like a cool pedal, but I feel like owning an Axe FX III, I've heard all the sounds of all these pedals already. Does anyone feel this way? It's like every new pedal is some kind of a combination of a delay, or a verb, or a shimmer... and is pretty much achievable in any Fractal unit. Have we already heard it all?

(This isn't a knock at Fractal, in case anyone reads it that way, totally the contrary).
 
I was thinking of going through YT vids of the presets in Strymon boxes in order to try to reproduce them on the III. That would be a very popular preset/block pack. I know many very generous forum members have shared some really great blocks and presets, but I never sat down and tried to match them with any other products. I may have have missed the post if someone has already done this. I think you are right @camilovelandiamusic , the III is an amazing unit and a great value with all the bells and whistles it has in it. Amazing company! Really great talent, both within the company and on this forum.
 
Agreed! All pretty much just chaining multiple effects, processing the wet signal only, applying modulation etc.

Basically selling convenience disguised as innovation for those who aren’t very techs savvy and easily fall for marketing.

Honestly that is a huge percentage of the guitar enthusiast market. Tons of dudes with disposable income who enjoy bragging rights and the thrill of getting the “new” stuff first.

Can’t blame a business for trying to make money though, or marketing depts for marketing
 
Again, I'm also not necessarily knocking Strymon down. They make amazing pedals. I just think it's interesting how future proof we are with a unit like the Axe FX III.

It’s not that different than 11 components hand soldered together for a $300+ price tag and a claim it is the most “authentic” fuzz face know to man....

Or a tube screamer circuit in a cool looking enclosure with fancy knobs and a $400 price.....

It’s just making people feel a need for something they probably already have.

At least in the case of a product like this it is more a product of increasing dsp power and programming, so by that token it is more than just marketing fluff, but not really new or otherwise impossible to obtain sounds for people with an Axe by any means.

Just puts it into an accessible little box with a cool name and the ability to produce that sound you hear in the video with the turn of a knob.

Can’t underestimate how much people will pay for the ability to turn a knob and get a tone lol.

Which is kind of funny in contrast to the synth market because now it’s all going modular and you need to patch like 10 things together just to make noise and everyone is bored of synths with presets and people want to create, not just press a button and play, but guitar market is totally full of “I want to sound like such and such with a press of a button”

Different strokes for different folks I guess
 
It’s not that different than 11 components hand soldered together for a $300+ price tag and a claim it is the most “authentic” fuzz face know to man....

Or a tube screamer circuit in a cool looking enclosure with fancy knobs and a $400 price.....

It’s just making people feel a need for something they probably already have.

At least in the case of a product like this it is more a product of increasing dsp power and programming, so by that token it is more than just marketing fluff, but not really new or otherwise impossible to obtain sounds for people with an Axe by any means.

Just puts it into an accessible little box with a cool name and the ability to produce that sound you hear in the video with the turn of a knob.

Can’t underestimate how much people will pay for the ability to turn a knob and get a tone lol.

Which is kind of funny in contrast to the synth market because now it’s all going modular and you need to patch like 10 things together just to make noise and everyone is bored of synths with presets and people want to create, not just press a button and play, but guitar market is totally full of “I want to sound like such and such with a press of a button”

Different strokes for different folks I guess
Yeah! I guess sometimes you pay to be able to get "that sound" turning on one button, as oppose to sitting and dialing it in for 20 minutes. I've totally bought into that before haha
 
One feature that stood out to me was the step sequencer. A step sequencer would be an awesome addition to the Axe-Fx modifiers lineup.

There's a wish list request for it here
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/thre...sume-option-in-sequencer.157285/#post-1921988

UPDATE - here's a block diagram from the Nightsky manual. I bet the Plex Delay block(s) could cover this.

Screen Shot 2020-09-21 at 11.00.44 pm.png

Extra update - A plex delay block run into the pitch block arpeggiator does a decent job at imitating the step sequencer demos of the Nightsky. Fun stuff.
 
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Everybody keeps on yammering on the Axe-FX and amp sims this and amp sims that. Meanwhile the fact that the Axe-FX also makes your pedal board obsolete gets ignored. And to be frank, THAT was what I got the Axe-FX for. The fact that it had crazy good amp sims was just a bonus to me. Sure, occasionally you might get a crazy pedal that can't be reproduced in the Axe, but those tend to be one trick ponies. And even on most pedal boards there is not always room for one trick ponies you only use for one song. Unless you're The Edge, David Gilmour or Ed o'Brien.
 
Everybody keeps on yammering on the Axe-FX and amp sims this and amp sims that. Meanwhile the fact that the Axe-FX also makes your pedal board obsolete gets ignored. And to be frank, THAT was what I got the Axe-FX for. The fact that it had crazy good amp sims was just a bonus to me. Sure, occasionally you might get a crazy pedal that can't be reproduced in the Axe, but those tend to be one trick ponies. And even on most pedal boards there is not always room for one trick ponies you only use for one song. Unless you're The Edge, David Gilmour or Ed o'Brien.
Agree 100%. I originally got the Axe-FX II because everyone was hyping the amp modelling. As we all know, that is awesome, but what equally blew me away was the quality and quantity / variety of the effects. I was expecting to keep my pedal board for all my Eventide DSP pedals but I ended up selling all of them since there wasn't anything I couldn't do on the Axe...

With the III it just got even more insane, I'm hard pressed to think of any other DSP box that offers that kind of effect processing power in that price point. It really is incredible.
 
Everybody keeps on yammering on the Axe-FX and amp sims this and amp sims that. Meanwhile the fact that the Axe-FX also makes your pedal board obsolete gets ignored. And to be frank, THAT was what I got the Axe-FX for. The fact that it had crazy good amp sims was just a bonus to me. Sure, occasionally you might get a crazy pedal that can't be reproduced in the Axe, but those tend to be one trick ponies. And even on most pedal boards there is not always room for one trick ponies you only use for one song. Unless you're The Edge, David Gilmour or Ed o'Brien.
I think for the regen shimmer it would have to be done in the reverb block since it interacts with the whole reverberation portion. I think the various cloud reverbs would cover that.

The thing I'm not sure about, which I thought was pretty cool in the demo, was the sparse reverb type they have... and then using the LFO to modulate the "size" of that leads to some cool effects.
 
Everybody keeps on yammering on the Axe-FX and amp sims this and amp sims that. Meanwhile the fact that the Axe-FX also makes your pedal board obsolete gets ignored. And to be frank, THAT was what I got the Axe-FX for. The fact that it had crazy good amp sims was just a bonus to me. Sure, occasionally you might get a crazy pedal that can't be reproduced in the Axe, but those tend to be one trick ponies. And even on most pedal boards there is not always room for one trick ponies you only use for one song. Unless you're The Edge, David Gilmour or Ed o'Brien.

Not me ... bought it for the great fx and virtual routing. Got it all backwards- Stomped on the MFC then came scenes!

I ended up staying for the amps though - they do kick ass!
 
Not me ... bought it for the great fx and virtual routing. Got it all backwards- Stomped on the MFC then came scenes!

I ended up staying for the amps though - they do kick ass!

Yeah, I went that way too. First use classic presets per part of the song, then hey, I could assign switches to certain FX, and then hmmm, maybe this scene thing is interesting after all.
 
Channels and scenes are where it's at. So ridiculously flexible. You can do absolutely anything with such a simple, small board. I could never go back to a traditional pedalboard. I'd be so frustrated after learning the Fractal Way.
 
Can’t underestimate how much people will pay for the ability to turn a knob and get a tone lol.

While I love the almost infinite flexibility and reproducibility of Axe routings, configurations, modifiers, channels, scenes, and presets etc, I do miss turning dedicated knobs which can lead to unpredictable and surprising results.

I asked this before but is anyone using a physical knob controller surface as a kind of "performance tab" tied to fixed block parameters like this?
 
While I love the almost infinite flexibility and reproducibility of Axe routings, configurations, modifiers, channels, scenes, and presets etc, I do miss turning dedicated knobs which can lead to unpredictable and surprising results.

I asked this before but is anyone using a physical knob controller surface as a kind of "performance tab" tied to fixed block parameters like this?
I’ve though about configuring my Faderfox to control parameters on the AxeFX for some ambient patches.

Although I’m having too much fun playing the axe as it is, so I haven’t got around to that yet
 
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