The Axe-Fx 3 works only at 48Khz

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leon1991

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This is a rant, i don't write these kind of messages very often but i think this one is worth it.

You guys at fractal audio did an amazing job creating the AXE FX 3, it's an amazing piece of equipment with amazing capability and versatility of sounds.

But it's now obvious that you did not understand anything about the studio work, about what a modern guitarist / music producer needs and about the future of music production in general.

I really want to buy an AXE FX 3 not only because i need something like a guitar amp, but because it would be a really cool experimental box that i can use to make every sound more personal: i can use it on vocals, synths, drums and on every other sound i want while i'm mixing or doing sound design, it has amazing effects that can add up really amazing textures to every sounds.
Doing these kind of stuffs from pro tools (or every other DAW) with a direct USB bus it will be a really fast, creative and innovative workflow and that's the point: i want do that, i want spend all the money it costs but it will not work fine.
Why? because AXE FX3, the machine with all the power of the world, don't support any other sample rate than 48KHz.
You don't know what you're missing, because i think that many many other people in the world have the same needs that i have and they are fucking upsetted like me because these useless and nonsense spec that only fractal audio has in the entire audio world.
And i'm more upsetted to see comments like "it's the entire audio world that has to adapt to 48KHz", yes maybe , but it's obvious that none give a fuck about the sample rate fractal audio equipment adopt, and the standard will remain 44100Hz of course, till something bigger will come.

Said that it's a shame that this so powerful piece of gear still has this stupid limitation.
As a producer many time you cannot choose the sample rate of the project because maybe someone else created it before, and so you know what a pain in the ass is to rerecord everything or to change the sample rate if the project has to go from producer to producer, with all the quality loss and things like that.
I don't know what is the motivation of your choice, maybe are the IRs maybe not, it doesn't matter because it's a crazy choice. With this ackward fixed sample rate at 48KHz you are not making the AXE FX 3 ahead of the times, you are losing opportunities to potentially make the AXE FX 3 an amazing studio piece and to help people utilize it on different material than guitars (which kinda bored the fuck out a little bit) to discover new things, maybe new styles and that maybe will help you creating new revolutionary pieces of equipment that can be groundbreaking even more than AXE FX ever did.

So i know my words haven't got that much value, but i hope that maybe one day you will make a selectable sample rate, if not so i wasted 30 minutes of my life.

Anyway, thank you, have a good day.
 
OP, the Axe III is a guitar processor. It is marketed as such, was designed as such, constructed as such... 48k for a guitar processor (given the audio range of guitar tones) is more than adequate. Changing the sample rate to 96k would necessarily cut the number of effects that could that could be used simultaneously — which is one of the main marketing points for this device.

It isn’t Fractals fault that you wish to use their device differently from its design / intent. Have you gone to the hardware store recently to complain that their hammers don’t cut wood?
 
iaresee said:
The analog I/O is world-class and free of sample rate constraints.
Click to expand...

Yeah, just plug it into your favorite interface, and record and 44.1 or 96k or 1 bit or whatever you want!!

Or just start your project with 48k and work with that, just like everyone else? It takes what...a mouse click?

The quality at 48k is better and prevents artifacts, 44.1 is just what was 'quality' in the past, but this isn't 1990 anymore, we have all since moved on....
 
I do wish the rate was selectable since I mainly use SPDIF into my Mac, and there's usually some setup I have to do if I re-jigger anything, but it's a small price to pay for such an amazing tool.

I remember the Kemper used 44.1 but you could go into a secret menu and change it to 48! But then you had to change other stuff so the cabs didn't sound weird or whatever.

In any case, I feel ya, OP. I just suggest accepting it as it is and using the analog I/O so you can control your own sample rate. As Iaresee pointed out, it's world class and you won't find any quality degradation. Good luck!
 
Imagine the rant we would have gotten if the sample rate was 64k like Cliff has stated several times as being the best possible.
Really with converters as good as they are now there’s no need for ultra high resolutions, those frequencies get filtered out before they can cause aliasing. 48kHz sampling rate puts ya at 23kHz with some change left over for the Nyquist formula.. nobody is hearing those frequencies except my dog, and he doesn’t like it. o_O
 
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Shaw said:
OP, the Axe III is a guitar processor. It is marketed as such, was designed as such, constructed as such... 48k for a guitar processor (given the audio range of guitar tones) is more than adequate. Changing the sample rate to 96k would necessarily cut the number of effects that could that could be used simultaneously — which is one of the main marketing points for this device.

It isn’t Fractals fault that you wish to use their device differently from its design / intent. Have you gone to the hardware store recently to complain that their hammers don’t cut wood?
Click to expand...

OP CRUSHED
 
The OP does have a point, in spite of the petulant way it was expressed.

I rarely disagree with Cliff, but the decision to use a fixed sample rate is something I would have advised against. I believe the community here skews towards live performing guitarists, for whom this isn’t an important issue, but in the studio it can be a significant matter. When working on a collaborative studio project, the choice of the project sample rate often isn’t up to the guitarist - you often must use a sample rate dictated by someone else, and, for a variety of reasons, it may not be 48 kHz

Of course there are workarounds, such as using another output instead of USB or using a conversion device, but these workarounds can be inconvenient compared to simply changing the output sample rate. The fact is competitors like Helix and Headrush have selectable output sample rates because that is a useful feature.

IMHO Fractal Audio is a victim of their own success here. The AxeFXIII is a wonder of I/O flexibility and the product page even touts it as “The center of your music workstation”. But without a selectable sample rate, IMHO it falls just a hair short of fulfilling that potential.
 
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