Tone Junkie Modeling is Dead

lqdsnddist said:
Does it matter how accurate of an amp it is of an amp I’ve never actually played in real life ?

If I like the 64 Super and it sounds good, does it matter if I ever played the real one or not ? Or if the model sounds better or different than the one I did play if I had one ?
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lqdsnddist said:
We have so many tools that can all sound good, so does it really matter how they approach that if they all sound good ?
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If accuracy doesn't matter, why own a Fractal?

"Not accurate at all but still can sound great" is basically the GT-1000.
 
And as far as the thread topic goes...

"Modeling is dead"

...is an objectively less ridiculous statement than...

"There is no right cab"
 
usersnoozer said:
If accuracy doesn't matter, why own a Fractal?

"Not accurate at all but still can sound great" is basically the GT-1000.
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Answer used to be because Fractal was the only option that had good tone, dynamics, feel, effects etc. night and day better than a POD and such

But these days there are lots of pretty good options with very realistic dynamics, feel and all that good stuff

So if you want a “plexi” tone, for 70s rock there are lots of things than can do it and get the breakup, “kerrrang” etc all sounding very good

Now if you want to have 2 dozen plexi options, swap kt88 vs el34, and 100 other parameters to tweak, then yeah FAS is where it’s at, no question king of modeling.

But does that represent the needs for many users ? Do many guitar players really have a desire to adjust cap values, B+ etc ? Or do more just want something that sounds good with minimal need for editing ?

Is the tweaking a means to an end you needed to make it sound usable, or is it just a fun rabbit hole to go down for the type who enjoys tweaking and tuning ?
 
lqdsnddist said:
Answer used to be because Fractal was the only option that had good tone, dynamics, feel, effects etc. night and day better than a POD and such

But these days there are lots of pretty good options with very realistic dynamics, feel and all that good stuff

So if you want a “plexi” tone, for 70s rock there are lots of things than can do it and get the breakup, “kerrrang” etc all sounding very good

Now if you want to have 2 dozen plexi options, swap kt88 vs el34, and 100 other parameters to tweak, then yeah FAS is where it’s at, no question king of modeling.

But does that represent the needs for many users ? Do many guitar players really have a desire to adjust cap values, B+ etc ? Or do more just want something that sounds good with minimal need for editing ?

Is the tweaking a means to an end you needed to make it sound usable, or is it just a fun rabbit hole to go down for the type who enjoys tweaking and tuning ?
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I agree there are plenty of new offerings that will get the job done and do it effectively! everyone has a choice which is even better! When I moved to modeling 16 years ago I told myself if I was going to do it I was going to go with the best out there! to this day I still believe that is FAS!

As to multiple amp options... Firstly I would say it boils down to the needs or the mindset of the player/artest! I get the arguments of option over load it can be daunting trying to navigate or understand all of the settings.

Cliff has stated before that all of the options in the Axe FX are there to help one find their sound or invent something totally new! point being the options are there for the users to decide! The old adage of "I rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it" comes to mind but it doesn't mean you have to use it.
 
I have played several of his captures on the ToneX. They sound fine, but nothing I’ve heard cannot easily be replicated - with more control - on the Fractal.
 
Clickbait aside, there is an unanswered question here...

If modeling and capture tech were somewhat equally available, which would the free market prefer?

Up until about six months ago, Kemper was the only established capture ecosystem.

As captures become prevalent, my guess is that the wider guitar market would rather find captures they like than dial in amp tones.
 
usersnoozer said:
As captures become prevalent, my guess is that the wider guitar market would rather find captures they like than dial in amp tones.
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To me, I think there is a middle ground and an opportunity for both.

If you look at the amp and pedal wish list on this forum, you can see there is an opportunity for a type of profiling that would allow someone to import a drive pedal or amp of their own origin. Fractal Audio, as with any company, has limited time and resources, so the possibility of them adding all those drive pedals and amps would be an enormous strain from a time and money perspective.

However, I have not met a profile that did not behave as the pedal and amp as you twiddle the virtual knobs to fine tune a sound based on my technique, strings, pickups, etc. So the range of the controls being captured accurately is still a final frontier for the profiles to be able to capture in a time efficient manner that would not take many hours to do.
 
usersnoozer said:
Clickbait aside, there is an unanswered question here...

If modeling and capture tech were somewhat equally available, which would the free market prefer?

Up until about six months ago, Kemper was the only established capture ecosystem.

As captures become prevalent, my guess is that the wider guitar market would rather find captures they like than dial in amp tones.
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I don't know about the free market, and I doubt we're going to see much real sales data that could answer that question.

Personally....I have no use for captures. I like being able to turn knobs, real or virtual, and have them do what they're supposed to do as opposed to putting an EQ in front of an amp I didn't set up.

I strongly prefer my Fractal to every real amp I've owned...but if they didn't exist, I'd probably be playing some ridiculous 2-amp rig that I couldn't really play at home. IDK...the amps I'd pick today are MV amps, so maybe it would be okay.
 
toneseeker911 said:
Here is a follow up with his thoughts on the future of modelers - Provide controls that are not on a physical amp 🤦‍♂️.
It’s obvious he hasn’t actually even looked at the edit screen on an axe fx.

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In the replies to comments HW (the guy in the video) says that he owns an Axe-FX III. In the video he does dismissively acknowledge that Cliff and Fractal are offering the most in regards to innovative / beyond analog controls on their amp models. You have to watch 24 minutes into the video before he makes that admission. It strikes me as more than just a bit deceptive to only passively mention that the things he claims to be the future of modeling (the entire thesis of the video) are already being offered by a major player in the modeling space without calling attention to it more explicitly and earlier in the monologue. Many of the exact features and controls he spends time stating that he'd like to see developed and included in modeling units are already available on FAS amp models and have been for years.

Either he's ignorant of the abilities of the Axe-FX III or he is deliberately obfuscating so he can garner more views on his video and convince the uninitiated that he is deeply insightful on how to utilize this up and coming technology (which is odd because he says that this technology is now dead). Given that he makes a living in the guitar modeling / profiling space and does seem to understand what he's talking about when he describes the features he'd like to see, I suspect the latter over over the former.
 
OrganicZed said:
You have to watch 24 minutes into the video before he makes that admission. It strikes me as more than just a bit deceptive to only passively mention that the things he claims to be the future of modeling (the entire thesis of the video) are already being offered by a major player in the modeling space without calling attention to it more explicitly and earlier in the monologue.
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this is the trend lately for gear reviews and other industries. mostly they pose a question for the title "is ___ the worst thing ever?????"

and after 10 minutes, it's not.

but if you stop watching the video early, you get heated and post comments and argue and get more views to the video and they make more money and their sponsors are happy with the view count.

people who just post an informative video get buried by all this. it's all pretty silly right now.
 
Incoming text wall.

So this guy is saying that the profiling market is fragmenting out from just Kemper to all these separate ecosystems. Quad Cortex, ToneX, etc. and eventually "amp profile content creators" (gross) are not going to be able to sell profiles in all these different systems because X additional profiles to create for X different ecosystems means X more work, and people are going to get confused about what profiler to get, and individual options for each profiler are going to get a lot worse because of said profiler production issues... so he is predicting that the market is going to eventually try to solve this problem with a single "computer" or some kind of dedicated hardware device that is going to run all the software from all these different companies, which themselves will convert their own ecosystems to some kind of compatible VST software that will run on this hypothetical computer thing. So in other words, you'll be able to take your "OmniProfiler" box and load up the Kepmer VST software and the Quad Cortex VST software and do whatever from there.

Then he goes on to say that, like the world of computers, there might be a company like Apple that will have the smoothest user experience because everything from the hardware to the OS to the virtual amps will all be under the development of a single company within a single product. Can anybody on this FRACTAL AUDIO AXE-FX forum guess the company and product this guy is talking about? Why obviously It's the Quad Cortex, of course! lol. What's that? Fractal Audio Axe-Fx who? Right.

Funny how these shills never talk about the Axe-Fx in these doom and gloom discussions, even though it has offered the exact solution they're proposing and have done so for over a decade now... but they can't monetize it so it doesn't count to them, even in their hypothetical predictions about how the market will move.

I understand the people who get profilers to capture their own rigs with minimal effort, and I understand people who make and sell profiles, but I cannot for the life of me understand people who buy profiles. You want to pay money for a completely static image of an amp as dialed in by someone who isn't you, who doesn't understand what you want out of gear? Why on earth would anybody do that? And then you want to pay AGAIN for another profile of the same amp but with, like, the treble knob turned up a bit? What??? If you're going to do that, why on earth wouldn't you just get a modeler instead of a profiler?
 
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having a good time with the new firmware

see cliff comment to some thread with a yt link about modelling being dead

chuckle and don't even go look for the video

go back to playing
 
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