shasha said:
Isn't FRFR supposed to be similar to monitors? I know that different monitors sound differently, but you should at least be able to dial in something decent with some tweaking.
Dutch said:
And Shasha, it's just that some monitors really do sound bad. Awful. There are some criminally awful monitors out there. <snip> And some monitors are OK, but just have something that does not cooperate well with the Axe-FX. Real FRFR doesn not exist in monitorworld. Maybe really expensive.
Monitors are designed to go loud, be cheap and sound good at the same time, if you get two out of three you're lucky. (Trying to quote Jay Mitchell but it's to late here to go get the real quote). And we're all putting things under microscopes here.
To build on what Dutch said. . . .
FRFR = Full Range, Flat Response. Ideally, studio monitors, stage wedges, FOH systems and the products we're talking about in this thread would all have a high degree of fidelity and be completely flat from 20Hz to 20,000 Hz. In the real world that is not the case, sometimes purposefully, sometimes not. For example, some monitor wedges alter the mids so vocals will cut through more easily (good if you're a singer; not good if you want FRFR). Other products attempt to be FRFR but don't achieve this either due to poor design or compromises required to meet a price point.
Can I achieve a decent sound from anything that's suppose to be FRFR? That depends on how much fidelity compromise has been made, what the compromise is and how the sound I'm trying to create will overlay that.
In my case it's important for a patch to translate well between my studio monitors and my portable FRFR solution. If I remove that requirement and use one of the "OK" monitors Dutch notes, I can likely dial up a patch I like. I will unconsciously work around the fidelity issues as I build the patch. However, if I were to create the same sound from scratch on a higher end system with greater fidelity, it should sound better.
To me, it's important to understand the real world issues with FRFR and then choose what you want to trade-off. I would prefer to spend $3K on a solution. Instead I'm working on better ways to compensate for the non-linearity in my current FRFR solution. That might get me close enough. If not, I'll have to spend some money. What constitutes "close enough" is probably different for everyone.
BTW. . . FRFR is new territory for many guitar players, and there's a learning curve. It goes counter to all that we've learned searching for speakers, preamps, power amps, etc. that "colour" the sound in a pleasing way. The bottom line is that the AxeFX does all of that now (the colouration), and the ideal FRFR solution adds NO colouration when amplifying the AxeFX signal.
Terry.
