troystetina
Member
Hello all,
I'm a new convert to Fractal Audio as of this year, and I wanted to contribute my experience to y'all. First of all, a bit about myself: I wrote the first widely published metal guitar methods back in the late 1980s and my method "Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar" become a 'must have' for a lot of shredders over the years... a big part of the guitar technique lexicon. I've published about 40 books in guitar instruction and they've done well... still selling after 30+ years. For the last 5 years or so, I've been working on Speed Mechanics 2 (book/video system) and just wrapping it up now. (If you want more background just google me).
Anyway, I decided on Axe FX III and snatched one up on eBay less than a year ago (there was a wait list at the time for new). And, as I'm sure will come as no surprise here, I was blown away of course. Patches are as good as my mic'ed Engl or Marshalls, but SOOOOO much easier and quicker! Before this I was using a VOX tonelab for quick/easy modeling. So the choice was either to take the quick and easy way and allow tone to suffer, or deal with my amps and mic'ing and all the headaches and limitations that go along with that. It's time consuming in any case, at least to pull a good tone.
So I played with Axe FX a while and loved the tones. Did a tone/gear video for my Patreon members where I talked through the history of what I've used, what I look for in a tone and how I shape tone, as well as demonstrating a few sounds out of Axe FX. (BTW, I sold a few for y'all, which I'm more than happy to do... I like recommending great products as well as using them.) And I also bought an FM3 shortly thereafter so I'd have something for live performance without having to take the III out of studio. (Wish I'd waited for FM9 now). Now I'm basically re-recording at least half of Speed Mechanics 2 using the Axe FX III, and saving my patches, as I intend to make them available to folks using the new method. Also looking to self-release another instructional series even more advanced in early 2022 with Ax Fx. And I just put out an EP using it as well. So I'm into it...
But enough about the glowing Axe Fx can do no wrong... The one area I find very cumbersome is the way the patches/scenes work. In particular, I can't seem to get it through my head that tweaking a setting in one scene affects the settings in all the other scenes (that use the same device)... especially since those other scenes are "out of sight, out of mind." Now I certainly understand the concept here, that Fractal is trying to make it replicate a real rig. But what this really does is confine us to the LIMITATIONS of a real rig, which is unnecessary and counterproductive IMO.
Why? Well, it's unnecessary because it's not a real rig... so software could be designed to allow each scene to stand on its own, remembering its own tweaks. And it's counterproductive because, speaking for myself at least, I'm wanting to save what I've got and then tweak to test for an improvement. So if the scenes each remained as I had set them, I could easily pop back and forth and decide if it was a gain or loss. But I cannot tweak without affecting my previously set scenes. How can I tweak the settings of one scene WITHOUT affecting the others? Only by swapping in a the same amp (into A, B, C, or D) in the new scene and configuring it from scratch! A lot of "back and forth" then, to check each setting... huge pain in the butt and very inefficient.
Of course, it's possible to copy the entire preset but this doesn't allow me to group similar tones together, which I dislike from an organizational standpoint. If, however, the scenes did not step on one another, it would be a much preferred solution because then I could tweak variations of a given amp, varied effects, etc., and when I get exactly what I like, copy that bit out into another preset for live usage.
And that brings up another problem of the "rig based" logic that insists on shared settings. I get my amp/scene perfect, let's say a high gain tone, and then in another preset I've finagled a great, lush clean tone. Now for a particular song, let's say I want to create a preset that combines these scenes. Unless I'm missing something, it's not possible to copy a scene into a different patch. That sucks! And it's a direct result of the scenes not being independent. So I have to manually recreate every aspect of one of those amps to get that scene into the new preset. Then, later I decide... hmmmm... I'd rather try a USA clean instead of a Jazz Chorus clean. Again, can't just find my "go to" perfected clean tone scene from my favorite preset, copy it, and drop it next to my gain tones. So this creates a whole set of difficulties that are unnecessary.
The ideal solution, from a user standpoint would be to make the tweaks on each scene independent. Does that force us to give up anything? No. Because if you indeed WANT the tweak to affect another scene, just copy and paste. Done! But with each scene standing on its own, we could tweak scenes for a variety of tonal variations with a given preset, as well as copy and drop scenes within other patches as we see fit!
The current procedure is extremely burdensome IMO. To set up patches for a real, live performance I imagine it would literally take me weeks the way the current setup is. Plus it would make quick "on the fly" swaps to test out different amp combinations virtually impossible. Once it's set, it's great. And the global overrides are awesome. But the hampering of the shared scene problem is significant and only works to our disadvantage.
Of course, for now, I'm just using it in a studio environment, so it's less of a problem in this situation at least. And the advantages so far outweigh my complaints that I feel a bit sheepish even saying. Nevertheless, I just wanted to give you my real world feedback to consider for added "ease of use" in future products. In any case, thank you for creating this product. I will continue to recommend it highly.
I'm a new convert to Fractal Audio as of this year, and I wanted to contribute my experience to y'all. First of all, a bit about myself: I wrote the first widely published metal guitar methods back in the late 1980s and my method "Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar" become a 'must have' for a lot of shredders over the years... a big part of the guitar technique lexicon. I've published about 40 books in guitar instruction and they've done well... still selling after 30+ years. For the last 5 years or so, I've been working on Speed Mechanics 2 (book/video system) and just wrapping it up now. (If you want more background just google me).
Anyway, I decided on Axe FX III and snatched one up on eBay less than a year ago (there was a wait list at the time for new). And, as I'm sure will come as no surprise here, I was blown away of course. Patches are as good as my mic'ed Engl or Marshalls, but SOOOOO much easier and quicker! Before this I was using a VOX tonelab for quick/easy modeling. So the choice was either to take the quick and easy way and allow tone to suffer, or deal with my amps and mic'ing and all the headaches and limitations that go along with that. It's time consuming in any case, at least to pull a good tone.
So I played with Axe FX a while and loved the tones. Did a tone/gear video for my Patreon members where I talked through the history of what I've used, what I look for in a tone and how I shape tone, as well as demonstrating a few sounds out of Axe FX. (BTW, I sold a few for y'all, which I'm more than happy to do... I like recommending great products as well as using them.) And I also bought an FM3 shortly thereafter so I'd have something for live performance without having to take the III out of studio. (Wish I'd waited for FM9 now). Now I'm basically re-recording at least half of Speed Mechanics 2 using the Axe FX III, and saving my patches, as I intend to make them available to folks using the new method. Also looking to self-release another instructional series even more advanced in early 2022 with Ax Fx. And I just put out an EP using it as well. So I'm into it...
But enough about the glowing Axe Fx can do no wrong... The one area I find very cumbersome is the way the patches/scenes work. In particular, I can't seem to get it through my head that tweaking a setting in one scene affects the settings in all the other scenes (that use the same device)... especially since those other scenes are "out of sight, out of mind." Now I certainly understand the concept here, that Fractal is trying to make it replicate a real rig. But what this really does is confine us to the LIMITATIONS of a real rig, which is unnecessary and counterproductive IMO.
Why? Well, it's unnecessary because it's not a real rig... so software could be designed to allow each scene to stand on its own, remembering its own tweaks. And it's counterproductive because, speaking for myself at least, I'm wanting to save what I've got and then tweak to test for an improvement. So if the scenes each remained as I had set them, I could easily pop back and forth and decide if it was a gain or loss. But I cannot tweak without affecting my previously set scenes. How can I tweak the settings of one scene WITHOUT affecting the others? Only by swapping in a the same amp (into A, B, C, or D) in the new scene and configuring it from scratch! A lot of "back and forth" then, to check each setting... huge pain in the butt and very inefficient.
Of course, it's possible to copy the entire preset but this doesn't allow me to group similar tones together, which I dislike from an organizational standpoint. If, however, the scenes did not step on one another, it would be a much preferred solution because then I could tweak variations of a given amp, varied effects, etc., and when I get exactly what I like, copy that bit out into another preset for live usage.
And that brings up another problem of the "rig based" logic that insists on shared settings. I get my amp/scene perfect, let's say a high gain tone, and then in another preset I've finagled a great, lush clean tone. Now for a particular song, let's say I want to create a preset that combines these scenes. Unless I'm missing something, it's not possible to copy a scene into a different patch. That sucks! And it's a direct result of the scenes not being independent. So I have to manually recreate every aspect of one of those amps to get that scene into the new preset. Then, later I decide... hmmmm... I'd rather try a USA clean instead of a Jazz Chorus clean. Again, can't just find my "go to" perfected clean tone scene from my favorite preset, copy it, and drop it next to my gain tones. So this creates a whole set of difficulties that are unnecessary.
The ideal solution, from a user standpoint would be to make the tweaks on each scene independent. Does that force us to give up anything? No. Because if you indeed WANT the tweak to affect another scene, just copy and paste. Done! But with each scene standing on its own, we could tweak scenes for a variety of tonal variations with a given preset, as well as copy and drop scenes within other patches as we see fit!
The current procedure is extremely burdensome IMO. To set up patches for a real, live performance I imagine it would literally take me weeks the way the current setup is. Plus it would make quick "on the fly" swaps to test out different amp combinations virtually impossible. Once it's set, it's great. And the global overrides are awesome. But the hampering of the shared scene problem is significant and only works to our disadvantage.
Of course, for now, I'm just using it in a studio environment, so it's less of a problem in this situation at least. And the advantages so far outweigh my complaints that I feel a bit sheepish even saying. Nevertheless, I just wanted to give you my real world feedback to consider for added "ease of use" in future products. In any case, thank you for creating this product. I will continue to recommend it highly.