Who Wants to Test Some New Firmware? (12.03 Beta 5 UPDATE)

It's one way of beta testing, but it's not the one right way. A real beta test is a rigorous shakedown. New features are thoroughly tested. Old features are verified. There are formal test cases that must be exercised,and there's a comprehensive formal reporting process and a tight schedule you have to keep. A real beta test is a lot of hard and boring work--much more involved than just tossing out the software and seeing what happens.

As cool as it is to get a chance to play around with beta software, I'm glad there's still a dedicated beta team.

Disagree with all of that. I think you are confusing beta with QA.

"New features are thoroughly tested" - QA test plan
"Old features are verified" - QA regression test plan
"formal reporting process and a tight schedule" - Dev/QA methodology/process
"lot of hard and boring work" - Yes, yes it is. Which is why QA resources cost $$.

Figure out a way to do all of that for free by outsourcing QA as a "dedicated beta", forget making AxeFx... write a book and retire.

"much more involved than just tossing out the software and seeing what happens" - That's pretty much exactly what it is. The whole point is to expose issues not found internally. Customers can be leveraged to expose issues via uncommon configurations/use-cases that might not be tested internally. But generally the software has passed internal QA (to some degree, possibly with small set of "known issues") prior to going out as beta.

You can't expect rigor around testing from unpaid resources. Never gonna happen. Hard enough to get rigor from those that you actually pay.. but at least there is accountability and repercussions from those earning $.
 
Disagree with all of that. I think you are confusing beta with QA.
I think you are confusing public beta testing with private beta testing. If you've ever been part of a designated beta team for an organized development project, you know what I mean. There are expectations beyond what you see here in the public beta releases. Fractal's designated beta testers put these features through their paces before any public betas were released. Most Fractal firmware releases have no public beta at all, but they go through plenty of beta testing.

The whole point is to expose issues not found internally. Customers can be leveraged to expose issues via uncommon configurations/use-cases that might not be tested internally. But generally the software has passed internal QA (to some degree, possibly with small set of "known issues") prior to going out as beta.
Agreed. That holds true for both public and private beta testing.
 
you guys have lost the focus here...
what i know with this kind of "public beta testing" is that in just 12/24 hours... this beta passed from beta0 to beta4! Period!
 
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Is there a possible bug with the FX Loop Block routing in this beta? I'm having no luck at all getting Output 2 to send anything to my Eventide H9.

It will see the Output 1, no problem, but not Output 2 (with the FXL block inserted and nothing else - clean).

Bypassing the inserted FXL is OK - signal comes back - but engaging it is not happening.

Driving me nuts. Am doing something wrong? Again..? :?
 
Is there a possible bug with the FX Loop Block routing in this beta? I'm having no luck at all getting Output 2 to send anything to my Eventide H9.

It will see the Output 1, no problem, but not Output 2 (with the FXL block inserted and nothing else - clean).
The number-one cause of no signal to Output 2—by a long shot—is forgetting to turn up the Output 2 level knob. :)
 
It's a combination of all those things. It's very similar to profiling except that you get authentic drive/vol/tone/etc. controls rather than just a snapshot. Please read the MIMIC paper on our website for more information.

Thank you Cliff, very informative read. What still baffles me though is how this can apply in amp models where there is no real amp to begin with, like the Das Metal, which, if I am not mistaken, is based on a diagram. If it were MIMICed to a real VH4 shouldn't it sound exactly like the Dizzy?

I know I am asking tough questions, and God forbid I am not asking you to explain your groundbreaking creation further. But I am somewhat curious about this: Which amps fall under that category, i.e. are not MIMICed to a real amp? Or is everything MIMICed now?
 
Is there a possible bug with the FX Loop Block routing in this beta? I'm having no luck at all getting Output 2 to send anything to my Eventide H9.

It will see the Output 1, no problem, but not Output 2 (with the FXL block inserted and nothing else - clean).

Bypassing the inserted FXL is OK - signal comes back - but engaging it is not happening.

Driving me nuts. Am doing something wrong? Again..? :?

No problems here with my effects loop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSlrzGIHmA8&feature=youtube_gdata_player
 
Thank you Cliff, very informative read. What still baffles me though is how this can apply in amp models where there is no real amp to begin with, like the Das Metal, which, if I am not mistaken, is based on a diagram. If it were MIMICed to a real VH4 shouldn't it sound exactly like the Dizzy?

I know I am asking tough questions, and God forbid I am not asking you to explain your groundbreaking creation further. But I am somewhat curious about this: Which amps fall under that category, i.e. are not MIMICed to a real amp? Or is everything MIMICed now?
if there are no real amps involved, they can most likely not be MIMIC'd. Das Metall model (based on schematics) appeared much earlier than the correct, MIMIC'd Dizzy model. pretty sure Cliff just didn't remove Das Metall to avoid the usual whining complaints...
 
Hi,

I just updated to the new beta and I noticed three odd things:

1. When scrolling though the presets, after scrolling though 50 or 100 presets, the display freezes & won't pass audio- I need to reboot the unit in order to hear anything or scroll or edit a preset.
2. Upon reboot, the unit display is defaulting to displaying the first effects block in the preset that the unit was on at the time the unit froze.
3. Upon scrolling again, randomly, the unit will stop scrolling and show the first effects block in the preset taht it decides to randomly stop on.

Did anybody else experience this lately with the new firmware beta?

Do you need any other info to help troubleshoot this?

Best,
Bonkers
I have had this happen also on 12.01 FW with AE running simultaneously.
 
Seems to me if there's such a huge issue with touching the AF2 controls when AE is connected then they either need to fix this or if it can't be fixed, they should disable the AF2 controls when you are using AE. Having it lock up and crash should not be acceptable.
 
Seems to me if there's such a huge issue with touching the AF2 controls when AE is connected then they either need to fix this or if it can't be fixed, they should disable the AF2 controls when you are using AE. Having it lock up and crash should not be acceptable.

Choices here:

Don't upgrade to beta firmware. Once you have a stable AE/FW mix, stick with it. You might be a few rev's back, but either you want all new amps/features right now, or you want complete stability.

The AE issue is clearly documented, and I'm sure it's in the queue to be fixed. That people keep doing it and complaining cannot be dropped at the feet of Fractal.

And from what I've seen of Fractal: They wouldn't release a public beta that has not gone through a thorough internal process to insure there would be no 'bricking' of units. As it is a beta, much of your present configuration (presets, etc) are basically sitting on a guillotine where the blade may or may not fall. Again, you choose to put your head in the hole.

About MIMIC: I'm of the opinion this is another 'forest for the trees' situation. It turns out to be more of an excuse to say 'it doesn't sound right' if it's NOT done in the MIMIC process. Even though many amps not under that process are very popular.

R
 
The AE issue is clearly documented, and I'm sure it's in the queue to be fixed. That people keep doing it and complaining cannot be dropped at the feet of Fractal.

And from what I've seen of Fractal: They wouldn't release a public beta that has not gone through a thorough internal process to insure there would be no 'bricking' of units. As it is a beta, much of your present configuration (presets, etc) are basically sitting on a guillotine where the blade may or may not fall. Again, you choose to put your head in the hole.
Well, I guess we'll agree to disagree. Anything that the user can do to lock up their machine should be classified as a show-stopper and no beta should be released until that issue can be resolved. We know that a corrupted preset can also lock up the AF2, again that simply shouldn't be possible.
 
That's a lot of "shoulds" in your last posts...

The number of possible parameters and values in a single preset is enormous.
I'm guessing that adding error-checking routines to cover all combinations would result in a gigantic size firmware increase.
 
Anybody have any issues with the volume of output 2 in 12.03.4? I did a gig on Saturday, ran output 1 to the PA, output 2 to my FBT. I had the output on the FBT all the way up and output 2 on the Axe all the way up, and was surprised that the stage volume was not sufficient. Had to have the guitar through the monitors as well, which ended up being louder than my FBT. Now I suppose it could have been some sort of hardware issue, haven't really tinkered with it yet but was still really surprised at the output level.
 
Well, I guess we'll agree to disagree. Anything that the user can do to lock up their machine should be classified as a show-stopper and no beta should be released until that issue can be resolved. We know that a corrupted preset can also lock up the AF2, again that simply shouldn't be possible.

Please don't take offense to this ,it certainly isn't mean't that way, but The titanic shouldn't have sank , but it did. As with many, things in life, it's very simple , If Cliff chooses to throw out a beta for us to try, it's our choice to try it and our responsibility if it causes some issues, because we chose to try it ,it very clearly is labled Beta!! He allways make it clear! Issues are to be expected ! a software that has a known issue or bug is installed with that to be expected, until it's resolved there are two choices ,avoid the problem area or don't use the software till it's fixed. My DAW has issues that will probably never be resolved ,all of them do, If we wait for anything to be perfect before using it , it will be a long wait!
 
Anybody have any issues with the volume of output 2 in 12.03.4? I did a gig on Saturday, ran output 1 to the PA, output 2 to my FBT. I had the output on the FBT all the way up and output 2 on the Axe all the way up, and was surprised that the stage volume was not sufficient. Had to have the guitar through the monitors as well, which ended up being louder than my FBT. Now I suppose it could have been some sort of hardware issue, haven't really tinkered with it yet but was still really surprised at the output level.

Check global eq volume.
 
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