With the wafers used for RAM being gobbled up by AI...I wonder how this will affect Fractal and the Axe Fx 3 and possible 4?

swiss studio said:
But Neural DSP is doing well. Plugins are the most profitable part of their business right now…
Same for universal audio, and many others.
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I'm not disputing that. I'm stating that it's not viable for Fractal, as it stands today.

I assume that Fractal's software is tightly integrated with their hardware so they can meet strict performance targets they've set. Rewriting that software to be run on any general purpose x86_64 or Arm64 CPU would probably be non-trivial, and might make it more challenging to reach those performance and quality targets.

Not saying it's impossible, just... not the direction Fractal is headed, by all evidence.
 
steadystate said:
I agree teachers aren't paid enough. But that's not the root of the problem. I know a career teacher who quit the only job she ever loved. Not because of money, but because the "new" local administration stripped her of any semblance of autonomy or common sense practice. She had to strictly adhere to a list of nonsensical policy, and was prohibited from disciplining her students in any way. She had enough, and left. She works in a bank now. Granted, higher pay might increase the threshold for how much bullshit a good teacher can take; but it isn't the solution.

Higher pay will increase demand for the job for everyone, not just the capable. The incompetent, corrupt, and lazy want higher pay too. Without higher standards and accountability, money is not the base solution.

In my opinion.
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Totally. I agree with you. I think in general teachers just need to be treated with respect, and in our country, where the only tangible value anyone has is their net worth, money is a place to start. But they need the professional deference given to engineers and other professions for whom we assume a certain level of niche competence. They're as essential to the health of the country as doctors, and they should be treated with that kind of placement in society.
 
steadystate said:
The notion that the root problem with the educational system in the US is a lack of funding is laughable. The rot caused by corrupt unions and bureaucrats, ideologically captured school boards/administrations/teachers, the lack of accountability, and tenure protection are fed by money, not solved by it.

As for the students, tick tock and Instagram have all but destroyed their attention span and search for meaning.

My opinion. Anyone who believes that throwing money at the problem will solve it is welcome to theirs.
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Most I agree with, but you actually kind of verified what I said-The $$$ and funding is NOT going where it needs to go. It's not the whole problem but is a huge part when the $$$ is going into the pockets of the morons in charge in most states.
 
rossipedia said:
Not only would it cannibalize sales of the hardware units, any copy protection would likely be cracked in short order, which would then cannibalize sales of the plugin itself.

IMO, for Fractal, this is a non-viable business model.
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That's not how things would work at all, in my humble opinion. For a couple of reasons.

Most importantly, I suspect that a large majority of us who use Fractal hardware choose it for real time i.e. live playing needs, which can't be met as well or at all by plugins alone. To do the same thing the Fractal hardware does with plugins you need to rack a nice and specifically prepared PC and a really nice interface to get even close to just the latency you get with even the FM3, and you lose every other aspect of the Fractal unit which makes it a convenient and reliable player's tool. How many guitarists do you know that play plugins live? Plugins are just a different tool for different purposes so I don't see hardware sales failing at all because of them. With a plugin you'd simply get a whole new audience but also sell to existing hardware users who want the plugins for their DAW workflows. Also consider how these new users might as well buy the hardware unit once they experience the Fractal universe and what it offers.

Next, about copy protection. Most people who'd get a cracked plugin would not buy it either, so you don't really lose them as customers. Any that you did lose are offset by the ones that do eventually buy the software out of convenience, getting support, commercial needs, or even just feeling bad. Most cracked software is used in second and third world countries by people who simply will not spend several monthly wages on some plugin they use for fun at home, but they might convince their employer to buy the software that they know and are used to, or they might convince their friends to use the software and maybe even buy it. If cracked software was really such a menace to software development companies and given that most software is cracked within days if not hours after release despite any copy protection mechanisms then literally nobody could sell software, which obviously isn't the case in practice and software companies are thriving.
 
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I suspect the real reason for not wanting to do a plugin that does amp modelling is that it'd be much easier for the competition to pilfer the binary for algorithms and parameters and various critical processing pieces that give Fractal the edge. That you can't really hide because it must be there in the binary to do its thing. You can obfuscate it but then you lose the performance and it's all pointless anyway because people will still figure it out. There is also the question of whether the kind of DSP Fractal do on the DSP chips can be implemented efficiently enough on a general purpose CPUs of varying performance characteristics. There's several other things that come to mind, but less hardware sales and cracking would be the least of my worries in Fractal's shoes.
 
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kvik said:
I suspect the real reason for not wanting to do a plugin that does amp modelling is that it'd be much easier for the competition to pilfer the binary for algorithms and parameters and various critical processing pieces that give Fractal the edge. That you can't really hide because it must be there in the binary to do its thing. You can obfuscate it but then you lose the performance and it's all pointless anyway because people will still figure it out. There is also the question of whether the kind of DSP Fractal do on the DSP chips can be implemented efficiently enough on a general purpose CPUs of varying performance characteristics. There's several other things that come to mind, but less hardware sales and cracking would be the least of my worries in Fractal's shoes.
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IMO that's the same foundational argument, just expressed differently. It's ultimately about protecting Fractal's products. Lost sales, competition, piracy, whatever you wanna call it.

To be clear, I'm not arguing for or against a dedicated Fractal amp modeling plugin, I'm just trying to express my understanding of Cliff's position, which is that he has no interest in doing a software-only plugin. I'd be surprised if that changes anytime soon.
 
GuitarDojo said:
The first one to engineer AI to use a fraction of the memory and power will be a Gazillionaire . (it will probably be AI itself...or a virtual AI version of ELON ;) )

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Yeah, it'll be Musk LOL. It's not like he has a history of empty promises. The only way he'd come close to this is if there was some massive government subsidy or corrupt contract where he can syphon public money. THAT is literally the only thing he's exceptional at.

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-failed-to-deliver-on-2025-promises
 
rossipedia said:
IMO that's the same foundational argument, just expressed differently. It's ultimately about protecting Fractal's products. Lost sales, competition, piracy, whatever you wanna call it.
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Sure, but details are interesting, at least to me. Piracy keeps being mentioned as THE reason in these discussions about plugins and I just don't buy it as THE reason, that's all. It's a bit off-topic discussion here so I'll stop.
 
kvn3120 said:
Yeah, it'll be Musk LOL. It's not like he has a history of empty promises. The only way he'd come close to this is if there was some massive government subsidy or corrupt contract where he can syphon public money. THAT is literally the only thing he's exceptional at.

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-failed-to-deliver-on-2025-promises
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he doesnt do anything. He comes in and takes credit. Dont confuse the two.

I wonder if people are cannibalizing their “old tech” for RAM to sell..
 
kvik said:
Sure, but details are interesting, at least to me. Piracy keeps being mentioned as THE reason in these discussions about plugins and I just don't buy it as THE reason, that's all. It's a bit off-topic discussion here so I'll stop.
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It's generally cited as the reason because Cliff has directly stated it's a motivating factor. It's not an assumption or a guess.
 
This thread is like reading an Erik Larson novel, waiting to see how these seemingly unrelated stories eventually connect...
 
AI AI… this word is everywhere these last 2 (?) years … I don’t use it at all, hate it somewhere. Another tool to make people even more passive . WOW that’s so cool to click and to have a song, video, image, movie, book, video game without doing nothing !! Without any talent, without any knowledge… just being able to use a « tool »… where is the pleasure ?
 
My name is mud said:
AI AI… this word is everywhere these last 2 (?) years … I don’t use it at all, hate it somewhere. Another tool to make people even more passive . WOW that’s so cool to click and to have a song, video, image, movie, book, video game without doing nothing !! Without any talent, without any knowledge… just being able to use a « tool »… where is the pleasure ?
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Yes, AI is a pain in the ass. Often confused, but sometimes very useful.

As for making us passive users of a tool, we crossed that bridge ages ago. Take that computer you use every day, for example. Try making one from scratch. I mean head out with a shovel and a pickaxe, gather the necessary raw materials, and come back home carrying the computer you made from rocks and sand and crude oil. The most knowledgeable person in the world lacks the expertise to pull it off. We are all users of someone else's work that we don't understand. It's what we do with it that matters.
 
FractalAudio said:
I get it though. The potential is huge. The first company that discovers a pill for cancer that you have to take every day for the rest of your life will become trillionaires. And, of course, they'll also discover a chemical that gives everyone cancer.
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AI isn't going to do too much of this anytime soon. The current AI approach is far too primitive to advance the state of the art that much. Many problems that we can't solve now have potential solutions in the works but we do not have anywhere near the compute power to even begin the explorations.

The next great leap is going to be when someone builds a viable quantum machine with sufficient qubits to pursue these solutions. I spent the last 6 years of my career working in this realm. The problem solving potential is staggering. Unfortunately, the pursuit of quantum computing is being done just like everything else - distribute the smart people competitively and politically instead of working collectively. The smart people doing this want to cure disease, reverse climate change, etc. while all the governments of the world are eagerly waiting for the ability to compromise global security.

Whenever you read AI, you should auto-insert "so-called". 😂
 
hippietim said:
This. The major uses of AI and robotics are stupid. They're being used to solve problems we don't have. They're displacing humans at a rapid pace. And for what?
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Worse still (maybe you're alluding to this), the CEOs of AI and adjacent corporations appear to have gone completely insane with the idea that their product can solve all of humanity's problems -- provided they can obtain enough energy and water to pave 10% of the planet with data centers. Do y'all feel like being deprived of energy and water to feed billionaire tech bros' fever dreams?
 
HerrSquid said:
Worse still (maybe you're alluding to this), the CEOs of AI and adjacent corporations appear to have gone completely insane with the idea that their product can solve all of humanity's problems -- provided they can obtain enough energy and water to pave 10% of the planet with data centers. Do y'all feel like being deprived of energy and water to feed billionaire tech bros' fever dreams?
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Take a drive around Northern Virginia. There are hideous f**king data centers all over. They're just these humongous soul-sucking blobs of concrete that look like prisons. And the massive power stations definitely look like something you don't want to live close to. This shit is not right. Not by a long shot. And for what? Displacing workers? Shitty AI art and music? Answering mundane questions nobody really gives a crap about?

But at least the tech companies are firing people with 10-20-30 years of expertise to shuttle in newbie engineers willing to turn the ChatGPT crank to do their jobs for them. Yeah. That's sustainable.

Having said all that, this picture is awesome:
1767856255185.png
 
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