Fractal Audio Firmware Update Thread

[eggpl@nt]

Also, I wonder how many people that own a Fractal unit have a large lineup of amps compared to those who buy profile/capture devices. I imagine the main idea behind the Kemper, Tone X, QC is to take your own amp tones on the go. Fractal has been build your own tones from the ground up for amps you don't have.

I know this isn't one size fits all as I've owned all the above and at times haven't had a large amp collection to capture but still bought 3rd party packs

That could definitely be part of it. We never saw the LB-1 and that might be for a similar reason—Fractal owners with amps they want to load down (or profile) may be a small group.

I wonder if there’s any internal motivation for a profiling-esque feature. If Cliff can marry the white-box and black-box approaches to create satisfactory (to him) results, maybe it makes his life easier?

How else is he going to get that amp that was released one nanosecond ago and is already on the Wishlist into the Axe Fx???

 

[GTR37]

Hey all !

Just a thought about future Fractal FW moves for discussion.

By way of my current rig .... I have now moved fully over to a Kemper Stage and am running only full-ground-up Liquid Profiles - although they are still very rare on the ground. It gives me everything the Helix + Tonex did but with much more "natural" and easy tweaking .... but that's all just for the sake of transparency and where I'm coming from.

Re: Fractal ... my "sense" was/is that "their" version of Modeling + Profiling was going to be their next "big" release / step .... just my 2c based on C.C's reactions etc....

Obviously Fractal will keep tweaking and adding things to make their gear as good as they can ..... but do people think C.C will somehow try to re-visit "his" plans for "his" version of Modeling + Profiling (?)

Thanks,
Ben

PS: Apologies for the italicizing !

No

 

[Mongillo19]

Also, I miss @Fireproof

Hope all is well!

 

[paisleywookiee]

Hey all !

Just a thought about future Fractal FW moves for discussion.

By way of my current rig .... I have now moved fully over to a Kemper Stage and am running only full-ground-up Liquid Profiles - although they are still very rare on the ground. It gives me everything the Helix + Tonex did but with much more "natural" and easy tweaking .... but that's all just for the sake of transparency and where I'm coming from.

Re: Fractal ... my "sense" was/is that "their" version of Modeling + Profiling was going to be their next "big" release / step .... just my 2c based on C.C's reactions etc....

Obviously Fractal will keep tweaking and adding things to make their gear as good as they can ..... but do people think C.C will somehow try to re-visit "his" plans for "his" version of Modeling + Profiling (?)

Thanks,
Ben

PS: Apologies for the italicizing !

I hope not. I want a model of an amplifier to set up as I wish; not someone else's idea of how it should be dialed in. If I wanted that, I'd buy a Kemper.

 

[mikah912]

No

Agreed. I don't think that particular juice is worth the squeeze it would take to retrofit Fractal units to do that stuff. There's very little "unobtanium" left in the amp/pedal world that's impossible with the existing Fractal library, anyway. I'd have to think the primary difference with new much-hyped amps and pedals is probably more in feel/features than sound, anyway.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Agreed. I don't think that particular juice is worth the squeeze it would take to retrofit Fractal units to do that stuff. There's very little "unobtanium" left in the amp/pedal world that's impossible with the existing Fractal library, anyway. I'd have to think the primary difference with new much-hyped amps and pedals is probably more in feel/features than sound, anyway.

Bringing ToneMatch to more devices at best would be all that's necessary, IMO.

 

[laxu]

Quickly perusing the Axe-Fx 3 fw release notes, there's about 6 new amp models (excluding channels, variants etc) that have been released since firmware 19 (which was released in Jan 2022).

I'm guessing Fractal is not too keen to buy more amps to model when they already have so many. I'd love to see some pics of their amp stash.

If they want to add more, they might be better off saving those for the Axe-Fx IV to entice people to upgrade.

 

[yeky83]

Hey all !

Just a thought about future Fractal FW moves for discussion.

By way of my current rig .... I have now moved fully over to a Kemper Stage and am running only full-ground-up Liquid Profiles - although they are still very rare on the ground. It gives me everything the Helix + Tonex did but with much more "natural" and easy tweaking .... but that's all just for the sake of transparency and where I'm coming from.

Re: Fractal ... my "sense" was/is that "their" version of Modeling + Profiling was going to be their next "big" release / step .... just my 2c based on C.C's reactions etc....

Obviously Fractal will keep tweaking and adding things to make their gear as good as they can ..... but do people think C.C will somehow try to re-visit "his" plans for "his" version of Modeling + Profiling (?)

Thanks,
Ben

PS: Apologies for the italicizing !

Kemper's lawyers got involved apparently, so who knows.

 

[GTR37]

I hope not. I want a model of an amplifier to set up as I wish; not someone else's idea of how it should be dialed in. If I wanted that, I'd buy a Kemper.

The problem that I see with profiling or capturing is that when it was Kemper or even QC they were alone in that market and commanding a high price now the technology is starting to trickle down and your seeing IK with a $400 price tag and easily accessible
IMO this is about to become a very crowded marketplace as the overseas companies get a hold of it
So why would you want to compete with that ?

 

[Mongillo19]

The problem that I see with profiling or capturing is that when it was Kemper or even QC they were alone in that market and commanding a high price now the technology is starting to trickle down and your seeing IK with a $400 price tag and easily accessible
IMO this is about to become a very crowded marketplace as the overseas companies get a hold of it
So why would you want to compete with that ?

I would view capturing on a fractal unit as am additional feature and not the flagship feature. tone x, QC, Kemper....the flagship is captures. Fractal would be unique in that regard as it's primary focus would be modeling with a capture feature imo

 

[James Freeman]

Kemper can keep his little trick.
Full amp emulation has always been and will forever remain the way to properly do it.

 

[Whizzinby]

The problem that I see with profiling or capturing is that when it was Kemper or even QC they were alone in that market and commanding a high price now the technology is starting to trickle down and your seeing IK with a $400 price tag and easily accessible
IMO this is about to become a very crowded marketplace as the overseas companies get a hold of it
So why would you want to compete with that ?

I think of it more as a value-add moving forward. If you only want that capability there are going to be a lot of cheap options to get into that game. At the premium end of the spectrum I think it’s more of a checklist feature to include, if your competition is doing both.

Unless you are capturing your own amps (and I’d wager the vast majority of owners aren’t) captures are really just a needless time sink over a device with really strong modeling, but at some point features become table stakes to play the game.

 

[mikah912]

I think of it more as a value-add moving forward. If you only want that capability there are going to be a lot of cheap options to get into that game. At the premium end of the spectrum I think it’s more of a checklist feature to include, if your competition is doing both.

Unless you are capturing your own amps (and I’d wager the vast majority of owners aren’t) captures are really just a needless time sink over a device with really strong modeling, but at some point features become table stakes to play the game.

That's true about it nearing the "table stake" level in the industry, but if the QC....err....."experience" has taught me anything it's that a company serious about making capturing/profiling a major feature needs to put serious thought into the user experience and infrastructure (e.g. marketplace, auditioning, data management) around the device if they're going to bother to offer the capability on the device in the first place. Additionally, they have the get the capture time down to 1-2 minutes max or third-party content providers simply won't offer comprehensive content bundles because it just takes up too much damn time!

Kemper is the only manufacturer who has figured all that out.

Not saying that's beyond Cliff, but again....the juice may not be worth that squeeze.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Kemper is the only manufacturer who has figured all that out.

Except that the Kemper no longer is top of the heap in terms of sound quality. Yeah it's quicker. But it's not as good as the ML-based stuff.

 

[mikah912]

Except that the Kemper no longer is top of the heap in terms of sound quality. Yeah it's quicker. But it's not as good as the ML-based stuff.

Might be true, but I look at the ecosystem of captures/profiles around Tonex, NAM, Mooer, QC, etc. There's nothing comparable. Even the leading content providers like Live Ready Sound who've delivered content packs on other platforms can't reproduce the depth/breadth of what they did on Kemper.

For example, if you look at the LRS Tonex page for their Fortin Cali pack, you get 27 profiles. The Kemper version of the amp pack - which only costs $5 more - has almost 10x that number of profiles in different mic/cab/gain level/channel configurations.

 

[Mongillo19]

Might be true, but I look at the ecosystem of captures/profiles around Tonex, NAM, Mooer, QC, etc. There's nothing comparable. Even the leading content providers like Live Ready Sound who've delivered content packs on other platforms can't reproduce the depth/breadth of what they did on Kemper.

For example, if you look at the LRS Tonex page for their Fortin Cali pack, you get 27 profiles. The Kemper version of the amp pack - which only costs $5 more - has almost 10x that number of profiles in different mic/cab/gain level/channel configurations.

Yeah the sheer amount of Kemper profile volume is insane (for better or worse). But hey kudos to them for sticking with a product for 10+ years. It's certainly a big plus and only recently did a capture/profile device "catch up".

 

[paisleywookiee]

Might be true, but I look at the ecosystem of captures/profiles around Tonex, NAM, Mooer, QC, etc. There's nothing comparable. Even the leading content providers like Live Ready Sound who've delivered content packs on other platforms can't reproduce the depth/breadth of what they did on Kemper.

For example, if you look at the LRS Tonex page for their Fortin Cali pack, you get 27 profiles. The Kemper version of the amp pack - which only costs $5 more - has almost 10x that number of profiles in different mic/cab/gain level/channel configurations.

Well sure. It’s easy to do 270 profiles when each one takes five minutes. The problem is when the quality isn’t as good. Sure; that’s arguable/subjective.

But it’s actually starting to not be subjective, when people like Leo Gibson have shown waveforms that neither the Kemper or QC is as accurate as the ML-based stuff.

So, do you want quality or quantity?

 

[Orvillain]

Kemper can keep his little trick.
Full amp emulation has always been and will forever remain the way to properly do it.

The Kemper is nowhere near as good as NAM is, which by all accounts was made by some dude in his bedroom in between Redtube sessions.

 

[laxu]

Well sure. It’s easy to do 270 profiles when each one takes five minutes. The problem is when the quality isn’t as good. Sure; that’s arguable/subjective.

But it’s actually starting to not be subjective, when people like Leo Gibson have shown waveforms that neither the Kemper or QC is as accurate as the ML-based stuff.

So, do you want quality or quantity?

The Kemper Liquid Profile thing makes it even more complicated when it seems to work well to avoid having many profiles.

To me quantity is a detriment and only makes it harder to pick a few favorites. Think about IRs. Most who buy say a York Audio pack just install the mixes on their modeler and never bother touching the dozens if not hundreds of individual IRs. Captures are the exact same thing, most just want say a dozen or so captures to choose from.

If I have learned something about guitarists using modelers, they want it easy. They want an amp model or capture that says it's "amp XYZ" on the tin, and they want it to sound good out of the box without much effort.

To bring this back to Fractal, I think they also are aware of how captures are becoming table stakes so making it a feature on their unit is probably not smart. Even Kemper's Liquid Profile stuff is moving more towards just modeling like Fractal does.

 

[Whizzinby]

Well sure. It’s easy to do 270 profiles when each one takes five minutes. The problem is when the quality isn’t as good. Sure; that’s arguable/subjective.

But it’s actually starting to not be subjective, when people like Leo Gibson have shown waveforms that neither the Kemper or QC is as accurate as the ML-based stuff.

So, do you want quality or quantity?

The bigger question is who the F wants to cycle through 270 profiles? (Once, much less every time you want a slightly different gain/EQ profile)