Fractal Audio Systems mystery product speculation

[Blix]

No matter what Cliff has up his sleeve, the competition set the bar low lately..

 

[Achilles]

.....more at 7

New FAS affiliate?

 

[spawnofthesith]

New FAS affiliate?

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Modelers are dumb



“Posted from my HX Stomp”

 

[la szum]

I’m on my man-cold round 2 (was well for a few days then it started over) so I now sound exactly like Corgan when i talk. Can’t stand myself

 

[0XI0]

Agreed. No idea why it has to be 3 pedals with their own little screens. I’d rather have 5-8 pedals without screens than 3 with.

Here are some FM3 internal shots lifted from https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/fm3-gut-shots.2232087/

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The 3 pedal board is its own PCB. It could be whatever design they want to go with.

what are these cylinders for?

 

[Achilles]

what are these cylinders for?

The C in the designator on the PCB means capacitor. Different can sizes are for different voltages basically.
There's a ton of smaller ones that are surface mounted on top of the PCB but those are rectangular.

 

[southpawdd]

what are these cylinders for?

those are polarized capacitors. Given the size/values, they are likely for power filtering or possibly audio path decoupling.

 

[Elf]

The C in the designator on the PCB means capacitor. Different can sizes are for different voltages basically.
There's a ton of smaller ones that are surface mounted on top of the PCB but those are rectangular.

Some people believe that, another theory is that those are the little houses where the Tone Elf live and come out at night to work!

 

[DLC86]

Different can sizes are for different voltages basically

Not necessarily, a larger cap could have a higher capacitance but lower voltage

 

[Achilles]

Some people believe that, another theory is that those are the little houses where the Tone Elf live and come out at night to work!

How bout cookie elf?

 

[Achilles]

those are polarized capacitors.

The two with the black quarter moon slice on one side are polarized. the other two aren't.
Think the black slice is the positive side if I'm remembering right.

 

[0XI0]

Some people believe that, another theory is that those are the little houses where the Tone Elf live and come out at night to work!

nah tone elves live in saturating inductors and transformers. distortion magic is in the wireless translation of audio energy... i just wonder why u don't see many surface mount inductors/transformers. I bet there's an issue with the magnetic field getting so small they stop working right once you get below a certain size package. the triaxis has like 27 little baby toroidal inductors scattered about

 

[unix-guy]

The heat is caused by the CPU. Modern ARM-CPUs create *way* less heat.

You've obviously not read Cliff's comments on ARM...

Here is a somewhat recent comment:

ARMs aren't particularly good at DSP. They're getting better every generation but still nowhere near a dedicated DSP

So, an ARM in this case might be an "upgrade" regarding heat but a definite downgrade in processing power.

 

[unix-guy]

Per Leons response to Andy's post on FB, he is in on this new thing too, so I'd say he 100% means Fractal... :)

Interesting...

 

[unix-guy]

unix-guy - beta testing since 1876

I'm not sure exactly what that means but it's funny in any case

And for the record, I've only been beta testing a little over 2 years

 

[Desertdweller]

what are these cylinders for?

 

[Sascha Franck]

So, an ARM in this case might be an "upgrade" regarding heat but a definite downgrade in processing power.

So, how comes I can run 4 (!) fully stuffed Helixes on just one single core of my Macbook Air at 3.5ms RTL (an RME would even take this down to a bit below 3ms)? A dedicated OS with its sole purpose being to run one single application could certainly bring latency down yet again and free up some more CPU ressources.
You gotta explain this "downgraded" processing power to me.

 

[unix-guy]

So, how comes I can run 4 (!) fully stuffed Helixes on just one single core of my Macbook Air at 3.5ms RTL (an RME would even take this down to a bit below 3ms)? A dedicated OS with its sole purpose being to run one single application could certainly bring latency down yet again and free up some more CPU ressources.
You gotta explain this "downgraded" processing power to me.

Doesn't mean it's quality... A Fractal is not Helix Native

I'll just tag @FractalAudio here and maybe he'll educate you on why.

Personally, he's convinced me he knows a thing or two...

 

[Sascha Franck]

Doesn't mean it's quality... A Fractal is not Helix Native

As said, we're talking generic hardware and a generic OS. Both things dedicated and you could squeeze a lot more out of things.
Besides, I doubt an FM3 requires more than 4 x the CPU power of a Helix.

I'll just tag @FractalAudio here and maybe he'll educate you on why.

Yeah well, let's see.

 

[sashimi]

Sascha makes a very good point. I know we don’t have Fractal Native to find out how it would run on the same Apple chip, but if you’re suggesting the same computer couldn’t handle complex Fractal signal chains, I don’t believe you.