FRACTAL : Going Into The Weeds : Amp Dynamics Page

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From the FM9 manual. (FM9 now has input dynamics ported)

This is pretty cool. I was messing with this with a vintage style strat using the Band-Commander amp with York Audio AC30 IRS. Edge of breakup tone.

Setting the type to "feedback", adding a little bit of input Dynamics (under 2). Setting output compression to 2.5 and setting the threshold so that hard playing compresses around 2 db.

Rolling back the guitar volume or playing lightly give you a nice clean tone. As you increase the volume knob and dig in you can get extra gain and dynamics. The output compression helps keep the volume jump between the two under control.


I haven't tried it with higher gain yet. But it's worth checking out IMO.



dynamics.jpg
 
This stuff is why the "modeler has this feel" discussions are a bit silly. Well, like...did you try changing it with all these tools at your disposal?

I use the Gain Enhancer all the time when playing with headphones. It's a cool feature.
 
I found this thread with a search. I was wondering when they implemented this tab for the FM9. I have one of the early FM9 units and I don't remember it being there with V1 of the firmware but I could be mistaken. I posted in a thread on the Fractal forum at some point last year and someone gave me a few things to try to get the feel of the model to be a little more lively and more like my amps. I had been playing with a couple of models that I have the real amp of and there is a huge difference in dynamics in them.

Fast forward to this week. I put the new firmware in that just release, V6. I happened to see the tab and dug up the note that I wrote from that post. I can say that it really has helped get much closer to the real amp in feel. I set the output compression to Feedback and then played with the Tube Hardness in the two places I found it. I haven't played with the compression amount too much yet. When I get a chance to dig in more I plan on really playing with this to see how close I can get it to the real amp.

The dynamics of the amps and the amount of gain in the Fractal models has really been my only issue with the unit. I find the drive in the models to be too compressed and too much gain, way more than my real amp has. I have always figured that is why the feel is off by a lot, because there is just too much gain in the model. From what I experienced with playing with the settings in the Dynamics tab and the Preamp tab, I was able to greatly improve the feel. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
 
FWIW I will often use gain enhance at about 1 to 2 to kinda give it a bit more of an interaction-with-the-amp feel when playing through headphones or at low volume levels...
 
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