Fractal Talk

norminal said:
There’s actually a few quality of life features that the Helix can do that the Fractal platform currently can’t.

For example, accessing the Blocks Library directly from the hardware. For me, that’d be extremely handy when access to a laptop/editor isn’t available.
Click to expand...
You'll note that I didn't say "nothing at all." :)
 
LCW said:
Probably a package space constraint... maybe even due to cooling. Guessing the rack unit has massive fans??
Click to expand...
The Axe-Fx 3 has a single 80mm fan that it doesn't even really need for anything but as a safeguard for e.g situations where it's in a rack case in a place with high temperature. The fans in all the Fractal products are more like "provide any airflow into the chassis" rather than "designed to efficiently cool the thing".

On the Axe-Fx 3 there's a fan pushing air to the DSP chip, which has a tiny heatsink on it. But there's no fan at the edge of the chassis that would efficiently pull in cool air. I'd honestly love to see Fractal put bigger heatsinks on their next gen products so that the rack unit makes no fan noise in most situations.

On the FM3 there's a fan at the bottom of the case drawing in air from the bottom, but the only thing getting actively cooled is footswitch #1's PCB. Haven't seen any gut shots of the FM9, but I expect it's similar.

My understanding is that the reason to not use the TI processors on the floor units are cost and extra hardware required for the TI DSP. The Axe-Fx 3 main PCB is nearly double the size of the one in the FM3.
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
If we are getting into wish-list territory, I'd like to see some time spent on really optimizing the Performance Page experience:

(1) It'd be great if there was a global setting that allowed patches to load at either the preset performance page or the global performance page. Doesn't seem like that would be too much work?

(2) Allow more than two rows of controllers on each of the Performance pages -- arrow buttons could take you down to a 3rd or 4th (or 16th for Sascha) row of parameters.

(3) Would be REALLY cool if you could customize what the all of the A-E knob presses send you to from the Performance pages -- having direct access to the amp and cab block from the performance page is GREAT. Would be even better if you could access three other blocks directly via knob press from the performance page. Is the knob-press the only way to access the tuner on the III?

(4) The icing on the cake would be if you could do some very minor customizations to the visual of the Performance pages -- IDEALLY for me would be the ability to turn on/off a solid vertical or horizontal line between any two adjacent parameters. That way at a quick glance I could see the grouping of related parameters - reverb parameters, of delay parameters, of drive 1 parameters, etc. Like everything performance page related, would only be configurable in axe edit. Each performance parameter could just have two toggled options: "right line on/off" "below line on/off". Having different colors for related parameters could also work and might be preferred, honestly -- that could maybe be done automatically, where the same auto-color used for each block is also used for its parameter in the performance pages?.

I am of two minds about the performance pages -- on the one hand, for those that are comfortable going in and customizing and really thinking through how they want to use them, they come really close to making the Fractal stuff easier to use from the front panel than anything else ONCE CONFIGURED (if expanded as above, would completely kill all others for panel use of configured presets). On the other -- they are always going to require a fair amount of configuring so for folks that aren't willing to do the initial configuration Fractal will always feel like a cumbersome UI.

EDIT TO ADD: "hold" knob A-E acts as bypass for the block it accesses.
Click to expand...
Ghost In The Shell Keyboard GIF

Resident UI complainer activated! Commencing UI post!

Totally agree with #1. Especially FC users probably don't care too much about the main Home screen because you can see what is going on from the FC.

#2 is something that was requested right after the feature came out. The big issue with performance pages is that it's so limited. 10 preset and 10 global params is not enough by a long shot for "quick access to my most tweaked params" for anything but bare-bones live use.

#3 That would be nice. I originally had the idea for this feature (as hold functions) because the labels on the A-E knobs lined up with Amp, Boost, Cab, Delay and rEverb so well, but being able to select your preferred functions on a per-preset basis would be dope. For some reason the Axe-Fx 3 I think has never gotten the "Hold tempo for Tuner" function the floor units have. I like the idea of "hold knob for bypass" for those blocks too.

#4 Color coding would probably be best.

Boudoir Guitar said:
Some more esoteric stuff would be being able to adjust the range of the knob on the performance page -- so, like, instead of reverb decay time covering like 0-20 seconds or whatever it is, I could limit this to like 1.25-6. This is a lot more work and basically going from "oh, Performance Pages is this pretty simple thing that is just a mirror" to "oh, Performance page is now basically a whole bunch of specialized controllers", but would be great nonetheless.
Click to expand...
I think a better way to do this would be a "Manual modifier Performance" page. There's only 5 manual modifiers atm, but expanding it to at least 10 like the Performance pages would work.

The modifier system is already suited for limiting the range, but the problem with the whole modifier system is that there's no proper overall view on what exactly is mapped where. There's also no way to toggle them on/off without removing them, and the way the modifiers are blocking any other value source. So when you map a modifier, it can only be controlled by that modifier and not a "last source in" method that would make more sense. This blocks Axe-Edit and the front panel's normal UI from adjusting params with modifiers attached which is just terrible. It is understandable for LFOs and such automated params, but not for manually adjusted things.

Axe-Fx 3 has absolutely no issue with the "last source in" functionality as long as this is done via MIDI Sysex like Axe-Edit does. Fractal just doesn't provide any documentation for current gen, and the last gen Sysex docs don't apply. So it requires reverse engineering, building your own middleman software and figuring out all the parameters. A lot of work.
 
Whizzinby said:
I’m increasingly thinking that the footswitch and UI configurations on these devices is a complete waste of time. Create a black box with, at most, a global volume or IO level controls, and then let the user pick a FC module for whatever precious setup they have. I suppose this makes the case for an FM0, but it’s all a massive tail chase having to make people choose between the processing power vs footswitch amount + size. Make one fucking small box with your best processor and let everyone pick the controller (Either a FAS fc port that’s deeply integrated, and a port for Laxu or Mben to BYO-FS)
Click to expand...
I've put out the idea of a "DSP and I/O" brain box + peripherals out a few times.

Footswitching is the easiest thing to expand on any modeler. Can be done via MIDI controllers, or even better with official footswitch units like Fractal FC6/12 or Helix Control where two-way sync is possible. This works fine.

The difficult thing to add is physical knob control. Nobody likes editing purely from a phone or tablet, that sucks compared to spinning a bunch of real knobs. So to me at least some form of knob control is required - whether it's a MIDI knob controller, or better yet an official knob controller that can track values between preset changes and so on. All modelers from every brand could be massively better with this stuff.

So for me, something like this would be fantastic:
  • Brain unit for DSP and I/O. Preferably smaller than rack, but they could offer multiple form factors at different price points with less I/O and DSP. Minimal onboard UI, maybe some small screen for preset/scene display and volume controls.
  • Axe-Edit on computer, tablet or phone. Everyone has at least one of these.
  • Physical control peripheral. Knobs and some buttons. They work based on what you are doing in Axe-Edit, or otherwise like Performance pages. Think of them like "FC for parameters". They can sell me and Sascha Frank several of them so we can have our 42 knob mad professor lab.
  • Floor box for footswitching. Preferably several kilos lighter than the FC units.
I currently kind of have this:
  • My pedalboard with MIDI controllable pedals = DSP, I/O, and physical knobs
  • Luminite Graviton M1 = control brain
  • Luminite XY or EC = context-based physical controls
  • Luminite F6W = footswitching
It is pretty dope especially since every system in that list is wireless for control. Of course, being a cobbled together solution it's a lot more work to set up the functionality compared to setting up e.g FC layouts, scenes in presets and so on.
 
laxu said:
Ghost In The Shell Keyboard GIF

Resident UI complainer activated! Commencing UI post!

Totally agree with #1. Especially FC users probably don't care too much about the main Home screen because you can see what is going on from the FC.

#2 is something that was requested right after the feature came out. The big issue with performance pages is that it's so limited. 10 preset and 10 global params is not enough by a long shot for "quick access to my most tweaked params" for anything but bare-bones live use.

#3 That would be nice. I originally had the idea for this feature (as hold functions) because the labels on the A-E knobs lined up with Amp, Boost, Cab, Delay and rEverb so well, but being able to select your preferred functions on a per-preset basis would be dope. For some reason the Axe-Fx 3 I think has never gotten the "Hold tempo for Tuner" function the floor units have. I like the idea of "hold knob for bypass" for those blocks too.

#4 Color coding would probably be best.


I think a better way to do this would be a "Manual modifier Performance" page. There's only 5 manual modifiers atm, but expanding it to at least 10 like the Performance pages would work.

The modifier system is already suited for limiting the range, but the problem with the whole modifier system is that there's no proper overall view on what exactly is mapped where. There's also no way to toggle them on/off without removing them, and the way the modifiers are blocking any other value source. So when you map a modifier, it can only be controlled by that modifier and not a "last source in" method that would make more sense. This blocks Axe-Edit and the front panel's normal UI from adjusting params with modifiers attached which is just terrible. It is understandable for LFOs and such automated params, but not for manually adjusted things.

Axe-Fx 3 has absolutely no issue with the "last source in" functionality as long as this is done via MIDI Sysex like Axe-Edit does. Fractal just doesn't provide any documentation for current gen, and the last gen Sysex docs don't apply. So it requires reverse engineering, building your own middleman software and figuring out all the parameters. A lot of work.
Click to expand...
I’m not gonna gatekeeper on how many parameters should be accessible, but it does seem to me that folks asking for a million are always in tension between “I want this to work more like a pedalboard” and “I want a kitchen sink preset that goes waaaaaay beyond what any real world pedalboard can do and have access to some really esoteric parameters that are fixed on most pedals on a hardware knob to tweak”.

Honestly, in my world, it probably wouldn’t take a whooooole lot of thought/effort/planning on my end (caveat, I have veeeeeeeeeeery little capacity for those things) to break up my “main jam” preset into 3 different presets based on 3 independent ways I use them and likely have enough parameters available on performance page for each of them.
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
I’m not gonna gatekeeper on how many parameters should be accessible, but it does seem to me that folks asking for a million are always in tension between “I want this to work more like a pedalboard” and “I want a kitchen sink preset that goes waaaaaay beyond what any real world pedalboard can do and have access to some really esoteric parameters that are fixed on most pedals on a hardware knob to tweak”.

Honestly, in my world, it probably wouldn’t take a whooooole lot of thought/effort/planning on my end (caveat, I have veeeeeeeeeeery little capacity for those things) to break up my “main jam” preset into 3 different presets based on 3 independent ways I use them and likely have enough parameters available on performance page for each of them.
Click to expand...
Having more params to map just means you don't have to make these workarounds. On top of that the Performance views require pre-planning as you can't just add/swap a parameter there without Axe-Edit.

On average, if you want good control over your amp block you are already using up 5-8 controls depeding on the amp model. Gain - Treble - Mid - Bass - Presence - Depth - Master - Level. So that's almost all your global params, with maybe space for some fx Mix params. Sure, maybe you can omit some but it's still an inconvenience. Just increasing it to 20 would give you way more room, and leave your per preset mappings for more specific stuff.

One thing modelers are bad at is managing multiple blocks in tandem. Adjust a drive, you might want to tweak your amp a bit and vice versa. On pedals I just reach for different knobs. On modelers I need to page back and forth, tweak one thing, page again, tweak, page again. You don't even have visibility to what these different params were set at unless until you page or just keep track of them in your head. More expansive performance pages could really help with this.
 
I wonder how Much CPU with one amp + Cab + Spring reverb would use up ?
would not this be the Trad setup and the way to use a Spring Reverb ? I mean i really doubt that i or anyone would use a Spring Reverb in say an EVH or John Petrucci chain or other complex chains
Im pretty sur that would satisfy all of those Jones'ing for the new Spring Reverb, OFC can't please everyone

:idk
 
Last edited:
Stone said:
I wonder how Much CPU with one amp + Cab + Spring reverb would use up ?
would not this be the Trad setup and the way to use a Spring Reverb ? I mean i really doubt that i or anyone would use a Spring Reverb in say an EVH or John Petrucci chain or other complex chains
Im pretty sur that would satisfy all of those Jones'ing for the new Spring Reverb, OFC can't please everyone

:idk
Click to expand...
Well a reverb in ultra quality some of them will get close to 40% CPU so let’s imagine this is the same or higher , when you factor that in w the basic 15% operating you could be like 60-65%
I totally get the we can have it only in a simple presets but
Based on the way that people read instructions even if Cliff
Put a note Spring reverb uses a ton of your CPU it is recommended you use on a seperate preset , people would still just ignore that and complain , many are already running patches at 82%
Also all the factory presets would not be able to run it
My guess is in the effort to keep their sanity and not have to field tons of issues they don’t want to give that option at the moment .
 
laxu said:
Having more params to map just means you don't have to make these workarounds. On top of that the Performance views require pre-planning as you can't just add/swap a parameter there without Axe-Edit.

On average, if you want good control over your amp block you are already using up 5-8 controls depeding on the amp model. Gain - Treble - Mid - Bass - Presence - Depth - Master - Level. So that's almost all your global params, with maybe space for some fx Mix params. Sure, maybe you can omit some but it's still an inconvenience. Just increasing it to 20 would give you way more room, and leave your per preset mappings for more specific stuff.

One thing modelers are bad at is managing multiple blocks in tandem. Adjust a drive, you might want to tweak your amp a bit and vice versa. On pedals I just reach for different knobs. On modelers I need to page back and forth, tweak one thing, page again, tweak, page again. You don't even have visibility to what these different params were set at unless until you page or just keep track of them in your head. More expansive performance pages could really help with this.
Click to expand...
I agree more is better. I don’t think it’s currently massively too few and I don’t find hyperbole to describe current situation is all that helpful.

One thing I finally figured out was that with the direct-access amp block button...I really don't need to have more than gain and treble from the tone stack on either performance page. A direct-access reverb button would similarly mean the only thing I would want on the performance page from that block is mix; probably same for delay, though feedback might also still be nice to have. Getting rid of the bulk of the tone stack stuff opened up room for me to add the bulk of the detail reverb/delay parameters I tend to want to touch. My beef in terms of number of parameters atm isn't so much "only 20?" but more "I'm okay with 20, but...I don't want to have to use both page AND arrow buttons to navigate between things that don't seem to be different enough to warrant moving to the "page" button. Has there ever been talk about the left/right arrows moving between individual parameters on a page, but also turning the page when the last parameter is reached? To me, the logic seems to be "you should have dedicated page buttons so you don't have to scroll across five parameters on 3 pages just to get to the fourth page; but I also shouldn't have to move down to a dedicated 'turn the page' button when...I'm pushing an arrow button past the last parameter on the current page trying to get to the next page. I've just recently done this "upgrade" to the global page so maybe as I use it more it will just start to become a little more second nature, but right now...too much thought.

While we're getting into wall-of-text nitpick, having those direct-access buttons take you to the main parameter page of the block rather than to the "model" page would also be a big help - I'm also always going there to tweak a parameter, not change the model.

A lot of this boils down to the usual complaint of "it seems like things that should be capable of being done with one button press always require 2, which isn't a big thing once, but after 1.5 hours of use, it...starts to grate a little".

But a lot of it also comes down to "if I spent as much time yelling at clouds about how I wish the thing worked actually learning how the thing worked and ingraining that workflow in my brain...I might be just fine". For example, having individual direct-access buttons would be awesome, but while writing this post it occurred to me that I could get myself in the habit of using the "edit" button to move through blocks in edit mode to fairly efficiently get to the delay and reverb pages by hitting the "cab" knob and then hitting "edit" a couple times...
 
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