Fractal Talk

[- ★ - BROCKSTAR - ★ -]

@Alex Kenivel we're on the edge of our seats... Did you get it?!?!

 

[mavrick102000]

Alex did say they were getting home late....

I'm hoping he received it and stayed up too late playing with it into the wee hours this morning.

 

[iaresee]

I may have asked you this before, but why run both units??

I can do more.

I run kitchen sink presets. So I'll stay on one preset all night and treat it more like a traditional rig. Bringing effects in and out on a whim as we play a gig. I use scenes for some quick access to a bunch of things on at once. The life of a musician playing in a band that's got a heavy bit of improvisaiton to what they do.

I offload all the drive block work to the VP4 and that frees up a bunch of CPU. I also use the VP4 for wild combinations of strange things. Like pulling up the Zapped preset on it mid-Zappa tune to bring in dyna-flange sounds. Or my Delay God preset which lets me do all kinds of crazy delay-based sounds.

Also what are the various knob boxes on the back row doing??

The red and blue knobs are expression controllers on the VP4. Right now they only get used in one patch to control the motor speed and feedback of a Lo-Fi Tape model on the delay block. I use them to put my signal in to self-osciallation and then modulate the pitch in real time. I usually do it if we end a show with a Neil Young tune like Ohio.

The EXP is attached to the FM9. It controls the rate of all the modulation effects (phaser, chorus, rotary) in my preset along with the rate of the tremolo. If I want a little more chop or if I want to make it undulate more than pulsate, I'll roll it up and down with the EXP. Previously I had a little expression box with a big knob on it on the far left side that was kind of suitable for turning with the side of my shoe, but it was pretty easy to fall off balance doing that in the moment so hopefully I stay on my feet better tonight with the EXP in place.

The Moog expression pedal is attached to the FM9 and just does wah duty.

The EXP2 does random things depending on the scene I'm on but mostly it gets used against the pitch block doing some amount of bending. I have +2 step, -2 step and +12 step modes on the pitch block it controls that I use as the mood strikes me.

The AirTurn turns pages in SongBook Pro on my iPad -- I use that for setlists and my per-song notes on my charts.

 

[Stone]

Seems to me that I'm running my FM9 more on Beeta than actual releases, which from what i can gather there is no real difference everything is WAI

 

[Rock Chalk]

Seems to me that I'm running my FM9 more on Beeta than actual releases, which from what i can gather there is no real difference everything is WAI

Seems like once a build makes it to public beta they're pretty stable. Sure, there might be a bug found once in a while in a public release, but those seem to be squashed fairly quickly.

 

[OrganicZed]

Seems to me that I'm running my FM9 more on Beeta than actual releases, which from what i can gather there is no real difference everything is WAI

I don't understand why FAS chooses leave the FM3 and FM9 firmware as beta releases for weeks on end. If a firmware is stable with no reports of bugs, why not just make it an official release? New features are often added in incremental firmware updates, so waiting to add in the most recent innovations that are trickling down from the III doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation. I trust that there is a legitimate reason that I am not educated enough to understand.

I don't run beta firmware on my FM9 because that is my live setup and I need it to be stable. Regardless, the updates (when they are eventually ported) are always significant and appreciated.

 

[laxu]

I don't understand why FAS chooses leave the FM3 and FM9 firmware as beta releases for weeks on end. If a firmware is stable with no reports of bugs, why not just make it an official release? New features are often added in incremental firmware updates, so waiting to add in the most recent innovations that are trickling down from the III doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation. I trust that there is a legitimate reason that I am not educated enough to understand.

I don't run beta firmware on my FM9 because that is my live setup and I need it to be stable. Regardless, the updates (when they are eventually ported) are always significant and appreciated.

We don't know what their testing looks like behind the scenes. Having it in beta for a long time can also be that it's been tested by their internal testers and end users for a long enough time for them to decide that "Ok, this is good enough for a stable release."

I expect that it's less effort to copy/paste and adapt the latest code from the Axe-Fx 3 codebase into the FM3/FM9 than try to fix e.g a bug already fixed on the Axe-Fx 3 individually on the FM3/9 codebase. Plus the closer the two codebases are together, the easier it is to keep them in sync and add new things from the next Axe-Fx 3 firmware.

 

[Orvillain]

QC owners be like:

 

[GTR37]

I don't understand why FAS chooses leave the FM3 and FM9 firmware as beta releases for weeks on end. If a firmware is stable with no reports of bugs, why not just make it an official release? New features are often added in incremental firmware updates, so waiting to add in the most recent innovations that are trickling down from the III doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation. I trust that there is a legitimate reason that I am not educated enough to understand.

I don't run beta firmware on my FM9 because that is my live setup and I need it to be stable. Regardless, the updates (when they are eventually ported) are always significant and appreciated.

I think it because Cliff works so quickly , they probably are testing behind the scenes constantly, and then Cliff says here is some new stuff I am going to release in a day or 2

 

[GTR37]

Also the changes to the cab block layout in Axe edit are really nice , much more spread out and not so cramped , did expect it so was kind of a wow moment

 

[Alex Kenivel]

@Alex Kenivel we're on the edge of our seats... Did you get it?!?!

Yes! It arrived yesterday morning while I was at work.

Alex did say they were getting home late....

I'm hoping he received it and stayed up too late playing with it into the wee hours this morning.

We got home with the kids after a school event and did the mad dash for dinner and bedtime. I unboxed it and plugged it in, confirmed that at least the front instrument jack and the left 1/4" output are working, as are all of the knobs, buttons, and USB connection.

The condition of the unit is pretty good. It looks like it may have been sitting in a shed, half exposed to the elements. There is some dried pooled liquid stains on top of the value knob and a bunch of tree crud in between the top edge of the faceplate and the box of the unit. I might want to pull it apart and clean it a little bit

It started up just fine and dumped me into a bank of factory presets. Unit was on firmware 18 and sounded terrible right off the bat as I started moving around to different presets. Super boomy and overdriven on all amp models that I flipped around on. This wasn't your typical "this needs a low cut in the cab block" type of mud, but more of a "somebody was fucking around with the input settings" deal - which I confirmed after stumbling around the input settings/pages. There were a few Factory presets that had been overwritten by complete noise and a routing scheme that told me they had no idea what they were doing when they had this thing. They had an input setting cranked to the maximum which I returned to default and things started sounding normal in factory presets.

That's all the time I had last night. I had 5 minutes this morning that I used to update to the latest firmware. I'm really suprised by how quick that process was and when I get home tonight I'll see about installing dynacabs and resetting globals.

 

[- ★ - BROCKSTAR - ★ -]

Yes! It arrived yesterday morning while I was at work.
View attachment 42257

We got home with the kids after a school event and did the mad dash for dinner and bedtime. I unboxed it and plugged it in, confirmed that at least the front instrument jack and the left 1/4" output are working, as are all of the knobs, buttons, and USB connection.

The condition of the unit is pretty good. It looks like it may have been sitting in a shed, half exposed to the elements. There is some dried pooled liquid stains on top of the value knob and a bunch of tree crud in between the top edge of the faceplate and the box of the unit. I might want to pull it apart and clean it a little bit

It started up just fine and dumped me into a bank of factory presets. Unit was on firmware 18 and sounded terrible right off the bat as I started moving around to different presets. Super boomy and overdriven on all amp models that I flipped around on. This wasn't your typical "this needs a low cut in the cab block" type of mud, but more of a "somebody was fucking around with the input settings" deal - which I confirmed after stumbling around the input settings/pages. There were a few Factory presets that had been overwritten by complete noise and a routing scheme that told me they had no idea what they were doing when they had this thing. They had an input setting cranked to the maximum which I returned to default and things started sounding normal in factory presets.

That's all the time I had last night. I had 5 minutes this morning that I used to update to the latest firmware. I'm really suprised by how quick that process was and when I get home tonight I'll see about installing dynacabs and resetting globals.

Very nice Yes once you get the rest of it installed and going and your input thing set to your liking, i am sure it'll be great for you! Can't wait to hear a further run down on what you think when you got time!

Don't forget to install the new presets as well.

 

[DrewJD82]

Actually, I think I'll check out those new presets. I've wanted to keep Austin Buddy's Live Gold presets in there because the organization is stellar, but I haven't kept up with the updates for those presets or even know if he's updated them in the last 2-3 years since I last updated them and at this point I'd rather have some presets that might spark some creativity than a bunch not effectively utilizing the current state of the AxeFX.

 

[dk_ace]

What are the thoughts on the sugar cone Dyna cab that just got added? People that bought the full pack before the smaller version was added to the unit have been raving about it.

I’ve got gigs, won’t be able to update for a while.

D

 

[dk_ace]

I can do more.

I run kitchen sink presets. So I'll stay on one preset all night and treat it more like a traditional rig. Bringing effects in and out on a whim as we play a gig. I use scenes for some quick access to a bunch of things on at once. The life of a musician playing in a band that's got a heavy bit of improvisaiton to what they do.

I offload all the drive block work to the VP4 and that frees up a bunch of CPU. I also use the VP4 for wild combinations of strange things. Like pulling up the Zapped preset on it mid-Zappa tune to bring in dyna-flange sounds. Or my Delay God preset which lets me do all kinds of crazy delay-based sounds.


The red and blue knobs are expression controllers on the VP4. Right now they only get used in one patch to control the motor speed and feedback of a Lo-Fi Tape model on the delay block. I use them to put my signal in to self-osciallation and then modulate the pitch in real time. I usually do it if we end a show with a Neil Young tune like Ohio.

The EXP is attached to the FM9. It controls the rate of all the modulation effects (phaser, chorus, rotary) in my preset along with the rate of the tremolo. If I want a little more chop or if I want to make it undulate more than pulsate, I'll roll it up and down with the EXP. Previously I had a little expression box with a big knob on it on the far left side that was kind of suitable for turning with the side of my shoe, but it was pretty easy to fall off balance doing that in the moment so hopefully I stay on my feet better tonight with the EXP in place.

The Moog expression pedal is attached to the FM9 and just does wah duty.

The EXP2 does random things depending on the scene I'm on but mostly it gets used against the pitch block doing some amount of bending. I have +2 step, -2 step and +12 step modes on the pitch block it controls that I use as the mood strikes me.

The AirTurn turns pages in SongBook Pro on my iPad -- I use that for setlists and my per-song notes on my charts.

What’s it like to program the VP4 and FM9 to work together?

D

 

[Stone]

So I was curious as to New Presets being the fact that i never really explored the originals in the FM
and I just skimmed over a few and

 

[- ★ - BROCKSTAR - ★ -]

So I was curious as to New Presets being the fact that i never really explored the originals in the FM
and I just skimmed over a few and

There's so much fun in just the factory presets and tweaking them here and there, it may be awhile before I ever make something of my own haha.

 

[Rock Chalk]

Yes! It arrived yesterday morning while I was at work.

If the previous owner had things messed up that bad, I think I'd do a factory reset along with the new firmware and presets....enjoy that thing!

 

[Alex Kenivel]

First Fractal question!

To perform a factory reset, do I just follow the instructions on page 93 of the manual in the PROBLEMS WITH GLOBAL SETTINGS OR PARAMETERS? Or is there a way to restore presets, globals and everything?

 

[JiveTurkey]

Setup...Utilities...Reset. Blow it all away