Apologies in advance for a 'Bye Felicia' post. I'm thinking of selling my Stadium XL. I'm not getting the enjoyment from it that I was really hoping for. The workflow is great. I don't really have any complaints there, other than a few niggles.
There are a few reasons.
First, I’m a bit inconsistent with the amp models. Sometimes they sound and feel great, but other times they feel a bit congested or dark to my ears. I can usually dial something workable in, but I don’t always feel like I can just drop an amp in and immediately feel at home with it. That lack of trust in the core tone is probably the biggest issue for me. If I'm honest, I felt the same way about Helix back in the day too. It isn't bad... but there is something missing that I feel Fractal captures better.
Second, my playing is very effects-heavy, and at the moment I’m not really gaining anything on that front compared to what my old Helix Floor was doing years ago. The effects are still reasonable, but I’m not seeing anything new that really expands the palette for me. And when my most enjoyable experience boils down to chucking a £100 pedal in front of a valve amp .... and the Stadium can't deliver that same experience, I start to feel like I have a £2000 paperweight.
Third, my live rig has actually simplified a lot over the past few years. Back in my Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster days I needed a massive all-in-one board. Helix really fit the bill there, and I could do all of these crazy combinations of effects that really delivered great sounds. But these days my setup and my expectations are much more straightforward, and the all-in-one experience and capabilities isn’t really central to my rig in the same way. Put more simply; I don't really use snapshots anymore, I don't really need to change my parameters from snapshot to snapshot, I don't need a bunch of 1-song specific tones anymore, and I'm no longer trying to kill off tap dancing. Actually I've really embraced the tap dance over the last year. It is part of the enjoyment of playing for me.
The other thing is that I inevitably fall into the comparison game. When I go back to my Axe-FX III, even though it’s objectively more complicated to use, the amp modelling just tends to work for me straight away. It feels more plug-and-play in terms of tone and response. I also like the routing flexibility, even though I don’t go crazy with the grid like some users, it’s nice to be able to mirror a real pedalboard pretty closely when I want to.
None of this is meant as a knock on the Stadium. It’s clearly a powerful piece of gear and I know a lot of people are getting great results with it. It just might not be the right tool for my workflow right now.