Got to use Stadium live this weekend for the first time. My buddy Bradford and I did a video over on our Worship Tutorials channel about our experience playing it. Here's the video:
The video ends with us having a some-what lengthy discussion (most of which I actually edited out), but here are some cliff notes about my personal experience (and some thoughts about Stadium compared to Fractal)
As a disclaimer, though: I'm a huge Line 6 fan, and a huge Fractal fan. When Helix launched, I adopted it immediately. When Axe-FX III released, I bought it, because I had always been curious about Fractal. Over the past 10 years, I've used Helix and Axe-FX III almost 50/50. I also capture amps for a living, so literally every day I'm playing real amps, capturing them, comparing them to the digital versions, etc. Anyway - back to Stadium...
We did a handful of the factory presets for Stadium, so I've had the chance to explore it for a while now. I've done a TON of A/B'ing it against all kinds of stuff - Axe-FX III, Tonex, QC, OG Helix, etc. Using it live was sort of the final litmus test for us...
1. I think the Agoura amps are at least as good as Fractal's models - better in some respects. Fractal has always been the pinnacle for me modeling-wise. The Agoura models are on the same level (IMO), but they exceed Fractal in one respect for me - and it's a big one for us church players. The Agoura models handle effects - particularly big reverbs and delays with overdrive into the front of the amps - better than Fractal. I tried to articulate this in the video, but when you start pushing the Fractal models with all that stuff, they seem to be pushed back further in the stereo field, It's like they're further away from you. And if you think, "well that's what reverb does", I would say, yeah kinda. In real amps, you get all the wet stuff slamming into the amp and creating a big beautiful sounding mess, but the amp is still more present in the mix (not present in an EQ way - present in a 'it's right in front of my face' way). Fractal doesn't quite replicate this as well as the Agoura models do. I haven't compared every model, but for the ones I've tried, this seems to be pretty consistent across the board. We understand a lot (most?) players don't set up their signal chain like this or go for these super ambient and driven tones, so this could be a moot point for many, but to me it speaks to the authenticity of the models compared to real amps.
I LOVE the Tweed Bassman model in Stadium, and I prefer it to the Fractal model by quite a lot. Makes me really want to play the reference amps that both Line 6 and Fractal have. I suspect their models sound exactly like the amps, which is just another point to think of when comparing amp models from company to company. They're modeled after real amps, and especially with vintage - they all sound kind of different.
One more point re: Fractal and Agoura models - I really like the tweak-ability of the fractal stuff. Being able to dive into all those submenus and essentially mod the amp block into oblivion is awesome. I know some people say it's a drawback for fractal, but I dig it a lot. The Hype parameter kind of does all that in a single slider, which is also very cool. And for the most part, I really like what Hype does to each individual amp model.
2. Stadium felt and and sounded just as good as a pedalboard into Tonex v2 captures to me. My board + Tonex setup has sort of been my gold standard over the past year+ or so. Stadium doesn't sound the same - it doesn't have the same drive models, reverb, delays, or amp models that I use with the board/tonex setup, but it sounds/feels just as good. No other all in one modeler has done this for me.
3. We experienced some bugs. Bradford had a tap tempo bug/issue going on, and my presets somehow set the 'level' parameter in the volume block to snapshot control. Just that parameter, tho, and I never set it up that way (that I'm aware of). It meant that if I pulled my volume back in a snapshot, and then came back to it in the middle of the song, the volume was off. I had my expression pedal settings to global. Once I turned off snapshot control on that parameter, all was fixed. Otherwise we had no bug issues.
4. I agree with other comments about reverbs. Fractal's reverbs are the best of any modeling unit, IMO. I do really love Dynamic Hall, Glitz, and Dynamic Plate. When I use Helix/Stadium, I'm perfectly happy with those sounds, but I have a feeling Line 6 will be giving us new reverbs down the line.
5. I cannot wait for Proxy.
Did a thing with the HiWatt as well. Good stuff!
