I thought I'd write up some thoughts I have on Stadium.
So at the moment.... a very buggy experience overall. Like the unit, almost every time I turn it on, somehow finds a way to log me out of my account, even when my WIFI is available and working.
The Agoura stuff is not blowing me away. I can get good enough sounds, but the amps aren't setup in a realistic enough way and so a lot of the UX benefits are immediately lost in trying to find the right control. It isn't a huge deal of course. But there's a lot of death by a thousand cuts stuff going on; which is essentially the TLDR of my whole experience.
I think there's something bloated and over saturated going on in the modelling somewhere. I'm not sure if it is poweramp related or not. But I feel like there's a distinct lack of sheen, fizz, clarity, brightness, aggressive frequencies are smoothed out in favour of a more instant gratification sound; and for me, I want as RAW as possible, as close to the real amp experience as possible. I've got the skills to smooth it out if I really want it.
Sometimes hype can help restore those frequencies, but it also introduces other artifacts that I'm not always keen on.
No new delays, or improvements to the existing ones. No new reverbs. This is a big big thing for me. I simply cannot and will not go back to a world where I just "made do" with the legacy Hall, or Ganymede, or whatever. Those algorithms are simply not a patch on even your bog standard 2003 made Boss RV-5. And when you compare to the BigSky? The MercuryX? The MXR reverb? No contest really. I can find sounds on those pedals that simply don't exist on Stadium or Helix. Hell.... a lot of the time they can't be found on Axe FX III either !
A lot of effort has gone into the showcase feature, and I'm glad to see that is happening for the people who want that functionality. But for me? Until I decide to take my Sloganyear stuff onto the stage, it just isn't a relevant part of the experience. Aside from testing a few things on it, I've barely touched it.
I'm very happy about the hardware quality. It seems really top notch to me. Best in class touchscreen. The I/O is fantastic, and easier to understand how to access everything than the Axe FX 3 is - I want mono, I just select the mono thing. The signal to noise ratio is very very good, and the overall sound quality is much better than the Quad Cortex - significantly so.
But I do kind of feel more like an early adopter on this unit than I ever did with the Quad Cortex. Which given the pedigree we're dealing with, is pretty damn concerning. If the regular Stadium Floor had kept the same I/O, I would have waited for that unit... and then maybe wouldn't feel so perturbed by my purchase.
My overall thought process lately has been along the lines of, maybe multi's aren't for me. Because I'm never satisfied. So a bunch of this is totally a "me problem" and not necessarily reflective of the actual objective reality. Totally possible that at this point my expectations are cranked far too high, and that I'm really spoilt. But I wanted this thing to absolutely kick immense amounts of arse, right out of the gate, and it's just sorta slapping the fat mans cheeks a bit.
Ultimately, I don't actually know why I bought this thing right now. GAS, sure. But I had dreams about going back to a Helix style device for my main board command centre, and it isn't there for me yet. I'm not entirely convinced it will be.
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