I will never quite understand TGFs general love for Fractal. I think with the release of ICONS , people are going to realize how close other, more economical solutions sound and are just as good.
The Fractal fans have been looking for it in a vst form. They already had it with NDSP.
When I had the FM3, Helix and QC a few years back and put them head to head, there were clear differences in their quality.
Fractal is my yardstick because I've put it against the real amps I've had and it's done extremely well against them - and that's through a Fryette PS as a poweramp with real guitar cabs at a moderately loud volume. I plan to do that thing again today with the AM4, interested to see how it goes with several years of fw updates.
Fractal - even with the fw back then - always came out on top for amp models.
Helix was solid, but not quite as good.
Quad Cortex was a very mixed bag. Some models were close to Fractal, some were noticeably off, or needed very strange settings to sound similar.
The same thing continued with effects models. Delay, reverb, modulation - Fractal is miles ahead. I liked Helix better for drives back then, but Fractal has since updated their drive modeling a few times. QC was again at best on par, but never better to me.
Having tried most NDSP plugins, I do agree they sound good for amp modeling, but some of their effects could be much better. I wouldn't call them more economical. I expect when Fractal starts putting out more ICONS packs, they'll quickly get to a point where they offer more than what you get with NDSP. Most NDSP plugins are like 2-3 amps/cabs + mostly a similar set of fx across the plugins.
That said, I have no real desire to buy the Fractal plugins, when an AM4 already does all that and is a more practical tool.
With respect to modelers, I foresee a few ultimate possibilities.
Since the advancement of capture tech and increasing accuracy, more people will either move to a portable computer/laptop solution with midi foot controllers (some already do) or the modelers will have to march in that direction with M.2 SSDs, faster cpus, more memory, faster bus speeds....
In essence, a computer like structure but purpose built. I liken this to the video game market where sure, you could pimp out a computer and have everything run on something elaborate system with kick ass graphics, tons of memory and a fast cpu or just use a highly tuned XBOX X or PS5 and be done with it. They are so slick and it's ridiculous how they harnessed power into a portable solution at a reasonable price.
Similarly a purpose built modeler could be built to house solutions like NAM v2 or the like natively. Not a stripped down version but the whole ball of wax.
Even with captures made by myself, I just don't like it that much, even when it sounds good. It's just a workflow that to me is worse than component modeling and even if it were more accurate at specific settings, that doesn't mean much if I have to jump through a pile of captures to get what I want.
I just don't see captures being some magic future. It's already a commodity tech you can add to any rig with a cheap Tonex One, and NAM v2 won't change anything unless it becomes parametric captures.
Fully computer based setups often need a lot more tinkering from the user, same as MIDI-based control systems. It's much more complicated to configure my MIDI + Strymon pedalboard to work like e.g scenes on a modeler. Maybe it works out when you have everything setup the way you like, but there are no true plug-and-play solutions like you get with a dedicated all-in-one modeler hardware.
idiot teenager things lol
![[Nathan]](/data/avatars/m/0/613.jpg?1726885163){kind=avatar}
