The place to speak about Dev's current projects, and everything yet to come
#236771 by pixellate
Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:08 am
I've been eye'ing one of these bad boys off for about a year now (back when they were US$2800) and I am yet to meet anyone who actually uses one ... and, turns out, our favorite'est of all favorites uses one!

Devy, If you ever get a chance to read this, could you answer me a few questions about the unit? They're fairly basic questions, ones that could be answered if Fractal Audio distributed to Australia (but they don't) so no-one has, or knows anyone who has, one of these units for me to freakin' play!

1. Is it really what everyone says? I mean .. all I hear is that it's absolutely f***ing unreal, and you even call it electrifying and alien.. How does it compare to other things like the Line 6 units such at the pod series??

2. How does it go live? I run through a Mesa 20:20 from a PodX3 and i'm content, I mean I can do all the dirty work like signal splitting and running in stereo and blah blah blah .. and I usually mic it up live, but I hear the Axe can basically plug straight into the P.A. and sound infinitely better than the X3.. If this is the case, I will probably jizz my pants because the X3 doesn't sound that great (for some reason) when I model my speaker cab (4x12 mesa) and the SM57... maybe Line 6 are crappy? ..maybe i'm a noob at teh modellingz?

3. Do you model your live tone using this? (I just saw you in Sydney and your tone was tight, so if that's what I can expect from an axe, I'll buy one, basically).

4. Would it allow me to control the temperature of the sun?

Basically, what I wanna know (and I don't care how brief) is if you think it's worth the money to invest in this?

Seeya later Aligator

Lyle
#236817 by Stillborn
Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:56 am
I am not Devin, but I do own a ultra.

1. Is it really what everyone says? I mean .. all I hear is that it's absolutely f***ing unreal, and you even call it electrifying and alien.. How does it compare to other things like the Line 6 units such at the pod series??

It's in a class of it's own. The amps and cab sims can feel like an actual amp, and the effects are superb. No line 6 product comes even close.
You have to prepare yourself for a learning curve and be willing to tweak. Once you get it, you'll find that the presets that are already on it are to show off some of its abilities and imo not very usable (cool as hell though). The real fun of this thing is to tweak it into something of your own.

2. How does it go live? I run through a Mesa 20:20 from a PodX3 and i'm content, I mean I can do all the dirty work like signal splitting and running in stereo and blah blah blah .. and I usually mic it up live, but I hear the Axe can basically plug straight into the P.A. and sound infinitely better than the X3.. If this is the case, I will probably jizz my pants because the X3 doesn't sound that great (for some reason) when I model my speaker cab (4x12 mesa) and the SM57... maybe Line 6 are crappy? ..maybe i'm a noob at teh modellingz?

I don't play live, but you can run it straight into the P.A or run it through a poweramp and cab. Most find it preferable to go with the P.A. and have some sort of FRFR amplification to monitor themselves.

the rest if for Devin, hope I could be of some help.
#237106 by pixellate
Fri Mar 19, 2010 4:47 am
Hey Stillborn!

Thanks heaps for replying ... man, if it's aeon's ahead of the line 6 products then i'm really tempted to get one ... I want something that I don't have to worry about. To be honest, the line 6 is inconsistent for some reason .. some days the same patch will sound different to what it should, and i've deduced that it's not a power amp problem. Also it's just annoying to program any line 6 product...they're cool, but they're far from something I can see Devy using.

mmmm... This is a really hard decision, because it is a LOT of money, however my 21st Birthday is coming up so maybe I can con some people into chipping in a few hundred dollars for it.. I'm prepared to pay for all of it but i might as well use the 21st as an excuse :D
#237114 by Knotrice
Fri Mar 19, 2010 7:18 am
I don't own one of these, and I'm no genius when it comes to amps, but I can say two things:

1. Get it.

2. (Sadly) it will not control the temperature of the sun. (Only the mighty Ziltoid can do that, as we all know. After all, if there were two omnisciences he would be both)
#237466 by The Dev
Tue Mar 23, 2010 11:04 pm
It's a year long learning curve, and you have to KNOW what you want...I mean down to the presence frequency etc, and where in the 25 or so parameters between multiple eqs, global eqs, advanced amp parameters, cab air frequency, cab impulses etc that particular frequency lies, and thats just for the high end...

But the thing is...once you start to pinpoint it, it's way better than ANY amp. Seriously.

I'm in the VAUGE ballpark with my heavy tone, in the parking lot with my clean tone, and in the next state with my effects and half distorted tone.

Every night I work on it. I tried my real amps in rehearsal the other day and realized how much ALREADY further ahead I am that the tube amps.

It depends on the guitars and pickups too... It looks like I may be releasing a strat style guitar with passive pickups with the 7 string V... so I'm experimenting with pickups, string gauges, cables etc...EVERY NIGHT.

Made 2 new cab IR mixes tonight...sounds great, too much presence, not enough midrange color...trying some orange v30s tommorow with the current cab as well... need to tweak the amp in there somewhere without changing the amp in general... my onstage sound through cabs and power amp is pretty much perfect though...just replicating that in the sims is my current job.

Have a PERFECT clean sound (for me...the Ki sound) with my Strat, but when I go to pickups that also work for crush, it gets too dark and distorted.

Working it on each tour, about 6 months away from the goal.

If you have the patience and or insight, it's the holy grail.
#237467 by mrbean667
Tue Mar 23, 2010 11:28 pm
Nice!
I always kinda thought that the Addicted heavy tone was a little too... 'bitey'? There seemed to be a lot of presence, but it lacked the 'cleanness' of the GP100 or whatever it was which fueled Infinity/Terria etc.

Axe-Fx seems to be very versatile, judging by Dev's work.
#237474 by daneulephus
Wed Mar 24, 2010 3:05 am
The Dev wrote:It's a year long learning curve, and you have to KNOW what you want...I mean down to the presence frequency etc, and where in the 25 or so parameters between multiple eqs, global eqs, advanced amp parameters, cab air frequency, cab impulses etc that particular frequency lies, and thats just for the high end...

But the thing is...once you start to pinpoint it, it's way better than ANY amp. Seriously.

I'm in the VAUGE ballpark with my heavy tone, in the parking lot with my clean tone, and in the next state with my effects and half distorted tone.

Every night I work on it. I tried my real amps in rehearsal the other day and realized how much ALREADY further ahead I am that the tube amps.

It depends on the guitars and pickups too... It looks like I may be releasing a strat style guitar with passive pickups with the 7 string V... so I'm experimenting with pickups, string gauges, cables etc...EVERY NIGHT.

Made 2 new cab IR mixes tonight...sounds great, too much presence, not enough midrange color...trying some orange v30s tommorow with the current cab as well... need to tweak the amp in there somewhere without changing the amp in general... my onstage sound through cabs and power amp is pretty much perfect though...just replicating that in the sims is my current job.

Have a PERFECT clean sound (for me...the Ki sound) with my Strat, but when I go to pickups that also work for crush, it gets too dark and distorted.

Working it on each tour, about 6 months away from the goal.

If you have the patience and or insight, it's the holy grail.


What do you mean, IR mixes?

Excited about that strat btw.... :D
#237482 by Ronixis
Wed Mar 24, 2010 6:47 am
The Dev wrote:...just replicating that in the sims is my current job.

For around 2 years, I've been working with a lot of freeware and commercial amp emulators that utilize impulse responses. You can get far, but IRs (= impulse responses) are still lacking some essential advantages of miking the perfect cab, in the perfect room with a perfect mic.

Impulse response is a "static image" of a certain signal chain. For example, guitar cab IRs are created by feeding a sine-wave through power amp -> guitar cab -> mic -> mic preamp. On the other end a computer catches the signal, analyzes what happened to it and creates the impulse. The problem is that IRs can't emulate the dynamic changes of a cab and a room: air movement, cab resonating, speaker reacting differently to different volumes etc. In a way, you could say that IR is a "still image", while a real cab in real room is a "movie".

I think this is why you get better sounding results live, since you get the reaction with the room when guitars are fed through the PA and monitors, which is rarely the case in a studio environment. There are a couple of ways to make IRs a bit more dynamic, for example Nebula vst (an "animate" alternative to static convolution) and Cab Enchancer vst (a freeware plugin aiming to emulate air dynamics etc.)

This huge post is not necessarily aimed to Devin exclusively since he probably knows most of these matters, but to everyone who are interested in this subject.

All the best!
#237484 by guitardouche
Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:17 am
wow, good to know that someone had success having their Axe Fx sound the same through the guitar cab and through the PA with the proper custom tweaked IRs.

This task still lies ahead for me, since that damn power amp is taking so long to arrive :x
argh, I'm sure it will be an insane amount of tweakage

daneulephus wrote:What do you mean, IR mixes?

Excited about that strat btw.... :D


Sounds like 2 or more IR mixed together (in phase, so they all add up to a big or "balanced" sound)

E.g. take an IR with a mic at the speaker center
then you add another IR with a mic some inches away from the center
then maybe you add a mic that is further away...

you take all those IR files and mix them together to create a new IR (there are programs, tutorials on the Axe Fx forum), you convert that into the sysex format and upload it to the Axe Fx.


Ronixis wrote:
The Dev wrote:...just replicating that in the sims is my current job.

For around 2 years, I've been working with a lot of freeware and commercial amp emulators that utilize impulse responses. You can get far, but IRs (= impulse responses) are still lacking some essential advantages of miking the perfect cab, in the perfect room with a perfect mic.

Impulse response is a "static image" of a certain signal chain. For example, guitar cab IRs are created by feeding a sine-wave through power amp -> guitar cab -> mic -> mic preamp. On the other end a computer catches the signal, analyzes what happened to it and creates the impulse. The problem is that IRs can't emulate the dynamic changes of a cab and a room: air movement, cab resonating, speaker reacting differently to different volumes etc. In a way, you could say that IR is a "still image", while a real cab in real room is a "movie".

I think this is why you get better sounding results live, since you get the reaction with the room when guitars are fed through the PA and monitors, which is rarely the case in a studio environment. There are a couple of ways to make IRs a bit more dynamic, for example Nebula vst (an "animate" alternative to static convolution) and Cab Enchancer vst (a freeware plugin aiming to emulate air dynamics etc.)

This huge post is not necessarily aimed to Devin exclusively since he probably knows most of these matters, but to everyone who are interested in this subject.

All the best!


that's true, nothing can be more original, than the original. But I think for guitarists having an IR that was created with a really LOUD sinewave is all that is needed :mrgreen:

I personally think that one should rather create a tone that fits perfectly instead of creating a tone that sounds exactly like a certain real live amp and cab etc.
but real things are usually more pleasant to the ears since the real world has an endless amount of irregularities while a simulation can only go as far as it was developed.


Hmmm... now that I think about it: It would be possible to develop an IR system with several "velocity layers". E.g. you have a quiet IR, a medium IR and a loudly sampled IR.
And regarding how loud the sound is that goes through "it", a blend of two IRs is used.
#237573 by pixellate
Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:30 pm
This is all very interesting.

Funnily enough, everything being discussed here relates to my area of study (signals and telecommunications engineering) so I may be at an advantage with this.

I'll need to respond in detail later, but for now all I can say is I am blown away by the sheer variability in the Axe-fx considering Devy's response ... I am seriously considering getting one, very soon .. Basically, I love this kind of thing, I love the maths, I love the physics .. I love music, so there's no reason against getting one apart from the fact it's expensive (but, then again, worth it).

I will need to go browse the forums (axe-fx forums) and see what I can figure out...

but as far as IR goes -- I haven't done much of this with my guitar work, but one thing we do at uni quite a bit is put a "shot" impulse signal through an instrument, and see what's going on at the other end of it. I mean .. this is like seeing what happens to the number one when you multiply it by some random variables... This brings me to ask, with music, is it actually better to use some sort of sinusoidal wave instead of an actual impulse? With acoustics in theaters we can find out what happens to that 'one' as far as reverberation and delay is concerned, and negate it with filters and other fancy stuff .. I'm trying to find the blur line between what I already know, and what I am about to learn!

Thanks in advance!

Off to work now -- ugh!
#237577 by The Dev
Thu Mar 25, 2010 10:27 pm
I think one of the reasons I'm so stoked is that I'm designing the sounds currently for Deconstruction, which is a pretty 'clear' and 'sci-fi' sounding heavy music orchestra... I've got 15 songs, (some 12 minutes long)... and literally a shit-ton more ideas in the 'bank' and coming out randomly.

Starting the process with a thick guitar sound that is clear will allow me to layer all the other elements and not lose the mix from the get go. Everybody's riffs make amps react differently... my riffs usually are pretty chord-y, and therefore a Meshuggah sound is pretty much mud. Fred sent me his patch a while back, and it sounded like shit with my riffs, but obviously ridiculous for him.

Finding my sound is a long road. The echos, the distortion...how much high mid will cut through the layers without losing the definition, yet when you boost the high mids that give the rest of the mix breathing room, on their own...the guitars tend to sound thin.

The static nature of IRs etc tend to work very well for Decon, because I require the guitars to sit in ONE place pretty much constantly. This record is a layered bizzare-mess :) it needs to be uncompressed and everything at approximately the same relative levels for the intention to come through. If the guitars are crushing and dominant throughout, all the choir and layers become lost. So I ride the levels and eq's etc throughout...but in a song like 'For My God' (Tentative title) there is 10 or more different guitar parts at once, so it's totally musical Tetris once you start trying to make everything speak.

The album is pretty much an observation of spirituality vs. religion...with special guests 'god' and 'satan' :) ... it's ruthless, and almost totally 'free'... but also quite dynamic. The character goes to hell, meets the devil, realizes it's him...and then talks to god, and he realizes he's just talking to himself... and technically, he never left the living room. It's pretty funny... it's kind of sad, and it's very dark without actually being dark at all. It's an observation on why humans need certain things, and that hierarchy with man at the top and everything else on the bottom is explored through testing ones own limits and feeding off your own fears and dangers.. There are no 'points' 'missions' or 'answers'... in fact, thats the conclusion (spoiler) is the character is fine with religion, or no religion, or sex, or drugs, or tv, or whatever... essentially...he just discovers what works for him vs. what doesn't and goes with that, weather it's right, wrong, smart, stupid, boring, antisocial, gay, violent, ridiculous or apathetic...whatever.

The lyrics are about love, family, commitment, realizations, cheeseburgers, and shit. Really, it's my first REAL attempt at a 'play' or a 'musical'

It's not a kids record... it's pretty advanced for me I think...time will tell though, it could suck.

Again... the conclusion is pretty anti-climactic... which I think is hilarious actually. The lead up is crazy though.

so yeah...impulse responses...
#237578 by keeptheflame
Thu Mar 25, 2010 10:34 pm
The Dev wrote:The album is pretty much an observation of spirituality vs. religion...with special guests 'god' and 'satan' :) ... it's ruthless, and almost totally 'free'... but also quite dynamic. The character goes to hell, meets the devil, realizes it's him...and then talks to god, and he realizes he's just talking to himself... and technically, he never left the living room. It's pretty funny... it's kind of sad, and it's very dark without actually being dark at all. It's an observation on why humans need certain things, and that hierarchy with man at the top and everything else on the bottom is explored through testing ones own limits and feeding off your own fears and dangers.. There are no 'points' 'missions' or 'answers'... in fact, thats the conclusion (spoiler) is the character is fine with religion, or no religion, or sex, or drugs, or tv, or whatever... essentially...he just discovers what works for him vs. what doesn't and goes with that, weather it's right, wrong, smart, stupid, boring, antisocial, gay, violent, ridiculous or apathetic...whatever.

The lyrics are about love, family, commitment, realizations, cheeseburgers, and shit. Really, it's my first REAL attempt at a 'play' or a 'musical'

It's not a kids record... it's pretty advanced for me I think...time will tell though, it could suck.

Again... the conclusion is pretty anti-climactic... which I think is hilarious actually. The lead up is crazy though.

so yeah...impulse responses...

I'll admit I was looking forward to Ghost a lot more than Decon, but you've piqued my interest with this description...I wanna see how this story pans out musically, if you know what I mean. To read the storyline is one thing but to hear it is completely different due to the emotions music can evoke so easily. I can't wait! :D
#237583 by mxtrav
Fri Mar 26, 2010 12:36 am
The Dev wrote:there is 10 or more different guitar parts at once, so it's totally musical Tetris once you start trying to make everything speak.


This is getting me all super excited, I love layered shit like this!
#237592 by pixellate
Fri Mar 26, 2010 4:50 am
I'm extremely interested in hearing Deconstruction, more-so than Ghost because, to be completely honest, I think the shear scale of Deconstruction will be monumental .. far more refined than your Strapping Young Lad days. Actually, I was on my way to uni the other day and Alien came on (don't know why because I had my DTB/DTP/Devlab playlist on... maybe it was a SIGN?). Anyway, I listened to Imperial, Skeksis... etc, and I had this weird feeling that maybe Deconstruction was going to be like that. It kind of annoyed me, but to read what you just said has completely quelled my fear. I know a LOT of SYL fans who are waging on Deconstruction to be the rebirth of SYL, and I hope, to god (or satan) that they don't take it as an insult when they finally hear your creation. Yes...

...impulse responses...

Okay, here's a question, and you MAY not be able to answer it, but whatever. Your tone on Synchestra is the tightest I've ever heard, in every aspect --- the cleans, the heavy, the effects .. Now, compare that to your tone on either Ocean Machine or Infinity, which, are perfect for what they are, and to be completely honest, sound like you went back to the future in the delorean and recorded them NOW, as opposed to 10 to 15 years ago ... The question is, do you plan on modelling (or have you done so) those tones down to the n'th degree for your live show using the Axe-fx? Cause .. I've been messing around with my POD at the moment, and I have a tone I think is good for Ocean Machine, Infinity ..that ridiculously massive, delayed, high-ish mid, distorted sound that only works with a set of my passive SD's (can't remember what they are, cause it's written on the box, which is in a bin). I then try to play anything from Synchestra on that tone, and it sounds ....... muddy? it's like it isn't crisp enough. When you played live in Sydney your tone was incredible...i've seen countless live shows since I was 12, and your tone was something that legitimately blew every other show out of the water .. which is good, considering you believe that your live tone is where you want it.. Also, I was in front of the sound desk, so all the poor suckers in the mosh were just unlucky ;-) hehe suckaz! Back on track --- I love playing music live, but one thing that's really demoralising is never having the right tone for what I want to play. I actually stopped writing music for a while because it pissed me off, took the edge off my creativity ... the music I write is so different to what you create, but all I want is to have something I can set, play with, understand inside out, and not BLOCK my creativity simply because it sounds like an angry canadian at the end of a microp.... i mean ... wait a second...

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