Question to IKMM : AT3 vs AxeFX

[Agreed]

whats the return policy on axe fx?

All sales come with a 15-day money-back guarantee (shipping not included).

Sounds good to me. Shipping isn't that unreasonable, I shipped a rack unit to Canada double-boxed and packed to withstand hell for a tiny fraction of the price of the AxeFX. If you've got the change to blow testing out the unit, you can probably swing a return... If you don't decide to just flip it, since there seems to be a fairly consistent demand and it holds its value.

The AxeFX is a really neat product in a lot of ways. It's in firmware version 10 now, and I've watched it grow from a pretty small but powerful collection of tools to a monumentally large group of amps, effects, etc.; and day one customers have had exactly the same product as people who bought it yesterday. Firmware updates are regular, user-base sensitive in terms of feature and content additions, and free.

The AxeFX is not a product to be dismissed. It deserves respect and FractalAudio is clearly a good company, good to their users and they listen.

But I do wish that AxeFX users and Cliff from FractalAudio would crank the Ego knob down a bit. It's an effects processor. It does not have anything in it that isn't possible or feasible in any other competing product, and most modeling software companies have their own gurus behind the scenes who think their own technology is the One True Path... But Cliff is very forward and up front with his image AS "the guy," the guru-wizard who codes pure tone. It's incredibly effective marketing, even if it does produce some particularly forward supporters who bring an attitude of "AxeFX is the best, everything else blows" to the table.

Not that every company doesn't have "those supporters." Heh.

[AndrewSimon]

The Axe-FX rocks my world for over 3 years now.
Forget clips and hardware and codes... play it!
With the 15 Day Guaranty it's a no brainer,
for the cost of shipping you get to play with one cool toy for 15 days.

I started with version 3.14.... now after about 30 updates (no joke)
we are at version 10.00
This thing is just getting better and better, pushing the envelope all the time.

I have been posting about it here on KVR since 2007 but haven't received
any good feedback:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=194242

I guess when you come from the VST world it's a big jump in price to swallow.
Much more converts on the TGP forum where people are used to paying
$3K to $5K for a single boutique amp.

[Agreed]

I guess when you come from the VST world it's a big jump in price to swallow.
Much more converts on the TGP forum where people are used to paying
$3K to $5K for a single boutique amp.

Hardly, I built my studio PC (with the goals of extreme horsepower, ample and fast storage, tons of RAM and ambient noise that can't be heard on recordings, the latter being not a small investment on its own) for one and a half times the price of the AxeFX Ultra and that doesn't even get into converters and other hardware and then various software costs. The total price for my studio endeavors would have let me buy a few AxeFX Ultras, I believe, or even a couple of Mesa Boogie MkV Frankly I'm quite set for physical gear with my trusty THD Univalve and an assortment of quality pedals. If you're a TGP regular maybe we've met over in the Effects forum side of things, maybe not.

The price of it isn't really galling, except that most people considering a modeler already have a computer so it doesn't represent an initial cost investment, just a sunk one. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, and on that count the price of the AxeFX isn't necessarily out-reaching the price of software, taken on equal terms.

[Agreed]

Alright, here's an MP3 link to the comparison. AxeFX original clip on the right, my AT3 clip on the left. You can hear them together or individually this way. I don't have access to the AxeFX proprietary cab IR that he used, so there's some discrepancy inherent that I can't really overcome. I used Amplitube 3's triple rec model.



And here is a link to a zip file containing a FLAC version of the audio, and the AT3 patch:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2Z33P7XX

[bishop666]

Well Done! This shows how close it can get. The axe fx is a tiny bit better by quality means. BUT does it worth the large extra amount of money?

I don't think so. In a mix you won't notice the difference of 4% missing in the AT3 version. The gap is so little any further AT3 expansion pack will close it.


Conclusion: AT3 is much closer to the axe fx than i thought. Big compliment to Agreed.


Agreed vs Axe FX: 1:0

[Amberience]

Alright, here's an MP3 link to the comparison. AxeFX original clip on the right, my AT3 clip on the left. You can hear them together or individually this way. I don't have access to the AxeFX proprietary cab IR that he used, so there's some discrepancy inherent that I can't really overcome. I used Amplitube 3's triple rec model.



And here is a link to a zip file containing a FLAC version of the audio, and the AT3 patch:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2Z33P7XX

Sounds very nice. But I'm almost convinced there is no AxeFX in there at all

[Agreed]

Thanks for the props, the hardest part was trying to work with the cab modeling to emulate the AxeFX's cab IR. If I just had that IR I'm pretty sure I could get it identical. Frankly that's not my idea of the perfect high gain sound, it's a little dry and kind of midrange-starved... But it was as close as I could get to the source within a reasonable time period (the original clip was made, according to the guy who posted it, within 5 minutes, so I didn't want to spend too long on making mine!).

Consider also that we may be using different amps... I know Cliff uses schematics sometimes, and real amps in front of him other times. I also know that while Mesa Boogie has good quality control, they still differ unit to unit. Correct me if I'm wrong, Peter, but I was under the impression that IK Multimedia actually gets out the measurement tools and digs deep into every piece of gear they model to get everything just right (part of the DSM and whatever other acronyms there are, aheh). So when you talk about a quality difference, are we comparing an apple to an apple? (Close enough, sure, but if that's a Dual Rectifier's Red mode with the Bright switch on into a specific cab IR, and I'm using a different amplifier potentially, different channel potentially, and who knows about switches - close is about as good as it gets, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn here but under the circumstances I do feel like I got it pretty darned close).

Anyway, it was an interesting challenge. I hope it's clear that I don't have any negative feelings toward the AxeFX, but that I do think that other high end modeling software is on par with it, quality-wise, and so it's unfair when Cliff and others go out of their way to insult the competition as slow or inferior. His claim that circuits aren't modeled correctly may be true of the other, inexpensive hardware modelers like the Boss GT-10, Pod X3, Vox Tonelab, etc.; but they have a fraction of the power of the AxeFX unit. A fair comparison to modern software is more nuanced because modern computers don't just match the AxeFX in processing power, they exceed it, even when taking into account the specialized nature of the TigerSHARC DSP chips in the AxeFX.

Anyway, enough yammering from me, I welcome other takes on the comparison as well.

Sounds very nice. But I'm almost convinced there is no AxeFX in there at all

Well, that's just incorrect, I downloaded the file and imported it into my DAW for the sake of sound-matching. And I put it hard right, while the AT3 part is hard left. You can test it yourself, null out the right with the original clip if you doubt

[AndrewSimon]

I guess when you come from the VST world it's a big jump in price to swallow.
Much more converts on the TGP forum where people are used to paying
$3K to $5K for a single boutique amp.

Hardly, I built my studio PC (with the goals of extreme horsepower, ample and fast storage, tons of RAM and ambient noise that can't be heard on recordings, the latter being not a small investment on its own) for one and a half times the price of the AxeFX Ultra and that doesn't even get into converters and other hardware and then various software costs. The total price for my studio endeavors would have let me buy a few AxeFX Ultras, I believe, or even a couple of Mesa Boogie MkV Frankly I'm quite set for physical gear with my trusty THD Univalve and an assortment of quality pedals. If you're a TGP regular maybe we've met over in the Effects forum side of things, maybe not.

The price of it isn't really galling, except that most people considering a modeler already have a computer so it doesn't represent an initial cost investment, just a sunk one. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, and on that count the price of the AxeFX isn't necessarily out-reaching the price of software, taken on equal terms.

Well let me tell you how I got mine.
I sold 3 Xotic pedals, my tube DI (The brick) and
a tube amp (Kustom Coupe36.... that I never liked)
What I got in return is so much more that it's just silly.

[bishop666]

Yeah, if you had the same IR the tones would be twins.

So, if Peter reads this: Compliment to all involved at IKMM





@Agreed you wanted to show a tone you prefer more. (This isn't part of the challenge) Do it if you like... (...doesn't need to be now.) I am curios to what you like. Some many tones to choose from these days.




This challenge was fun. Although i just made the rules and otherwise spectated

[Agreed]

@Agreed you wanted to show a tone you prefer more. (This isn't part of the challenge) Do it if you like... (...doesn't need to be now.) I am curios to what you like. Some many tones to choose from these days.

I dunno, I'd like to hear other thoughts on the comparison. As futurefields noted, there are lots of ears around here and I always find it helpful to hear feedback from a lot of the other regulars around here. Good people all, even when we disagree.

I am personally more into the 5150 kind of high-gain sound for the really brutal stuff, or a heavily pushed Marshall for dry metal sounds. Just not a Recto guy. They have their niche of course, and Andy Sneap (friggin' miracle worker) can get amazing sounds with them, but not my thing.

[Amberience]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/630473/mastodon ... Chorus.wav

AT3. With Podfarm's 'VintageUK' preamp. TheGlue strapped on the end.

[bishop666]

---

[zerocrossing]

Great job Agreed. Sorry to be so out of it. A head cold that escalated while I was in Chicago, became plugged ears on my flight back that are just starting to clear now, but I can tell you got pretty damn close. I can tell that the AxeFX seemed to have a little more of an aggressive attack... it almost sounded to me when I tried a quick try at replicated it that the AxeFX version sounded what my guitar sounds like when I first put new strings on it.

Anyway, maybe I'll give it a go this week, but I doubt I could get much closer and I'm not even sure I could say that either one was better than the other. They both seemed very good to me. Interestingly, your mp3 post really showed how much the mp3 compression screws with the sound and how these tests should be uncompressed. Anyway, it's always this way, isn't it? You can only though so much money at something before you start getting diminished returns. If you play live and want dedicated hardware that's the best, then the AxeFX is still your best bet, but if you're like me and you're going to be using a computer anyway Amplitube gets me where I want to go for a lot less.

[Sascha Franck]

I can't add anything about the quality of AT vs. Axe-FX or anything.
But, here's what I recommend to anyone already owning a decent live setup:
Get yourself a speaker loadbox (such as the ones from Weber, Koch, VHT, a Marshall SE-100 and what not). Preferably make sure it has two line outs, one with a speaker sim, one without. That way you can monitor without any latency (which is an issue on quite some setups) but still use cab IRs for mixing purposes (I absolutely believe that, if anything at all, the IR speaker simulation technique is quite "there" - read: Noone will notice a difference anymore, not even advanced guitar recordists). If you want to be even more on the safe side, add a quality split box as the first part of your guitar signal chain and also record the dry guitar signal, so you can go for re-amping later on, shouldn't you be happy.
Total cost: Around €500 (including the split box).
With such a setup you can simply take any amp that you like and record it at home with absolutely professional results.
As said, this method is making most sense for those that already have a live setup they like and want to capture it professionally on recordings without being able to run a loud amp.
Personally, I've already got 3 tube amps that I all like (a Boogie MkIV, an early 90s Twin and a Laney LC50), plus a bunch of pedals, so I'm quite sorted soundwise. And that's why I'll be going the route described above (I'm just not sure about the loadbox yet). I won't lose any software amp options, either, as I'll also go for a splitbox.

Fwiw, one of *the* most convincing things I ever heard from a modeller has been a clip by Paco Casanovas (some may know him from the Axe-FX forums or other guitar oriented ones), demonstrating the JCM 800 model of the Axe-FX. Unfortunately, I can't find a link to it anywhere, but it really had me stunning. Mind you, it wasn't any chugga-chugga-higain or so, though.

And fwiw #2: The sample Agreed posted is indeed coming darn close to the Axe-FX clip. Guess both of them would be as useable in a mix.

And fwiw #3: For me, latency is a key factor. It's not so much about the timing or so, it's more of a "feel" thing. I mean, with my FW interface I'm getting an in-to-out latency of around 10 ms (9.something). That's like standing 3 meters away from your amp. I'd say that each and every guitar player can get away with that. But, whenever you stand 3 meters away from your amp, there's some room information added (unless you play in a dead room, which should hardly ever be the case). This is not happening with latency. The sound just arrives later, without any additional room information. Not much of an issue when working with monitor speakers, but to me it's really irritating when working with headphones (which I often have to do).
With that to-be-built setup of mine, I'll never have to care about latency again.

And finally, a word about instrument ins on audio interfaces: Yes, there's a whole world of a difference between them. I own an M-Audio FW-410 (ok, but not great), NIs Rig Kontrol (pretty good but can only be used together with the audio interface part), an M-Audio Audiobuddy (actually really nice for the money), a TC G-Force (which can as well amplify instrument levels properly, could then be routed digitally into my DAW), an IKMM Stealth Plug (quite good quality, unfortunately it only records in 16 bit and has quite some other flaws) and a Boss GT-10.
Now, it only happened recently that I tried the GT-10 for recordings, and I've been absolutely amazed by the results. In opposite to earlier GT models, apparently this time Boss made some real efforts to tailor their AD converters for guitar useage. So, as long as I can be arsed to set it up at home (it's usually just part of my live setup), I don't use anything else anymore (it's limited to 44.1, but that's what I'm using anyway).
Another nice thing about the GT-10 is that you can as well use it as an audio interface, recording the clean guitar signal while monitoring through its amps and FX (software monitoring unfortunately isn't exactly possible as it adds a whooping 16 ms of latency, even at 32 samples buffersize), and as I always have it with me on the road anyway, I don't need to carry around any additional interface anymore when touring or so.

- Sascha

[Agreed]

Sascha, I've liked what I've heard from the GT-10 as well. I don't think, personally, that it matches the quality of high-end software or the AxeFX, but it sounds very good and has an affordable price, is well built, etc.; if I needed a floor-based modeler to gig with, I'd pick that over the competition. The Pod X3 Live seems fragile to me, and the Vox Tonelab series is too confused about where they want the product to fit to put out a good, modern update. I quite like the Korg modelers, but the Korg modelers are just the Vox modelers with A) some extra, cool effects, but B) poorer preamps.

I had a Zoom G9.2tt for awhile. It was neat. A toy, but a neat toy. Its cabinet emulation was TERRIBLE! But into IRs some fantastic results could be had. And it emulated a range of distortion pedals, including the Klon Centaur and other boutique favorites, and emulated them quite well (I say this having experience with a number of them, I'm kind of a dirt pedal nut!). The tubes in it were kind of gimmicky, not really running all that hot but they did add a little warmth and some important sag... Even a starved plate tube sags a little, nothing wrong with starving a tube. Rounds off the harmonics produced by solid-state distortion quite well (e.g. Radial ToneBone Hot British, which uses a Marshall JMP 1-like diode configuration into a starved plate tube to give it some sag and soften the clipping, very effective, very nice sounding pedal to my ears). I guess it did an okay job with digital distortion, too.

Zoom is uncharacteristically up-front in their acknowledgment of exactly how limited their modeling process is. I don't have the communication handy, but one of their engineers responded to an email sent by a member of TheStompBox.net and explained that they limit their modeling of an amp to a very specific range of its gain. They have to, because of processing power limitations (since the proprietary processing chip has to run not just the amp model, but any effects, etc. too). Now, it's been my experience through testing that other inexpensive (relatively speaking) hardware modelers do the same thing, but Zoom is forthright in admitting it. Doesn't necessarily mean bad results, but it does mean that it isn't going to approach the dynamics of a more sophisticated, complete circuit model approach found in modern software (and the software running on more expensive hardware platforms, that is, the AxeFX).

Great job Agreed. Sorry to be so out of it. A head cold that escalated while I was in Chicago, became plugged ears on my flight back that are just starting to clear now, but I can tell you got pretty damn close. I can tell that the AxeFX seemed to have a little more of an aggressive attack... it almost sounded to me when I tried a quick try at replicated it that the AxeFX version sounded what my guitar sounds like when I first put new strings on it.

Anyway, maybe I'll give it a go this week, but I doubt I could get much closer and I'm not even sure I could say that either one was better than the other. They both seemed very good to me. Interestingly, your mp3 post really showed how much the mp3 compression screws with the sound and how these tests should be uncompressed. Anyway, it's always this way, isn't it? You can only though so much money at something before you start getting diminished returns. If you play live and want dedicated hardware that's the best, then the AxeFX is still your best bet, but if you're like me and you're going to be using a computer anyway Amplitube gets me where I want to go for a lot less.

Yeah, mp3 compression does have its drawbacks. I have a lot of my music library encoded in either VBR -ape (alt preset extreme) or CBR 320, and even on my monitors I can't tell the difference 99% of the time when running FooBar's blind test utility, except on really demanding and subtle content. I like to provide FLAC lossless when I can; I really wish that the audio hosting service I use, Tindeck, would accept FLAC uploads... But they don't, just MP3, Ogg, and WAV. I guess I could encode lossless Ogg. Anyone with the means to play back FLAC probably has the means to play back Ogg lossless, too. I might start doing that.

Most of the time it's not a big deal, but if I start getting complaints I tend to listen!

As far as the tone goes, they're close but not identical - and I agree, it isn't that the AT3 or the AxeFX one is superior or inferior, they're just different. They both have clarity (though they're both also pretty squished against the wall by all that distortion, haha), it's just a matter of how dry or pushed do you like your high gain sound.

I've got to install an AC unit in the bedroom today, this summer heat is killing us and the house we're renting lacks a good central AC, I think it'll pay for itself if we can just cool the room we're using at night and turn off the big window unit in the middle room of the house. So likely no clips from me today! But I will provide an example or two of my favorite Amplitube 3 high-gain tones. There are some lovely ones in there, so many different routes to be had. Well, I have some ready-made clips I guess. I spent a few weeks on another forum, the Musician's Lounge at forums.somethingawful.com, helping people get tones they were looking for, so I've got a couple here that I like. Apart from these, though, it'll be a few days before (if) I put up anything else.

1. Here's a really thick sound, supposed to sound close to The Sword - Freya, that I got by running the AT3 pedal into the AT3 Orange amp. (I happen to know that one of the guitarists uses an Orange amp and a Metal Muff, which is related, circuit-wise to the Boss Metalzone ... little bit of tweaking and I got the following, which I stupidly double-tracked without a metronome so it's kinda sloppy). I like this, it's a patch that is really fun to play because it "feels" good and lively.


2. Here's a sound that's close to the sound of Opeth's "Master's Apprentices" from Deliverance. I think this is just single-tracked, I was in a bit of a hurry, but the sound is cool. I actually did use the Triple Rec model for this, but since it was again just trying to match a tone I'm not sure if it's how I would like it to sound, just trying to get close to a recorded sound. But without the benefits of quad-tracking and post-processing and a multi-band compressor