Whoa! New Fractal Axe software!

[GreyLion]

The thing that a lot of us guitarists have been faunching for since the first Axe came out.

Looks like they finally decided to quit leaving money on the table, and did it smart -- releasing only one family of amps in each bundle, so they can squeeze maximum dollars out of us, without cannibalizing hardware sales.

I wonder if it's too late, since a lot of other sims have gotten so good.

https://shop.fractalaudio.com/collections/plugins

[SLiC]

Interesting, it’s on ilok but I can’t see a demo…I can’t see many buying without trying it first…

[pekbro]

Hmm, interesting, no demo sucks though. Of course they might be demo-able at installation like other ilok protected stuff...

I will wait to see what Zerocrossing says about the stuff, I recall he was a AXE FX guy at one point. heh

[glokraw]

Saw some players working it on youtube, sounded fine, looked easy to use. These days, that should be a given, given the amount of rocky ground plowed up the last 10 years to get us to free neural, aida-X and json gear captures alongside a dozen top commercial option$

[billinder33]

I'm an AXE-FX3 owner and absolutely love the unit, but this seems very pricy given the limited number of models.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

A demo is coming, but no ETA announced. Apparently, the Fractal guys are meeting with iLok to sort out how to do that (this seems all new to them).

The pricing is obnoxious. I understand wanting to charge a premium so as not to hurt hardware sales, but they should be charging $300 for the whole package. Not just for Fender amps.

I've never used Fractal stuff though. I hear it's excellent. But ToneX is excellent, NAM is excellent, Genome is excellent, etc. There's no shortage of excellent tones available in the box.

[zerocrossing]

A demo is coming, but no ETA announced. Apparently, the Fractal guys are meeting with iLok to sort out how to do that (this seems all new to them).

The pricing is obnoxious. I understand wanting to charge a premium so as not to hurt hardware sales, but they should be charging $300 for the whole package. Not just for Fender amps.

I've never used Fractal stuff though. I hear it's excellent. But ToneX is excellent, NAM is excellent, Genome is excellent, etc. There's no shortage of excellent tones available in the box.

I had an AxeFX III mk2 for a long time. Save your money. It's very good, but sound quality wise, you're not missing much. The think about it that's great is the ability to tweak things down to the subatomic level, if that's what you desire. I probably would buy a software version of it for $300, but just the Fender emulations? They're high. I just don't think they understand how the software market works.

[zerocrossing]

Hmm, interesting, no demo sucks though. Of course they might be demo-able at installation like other ilok protected stuff...

I will wait to see what Zerocrossing says about the stuff, I recall he was a AXE FX guy at one point. heh

I was indeed. See previous post!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

A demo is coming, but no ETA announced. Apparently, the Fractal guys are meeting with iLok to sort out how to do that (this seems all new to them).

The pricing is obnoxious. I understand wanting to charge a premium so as not to hurt hardware sales, but they should be charging $300 for the whole package. Not just for Fender amps.

I've never used Fractal stuff though. I hear it's excellent. But ToneX is excellent, NAM is excellent, Genome is excellent, etc. There's no shortage of excellent tones available in the box.

I had an AxeFX III mk2 for a long time. Save your money. It's very good, but sound quality wise, you're not missing much. The think about it that's great is the ability to tweak things down to the subatomic level, if that's what you desire. I probably would buy a software version of it for $300, but just the Fender emulations? They're high. I just don't think they understand how the software market works.

I'm honestly most interested in the FX. Like, how good is their CE-2, how good is their RE-201, etc. I thought about picking up the FX floor modeler thing (the VP4?).

But I don't even know if those are represented in the plugin, or if they'll add them later on for $300!

I'm in no rush. I'm in the market for some kind of Plexi head (Germino, Top Hat, Ceriatone), and would rather put the money towards that.

[zerocrossing]

A demo is coming, but no ETA announced. Apparently, the Fractal guys are meeting with iLok to sort out how to do that (this seems all new to them).

The pricing is obnoxious. I understand wanting to charge a premium so as not to hurt hardware sales, but they should be charging $300 for the whole package. Not just for Fender amps.

I've never used Fractal stuff though. I hear it's excellent. But ToneX is excellent, NAM is excellent, Genome is excellent, etc. There's no shortage of excellent tones available in the box.

I had an AxeFX III mk2 for a long time. Save your money. It's very good, but sound quality wise, you're not missing much. The think about it that's great is the ability to tweak things down to the subatomic level, if that's what you desire. I probably would buy a software version of it for $300, but just the Fender emulations? They're high. I just don't think they understand how the software market works.

I'm honestly most interested in the FX. Like, how good is their CE-2, how good is their RE-201, etc. I thought about picking up the FX floor modeler thing (the VP4?).

But I don't even know if those are represented in the plugin, or if they'll add them later on for $300!

I'm in no rush. I'm in the market for some kind of Plexi head (Germino, Top Hat, Ceriatone), and would rather put the money towards that.

I thought their effects were great… but they suffer from what all Fractal software does: it’s all a bit cleaned up. Like idealized versions of what they are modeling. Like their engineers can’t help but “fix” what they see as negative aspects of what they are modeling. It all ends up sounding a bit on the “nice” side, and gives them all a certain character.



Don’t think that I mean that as them being bad. I do miss my Axe FX, and if I come to their senses and release software versions that are reasonably priced, I’d buy it, for sure. I just decided that I was able to get similar, if not better in some ways, results from other software, and I couldn’t really justify having a big, expensive box with a fan running all the time.

[TMaudio]

Any shootout I've come across, ,people end up choosing TH-U

[zerocrossing]

Any shootout I've come across, ,people end up choosing TH-U

It’s all mostly a matter of preference. I don’t like TH-U at all, or really anything from Overloud, but that’s just an opinion. There are a ton of great options now, so it’s easy to be picky and reject something for reasons that aren’t necessarily universal.

[Surgo]

Not really sure who this product is for. If it was some perk at a big discount for owning their hardware, I'd definitely want to buy their hardware. But $200 plus ilok is, uh, not for me at least. The world certainly doesn't need to cater to me, but in this case... I'm not really sure who it is for.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Any shootout I've come across, ,people end up choosing TH-U

It’s all mostly a matter of preference. I don’t like TH-U at all, or really anything from Overloud, but that’s just an opinion. There are a ton of great options now, so it’s easy to be picky and reject something for reasons that aren’t necessarily universal.

I use Super Cabinet as my IR-loader of choice. Other than that, I don't gel with TH-U.

[metalifuxx]

A demo is coming, but no ETA announced. Apparently, the Fractal guys are meeting with iLok to sort out how to do that (this seems all new to them).

The pricing is obnoxious. I understand wanting to charge a premium so as not to hurt hardware sales, but they should be charging $300 for the whole package. Not just for Fender amps.

I've never used Fractal stuff though. I hear it's excellent. But ToneX is excellent, NAM is excellent, Genome is excellent, etc. There's no shortage of excellent tones available in the box.

I had an AxeFX III mk2 for a long time. Save your money. It's very good, but sound quality wise, you're not missing much. The think about it that's great is the ability to tweak things down to the subatomic level, if that's what you desire. I probably would buy a software version of it for $300, but just the Fender emulations? They're high. I just don't think they understand how the software market works.

I'm honestly most interested in the FX. Like, how good is their CE-2, how good is their RE-201, etc. I thought about picking up the FX floor modeler thing (the VP4?).

But I don't even know if those are represented in the plugin, or if they'll add them later on for $300!

I'm in no rush. I'm in the market for some kind of Plexi head (Germino, Top Hat, Ceriatone), and would rather put the money towards that.

Just wait for this friday for an awesome modded Plexi. It wont be iLok and its not profiles/captures, and certainly not $300