Axe FX FM3 vs.......

Also I tried to sign up to the fractal forums... but they banned me for spam ( I didn't ever get to log in )...and say that I should contact the administrator... but I can't for the life of me find anywhere to contact them..... username was Wiz email was forums AT dodo DOT com DOT au if anyone here is on that forum and can shoot the admin a message I would appreciate it

Wiz

I bought the UAD Ox Stomp, then sold my FM3 and never looked back. Running the Stomp with some preamp pedals (Blackbird, Tubesteader, etc). No offence to anyone in the Fractal realm, but I find (in the Americana genre anyway) the Stomp setup gave me a much more natural sound without ever having to mic amps. Sorry to hijack, just puttin it out there.

I thought I saw someone last week selling a used one in oz?

I use a Helix. I’ve got the floor processor for live gigs, and use the Helix Native Plugin into Logic for amp tones when tracking at home.

I think the Axe sounds (from what I’ve heard) are probably better out-of-the-box but I have no complaints with the Helix either.

And I completely disagree with you. I’ve had the ox here for a week and thought it was spitty in every instance. So I guess everyone hears things differently.

Does the AXE-FX 3 work with a traditional analog pedal board?

I have a large pedal board of mostly boutique analog pedals and I'm plugging this into Tone King Imperial MK2 or Fender Princeton.

But for silent recording the AXE-FX 3 has a fantastic reputation, but I know little about the unit and I know some digital solutions 
don't work well with pedal boards.

Thanks.

Great explanation - thank you.

I pour my shitty guitar playing soul in those clips and then you bring out yourself and Red Volkert haha. Exit. Stage left …sounds awesome man.

That newest AC30 Brilliant is the one. It’s THE sound. And on top of it - these things are INFINITELY tweakable. Want to switch your el84s to kt88s? No problem. I mean it goes on and on. So if you don’t like my eq choices or whatever - just listen to all the snarl and nonlinearities…I just don’t hear that in other amp sims.

Here’s my long winded take.

I have a Fractal FM3. I also have a Line 6 HX Stomp with Helix Native. I’ve got too many VSTs like Scuffham S-Gear, Softube Amp Room, etc. I’ve used these digital solutions interchangeably with my tube amps (through a Suhr Reactive Load). I’ve got a Tweed Champ clone, Tweed Deluxe clone, Pro Junior, Plexi Clone, and Peavey 6505 so those are the types of tones I’m going for.

The Fractal modelers have the most amp models to choose from. You should look at the amp list. The Helix does have a lot too. I think the Fractal’s basic sound is close to the Helix. The Fractal stuff is more customizable, which could be a negative for some but a selling point to others. Another big difference is the speaker sim part of the modeler.

The Fractal units are the best choice for Marshall sims. It has sims of all the eras (JTM to modern JVM, boutique manufacturer models too). You can continuously adjust the bright cap on Marshall sims in fine detail on the Fractal units. Many of the Helix Marshall sims were based on amps that had the bright cap clipped, and were modeled that way. The missing bright cap is good for single coils, but you may find the bite lacking with humbuckers. Some recent Helix models in the last year (Voltage, 2203) address these concerns and Line 6 is closing the gap. Softube Marshalls are good if you feed them the proper input levels.

For Vox-y models, I like the Helix Matchless DC30 sims and the Fractal’s Morgan AC20 sims. I like the Blackface Fenders in the Fractal, but the Princeton in the Helix is good too. Fractal has a little more variety in the low gain area, with stuff like Brownface-era Fenders, 18W Marshall circuits.

The major players in modeling also overhauled their cabinet simulation. Fractal is the most well thought out. They have selectable speaker impedance curves to mimic the behavior of different cabinets loading the output transformer. Fractal’s fairly new Dynacabs are a large collection of IRs shot with a Dynamount for variable control of mic position. Line 6 redid their cab section last year, which improved the sound a lot. Of course, UA has their Ox Box and Ox Stomp. Softube has the Celestion Speaker Shaper for variable placement of mics. The difference in cab sims leads to even more differences in sound between these different products. All this is of course in addition to the whole third party cabinet IR libraries.

Every sim is expecting a different input level if you are using your own hardware for DI and expecting to reamp into the unit later. Line 6 is at 11.5dBu = 0dBFS. The FM3 is 6dB lower, at 17.5dBu. VSTs like S-Gear and Amp Room want a signal closer to 0dBu.

USB reamping with the FM3 is not smooth. You need to adjust for latency that isn’t reported to the host. For example, I record a dry unaffected track using the FM3 as an audio interface, but the track is off by 2149 samples at my buffer settings. So I need to set the manual offset in my DAW so that items line up correctly. If not, the audio item is off. Then if I reamp through USB, it is off another 2149 samples.

More about it here: forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/latency-compensation-measurement.177851/

The Helix ecosystem is nice because Helix Native is $100 if you own their hardware. You can freely adjust it as a VST and skip printing as a reamp. The Helix sims were really stepped up after about about firmware 2.8, and the system as a whole after 3.10 when they started internally oversampling. However, Line 6 doesn’t try to improve on existing models, to preserve users presets. They create new models to address customer requests.

So strange, I thought there was always a digital harshness with the high end of the Fractal, which I don’t find with the Stomp…but again I’m using tube pre pedals with it.  On the FM3, I did try some high cut in the Fractal EQ and 3rd party speaker IR’s that were recommended by others, to no avail..just couldn’t get it where I wanted.  One mans trash and all