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[VOLiTiAN]

If you’re using the DAW meters, these are inherently useless, how are you measuring peaks?

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[VOLiTiAN]

Farbeyond, there are so many issues with that as a request, and this is just my input, not really looking for a debate, just adding some food for thought.

For a start processing power (RAW) is cheap as chips these days, why run a bespoke hardware system to increase costs for both sides (user and company) also you’d have to understand the sheer workload from inception to beta testing, hardware fail over etc. Lots of financial speculation for no promise of return.

Have you never frozen an instrument in a DAW? the processing only needs to be done once, for future performance/playback why would you leave it all live?????

I’m curious to know what you think is inside the Axe-FX?

One a sidenote, just because someone dropped something and it was fine, DOES NOT mean that unit will take that kind of abuse and it’s very silly for you to suggest that having a RACK MOUNTED piece of kit suddenly becomes more reliable. A laptop with a solid state drive, setup for the task, is just as prone to hardware component failure as the next and i’d say 99% of live rigs can’t accommodate a beer being spilt on them.

You can get flightcases for all scenarios now, we’ve got one here for our bassists rig, which has his rack gear in the bottom, and his laptop built into the top – shocking I know, just think of all the issues he’s…. oh no wait, it’s never failed on us once…

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[VOLiTiAN]

Why don’t you freeze the instrument? Then if you need to make edits in situ, or still want access to the external plugins you can freeze the instruments not channels. You can also use those freeze files in the audio folder as the bounce files, and you can setup how many output channels show in your mixer by right/clicking the instrument in the panel (F11) prior to freeze.

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[VOLiTiAN]

Hi FarBeyond,

You kinda missed my point, I wasn’t saying GR5 or Amplitube or whatever were better, I was saying that the cost of a good analogue, preamp, a laptop and all the hardware, could easily be half the price of the Axe-fx, and with that in mind, using a laptop to process after the fact could actually yield more flexible options.

Think of all the stuff you could buy instead of the Axe FX….

Also with SSdrives on laptops they aren’t suffering live, like you might imagine.

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[VOLiTiAN]

Also, sorry quick addon, I’ve not played through an axe fx II yet, the specs look ummmm “improved” although how much you’ll actually use is another matter…. I would be keen to play through one just to see, but at over 2k, and considering things like guitar rig, revalver etc etc all controlled neatly by a cheap FCB1010 on a laptop that would be at most half the price of the fractal audio offering, I gotta wonder even if it’s doing a good job, does it really justify the cost? because using the laptop is practically infinitely times more configurable hehe

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[VOLiTiAN]

FarBeyond, If I may throw a little bit of debate into the mix.

The question you’re posing I feel is a little redundant as recording through a real amp and hearing it back through the cab or then through a set of full range reference monitors is going to be different due to the freq’s they can represent, so naturally sitting behind the desk is going to reap different opinions as to what, a good sound is, could be, and sonically in the mix should be.

I’d be thinking along two lines, firstly, the point about the top end in the distortion, this is one of the fundamental issues I have with software preamps and the like, I have always found that the fizziness is ever-present and lacking in that smooth rounded top end we all like especially for searing lead sounds.

My random approach: First, roll of the top end with a bell EQ rather than lowpass it, then comparatively raise the top end around say 7-10k, plugs like Voxengo’s Harmony EQ has a really high range aswell (upto around 20k) that can add some real sparkle to the mix much like the adding of around 70-100hz ads a nice perceived punch on the low-end on the mix.

I’d say do roll off the high-end *before* the cab, and then add the topend/air after the cab? Curb the fizziness and get back some speaker clarity?

Either way, with the point I’m making above, I still feel like you, that the axe fx is still missing the mark slightly.

Secondarily is the point you make about the feedback from the preamp, that kind of movement before it hits the speaker, when you’re really digging in that bit extra on the palm muting, or when you’ve got neck all out of shape with crazy vibrato, “something” is lacking, and again I feel that although the axe fx does get close, it’s just lacking that bit extra that really defines it for me.

It’s weird really, I bet I could be given a bunch of tones and not tell them apart from an axe fx or the real thing, but I always felt I couldn’t find the sweet spot when setting it up, the bit that really made me go “yeeeeah” know what I mean? Either way all I can recommend is getting a decent analoque preamp, but maybe keeping the axe fx as a great fx arsenal, we use laptops so we couldn’t justify keeping it, Sansamp PSA1 all the way hehe

Anyway, didn’t wanna trounce on your post, I guess I share the same pain 🙂

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[VOLiTiAN]

Okay this is easily searched in google, as this is normally basic audio setup details.

Spiro, what latency are you running, and what did you do to “solve” the issue?

Juicy, it’s highly unlikely it’s a firewire port issue unless the port has actually started to show specific signs of age etc, i.e. disconnecting, not picking up the audio interface and general stability issues. This behaviour is not symptomatic of the need for a new firewire card.

I would very much say this is a classic example of what our drummer suffers from, and that is perceived latency. The chances are if you’re running latencies below say 3-4ms then you’ll probably noticing the latency disappearing and making it more playable however being replaced by cracks and pops, if you check your performance meter in your DAW or in the task manager, you’ll see this is more of  FSB/CPU load issue or a background service (indexing, firewalls, malware scanners etc) that’s interrupting the audio path.

Don’t just buy hardware until you’re sure it’s not a config problem…

Also how many processes is windows running? On our vista/win7 workstations we have about 32 max processes, on our old xp machines we tend to have around 25-27 – but these are all off the net permanently, so no need for anything except basic networking access. The last laptop one of my students brought to me had something like 60-70 processes all hogging valuable resource.

Regards

D.

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[VOLiTiAN]

Hi Scott,

Is it fair to assume you mean on the master bus? So the mastering engineer has some headroom, or are you suggesting your drums submix never goes over -6db?

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[VOLiTiAN]

Superior and MF, nothing’s pre-processed you can get a bunch of preset packs (use sparingly, you hear the bulb pack all over Youtube) you can create any manner of sounds. store your own kits and not potentially be limited by pre-processed libraries intended for more ease of use and for those not so happy with deep drum-sound editing.

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[VOLiTiAN]

Did you really just post pictures of your serial numbers??

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[VOLiTiAN]

On firewire, there’s 2x buffers on some systems, the overall ASIO buffer, often referred to as the system latency, however with firewire products there’s sometimes a separate firewire controller buffer aswell, it’s the latter that needs to be reduced for improved MIDI playback and interaction.

Also there is a later version of superior, but you already knew that right?

And i’ve just seen something I missed.

OS – Win 7…..

You know that firewire pretty much fails on Win7 right? Micro$oft are dropping support entirely for that interface, we couldn’t get out hardware to work at all until we switch to legacy drivers and naturally we only got half the functionality and zero stability.

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[VOLiTiAN]

Juicy, your apology, if it was intended to me directly, is kindly accepted, and my apologies to yourself or others on this thread for causing any kind of negativity.

My absolute last post about this matter, now back on topic.

Does toontrack compress the files prior to release? if so perhaps the best thing (just for the sake of being anal about the process) would be to at least get an *original* file of the sticks etc in order to make the IR? Or am I way off base on that one?

Regards

D.

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[VOLiTiAN]

Nonsense, you can edit any post and at any time, and today you have modified several posts that have been up on the thread a few days.

You need to seriously re-address your approach on etiquette, I’m genuinely shocked at your behaviour.

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[VOLiTiAN]

I mean, you are going back through your old posts in this thread and amending them to reflect a different light of how you behaved.

It’s a very shady approach and frankly. I’d like this thread locked so no further changes can be made or worst case scenario deleted.

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