The Fractal Thread

FarleyUK

FM9's official FW7 has been released as well.

I tried the FM9 FW7 beta last night at an audition, using York Audio greenback IR mixes for the first time. It sounded bloody brilliant I thought, and the band commented on how great it was and how well it sat in the mix.

welshboyo

Yep, FW7 does sound great doesn’t it, I know there can be a bit of emporer’s new clothes syndrome going on at Church of Cliff when a new FW is released but this one definitely sounds better!!

AndyJP

Loving FM3 FW8 Beta.   Nice to have the new Nobels ODR1 drive.   The Deluxe Reverb is my go to and think it sounds even better.

Snags

Kultschar said:

FarleyUK said:

Yeah, I call that 'the Cliff effect'; there's a LOT of odd behaviour in the forums, and the amount of brown-nosing is insane. Can't deny they make amazing products, but the way a lot of people act you'd think they created World peace or something.

Agree - also quite a highly censored forum!   Dare mention a sniff of other competing products

To be fair, a manufacturer's own forum isn't really the place to be discussing other manufacturer's products. That's what general forums are for. There are plenty of places to do that elsewhere (here, TGP, TGF etc. etc.).

Roland

Here’s a pre/post update comparison video for firmware 7 on the FM#9. As a general rule I don’t have much faith in YouTube comparisons, but his one covers a range of sounds, if not styles:

https://youtu.be/DJUbE0-gcyQ

FarleyUK

Seems like there may be a weird bug in FW25 on the AFX3 - I and several others have encountered random freezing of the unit. Some have had a high pitched noise, others (like me) have had silence, but all output LEDs on the unit are full.

Very strange!

Roland

Glad you said that. I was thinking that with no bugs reported, and a few hours to spare, I might upgrade this afternoon.

sweepy

Ive mentioned other products in the Fractal Forum and tbh, never had any issues. I did say that the Helix interface is far more user friendly which it most certainly is

Jonathanthomas83

sweepy said:

Ive mentioned other products in the Fractal Forum and tbh, never had any issues. I did say that the Helix interface is far more user friendly which it most certainly is

Well don’t start that nonsense here too. We’ll be having none of that.

sweepy

lol,those of us that have used them all probably would agree I'll get my coat

Jonathanthomas83

sweepy said:

lol,those of us that have used them all probably would agree I'll get my coat

Oh I definitely agree. I’m just manifesting the spirit of a true Fractal fan boi.

sweepy

And you manifested it perfectly, the PRS links in that Forum are mental, ppl with far too much money  

Jonathanthomas83

sweepy said:

And you manifested it perfectly, the PRS links in that Forum are mental, ppl with far too much money  

Ah, now I can’t piss take too much with that due to my love of PRS. I’m no dentist, but I do spend money I don’t have!

sweepy

Jonathanthomas83 said:

sweepy said:

And you manifested it perfectly, the PRS links in that Forum are mental, ppl with far too much money  

Ah, now I can’t piss take too much with that due to my love of PRS. I’m no dentist, but I do spend money I don’t have!

Guilty as charged too tbh but some of them have a wall of the posh models !!!!!

ToneControl

sweepy said:

Ive mentioned other products in the Fractal Forum and tbh, never had any issues. I did say that the Helix interface is far more user friendly which it most certainly is

I didn't use either that much on the front panel, but got the impression that the Helix was easier to use.
However, in the Windows editor, I much prefer the Fractal editor

sweepy

Oh agreed the software editor on the Mac/PC is far better on the Fractal apart from a few little niggles, if I was gigging I'd get a cheapo laptop just to run that permanently 

FarleyUK

Yeah, that's (IMO) the major downside with Fractal - front panel editing CAN be tricky and very finicky. I know there's a 3rd party iPad editor app, but TBH, it's expensive and doesn't work that well. I was thinking of just getting a second-hand windows tablet or something to run it from, as well as my IEM mix software.

welshboyo

I don’t think it’s too bad, I tend to use the performance pages for the stuff that I would generally tweak at a gig, Hi/Lo cuts, drive, gain, amp tone controls, delay mix etc.

Anything more than that isn’t really something you do on the fly at a gig surely?

FarleyUK

welshboyo said:

I don’t think it’s too bad, I tend to use the performance pages for the stuff that I would generally tweak at a gig, Hi/Lo cuts, drive, gain, amp tone controls, delay mix etc.

Anything more than that isn’t really something you do on the fly at a gig surely?

Great point, I'd forgotten about the performance tabs!

I tend to only really need to tweak 'deeper' things at rehearsal, just to ensure they're all fully setup. FOr example, if a block was accidentally bypassed, or the mix wasn't correct, or if a footswitch isn't doing what I want etc.

paulmapp8306

Roland said:

Glad you said that. I was thinking that with no bugs reported, and a few hours to spare, I might upgrade this afternoon.

FWIW Ive been using mine everyday, and havent had any issues since the FW update.