So I bought an Axe Fx Ax8 and I have been profiling my preset as I make them...

My noodling isn't really inspired, but I think the Re-amp is as best as can be expected. I think you did a great job. I honestly think you got the best out of it, but the Kemper to my ears is much more realistic as in comparison, the AXE sounds harsh and thinner. The clips I posted have no EQ added or compression or anything. They certainly can be improved, but I thought to be fair I just posted the raw amp with very little delay and reverb for playability.

What I would like is for you to get the Guido profiles of the Bognar XTC (it's less than 4 dollars for about 7 or eight kick ass profiles) and hear and feel for yourself the clear advantage of the Kemper.

You still have to tweak very little to suite your guitar. I totally think I know where you're coming from. You're really good at tweaking and so was I. I got really good tones from my HD 500 and 300 before it, so it was always a thing that made me feel good being able to get good patches, but now that I have the Kemper, I still tinker here and there, but it's so liberating accepting someone else's good profile that needs minimal tinkering and I play much more.

I honestly think you're already getting the best and the most out of the AX8 and no matter how many good patches you get, you will always be limited to the AX8 inability to reach up the level of the KPA.
Remember the KPA internal processing is a ridiculously higher sampling rate:

From Chris Kemper "The global sampling rate is 44.1 kHz, while the internal sampling rate is partially much higher. The algorithm for the tube simulation runs on more than 700 kHz sampling rate (!).

Deadpan:
Here's another clip with two dry tracks(link below (two Very small tracks in wave 24 bit format as the original ones I used). If you have time and feel like re-amping quickly, please give it a shot.

This one has no clean up to worry about, just a simple double tracked rhythm clip with amp at a healthy amount of gain.

Again i'ts the Bognar XTC profile from Guido, RED 2, so if I can hear how the the fractal Amp would sound, your time as always is greatly appreciated and it's honestly educational and interesting to me.
DI tracks link (hard left and right)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ndszyoktzgla6u/BognarDoubleDI 2.wav?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1mgiu3fn1ccqt55/BognarDoubleDI 1.wav?dl=0

I've been doing my best to hold my tongue since the "first" Axe clips a couple o' pages back, deadpan, as you may have noticed. It's not that I'm not interested; I've been listening.

I'll just say this: That strange "plinkiness" I seem to always hear in the Axe's attack portion of the waveform, along with the "plasticky" segment of around 200ms that immediately follows the attack's leading edge, is there in all its glory. This isn't your fault of course, and that's one reason I've been quiet 'till now. The phenomena I've spoken of here have been obviously apparent to me since this first time I heard the Axe; honestly I was disappointed to hear it's still there, what with the much-lauded new-fangled Quantum™ firmware.

Interestingly, I couldn't really hear it on the last clips you posted. Will report on this once page is reloaded...

EDIT: I had to reload the page to be able to play them again, this time placing my head right next to the Mac speaker, and sure enough, said characteristics are still there. I had the volume cranked to full but unfortunately this particular Mac has always had a very low-volume speaker setup; it was initially just way too soft to hear any detail. I even thought for a moment that some 'verb might've been pushing the sound further away, but as it turned out it was just the level.

Deadpan, as you suggested, experience with the unit will yield improved results, so I sure hope you stick with it; one can only learn. Also, I very much appreciate your matter-of-fact, honest and well-intended efforts here in this thread. Way to go man.

Deleted-carry on-just not worth it.

Quote from zentman

our posts, especially the first few dozen, are nothing but blatant angry insecure fanboy stuff.

Thats not the way we like to communicate here . Would you be so kind to look for another arena to offend people?

Deleted-carry on-just not worth it.

Slightly less plink and plastic for me, deadpan. Guess that means you're headin' in the right direction bro'... IMHO and to my ears. Well done man.

Zentman, that was kinda venomous, don't you think? Bad day?

Dean, the sampling rate on the Axe is 48k. That's all I have for you specifically. To any and all who hear artifacts, bad tone, and otherwise on the Axe product. To any who state it can't do cleans or mid break ups. Can you tell me how it keeps getting past the ears of guys like below?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BAIw3USo8mM/

Look up his discography. Now consider the fact that Carrie Underwood's entire 5 member back line are all going through this. Do you really think the tech crew, the producers, all 5 musicians and everyone involved in a arena filling world class act don't know as much as some random dudes on a competing products forum? Maybe you suspect a bit of bias here as I do. There are guys like that on every single forum. Just have to have the best or they feel cheated somehow. I can guarantee you that many touring level pros can and do use the Axe or the Kemper and get stellar tones. :
[Blocked Image: http://www.xacttone.com/info/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/front_34-1.png]

Who is Carrie Underwood ?

Carrie Marie Underwood is an American country music singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of American Idol in 2005, and has since become one of the most successful artists in any musical genre.- Wikipedia

Quote from paults

Carrie Marie Underwood is an American country music singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of American Idol in 2005, and has since become one of the most successful artists in any musical genre.- Wikipedia

Thanks Paul

I kinda know who she was. I have heard her name over and over. Never really looked her up though.
Kind of figured she was a pop/ country singer. Country is the new pop, right? They all blend together and sound the same to me any more.

I cut the cable tv cord years ago so I just don't keep up. I know she has been around a while now.
After listening to the band I wouldn't put a lot of weight on the guitar section equipment choices. That was my purpose of asking who is Carrie Underwood. Not that they are bad but more average. Run of the mill you might say. I wouldn't use their equipment choices to leverage an argument.

Good or bad. I have never heard an Axe in person so I can't rightly get into this fight.

Quote from Inthrutheout

After listening to the band I wouldn't put a lot of weight on the guitar section equipment choices. That was my purpose of asking who is Carrie Underwood. Not that they are bad but more average. Run of the mill you might say. I wouldn't use their equipment choices to leverage an argument.

Good or bad. I have never heard an Axe in person so I can't rightly get into this fight.

Even though Jimmy Herman has played with :

Performed with: Dierks Bentley, Steven Tyler, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Gretchen Wilson, Billy Dean, Danielle Peck, Ricochet, Little Big Town, Orianthi, Michael Martin Murphey, Ricky Minor Band (American Idol/Jay Leno), Jason Aldean, Chuck Wicks, Jake Owen, Hunter Hayes, Vince Gill, Randy Travis, Miranda Lambert, Josh Turner, Craig Morgan, Billy Currington, Bryan Adams, Sons of Sylvia.

you wouldn't put a lot of stock in his opinion. Average run of the mill player right? I see. The fact that they are a top touring outfit backing a Grammy award winning artist who packs arenas means nothing. Nobody there checking the guitar tones except the musicians right? No producer? No Engineers with oodles of top notch experience leaning over and telling all five guys that they hear "artifacts"? You guys are really something here. Unbelievable the level of deception you will put yourself through to convince to yourself you have the worlds greatest toy. Seems to me it wouldn't matter who played the Axe live you'd find a way to belittle the testimony. Metallica, these guys, Zappa, the Edge, Brian Nutter, Danny Elfman doesn't matter. None of them know as much or have as valid opinions as this forum. Okay then. Carry on with the circle jerk.

For the record, the Kemper product has top level touring pros too but unlike you, I don't have to belittle them to make myself feel good about having an Axe. That's because.......wait for it.......it's gonna hurt you be warned....................THEY ARE BOTH REALLY TOP NOTCH PIECES OF GEAR.........it's ok to say that....it won't make your Kemper sound bad.

Keep it clean guys.

This is a very interesting topic thanks to deadpan, let's keep it that way.

Quote from deadpan

Monkey, I hear no plink or plastic. I hear a little more bloom in Dean's clip but u could get that with daw pluguns, not saying that I should have to but I have no idea of the chain that Guido used to make the initial profile. Good chance some expensive studio equipment was used, making it a bit hard to replicate in the box. Note that I am not trying to make it sound better, I am using the xtc to get as close as I can to his sound only. If I had a wav of his stereo file i could load it on my daw for direct comparison but as it is I am going off memory. We all know how well that works!

I'm not surprised you're not hearing the characteristics I mentioned, deadpan. As I suggested, once one's become sensitive to them, they stand out like the proverbial, but it's perfectly understandable to me that they'd simply not be apparent to anyone who hasn't became "attuned" to them. If it were possible to accentuate them somehow to the extent that they were obvious to all, and then dial them back again, I believe anyone could identify them; as I suggested, it's only a matter of attunement. We see this time and again in the realm of audio. An analogy might be where certain audio processors are concerned, such as compressors - results can be exaggerated for the aforementioned purpose and then suddenly... viola - folks who previously heard nothing find their brains / themselves easily identifying the effects on the source audio.

Another example of this, IMHO, could be the "fizz", which may be a bad description of it, of L6 amp-modelling processing, which some are particularly attuned to, but which others swear they cannot detect.

Yet another might be the HD series' "scratchiness", which for those who became sensitive to it posed a nearly-impossible challenge to effectively programme or dial out of their patches. I was one of the unfortunate ones in this regard and spent 3 years fiddling with my unit before switching to the Kemper. I did succeed in the end, but the fact that programming was largely based, for me at least, around polishing turds, meant that I just had to try the Kemper (bought blind actually, based on PooToob clips which clearly illustrated the huge step up to "realism" that the unit represented). It was only a few weeks after the switch that L6 announced the Helix. Had the company done this a month earlier I probably wouldn't be here today as I reckon I'd have been more than happy with the improvement over the HD unit; the "scratchiness", for one thing, seems to have been well and truly nipped in the bud by the newer unit. Heck, without having heard the Kemper up-close and personally, I'd probably not even have heard the characteristic L6 arty-titty-facts given the progress the company has made in reducing them over those of the previous generations. Again, this wouldn't be a reflection of any lack of ability on my part, but simply the absence of a point of reference.

The bottom line of what I'm banging on about, as if it isn't obvious by now(!), is that without being specifically sensitised to a "point of reference", anybody can miss the sorts of anomalies I've talked about, even those with impressive discographies and overflowing bank accounts, as I'm about to suggest to zentman.

As always, I hope you don't think I'm being condescending or patronising; I trust that you'll see I'm only, like you, trying to accurately convey things as I see and hear them, which I openly acknowledge is my subjective perspective and one that ultimately may never be relevant or useful to you.

Keep up the good work, deadpan; cheers mate.

Quote from zentman

To any and all who hear artifacts, bad tone, and otherwise on the Axe product. To any who state it can't do cleans or mid break ups. Can you tell me how it keeps getting past the ears of guys like below?

I refer you to my explanation above, zentman. I feel you're entitled to one, especially given the polite manner in which you asked, mate.

This phenomenon that I'm referring to has been around since Adam was a boy, and nobody is immune to it. That goes for producers, engineers, golden-eared freaks, and yes, award-winning and lengthy-discog-possessing artists alike.

This explanation will of course mean nothing if you don't accept it, in which case I'll not press you further in this debate as it'll achieve no more than to contribute to a circular spiral that neither you nor I, I trust, wants to become trapped in.

Thankfully I cherish the fact that we're all different. Imagine a world full of automatons! Then again, in my neck of the woods... better not go there, but you know what I mean. What I'm trying to say is that regardless of how you see my response, I appreciate the facts that you may well see things differently and are willing to chime in here. "Each to his own" is a powerful manifestation of freedom IMHO, albeit one most of us tend to take for granted.

Cheers mate.