Axe FX III An Improvement Over Axe FX II XL+?

[Jon Pearson]

My old bandmate had a IIXL and I had the III at the same time. I did notice a certain something different between them when playing the same models, but like... I don't know, they both sounded great. I'm sure tweaking could have evened it out, but also why even bother if you can make them both sound great?

The III was way easier to dial and use though, I will stand by that.

 

[Badlander1994]

My old bandmate had a IIXL and I had the III at the same time. I did notice a certain something different between them when playing the same models, but like... I don't know, they both sounded great. I'm sure tweaking could have evened it out, but also why even bother if you can make them both sound great?

The III was way easier to dial and use though, I will stand by that.

The UX on the IIXL does leave a bit to be desired, but it’s not as bad as I was expecting it to be. Porting over the preset speaker impedance curves from the III would solve most of it for me tbh.

 

[MatrixClaw]

The III was way easier to dial and use though, I will stand by that.

This is the key point. The II and the Standard/Ultra were fully capable of great tones, but the III had presets that sounded awesome right out of the box and models required far less effort to get them sounding good.

 

[H13]

Modellers are death to my brain.

I'm the sort of person who wants to know that every single control and option available to me is in the exact right spot. I'm the sort of sad, obsessive dweeb who wants to know what it sounds like with the Mids on 6 vs Mids on 7.

There's something wrong with my brain. I'm aware of that but I'm also embracing it.

So yeah, letting me set the bias, tubes, saturation options and all of that is absolute death to me. I will spend a day figuring out exactly how 1 knob impacts a particular amp, then the next day work on the next one, then the day after that, figure out how those two controls interact..........

...

It was bad.

HOWEVER:

IMHO, I don't think the "issues" in regards to sound quality relates to amp modelling anymore.

I think the deficencies come from IRs.

Whenever I've had to work with IRs, I'll admit that the sound is great, but getting an IR guitar sound to sit perfectly in a mix always required double the work of what a straight up 57-on-a-cab recording does. I would hesitantly accept that you can achieve the same end result using IRs, but the mix engineer will have to work twice as hard to get it to happen.

If you put a blindfold on me, I absolutely admit that I would be fooled by an IR more times than I'd like to admit. But I also bet that the engineer had to do much more careful automation, EQing and possibly even compression in order for it to do the thing it's pretending to be.

So is there a worthwhile difference in amp modelling between the AFX 2, AFX3, Neural DSP or any of the others?

Probably not.

Can you get them to sound amazing with an IR instead of a real cab?

Hell yeah!

Can you get them to sit right in a mix?

Yes-ish, albeit with a lot more of a headache.

 

[budda]

@H13 axefx3 has dynacabs which reads like it would solve your IR issue pretty quick

 

[H13]

@H13 axefx3 has dynacabs which reads like it would solve your IR issue pretty quick

Ehhhh...

It kinda did but it also kinda didn't.

It sorta became a new thing that wasn't as flat or dead as an IR, but didn't really react like a cab either. Still kinda required the same amount of work as an IR.

Part of me quietly suspects the issue is that ultimately you're working with a DI signal from an "amp." A DI signal isn't going to be terribly dynamic.

 

[budda]

Ehhhh...

It kinda did but it also kinda didn't.

It sorta became a new thing that wasn't as flat or dead as an IR, but didn't really react like a cab either. Still kinda required the same amount of work as an IR.

Part of me quietly suspects the issue is that ultimately you're working with a DI signal from an "amp." A DI signal isn't going to be terribly dynamic.

I mean it was a mic being moved around a cab, im not sure how much more mic+cab like it can be

 

[H13]

I mean it was a mic being moved around a cab, im not sure how much more mic+cab like it can be

Well yeah but that's how you shoot an IR in the first place...