The Fractal Thread

DavusPG

In other news firmware 8.01 has just been released for FM9 and includes improved pitch shifting

TeleMaster

Hmm. 4 blocks would be too restrictive for me, as would the low amounts of IO. I expect it'll sound amazing but I like having more options. Here's a pic of the back panel if anyone wants it. Apologies if it's been posted before.

Jonathanthomas83

peteri said:

thomasw88 said:

peteri said:

I have to say I’m disappointed, I’ve recently sold my Axe III turbo and replaced it with a tonex and two H90s. 

The only thing I miss is the 2290 delay type, I find the eventide effects at least as good as Fractal and for reverbs quite a bit better. 

And the H90 is really flexible with IO, I run one H90 four cable with the Tonex and being able to add mod effects either side of the amp (and varying it preset to preset ) is great. 

I think they’ve missed a trick on this pedal with the lack of IO, from what I’ve seen you don’t have enough for four cable 

The VP4 does do 4cm. Apparently you can put the loop anywhere in the chain of 4 effects.

Yes but it only has two in and out out analogue - so if you use a loop you can’t do stereo out unless you use spdif.  This seems limited to me 

I really don't get the inclusion of SPDIF. I'd love to understand the benefits for a pedal like this. But as far as I'm aware, no other pedals use SPDIF so it has limited use (according to my evidently limited imagination at least!) outside of being able to plug into audio interfaces, I guess.

Do we know if it can function as a USB audio interface?

Roland

TeleMaster said:

Hmm. 4 blocks would be too restrictive for me, ….

That’s assuming that the number of buttons matches the number of simultaneous effects you can run. I suspect that’s not the case. The FM3 has three buttons, but you can have many more simultaneous effects.

sweepy

Yes, it can work as an audio interface 

thomasw88

peteri said:

thomasw88 said:

peteri said:

I have to say I’m disappointed, I’ve recently sold my Axe III turbo and replaced it with a tonex and two H90s. 

The only thing I miss is the 2290 delay type, I find the eventide effects at least as good as Fractal and for reverbs quite a bit better. 

And the H90 is really flexible with IO, I run one H90 four cable with the Tonex and being able to add mod effects either side of the amp (and varying it preset to preset ) is great. 

I think they’ve missed a trick on this pedal with the lack of IO, from what I’ve seen you don’t have enough for four cable 

The VP4 does do 4cm. Apparently you can put the loop anywhere in the chain of 4 effects.

Yes but it only has two in and out out analogue - so if you use a loop you can’t do stereo out unless you use spdif.  This seems limited to me 

I would never use stereo live so works absolutely fine for me.  

Jonathanthomas83

sweepy said:

Yes, it can work as an audio interface 

Thanks mate. That would be cool for my needs. Plonk a two notes opus in the loop for cabs and then I can run a high gain head into it for a nice all in one solution. Nice that I don’t have to worry about stereo audio out, it’ll all be done via USB, that’s awesome.

DavusPG

Roland said:

TeleMaster said:

Hmm. 4 blocks would be too restrictive for me, ….

That’s assuming that the number of buttons matches the number of simultaneous effects you can run. I suspect that’s not the case. The FM3 has three buttons, but you can have many more simultaneous effects.

From what I've read I think that is the case, which seems quite restrictive given the number of effects they've crammed in there. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's only 4 scenes per preset.

exocet

Jonathanthomas83 said:

peteri said:

thomasw88 said:

peteri said:

I have to say I’m disappointed, I’ve recently sold my Axe III turbo and replaced it with a tonex and two H90s. 

The only thing I miss is the 2290 delay type, I find the eventide effects at least as good as Fractal and for reverbs quite a bit better. 

And the H90 is really flexible with IO, I run one H90 four cable with the Tonex and being able to add mod effects either side of the amp (and varying it preset to preset ) is great. 

I think they’ve missed a trick on this pedal with the lack of IO, from what I’ve seen you don’t have enough for four cable 

The VP4 does do 4cm. Apparently you can put the loop anywhere in the chain of 4 effects.

Yes but it only has two in and out out analogue - so if you use a loop you can’t do stereo out unless you use spdif.  This seems limited to me 

I really don't get the inclusion of SPDIF. I'd love to understand the benefits for a pedal like this. But as far as I'm aware, no other pedals use SPDIF so it has limited use (according to my evidently limited imagination at least!) outside of being able to plug into audio interfaces, I guess.

Do we know if it can function as a USB audio interface?

SPDIF input makes sense from the perspective of using it in conjunction with other Fractal products. As it’s a digital device, the “wet” signal path is subject to AD / DA conversion, which introduces latency. Same with all digital audio products. Adding the VP4 to an FM3 would double the latency. Linking the 2 via SPDIF removes the additional latency. 

Yes it can function as a USB audio interface.

Jonathanthomas83

exocet said:

Jonathanthomas83 said:

peteri said:

thomasw88 said:

peteri said:

I have to say I’m disappointed, I’ve recently sold my Axe III turbo and replaced it with a tonex and two H90s. 

The only thing I miss is the 2290 delay type, I find the eventide effects at least as good as Fractal and for reverbs quite a bit better. 

And the H90 is really flexible with IO, I run one H90 four cable with the Tonex and being able to add mod effects either side of the amp (and varying it preset to preset ) is great. 

I think they’ve missed a trick on this pedal with the lack of IO, from what I’ve seen you don’t have enough for four cable 

The VP4 does do 4cm. Apparently you can put the loop anywhere in the chain of 4 effects.

Yes but it only has two in and out out analogue - so if you use a loop you can’t do stereo out unless you use spdif.  This seems limited to me 

I really don't get the inclusion of SPDIF. I'd love to understand the benefits for a pedal like this. But as far as I'm aware, no other pedals use SPDIF so it has limited use (according to my evidently limited imagination at least!) outside of being able to plug into audio interfaces, I guess.

Do we know if it can function as a USB audio interface?

SPDIF input makes sense from the perspective of using it in conjunction with other Fractal products. As it’s a digital device, the “wet” signal path is subject to AD / DA conversion, which introduces latency. Same with all digital audio products. Adding the VP4 to an FM3 would double the latency. Linking the 2 via SPDIF removes the additional latency. 

Yes it can function as a USB audio interface.

Ah that is cool, I didn't think of the ability to link two Fractal devices via SPDIF. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

mrkb

FM3 only had SPDIF out though, so could only feed the VP4, so not that useful. FM9 has in and out.

TeleMaster

DavusPG said:

Roland said:

TeleMaster said:

Hmm. 4 blocks would be too restrictive for me, ….

That’s assuming that the number of buttons matches the number of simultaneous effects you can run. I suspect that’s not the case. The FM3 has three buttons, but you can have many more simultaneous effects.

From what I've read I think that is the case, which seems quite restrictive given the number of effects they've crammed in there. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's only 4 scenes per preset.

There's a maximum number of blocks though and you can have a combination of effects on or off using scenes as you can with the other fractal devices right? The FM3 has as many blocks as needed until the CPU capacity runs out but the VP4 has a maximum of 4 blocks per preset, so whatever you can do with the scenes you've still only got 4 effects on at a time, and for pretty much every preset you'll have reverb and delay, so realistically I've only got two blocks for everything else. So it's just too restrictive for me. 

If they can utilise the channel system to add different types of modulation that might be a way round it but I think this will just be 4 blocks with 4 scenes and that's it. 

exocet

mrkb said:

FM3 only had SPDIF out though, so could only feed the VP4, so not that useful. FM9 has in and out.

That combination works fine with FM3 though? Use the VP4 for modulation and delays to free up CPU in FM3. Assuming of course that you're happy with mods / delays after the amp / cab block.

FM9 doesn't need the additional horsepower for 90% of users.

Heartfeltdawn

exocet said:

That combination works fine with FM3 though? Use the VP4 for modulation and delays to free up CPU in FM3. Assuming of course that you're happy with mods / delays after the amp / cab block.

FM9 doesn't need the additional horsepower for 90% of users.

Or just dump the VP4 in the loop. People might worry abotu the latency but I don't think this would be an issue.

I shall resume my position for prayer that Fractal Native comes out one day...

octatonic

exocet said:

Jonathanthomas83 said:

peteri said:

thomasw88 said:

peteri said:

I have to say I’m disappointed, I’ve recently sold my Axe III turbo and replaced it with a tonex and two H90s. 

The only thing I miss is the 2290 delay type, I find the eventide effects at least as good as Fractal and for reverbs quite a bit better. 

And the H90 is really flexible with IO, I run one H90 four cable with the Tonex and being able to add mod effects either side of the amp (and varying it preset to preset ) is great. 

I think they’ve missed a trick on this pedal with the lack of IO, from what I’ve seen you don’t have enough for four cable 

The VP4 does do 4cm. Apparently you can put the loop anywhere in the chain of 4 effects.

Yes but it only has two in and out out analogue - so if you use a loop you can’t do stereo out unless you use spdif.  This seems limited to me 

I really don't get the inclusion of SPDIF. I'd love to understand the benefits for a pedal like this. But as far as I'm aware, no other pedals use SPDIF so it has limited use (according to my evidently limited imagination at least!) outside of being able to plug into audio interfaces, I guess.

Do we know if it can function as a USB audio interface?

SPDIF input makes sense from the perspective of using it in conjunction with other Fractal products. As it’s a digital device, the “wet” signal path is subject to AD / DA conversion, which introduces latency. Same with all digital audio products. Adding the VP4 to an FM3 would double the latency. Linking the 2 via SPDIF removes the additional latency. 

Yes it can function as a USB audio interface.

It doesn't entirely remove the additional latency.
It just removes converter latency, which is usually 0.3ms, give or take.
Processing latency can be higher.
If running through a DAW Buffer, higher again.

DavusPG

TeleMaster said:

DavusPG said:

Roland said:

TeleMaster said:

Hmm. 4 blocks would be too restrictive for me, ….

That’s assuming that the number of buttons matches the number of simultaneous effects you can run. I suspect that’s not the case. The FM3 has three buttons, but you can have many more simultaneous effects.

From what I've read I think that is the case, which seems quite restrictive given the number of effects they've crammed in there. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's only 4 scenes per preset.

There's a maximum number of blocks though and you can have a combination of effects on or off using scenes as you can with the other fractal devices right? The FM3 has as many blocks as needed until the CPU capacity runs out but the VP4 has a maximum of 4 blocks per preset, so whatever you can do with the scenes you've still only got 4 effects on at a time, and for pretty much every preset you'll have reverb and delay, so realistically I've only got two blocks for everything else. So it's just too restrictive for me. 

If they can utilise the channel system to add different types of modulation that might be a way round it but I think this will just be 4 blocks with 4 scenes and that's it. 

Yeah, for now the FM9 is still a far more useful tool for my needs. A compact VP8 and I'd consider it 

TeleMaster

DavusPG said:

TeleMaster said:

DavusPG said:

Roland said:

TeleMaster said:

Hmm. 4 blocks would be too restrictive for me, ….

That’s assuming that the number of buttons matches the number of simultaneous effects you can run. I suspect that’s not the case. The FM3 has three buttons, but you can have many more simultaneous effects.

From what I've read I think that is the case, which seems quite restrictive given the number of effects they've crammed in there. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's only 4 scenes per preset.

There's a maximum number of blocks though and you can have a combination of effects on or off using scenes as you can with the other fractal devices right? The FM3 has as many blocks as needed until the CPU capacity runs out but the VP4 has a maximum of 4 blocks per preset, so whatever you can do with the scenes you've still only got 4 effects on at a time, and for pretty much every preset you'll have reverb and delay, so realistically I've only got two blocks for everything else. So it's just too restrictive for me. 

If they can utilise the channel system to add different types of modulation that might be a way round it but I think this will just be 4 blocks with 4 scenes and that's it. 

Yeah, for now the FM9 is still a far more useful tool for my needs. A compact VP8 and I'd consider it 

Or 4 switches with as many blocks until it runs out of CPU is fine. I guess they felt that would lead to too much overlap with the FM3.

The Hxfx sold well and is amazing but Fractal effects are a step up, although I'd say that there isn't a massive difference in reality. 

Aidanspaghetti

Wait for the paid updates releasing blocks.....

paulmapp8306

jamesguitar said:

Keeping an open mind, but Fractal have historically been the worst products when it comes to being user friendly. 

If they could hire someone else to do design their software and menu layouts (and also bring the prices down a little) then they’d be killing it.

As always with this stuff we won’t know where it sits in the market until we have price and demos.

I think it depends how your mind works.  I  find it the most intuitive of any unit - and Ive used multi FX (rack and stomp) for 30+ years.  

Snags

Amongst all the VP4 buzz, venerable kit still making big noises: