Cliff from fractal talks briefly about the 11R

just a quick quote from Cliff:

I've compared the 11R, KPA, HD500, etc. and the Axe-Fx comes closest to the real thing. The 11R with the right IRs can come pretty close (but you can't load IRs into it so it's an awkward solution) but I can still pick it out 80% of the time or more. In A/B tests I can pick the KPA out every time. It has a signature to the distortion and pick attack that differs greatly from the real amps. I have had no luck getting the HD500 to sound like the real amp.

i just thought that it was cool that he mentioned the 11R as one of the better modelers of the bunch.

Sure he is gona say his is best and maybe it is.....

to bad Avid scrapped the team working on the 11r or maybe we would have ir loading by now...

+1

It is nice to hear this, but we've all know this for quiet awhile now.

I do appreciate the fact that a guy with Cliff's talent can recognize others.

i don't think the "right" IR is needed to get a good sound. you just have to know how to tweak what is already onboard. not sure how much time he spent with it, but at least he gives a nod to the tonal quality....which he didn't do for the kemper (his direct competition).

just imagine if Avid would have kept working on the eleven rack....well maybe DON'T think about it, you may get pissed off.

Glad I have both!

But he didn't say anything about my beloved little cheap G3..

Man..he really hates Kemper..

I played around with a Kemper for most of a day with a Pro that is ALL about the Kemper and the damn things sound amazing!

I good friend of mine, and also a good guitar player, came to my home last Saturday. He picked-up my guitar and I plugged into my 11R (rig output no cab into Peavey tube power amp and Peavey 4x12" cab). He used to have Marshall and Mesa amps and was totally blown away.

I then plugged the 11R into my studio monitors (rig output) and he was also blown away, so loading IR is maybe not a necessity...

i don't think the axe-fx IR's are any better than the eleven rack. seems like all IR's need some type of high cut. why? because the IR is made by close micing the cab. have you ever put your ear in front of your cabinet even at low volume? tons of highs. so if you roll off some highs, you are there. i also find a lot of the better sounding IR's have too much low end. it's crazy, if a cab IR has the right amount of highs, then the lows seems obsessive.

i think that adding IR's to the eleven rack would only turn it into a Pandora's box...much like the axe-fx. it took me a couple years to work with the existing cabs on the eleven rack and get good tone. in contrast, i'm still not at the same level of confidence with the axe-fx. just too many IR's to choose from; and not all IR's sound good with all amps.

what we have in the eleven rack is good enough to get just about any tone imaginable....which i've done with the Singtall Superpack. and not only myself, but countless others have made such a wide variety of presets using only the humble tools the eleven rack provides.

OK, please forgive this stupid question - I'm not the tone guru most here are. But what are IR's and what does loading them do? I haven't come across anything I've needed to do that 11R couldn't handle.

So could someone shed some light on what IR means, and what one does with them?

Thanks!

IR is "impulse response". The 11r cannot load them, but you can use them in the recording process.

Google will yield much info as to the merits of using IR's.

if someone came up with an IR that sounded like a guitar cab sitting in a bedroom they would be rich. that's the first sound most people search for and the hardest sound to get. i gave up on that and starting trying to get a finished cd tone instead.

Good old Cliff :-)

Haha... fair enough to trust someone who talks shit about his direct competitors (Kemper) who managed to beat him on several discussion about matching, irs and modelling, where Cliff clearly wasn't prepared as Mr. Kemper
funny that he praises a clearly dead product (Eleven Rack), just to show off he's a good guy who recognizes talent..

About the technical part, I find the kemper much more closer to the real amp, as the kemper profiles the sweet spot and character, the axe fx just copies the EQ curve.

the Tonematch feature only matches the eq curve, but the MIMIC modeling matches the amp feel. using both features you can get REAL close.

What is the mimic modeling? Never heard of that,is it a function like tonematch or something they do in the programming phase?
On top of that i heard a kemper live and it was gooood ,gotta try an axe Too some day.

I totally agree with you, when I switch from "Rig output no cab" to "Rig Output" I also enable a parametric eq on each patch to remove highs and lows. I don't understand why Chris didn't take a far-field mic instead of close-field when creating IR, it would have made the 11R totally awesome out-of-the-box and would have also recreated the amp-in-the-room feeling.


The main reason I decided to get 11R was because of the simplicity of using it, and mainly from the front panel. I didn't want to tweak hundreds of parameters hidden under tens of menus to have a good sound. The UI on 11R is fantastic in reproducing a real amp/pedals knobs fealing.


Humble but of high quality!

long story short, MIMIC is the way he codes the axe-fx firmware to make the actual amp sounds. MIMIC accurately reproduces the feel of the amp and in most cases the exact knob correspondence to match a real amp.

Tonematch is simply an eq block that lets you copy an exact eq profile from another amp or even a recording. i used the feature to tonematch my pickups from one guitar to another.....even to make my electric sound like my acoustic.

There's a reason why he hates Kemper and spends so much time searching for perceived weaknesses- it's cutting into his sales!
I have owned both at the same time and was able to A/B the two as of FW 10. Unless FWs 11 & 12 were significant upgrades, the Kemper, by a long shot to my ears, sounded more like the real deal. But, because the AXE works better with a power amp & cab, I will be owning both again.(sigh)

after firmware 12.3.....everything is way more organic and realistic.

12.0 was a major upgrade of the Axe2 to the base modeling algorithms. 12.3 takes it even further because it adds the modeling of the power supply load from the power section affecting the supply load to the pre amp tubes. It's totally a 'feel' upgrade versus a 'sound quality' upgrade. You can really notice the difference in how it works on Brown Sound type patches.

I'll Echo DonaldR's statement that the front panel interface of the 11R is way more user friendly than the Axe-2's. The trade off there is you lose a lot of the tweakability. I think the added ABCD controllers on the Axe-2 are probably a direct result of the 'Let's try out some competing products' sessions.

But the front panel interface on the 11R to be is orders of magnitude easier to use.