Hahaha, That’s what I’ve been doing, capturing FM3 Amps pre Cygnus on Quad Cortex.
1 Like
I might keep the FM3 afterall … it is currently up for sale but has not sold yet.
2 Likes
Both the FM3 and the QC are back to back on the table and Ihave been capturing some great clean amps, that I love in the FM3. The Bassman amps worked great, even one with a “Bender Fuzz” goosing it. I couldn’t really hear any difference. The Last amp of the day was a Princton Reverb (without the reverb). The FM3 amp sounded a bit rounder and fuller with a little bit more bass response. I need to try that one again and have a look at the capture gain settings.
I am really enjoying this - great results !
More capturing tomorrow … it’s kind of fun …
Both the FM3 and the QC are great in their own right and I decided to keep both of them. The FM3 is just such a great macninne too !
Cheers, Todde
2 Likes
Not
Maybe, but
1.USB on FM3 is limited to 4x4 whereas FX III an Quad Cortex have 8x8
2.The FM3 guitar input impedance is fixed at 1 Mohm, whereas FX III and Quad Cortex are variable.
3. Input gain on FM3 is not adjustable (granted you have an option to pad it with 3, 6, and 12 dB. FX III and Quad Cortex can be adjusted and fine tuned.
4. No MIDI over USB for FM3, Axe FX III and Quad Cortex have.
5.No IR Player, no Vocoder, no RTA, no Crossover Block - that may change one day
6.Way less powerful DSP which one day may stop improvements trickling from its bigger brother.
Edit; There’re more differences of course. The point is FM3 is built to a price and it shows whereas Fractal Axe FxIII and Quad Cortex are flagships of their respective companies .
3 Likes
The FM3 has a couple of very nice Plexi sounds (amp and cab combined). I only succeeded with one preset though. Even after mutliple tries with various in/out settings in the capture screen they just didn’t sound right and close to the original. It seems the QC does not like the Fractal Plexis.
Cheers, Todde
2 Likes
I only capture amps, disabling cabs and everything else like gate , oppressors ,drives, ir etc.
Unfortunately, I cannot confirm this. Especially when it comes to midi, I’m in a long conversation with Knut G66, because midi mapping slows down the three buttons quite a bit! This problem is probably not planned to be solved that way, which is why I ended up here. Midi commands also have to be sent via a separate midi controller, since USB is only intended for audio and editor! I do not like it. therefore I will probably part with the FM3.
2 Likes
Lots of good points; other than #6, none of the other points affect my use of it, though they’re accurately described differences. I’ve learned to make simpler presets; I used to make massive presets that the FM3 couldn’t handle, but these days I make more, but smaller, presets that the FM3 can handle, no sweat.
I mainly use 5-pin DIN MIDI connections in my setup, so the MIDI over USB isn’t a huge bummer for me, but I can see how it would be a deal-breaker.
1 Like
You did know what it came with before you ordered it ,right? I find tech support excellent as they have answered every email within 1 day and it was not verbatim from the manual. I have also found the proper captures as good as any in my AX3. The QC needs some updates but those will come soon. I sold my FM3 after getting the QC. Yep, it’s that good. BTW…AX3 needs a foot controller @ 450 bucks min so that’s 2500 NOT 1600 bucks.
1 Like
I captured the entire signal chain of my friend’s AXIII Soldano patch and it sounds amazing. One capture.
Once bundling is released in Core Is 1.0.3 I’ll post my preset. So much rock.
3 Likes
Hello.
I am or was an Axe Fx 2 user.
I found the unit excellent although very hard to get the sounds I wanted. ( especially as I’m into clean sounds)
Over a few years I finally ended up with 3 or 4 clean and overdrive sounds which I used to gig with.
It was a great unit. Well worth the money.
I put down the $200 dollars for the QC about 18 months ago as I was very impressed with the plugins NDSP offered and was curious as to what the QC would offer. I paid the rest and Finland to Australia only took a week.
In TWO weeks I have achieved a huge amount.
I now have three sets of up to 8 presets with up to 8 scenes for each preset that process
1 / GTR
2 /vocals
3 /octave down bass from a Boss OC 5;
and
4 / a harmonica mic Chanel with eq to suit
There are 3 sets because depending on my mood I gig with one of three guitars and each set of patches is optimised for each guitar as they are all different so far as pickup settings ,single pole or humbuckers ,piezo blend etc
I also have a vocal and gtr send to my TC VL3
( I used to use it for everything once - whilst I waiting for my AXEFX to be repaired after it dropped its operating system and which took 2 years…) ——-which provides real time harmonies and an occasional recorded loop so I can play a few lead breaks as I play solo.
I can see some things are not the same as the Axe FX but the QC sounds great and I have achieved all this in two weeks which is testament to the thought that went into the design of this unit.
I still love my Axe FX but it really was very complicated to use.
The QC is a walk in the park.
I like to focus on what the QC can do rather than what it doesn’t do.
We are so lucky to live in this time where great companies give us great products.
Cheers
8 Likes
It’s been a while since this original post so I’m not certain of you’re still active. Hopefully so. This is something I’ve been wanting to discuss for a long time with an Axefx “power” user.
My thoughts behind buying the QC were never to have it as my effects board. I wanted this software, the promised plugin capability soon to come, the quality of captures (of amps, cabs & ir’s) and that’s pretty much it. I wanted to have the QC be my “amp in a box” for recording and live but NOT my effects. I have yet to combine the 2, but my thought was to use the QC as my profiler and main amp/cab tones but use the FM3 for all my effects. There are less 3xpensive options and I do really love the eventide h90 as well as the modular dual delay box for my effects.
So, my question is whether you see that as either overkill or a waste to put the FM3 as ONLY am effects processor and my QC as my “amp/cab” (plus a few of the niceties). This would be intentionally bypassing any of the cab and amp modeling in the FM3 to 1)save cpu on the FM3 & QC and 2) I think the AxeFx effects just flat sound better and there are a BILLION so I could 3)ditch the eventide h90/delay pedals. I’d have a setup of just QC, FM3 and 2 expression pedals.
I my mind, that would be quite a powerful, small road kit I could fit in a suitcase. It would also be pretty dang affordable.
I’m curious what your thoughts would be and if you have continued diving into the QC. It truly does dial in amazingly well on specific amps and WOW on the piezo settings built in. I’ve never had anything pull out my piezo so well that I just flat said HANDS DOWN THIS IS THE BEST BOX FOR THIS GUITAR W/O A DOUBT. At the time, I was really playing my Petrucci Majesty 7 and the QC brought that thing to a whole new level. But hey, there are now plenty of amp modelers these days that cost a lot less and you can’t tell the difference of whether it’s a modeler or the real thing.
I appreciate any thoughts on the matter and thanks for your initial informative posts. Cheers!
My experience is that the effects in QC are fine for my purposes, they cover most of the typical live gigging needs. I also have a Helix, HX Stomp and HX Effects, each of which could be used for effects with QC. But I haven’t yet had a real need to do this. There are a lot of interesting effects in the Line6 family, and some are better than the similar QC effects (e.g., UniVibe, all the pitch shifting effects). But I don’t find a need to use those effects often enough in gigs to bother with the extra unit and setup complexity. Your needs might be different.
1 Like
Hey, haven’t been here in a while, but I think you should just get an FM9 and be done with it. No sense in dealing with the extra latency, cables, and power management of multiple digital units. My guitarist moved up from the FM3 to FM9 and it’s incredible.
That said, I’ve been using my HX Stomp mostly for the last couple years since I hopped over to bass (Fractal doesn’t care about bassists). The pitch shifting is much better on the HX stuff, so that’s the primary reason. But I did recently re-buy this (should be here in a couple days) and I’m hoping I can switch over to the QC full time exclusively for bass. I’m hoping the new Transpose function is as good for bass in the QC as it is in the plugins…
been finding transpose on the QC to be very glitchy at least on guitar. might be ok for bass esp if its monophonic. but always find pitch shifters struggle more with lower frequencies. I was really hoping to use this for bass occasionally as well as guitar. initial test of transpose vs poly capo with HX was pretty dissapointing
Oof. That doesn’t give me a lot of hope. Might have to return my second one if the transpose isn’t up to snuff for bass. The official video demo made the Transpose function sound great; the caption says it’s monophonic, but the guy was playing chords for sure. I guess we’ll see. I hate to buy and return a second one, but if it’s still not up to snuff, I won’t really have a choice unless I just want to hang onto an expensive toy that I can’t use to gig with.
I use it to play bass lines occasionally and it sounded pretty good as long as you stay away from chords if shifting more than a few semitones.