Now for a little ugly. The presets... I don't have any crazy guitar, but man, a lot of the presets just seem to be wildly off. One thing I have to say about Fractal, is that every dang preset just sounded great. I'm editing one called "Bohemian Rhapsody - Solo" and it's crazy. There's literally EQs doing contradictory things that don't really lead to what I consider to be "that sound." It's there, though. You just have do dig in and find it.
Then there's quality of life stuff that just seems to be missing. Double clicking in a parameter should always restore it to the default If you want to make people really happy, add an option that let's you either do default or what the original preset was set at. If you want to make people super happy, have a "compare" button.
It's missing an interactive help function as well. I should be able to easily get to the manual without having to do a search on the internet of where it's located and what it's called. If I mouse over a function, there should be some text telling me what that function does. Mostly it's obvious, but sometimes not. I have no idea what the Brian May Red Special pedal does or what the controls are for.
There used to be wet/dry mix controls on the bottom... I miss that. What happened? I know they can be mimicked by using the DI and mixer module, but it used to be so easy.
Now I have to put in a noise gate if I want one? I miss it when it was in the bottom tray. There's plenty of blank room there for a on/off toggle, release, threshold and depth knob. Don't make people search for something so basic.
I should be able to right click anywhere in the signal path and get a contextual dropdown menu of what I can insert at that point.
Good: the general look of things is nice. Call me ol' fashion, but I like to see what the amp looks like because I know the amps so it's not just a pretty image. It tells me what I can expect when I use it.
Bad: The UX design is often confusing. Why do I have to click "edit" when I have a stomp effect post amp? Clearly the space is there. Getting in and out of selecting Tonex captures is awkward. Stuff like that.
Good. Amps. Lots of AMPS. Great collection of stuff that pretty much covers it. I wouldn't mind a couple more metal transistor monsters from the 90s, but I'm mostly happy with the offerings.
Ugly: I'd like to be able to mouse over and get a little blurb of what all the gear is. I know a fair amount from years in music retail, but not everything. It can just be the blurb from this page: https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/a ... 5/#thegear
Good: Effects are comprehensive and plentiful.
Bad: Every delay and reverb should have a built in ducker. Reverb mix seems really off and hard to dial in a good amount. This has been true since I first started using Amplitube.
Finally... why is "Max" not max? Maybe it's the completionist in me, but there should be some basic way of just having everything.
That's my take on it. I'm sure others will disagree, but I'd love to see what I've criticized be given a bit of polish. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
