ADHDguitarist wrote:allan.bourque wrote:I was trying my best to wait for some real world reviews of this, but I couldn't help myself and went out and ordered one. It should be here tomorrow. I'll post some thoughts later this week if anyone is interested.
can't wait to hear your thoughts. I'm fixing to drop a bunch on a new computer or I would have ordered one already.
I have only had it for about an hour, but I'll tell you my initial impressions. Keep in mind it's new so a lot of this opinion could just be in my head, not sonically accurate. It's still shooting rainbows out the headphone jack right now
Size/Build
Very high quality build and sturdy construction. The knobs all have good resistance and I doubt they would ever accidentally get adjusted by a bump or a brush by. All the jacks and switches appear to be good quality. Size-wise, it's a big interface. I'm coming from a Focusrite 2i2 and if you put 2 of them back to back, that would be the approximate dimensions of the AXE. Same height, but deeper and wider x 2.
Latency
I set up the driver for 48K and my standard buffer size of 256 and had no problems with any latency. For reference I'm on Windows 10 Pro. I opened up Cubase 10 and it picked up the new driver/interface with no issues. Playback/record/etc all worked like a champ.
Sound
The headphone amp has more output than the 2i2, and initially even the output to my powered Presonus Eris monitors seems louder, but that could be because it's much quieter around my place right now.
Z-Tone does seem make a difference. To the left it opens the sound up and it just feels like you can dig in a little more and get a more response out of the strings. To the right and it is much more muted and less dynamic. The Pure/JFET switch didn't appear to make much difference, but to be fair I haven't played with it much yet.
Other Stuff
I appreciate the gain meter over the ring that Focusrite uses. It's easier to tell when you are getting close to clipping. The active/passive switch works as advertised. I'm not sure of the padding, but it took on my EMG loaded guitars with no problem. Shut it off and immediately clips as it should.
The monitor mix knob is nothing I would use, but I could see it being helpful in a lot of situations.
Preset knob is interesting. I'm not sure how much I would use it as I pretty much have my go to presets for every genre, but it's a nice option to have instead of mousing around to find your sound.
Tuner is pretty good and it can stay on all the time. If you are like me and run GTune on every guitar track this will save a little CPU power in your DAW.
I hooked up a Roland EV5 to the back and that works great. I've tested this in Amplitube and TH3 so far.
Sofware
The driver installed very easy and it leaves a little app running in the system tray.
Amplitube is Amplitube. I literally have every major amp sim and a few minor ones, so I doubt I will use it much but it's nice that it's there. Like Bias FX there's a little bit of upsell built in there. Some of the presets will prompt that you don't have that particular package which is a little irritating, but it is what it is. The TRacks stuff is nice though.
Reamp
I played around with reamping and it works as advertised. Only caveat is the manual won't help you with setting your DAW up. You'll need to assign a new buss for output 5 on the Axe.
Negatives
Right now the only potential negative is it generates some serious BTU's. It gets very warm on the bottom so make sure wherever you put it gives adequate clearance on the bottom for airflow.
I still have a lot to mess with but overall I'm pretty happy with it. It's just about everything a guitar based home studio would need. Is it worth the asking price? I think it's an easy sell if you are a guitar player looking for more control. If you are a turn everything up to 11 kind of player, it may not provide as much benefit, but it's still a very very nice interface.