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Does Blue Cat's Axiom ever go on sale (not a deal...yet)?


Mesh

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Been demoing this for a few days and for the most part,  do like how it sounds.   There seems to be a lot of tweaking possibilities and I've only just scratched on the surface. 

Those of you that own this, would like to hear your opinions/thoughts on it as well as if it every goes on sale.

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The sound, the GUI, pretty much everything, but most importantly it was the sound, the tone. I just didn't like it at all. I had high hopes going in to it with what a few people were saying about it, but for me that just didn't materialize.

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3 hours ago, Mesh said:

Been demoing this for a few days and for the most part,  do like how it sounds.   There seems to be a lot of tweaking possibilities and I've only just scratched on the surface. 

Those of you that own this, would like to hear your opinions/thoughts on it as well as if it every goes on sale.

Even at 75% off, I'd pass.

 

It doesn't sound like you are sold on it either.

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9 minutes ago, emeraldsoul said:

I demoed it but it didn't pass my rather rigorous "instant gratification" test. 

But I think a knob twiddler could get somewhere with it eventually.

That's about how I found it as well. 9_9

Craig Anderton however,  gave a good review.....but then again, he's definitely a knob twiddler. Looks like I would have to spend a bit of time to get the tone I want. That being said, some of the presets did   sound    pretty good straight off the bat, and others were just meh.

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Well, I'd say Axiom is not exactly a "plug a cable and you're OK to go!" type of ampsim.

Rather it's first and only "sound design modular studio" oriented towards guitar players, not keyboardists.

Some presets are pretty good stright off, though, in every category. And you get LateReplies and ReGuitar as built-in effects.

Edited by Eugene Tsepenuk
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I love Axiom for many reasons. The UI and preset management is fast and civilized (the preset heirarchy is just a subdirectory in Documents, easy to copy them between machines). Doesn't waste a lot of screen space trying to look like a pedal board. Being able to open the editors for all the pedals, amps, etc. to see all the knobs at one time if desired (and if you have enough screen space). The modularity (being able to insert arbitrary VSTs, including itself anywhere in the signal chain). The way that every component has its own set of presets, as well as 'complete rig' level presets. The included LateReplies is incredible and does things few if any other delays can manage. (Though it is damned near incomprehensible without a serious manual deep-dive.)

The Accoufiend that they include if you buy the $250 bundle mostly solves the lack of feedback/sustain that you get when you're recording a real amp at volume. (Which isn't an option for a lot of us.)

That said, I'm a sound-designer sort, so I roll my own presets - starting with one of their amps, tweaking it, and then adding fx pre- and post- amp as desired.

Downsides: I'm coming from the BIAS world. One thing that they did over there that isn't replicated in Axiom is a whole lot of "Mashall JayCeeEmm" -type "oh, so that's what this is emulationg" presets. There are plenty of presets in all levels of crunch, many of which give some hint as to what they're trying to sound like, but most of them do not. So it doesn't tick that "now I have a large pile of virtual 'real gear' that I could never afford... or fit in my bedroom" box that others (BIAS, the IKM stuff, etc.) do.

No "ToneCloud" equivalent with user-contributed presets. That could be argued as a feature, given the useful/crap ratio of an un-curated preset repository, but having such a thing was useful on occasion.

Also, some of their 'pedals' are functional, but not great. I routinely drop in Valhalla Delay and Breverb into slots in the rig rather than their provided delay and reverb units.

One upside: a very generous fully-featured free demo. There's no timeout on it, and it just does the "mute the audio processing for a half-second every now and then" thing. More than adequate for use as a practice/dicking-around rig without ever buying the whole thing.

Another upside: licensing is of the "put it on all your machines, just don't use it in two places simultaneously" variety, where you copy/paste an authorization code they give you. Don't know if the software ever needs to phone home. Certainly no 1- or 2- install limit, no iLok, etc.

 

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