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QUANTUM 7

How much room do you need for 258 top-class guitar amps? Well, as always with serious scie­nce, the proper answer is: "it depends". To store this many tradi­tional tube amps, you would need a cubic space with edges 30 m. You could easily fit the Bran­denburg Tor or the Arc de Triumph in­side a cube that size (but you would have to take the amps out first, of course). With the Axe-Fx II XL+ and the AX8 you don’t need quite as much space, because these little black boxes already contain 258 first-class amp simu­lations. And this means that the above-mentio­ned armada of amps can now fit inside a fairly small ruck­sack. Welcome to the century where dreams come true!

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Tyler Grund

Tyler has taught himself how to play the gui­tar by liste­ning to albums and play­ing with great musi­cians. Early on, he was swept up by the power of Stevie Ray Vaughan and still hea­vily ad­mires the music crea­ted by that iconic artist. He conti­nues to grow as an artist by lis­tening to the nuan­ces of guitar player’s styles to deve­lop a unique ear for tone.

Listen to Tyler's Firm­ware 18 Sound Clips below. Pat­ches down­loadable at  tylergrund.com/axefx2.

QUANTUM 6

Advanced Quantum Mechanics.While most of us will hardly have had time to check out the last firmware update, version 6 has already appeared. An update that is easier to hear and feel than to describe.This time it’s all about fine tuning.

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Peter Autschbach

Many of you who are interes­ted in the Axe-Fx will already be fami­liar with Peter Autschbach – his Axe-Fx videos have recei­ved over 500 000 views. Yes, exactly, the guy with the yellow glas­ses and the wonder­ful guitar tones. The glasses are mean­while passé, but the tones have become even bet­ter; thanks to Fractal Audio.

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QUANTUM 5

Just a few days ago the new Quan­tum 5 firm­ware was relea­sed for the Axe-Fx II and shortly after­wards for the AX8. While the upda­te to Quantum 4 was a fairly small step, Quan­tum 5 is once again a huge leap for­wards

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QUANTUM 3

The amazing Quantum 2 firmware for the Axe-Fx II was extre­mely well-received by the Fractal Community and now, just over two months later, Quantum 3 is already here. And for the first time the Axe-Fx II and its cool younger brother, the AX8, are being further deve­loped in parallel. New firm­ware versions will appear almost simul­taneously for both models, meaning that the AX8 will now always have the same bril­liant amp models and further improve­ments as the Axe-Fx II. There­fore what we write here will mostly be true for both models.

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QUANTUM 2

We musicians are in an enviable position. While other people have to do all sorts of hair-raising things to feel alive or to relax, we have our music. And we don’t need to look around for long to find new, cool people, because our music has a habit of serving up fine new friendships all the time. All we need to be is open. And since the Axe-Fx came into being, the lives of guitar and bass players have become even better. And now there is once again reason to celebrate: Quantum 2.0, the new firmware for the Axe-Fx II, has been sent from above. What exactly there is to get excited about is the subject of this article. 

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QUANTUM LEAP

Even for Fractal Audio themselves, Quantum is a milestone in amp modeling. At the core of the new firmware are new algorithms for circuit simulation in real time (Real-Time Spice), providing a degree of accuracy previously unheard of in any product. According to Fractal Audio mastermind, Cliff Chase, Quantum is the single biggest improvement there has ever been in any of the many firmware updates for the Axe-Fx. 

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