I can protect the QC from animals in the crowd and also don't get poop and urine on the footswitches hahaha
...
... (trying to imagine the types of events you are talking about
).
Neural Quad Cortex
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Just ordered the Kemper Stage; arrives Wednesday! Because I love my head and Remote, I realized that the Kemper gives you more instantly accessible sounds, more complexity if you need it, and organizes that complexity much better, than the Quad. How so? Hear me out. If you like complexity paired with simplicity the Kemper is WAY better than the Quad and it's pretty touch screen.
On the Quad, you MUST stay in one preset, because you will lose spillover and have audio gap if you go to another preset. Even if you make entire presets for each song you play live, if you ever need to cleanly transition from one song to the next (like I do often), you can't without the audio gap. What are it's organizational advantages? Four independent signal paths? You know for all those times where your bass player and acoustic guitarist desire to run through your rig in concert and desire you to do all the tap dancing for yourself and them.. When you have that overwhelming desire to use up DSP for their signal paths while you edit the thing for your own needs, and desire a big audio gap for not just for you but the whole band at the end of songs when you need to change presets. Brilliant, I don't know how I've lived without this!
If there are go-to chains of effects you've set up on the Quad, for commonly used situations, you MUST make room for them in the preset you are using, if you want instant access to them. And to move just one of these of these go-to tones into your preset, you MUST copy/paste each individual effect block one at a time, which requires going back and forth between these presets, and hitting save each time. Or recalling each of the individual effect block presets you created to make that ONE tone, which of course you would have had to individually named and saved some other time.
On the Kemper, your preset (rig) may seem comparatively limited to the mammoth preset of the Quad, but it's not. First although you "only" have 4 preamp effects and 4 post amp effects, per rig, you have several other always-available effects that don't use up an effect block. The looper is always available. In the input section, which can be set globally or locally by locking, you can transpose the entire rig, use the very musical noise gate, set the clean and distortion sens. Your amp AND your cab do not count as effect blocks since they have a fixed position. While there's fewer parallel options per rig, you do at least have parallel routing options both pre and post amp.
The relevant comparison between the Quad and Kemper boils to this: A Kemper Rig isn't Kemper's version of the Quad preset. A Kemper PERFORMANCE is the equivalent to the Quad Preset. This is because you have spillover and no audio gap between the five rigs in a performance! And not only that, you have such spillover when you bank up or down to the next song's performance, so you CAN transition songs smoothly and still switch to a new performance and rig between them! There is absolutely no reason at all to try and recreate go-to tones within a new Rig, because it's ten times easier to just paste that go-to Rig in one of the five slots of the performance, and a different go-to rig in another, still leaving you with three new Rig slots for any song specific tones you need to create. So it's like having FIVE completely independent SCENES, however if you want them to share some common features, such as a performance tempo, transposition, noise gate, you can lock the input. The fixed commonly-shared signal path is also what would allow you to quickly lock and/or copy and paste individual blocks or sections between those five performance slots. If those 5 independent slots with different midi messages in each isn't enough, you can manually toggle on/off four combinations of things in each slot. And if that's not enough, you can MORPH each of those five Slots (which are like 100% independent SCENES), creating a second SCENE within that SCENE, if you will. The morph can be instant and toggled back and forth, or gradual with an expression pedal. Can ONE preset (since you can't leave it without audio gap and no spillover) on the QUAD do all that, let alone keep you as organized or take less to time to arrange as ONE kemper performance? No it can't. (*Even if it could, the Kemper's ability to bank up and down without an audio gap and without losing spillover means you could just create a 2nd, 3rd, 4th... performance for that song)
The way Kemper keeps the complex simple is this: The Kemper's identical signal path structure of every rig having 4 effects, amp/cab, 4 effects after all (plus the extra always-available effects mentioned) is what allows you to quickly combine parts from other rigs. If you want all four pre amp effects blocks, you can copy/paste as a single unit, or save them as a signal unit. The limit of one amp/Cab at a time is what allows you to instantly copy and paste the amp block from rig to rig, if you feel like trying out a different amp/cab that day. Next you can go through your rigs and performances on the fly, during soundcheck, and make quick changes to the gains of your OD models and amps and never worry about the volume of your rigs matching. You CAN lock or move sections of the signal path between rigs quickly, because they all share the same signal path organization.
Finally, the ability to add ducking to most of the effect models minimizes the need to turn as many things on or off and lessens the need for additional effect blocks or rigs, and the time needed to set them up. For example, a common need is to lower and/or raise the delay or reverb mix or feedback in different parts of a song. When strumming a chord pattern, you need less ambience, but when you play individual notes or hooks and let a chord ring out, you WANT more ambience. Why bother programing and toggling two delay modules, rigs or programing morphs just to altar your ambience, when all you to do is turn up the ducking to 0.3-0.5, play like normal and forget about it?
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Just ordered the Kemper Stage; arrives Wednesday! Because I love my head and Remote, I realized that the Kemper gives you more instantly accessible sounds, more complexity if you need it, and organizes that complexity much better, than the Quad. How so? Hear me out. If you like complexity paired with simplicity the Kemper is WAY better than the Quad and it's pretty touch screen.
On the Quad, you MUST stay in one preset, because you will lose spillover and have audio gap if you go to another preset. Even if you make entire presets for each song you play live, if you ever need to cleanly transition from one song to the next (like I do often), you can't without the audio gap. What are it's organizational advantages? Four independent signal paths? You know for all those times where your bass player and acoustic guitarist desire to run through your rig in concert and desire you to do all the tap dancing for yourself and them.. When you have that overwhelming desire to use up DSP for their signal paths while you edit the thing for your own needs, and desire a big audio gap for not just for you but the whole band at the end of songs when you need to change presets. Brilliant, I don't know how I've lived without this!
If there are go-to chains of effects you've set up on the Quad, for commonly used situations, you MUST make room for them in the preset you are using, if you want instant access to them. And to move just one of these of these go-to tones into your preset, you MUST copy/paste each individual effect block one at a time, which requires going back and forth between these presets, and hitting save each time. Or recalling each of the individual effect block presets you created to make that ONE tone, which of course you would have had to individually named and saved some other time.
On the Kemper, your preset (rig) may seem comparatively limited to the mammoth preset of the Quad, but it's not. First although you "only" have 4 preamp effects and 4 post amp effects, per rig, you have several other always-available effects that don't use up an effect block. The looper is always available. In the input section, which can be set globally or locally by locking, you can transpose the entire rig, use the very musical noise gate, set the clean and distortion sens. Your amp AND your cab do not count as effect blocks since they have a fixed position. While there's fewer parallel options per rig, you do at least have parallel routing options both pre and post amp.
The relevant comparison between the Quad and Kemper boils to this: A Kemper Rig isn't Kemper's version of the Quad preset. A Kemper PERFORMANCE is the equivalent to the Quad Preset. This is because you have spillover and no audio gap between the five rigs in a performance! And not only that, you have such spillover when you bank up or down to the next song's performance, so you CAN transition songs smoothly and still switch to a new performance and rig between them! There is absolutely no reason at all to try and recreate go-to tones within a new Rig, because it's ten times easier to just paste that go-to Rig in one of the five slots of the performance, and a different go-to rig in another, still leaving you with three new Rig slots for any song specific tones you need to create. So it's like having FIVE completely independent SCENES, however if you want them to share some common features, such as a performance tempo, transposition, noise gate, you can lock the input. The fixed commonly-shared signal path is also what would allow you to quickly lock and/or copy and paste individual blocks or sections between those five performance slots. If those 5 independent slots with different midi messages in each isn't enough, you can manually toggle on/off four combinations of things in each slot. And if that's not enough, you can MORPH each of those five Slots (which are like 100% independent SCENES), creating a second SCENE within that SCENE, if you will. The morph can be instant and toggled back and forth, or gradual with an expression pedal. Can ONE preset (since you can't leave it without audio gap and no spillover) on the QUAD do all that, let alone keep you as organized or take less to time to arrange as ONE kemper performance? No it can't. (*Even if it could, the Kemper's ability to bank up and down without an audio gap and without losing spillover means you could just create a 2nd, 3rd, 4th... performance for that song)
The way Kemper keeps the complex simple is this: The Kemper's identical signal path structure of every rig having 4 effects, amp/cab, 4 effects after all (plus the extra always-available effects mentioned) is what allows you to quickly combine parts from other rigs. If you want all four pre amp effects blocks, you can copy/paste as a single unit, or save them as a signal unit. The limit of one amp/Cab at a time is what allows you to instantly copy and paste the amp block from rig to rig, if you feel like trying out a different amp/cab that day. Next you can go through your rigs and performances on the fly, during soundcheck, and make quick changes to the gains of your OD models and amps and never worry about the volume of your rigs matching. You CAN lock or move sections of the signal path between rigs quickly, because they all share the same signal path organization.
Finally, the ability to add ducking to most of the effect models minimizes the need to turn as many things on or off and lessens the need for additional effect blocks or rigs, and the time needed to set them up. For example, a common need is to lower and/or raise the delay or reverb mix or feedback in different parts of a song. When strumming a chord pattern, you need less ambience, but when you play individual notes or hooks and let a chord ring out, you WANT more ambience. Why bother programing and toggling two delay modules, rigs or programing morphs just to altar your ambience, when all you to do is turn up the ducking to 0.3-0.5, play like normal and forget about it?
Have you already got the QC then...?
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Have you already got the QC then...?
Nope, and to be fair I'm not basing my review on any criticism of the unit's sound or even that it might work great and even be preferable for many users. In fact, if one was starting completely from scratch and has no plans to bring in things from other presets, they might find the Quad's workflow preferable; setting up something from nothing is probably FASTER on the Quad. This is especially true if an audio gap between presets isn't something they have to worry about. Guys that want to do a ton of parallel processing (which I don't) might require the Quad to make it happen. But that freedom has costs in efficiency, which I explained. The Quad, in terms of organization is pretty much the Helix, which I owned, played for 60 hours, and returned, less because of it's inferior sound (the not bad at all) but because the headache of staying organized for which I couldn't find a suitable work-around. My comparison between the Helix and Kemper was also before Kemper added the Editor, but even then I found it easier to stay organized. I would use this analogy. The Helix is like sweeping a huge gymnasium with a wide push broom; the kemper like using a standard broom in 14x14 foot room. Even with a much smaller broom, it takes a fraction of the time to finish sweeping, because there's less to keep clean. Now with the KPA editor, it's like having both brooms available for sweeping that small room, if you actually want both. But there's nor reason to worry about keeping a gymnasium clean unless you actually have a use for a gymnasium.
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Nope, and to be fair I'm not basing my review on any criticism of the unit's sound or even that it might work great and even be preferable for many users. In fact, if one was starting completely from scratch and has no plans to bring in things from other presets, they might find the Quad's workflow preferable; setting up something from nothing is probably FASTER on the Quad. This is especially true if an audio gap between presets isn't something they have to worry about. Guys that want to do a ton of parallel processing (which I don't) might require the Quad to make it happen. But that freedom has costs in efficiency, which I explained. The Quad, in terms of organization is pretty much the Helix, which I owned, played for 60 hours, and returned, less because of it's inferior sound (the not bad at all) but because the headache of staying organized for which I couldn't find a suitable work-around. My comparison between the Helix and Kemper was also before Kemper added the Editor, but even then I found it easier to stay organized. I would use this analogy. The Helix is like sweeping a huge gymnasium with a wide push broom; the kemper like using a standard broom in 14x14 foot room. Even with a much smaller broom, it takes a fraction of the time to finish sweeping, because there's less to keep clean. Now with the KPA editor, it's like having both brooms available for sweeping that small room, if you actually want both. But there's nor reason to worry about keeping a gymnasium clean unless you actually have a use for a gymnasium.
I'm just confused how you can state all of this as 'fact', when the device isn't even out yet.
You're basing this all on guesses and assumptions from marketing videos (of which there have been very few). I'd hold off until the device is (eventually) out.
(And I speak as someone who is potentially replacing the Kemper with the QC, if it performs as well or better for my situation. Just waiting for Neural to pull their fingers out...). -
I'm just confused how you can state all of this as 'fact', when the device isn't even out yet.
You're basing this all on guesses and assumptions from marketing videos (of which there have been very few). I'd hold off until the device is (eventually) out.
(And I speak as someone who is potentially replacing the Kemper with the QC, if it performs as well or better for my situation. Just waiting for Neural to pull their fingers out...). -
Well none of here have one yet, so we’re all speculating...
It is a fact, they indicated that there IS a couple second audio gap between presets, I saw the head of the company say so on video. The organizational limitations I mentioned logically flow from that fact.
Where I’m speculating, and probably right, is that automatic volume compensation like we have on the KpA is not a feature available on the Quad, and would be a much more complex feature to add to a system with four independent signal paths and parallel routing of effects that alter volume in any place of the signal paths. I know no other company that has added the ducking feature on most of their effect models, just maybe the do as well ? So perhaps some of these later features, which are important to me, can be performed by the Quad. If they are important to you, you might want to wait before pulling the trigger.
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It is a fact, they indicated that there IS a couple second audio gap between presets,
A couple of seconds delay seems very big. Was that their wording in the video?
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A couple of seconds delay seems very big. Was that their wording in the video?
I'd have to rewatch to see if it's EXACTLY 2 seconds, but even if it's less, a very noticeable cut off with no spillover that screws up your playing if you don't stop and wait for it to load (even half a second) is too much to use within a song. I don't think my Helix preset gap was that big, but it was too big to use in the middle of a song for situations where you're strumming chords on the beat through the end of on section of the song and need to hit the downbeat of the next section with a different preset. And it makes perfect sense, at least to a guy that doesn't no a lot about computers. You need DSP dedicated to being able to quickly tap other Presets. If you max out what you can do within one preset, you have less DSP/power/Ram/whatever dedicated to giving you instant access and spillover to other presets or rigs as we call them. That's what the Helix did and sounds like the Quad does. It traded instant access and spillover to adjacent presets in order to give the guitarist more possibilities within a preset and less of a reason to even need to leave a preset mid song. And that trade off is worth it to some players and more problematic to others.
* In the Helix's case, this was exactly true in how they engineered. Once upon a time I had owned the Pod HD. I don't believe it had spillover, but it's audio gap between presets was super short, so short that I had no issue switching presets between songs, not much different that toggling real overdrive pedals.
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I can't imagine the "most powerful floor unit" in all the known universes and on flat earth having such a long gap. But if so there still are scenes / snapshots to not have to deal with preset change gaps. I mean, who changes real presets within songs? This is what scenes are for.
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We don't know if there will be a gap once it is released. So wait until then. It should be rreleased soon.
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I can't imagine the "most powerful floor unit" in all the known universes and on flat earth having such a long gap. But if so there still are scenes / snapshots to not have to deal with preset change gaps. I mean, who changes real presets within songs? This is what scenes are for.
I change presets (rigs) between songs. That's what the Kemper Performance is for. So you have instant access and spillover between five completely independent rigs.
My work flow is this: I have a handful of rigs I use in many situations and songs. For new songs, If I want or need something special, I will use one of my template rigs as a starting point, I copy and name it the Song title, and make whatever adjustments or effect changes I need for that song in the D, X, Mod, Del, and Rev blocks. If I need a different combo of those particular effects or amounts of them, I may program a morph or program an effects switch to toggle the effects.
On every Sunday morning, I play a different combination of songs in various orders, usually only five songs per Sunday, from a growing repertoire of 50+ songs.
So I have a handful or performances I write over each week. Since I usually only need one specialized rig per song, sometimes not even that, I can fit a couple rigs I use all the time in a couple slots and maybe the specific rigs I need for three different songs into just ONE performance. I can set up everything I need for that morning in two minutes, with every single Rig in order that I will play it. If I have a new set of Tone Junkie profiles, that I want to try out, I can copy and paste a couple of them into the 5-10 rigs I need that Sunday morning in under a minute, without overwriting all of the song-specific effects I've dialed to taste. I can edit the snot out of anything in these performances and save them if I find myself wanting and last minute changes, since I write over these performances each week anyway. Since I can jump from rig to rig within the performance without losing edits, I don't even need to hit Save until I've made all a whole string of last minutes changes in all the rigs. And since all of my original Rigs are safe in browse mode, I don't need to worry about editing these two performances to taste during soundcheck. And if I do want a change I make to be permanent, I just export that rig to the browse pool and delete the original during the week, before writing over the performance for next Sunday.
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I change presets (rigs) between songs. That's what the Kemper Performance is for. So you have instant access and spillover between five completely independent rigs.
A performance has 5 slots that can be seen as snapshots (Helix) or scenes (fractal). Yes, spillover is needed and possible within these 5 slots/snapshots/scenes. The Helix has more than 5 (8 or more, depending on how many switches you program to be snapshot switches). So do fractal devices. You can write it down: the QC will also have scene mode with more than 5 scenes where spillover will be possible.
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I can't imagine the "most powerful floor unit" in all the known universes and on flat earth having such a long gap. But if so there still are scenes / snapshots to not have to deal with preset change gaps. I mean, who changes real presets within songs? This is what scenes are for.
More simply, the greater the complexity each rig I create for new songs (by trying to fit a bunch of go-to sounds within it by using Scenes) the more work it is when I inevitably change my mind about how I want one of those commonly used rigs to sound. So lets' say I do what you say on the Quad and make 50+ song-specific Presets and program a bunch of extra Scenes within each one for some go-to sounds. I now have 50+ presets with many of the same Scenes saved into each one of them. So far so good.
But I am fickle, When I inevitably decide the reverb in one of my go-to sounds is too dense in general, I will now have to go to all 50+ presets (maybe only 35, I forget off hand which songs I put that go-to sound in) and make the same edit 50+ times. If I don't, one of my go-to sounds will vary from song to song and I'll have no way of remembering which ones I adjusted. The whole point of go-to sounds is that I can set them and forget them when I don't have time.
Same thing occurs when I get on a "up-the compression" kick and vice versa. Or if I think my go too lead tone is too distorted for church, or not enough distortion to melt everyone's face off. Or when my acoustic sim sounds too shrill, or too dark. Or I just want to try out a different set of profiles. Or want to tweak the graphic EQ in the X slot because I'm bored my my SG and love my Strat again and need to adjust just my lead tones.... And so on.
Because I don't have endless copies of these go-to sounds residing within tons of presets in the Kemper, I can change the originals permanently, or just change the copies of the originals I've made for that Sunday in performance mode. I still have a whole bunch of song-specific Rigs in the browse pool on my Kemper with profiles I don't like much anymore. I don't even bother changing them to my current favorite profiles. Because when I actually need those Rigs again and copy them into a performance for Sunday, 15 seconds is all it takes to swap the profile out so that it matches the current iteration of the amp section of my go-to rigs.
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More simply, the greater the complexity each rig I create for new songs (by trying to fit a bunch of go-to sounds within it by using Scenes) the more work it is when I inevitably change my mind about how I want one of those commonly used rigs to sound. So lets' say I do what you say on the Quad and make 50+ song-specific Presets and program a bunch of extra Scenes within each one for some go-to sounds. I now have 50+ presets with many of the same Scenes saved into each one of them. So far so good.
But I am fickle, When I inevitably decide the reverb in one of my go-to sounds is too dense in general, I will now have to go to all 50+ presets (maybe only 35, I forget off hand which songs I put that go-to sound in) and make the same edit 50+ times. If I don't, one of my go-to sounds will vary from song to song and I'll have no way of remembering which ones I adjusted. The whole point of go-to sounds is that I can set them and forget them when I don't have time.
Same thing occurs when I get on a "up-the compression" kick and vice versa. Or if I think my go too lead tone is too distorted for church, or not enough distortion to melt everyone's face off. Or when my acoustic sim sounds too shrill, or too dark. Or I just want to try out a different set of profiles. Or want to tweak the graphic EQ in the X slot because I'm bored my my SG and love my Strat again and need to adjust just my lead tones.... And so on.
Because I don't have endless copies of these go-to sounds residing within tons of presets in the Kemper, I can change the originals permanently, or just change the copies of the originals I've made for that Sunday in performance mode. I still have a whole bunch of song-specific Rigs in the browse pool on my Kemper with profiles I don't like much anymore. I don't even bother changing them to my current favorite profiles. Because when I actually need those Rigs again and copy them into a performance for Sunday, 15 seconds is all it takes to swap the profile out so that it matches the current iteration of the amp section of my go-to rigs.
Do you make effects and stomps presets too?
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-That moment you realize that the time you spent expressing your opinion on the internet has consumed more minutes of your life than the benefit you've been arguing about (facepalm emoji)
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Do you make effects and stomps presets too?
Sometimes. At one point I found that workflow helpful. To line up whatever profiles I like in a performance and then dialing up song specific Post effects as a singular unit. (Saving the X,Mod,Del,Rev section as a single preset). But then I was often doing certain song specific things within the Stomps section as well, so at the end of the day it was easier to just keep making and using song specific Rigs when I needed them. A couple weeks back after Kemper Drive was released, I created a nice Stomps section preset utilizing the kemper drives in the B and C with a good universal compressor in A, and a bypassed pitch effect set up for subtle octaves in the D. I then pasted this into some of the rigs in my Sunday set.
Even here, to the best of my knowledge, only the KPA lets you save a section of effects as a singular unit and quickly plop the whole thing within another rig. The fixed signal path of the KPA is what makes doing this so incredibly simple, especially if you don't mess with the parallel settings, which I don't.
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-That moment you realize that the time you spent expressing your opinion on the internet has consumed more minutes of your life than the benefit you've been arguing about (facepalm emoji)
I thought your posts were balanced and informative. So just a small facepalm if you must
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-That moment you realize that the time you spent expressing your opinion on the internet has consumed more minutes of your life than the benefit you've been arguing about (facepalm emoji)
You're maybe just slightly jumping the gun giving a product review before you've seen the product, but it was a very thorough non review ?
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Grooguit if you know your effects well then you could also just build around that and highlight the stack button to rotate through rigs.
Group of 4 stomps and effects as a base
Rotate through stacks
Change individual block presets
I have groups of 4 and I have individual preset blocks saved too. This helps a lot!
