Neural Quad Cortex

  • So you went on a forum and cried to the CEO of a company that some guys on another forum don’t like your posts?!


    :D

    No, I didn't cry to anyone. I went and apologized to the CEO for posting his "relevant" post here without permission. I thought it was very important to read from the CEO, his thoughts and mindset on the direction of the Quad Cortex. I knew that some might disagree about owning one after the fact, but would still enjoy and appreciate the read as I did. That was my fault in assuming I was among friends and fellow Kemper owners here. I also told Doug that I would remove the "on-topic" and relevant to the discussion "post" the second he asks me to. But I won't remove it for a bunch of spoiled brats that can't handle any kind of what they consider a threat from the competition, and that's exactly what this is. I expected more adults in the room, so I'm very sorry for mine and your disappointment. Consider this my last words on this subject, and fire away.

    If you use FRFR the benefit of a merged profile is that the cabinet is totally separated in the profile.


    For my edification only... ;) Kemper/Axe-FX III/ Quad Cortex user

  • I have been posting on the Kemper forum for 7 years now. I have never brought drama or engaged in defensive behavior about a competing product. In fact, this place has always been a very open and chill place. Spikey has been around almost as far back as I can remember.


    Thanks to a few overly and unreasonably defensive members in this thread, things sure have changed in Kemper land, compared to the good old days.


    There really is no reason to tell other members not to post certain things, especially objectively relevant things related to the topic at hand.


    There is no good reason to be as defensive about the Kemper, and as antagonistic toward those of us long time Kemper community members who happen to be considering the QC.


    It’s really a bummer what has happened here.


    ::checks url::


    Was hoping it said Fractal rather than Kemper. Disappointed.

  • Ok, back to the topic,


    I’ve seen all of the videos concerning the QC, and so far it looks pretty good. The ones where they compare the Kemper to the QC, I think sometimes the Kemper wins when it comes to capture/profiling and sometimes it doesn’t, at least to my ears.


    To be quite honest, I really don’t care that either one is closer to the original amp or not. I don’t own 50 amps, and I don’t think many here do either and I wouldn’t be able to tell you for many of them if it’s a good replica of the amp or not. What I do care about is the tone that I get out of it, according to the way I play which is impossible unless I actually demo one for myself. Pick dynamics, pups, tone woods, etc all play a part in the tone.


    So, instead of more head to head crappy YouTube stuff, I’d really just like someone to post WAV clips of just the factory presets, rigs, whatever the hell they call them so I can go through them all and hear how good of a tone set this thing can really produce. Kind of like what all of the profile vendors do with the Kemper.


    What do you think?

  • So who else here is getting a Quad Cortex when released? :)


    Nicky and Me and.... ???

    I'm getting one but mostly for my synths.


    Obviously, I'm gonna guitar noodle around with it and I'm planning on capturing my kemper with pedals in front of it.


    Gonna capture some pedal stacks, and some amps too.

  • Man, I've been away since my last comment on Monday.


    This Kemper forum (or at least some in this thread) are some of the most sad people I've ever interacted with on the internet.


    There's pretty much nowhere to go have a discussion anyone without right and left wing extremists defending their purchase...not to mention cancel culture.


    I own a Kemper. And a Fractal. And soon a QC. I'll decide for myself which is best. I'll probably keep one of the older products that has been vetted, but as a platform, QC has a lot of up side if the basics are right.


    Anyways, carry on with all the hurt feelings about Kemper superiority and insecurities about a new product.


    I'm actually interested to see how Fractal improves on already awesome tones with their new software update.

  • I agree.


    If your primary workflow is to capture a bunch of amps YOU own, then play them back in your basement, then I see the QC being quite good.


    My primary concerns are:


    1. The physical format does not lend itself to live usage
    2. The limited ability to tweak the amp tone AFTER the capture means that unless a capture happened to be created on a rig very very close to what you use and how you play is a problem for me. Anyone who uses others profiles and then tweaks them for their own usage may find the relative lack of amp parameters troubling. I know that I exclusively use profiles OTHERS made and tweak them to my needs for live use.
    3. The business model is troubling. Also the copied statement that QC will never charge "for an update" can be quite misleading. Does an "update" include new amp models? or is that an amp package? Does an "update" include new reverbs? New stomps? I am not sure about these things at this point in time.
    4. I have owned the KPA since 2013. In that time, there has been no updates that effected my tone. This is a CRITICAL feature for me since I have TONS of time in my KPA making great gig-ready tones for my rig. It is unknown if QC will be able to do this or not. Fractal has had plenty of issues in this area over the years.


    To be fair, I also don't care (as much) for the Kemper stage because of the amount of cables that accumulate around your feet; however, the space between buttons, and the ability to move up and down between performances are especially well thought out on the KPA (including the stage).

  • So much for the logic that they're trying to protect sellers.

    Sure, and that protection may or may not be free of charge for the seller, and can be aimed to protect future Neural paid content, in collaboration with producers, musicians or amp makers. That kind of business model sounds pretty similar to Apple/Google, they get a share of the apps being sold through their ecosystem, you can’t share your own developed apps outside of their cloud based platform, at least they don’t want to.

    Kemper, Helix and Fractal don’t profit from third party presets/profiles. Let’s assume QC will not do it, neither.


    There are few threads in the KP forum, about the need to include DRM or similar controls in the Kemper system, but so far, that was not a big issue even with comercial profiles to justify the cost.


    I believe it is more important to provide tools to speed up growth of the user community, instead of profit from it.


    By the way,
    although we do have thousands of free rigs through RigExchange and free factory content through RigManager, there is something that modelers allow and Kemper does not. Modelers allow you to tweak a factory amp model, add effects to it, create your own rig or preset based on that and share it for free. In the KP community you are not allowed to do that unless you are the owner of the profile. I don’t have amps anymore, so I do not have anything to profile and share in RE?


    I guess that most of Kemper users, do not profile amps, so, it would be great if Kemper includes “shareable” factory content with hundreds of professionally profiled amps that we are allowed to tweak and share freely, and yes you can store it locally, too. That could grow the sharing community even, more.




  • I don’t hear anyone arguing in this thread, except where some people (not moderators) seem to believe that they’re in a position to dictate what others write about, and then to dismiss those concerns and the people who voice them with name-calling if those posts don’t feed some blurry concept of what they think a thread about a product that NOT A SINGLE PERSON HERE HAS EVER HELD IN HIS OWN HANDS should read like.


    I‘m seeing musicians, several of whom are satisfied owners of multiple digital guitar platforms, who are taking issue with a social-media-style opt-in-only approach to creating and saving personal tones, and maybe some others who are dismayed by the leave-no-doubt commercialization of some of their heretofore favorite theoretically “impartial” influencers.


    Anyone who’s been around the Kemper forum for years knows that pretty much everyone who has posted a bunch has at least posted a bunch of “wishes“ or complaints along the way. Live and let live. Some of those wishes have come true, and some of those musicians have moved on to other gear.


    It seems as if in this moment, expressing any opinions other than “yay NDSP” now equals hater? I guess that’s the third thing that several people have noted about the rollout of this device. There’s a lot of bullying going on.


    For anyone taking issue with the nature of this thread, just read a handful of pages from the one on TGP and you’ll get a taste of something truly special. It all reeks of the energy surrounding one of those other brands in the early days, but to the nth degree. And some of these folks are actually running back to TGP and reporting that the “Kemper Guys” are all upset?

    Hahaha. What’s a Kemper guy!?!? Is that a musician who actually uses gear that exists? Today? For the purpose of making music?


    Question: will everyone who plays frigid outdoor gigs need to wear special smartphone gloves in order to operate their QC touchscreens?


    :)

  • Question: will everyone who plays frigid outdoor gigs need to wear special smartphone gloves in order to operate their QC touchscreens?


    :)

    Don't think QC is targeted at gigging musicians. From what I've read it's more targeted at modern people who "don't live in the stone age".

    I, for one, enjoy living in the stone age .

  • I am a "Kemper guy" and we need to plot an invasion of the TGP and enact a hostile takeover of the thread and capture their "I ❤ NDSP!" flag and then tar and feather their followers for blasphemous statements claiming the QC is better than Kemper purely based on paid with real honest cash based "reviews" and then set up the Kemper base camp and put all QC loyalists in the amp gulags so they work for the almighty KemperVerse making 100% super accurate profiles that are 100% betterer and realerer than the real amp with added cocked wahs as an exclusive feature for that little extra pazzazz so there's no doubt who is king of this particular social media ant hill that no one outside of this tribal insanity even knows about or even cares. This is WAR!!

    Who's with me?! ?

    (I am KIDDING okay??!)

    1. The physical format does not lend itself to live usage

    I don't understand this. To me it seems like it was in fact designed for live use.


    For example, I have both the Rack/Remote and the Stage. Each one requires the same number of cables to hook up at a gig, the difference is that with the Stage I have two less things to haul to the gig. What am I missing?

  • I don't understand this. To me it seems like it was in fact designed for live use.


    For example, I have both the Rack/Remote and the Stage. Each one requires the same number of cables to hook up at a gig, the difference is that with the Stage I have two less things to haul to the gig. What am I missing?

    I think the physical size and the spacing of the foot switches kinda tells you it’s not the best option for live. Anyone other than Yosemite Sam is gonna be hitting wrong switches at some point. It’s gonna need some type of remote for guys and gals who do any tap dancing with patches.

  • I think the physical size and the spacing of the foot switches kinda tells you it’s not the best option for live. Anyone other than Yosemite Sam is gonna be hitting wrong switches at some point. It’s gonna need some type of remote for guys and gals who do any tap dancing with patches.

    Dude, the buttons are no further apart than the smaller helix and stomps that people use just fine.


    Again, by no means am I a NDSP fanboy but some of the “cons” or “complaints” that keep being mentioned here are so trivial or yet to actually be seen. Much to make out of nothing.

    After playing around with an FM3 for a week, where’s the Fractal whining thread because that little unit is quite good for $999.

  • Dude, the buttons are no further apart than the smaller helix and stomps that people use just fine.


    Again, by no means am I a NDSP fanboy but some of the “cons” or “complaints” that keep being mentioned here are so trivial or yet to actually be seen. Much to make out of nothing.

    After playing around with an FM3 for a week, where’s the Fractal whining thread because that little unit is quite good for $999.

    I like the Stomp. I’ve never tried any Fractal stuff, but I’m sure it’s great too. But as far a switches go, you’re talking about devices that have three foot switches as opposed to a double row of ten, I believe. Maybe I’ll be surprised when I get it, but when I see someone’s hand looking rather large next to it, I feel it whispering “desktop” to me. At least that’s how I’ll be using it at first. Being wrong would be a happy surprise. All that said, I’m still in the camp of having my gear safely behind me with just the profiler remote out front. I’ve had too many drunks step on my stuff, trip over cables, knock my microphone into my mouth, etc... Choices? What a wonderful time to be a gear nerd:)

  • I think the physical size and the spacing of the foot switches kinda tells you it’s not the best option for live. Anyone other than Yosemite Sam is gonna be hitting wrong switches at some point. It’s gonna need some type of remote for guys and gals who do any tap dancing with patches.

    It’s the same dimensions as the HX FX and I have never had an issue with that.


    And I have big feet and run it in stompbox mode or whatever they call it.


  • It seems as if in this moment, expressing any opinions other than “yay NDSP” now equals hater? I guess that’s the third thing that several people have noted about the rollout of this device. There’s a lot of bullying going on.


    For anyone taking issue with the nature of this thread, just read a handful of pages from the one on TGP and you’ll get a taste of something truly special.

    What you’re actually seeing is the knee-jerk defensive position taken by some 2 or 3 members on this forum when faced with any perceived slight against their KPA (even when, more often than not, it’s completely imagined), and a reaction to their smug attitudes when another view is put forth.


    This is not bullying.

    And, in my opinion, the TGP thread has been more tolerable than this one, aside from the relentless conspiracy mongering which has, fortunately, died down a bit.


    Different strokes, agree to disagree, yada yada...