Neural Quad Cortex

  • I can totally pass my guitar through my synth with a voltage regulator, been there done that. The results are..... weird, not really musical (I mean, it sounded like a moog, just in a weird way, and even more when glide is enabled). I guess there are pedals out there for this, but the closest I get is getting a moogerfooger low pass and some weird line 6 synth effect in front.

    The answer is 42

  • I think the bit people might be missing is that making the perfect unit is near impossible.


    Its not only about processing power, its that people fundamentally have different needs and covering all of them in some cases are mutually exclusive.


    Here's an example - I have ZERO interest in moving blocks, modules etc. I have no interest is deep effects, gain stacking etc. I love the simplicity of the amp layout I currently have. Combining the deep editing and flex of say Axe III ( which I suspect we all agree is the most flexible) and simplicity is incredibly difficult.


    I am of course simplifying and Kemper has made great strides in improving the effects themselves but always room for improvement.

  • Agree, the longer you go on life, the more you learn to appreciate the specific tools for specific tasks. A great knife is the one designed for doing wonderfully a specific task, sure you can cut bread with it, but if it is made for slicing meat, I guess you wont get your victorinox all porpouse to replace it.

    The answer is 42


  • Kemper2 will come. And it will be like Dr Malcolm said in Jurassic Park2: First big ohhs and ahhs and then running and screaming..


    I mean the competition.

  • Kemper doesn't try to be the routing king because that isn't its DNA IMO.


    If you want to count the number of tweakable parameters in Axe III Fx compared to KPA, I can assure you, the KPA isn't going to come out on top in that metric.......... But I would challenge any Axe III Fx user to a competition of getting a specific type of tone that sounds great in the least amount of time ..... any day. I would say the same for the QC.


    If sophisticated efx and routing are the most valuable thing in your tone, KPA isn't the best tool to do it (although it is still a pretty darned good one). The Axe III Fx is best in this regard IMO.


    I think for me and using dual output guitars the kemper gets trickier and the QC or fractal is the way to go.....guitar synth the two later are a must.


    For a traditional guitarist this isn't an issue


    I would say I have zero interest in 90% in most of the "deep parameters" on the fractal gear and for most who pretend they do are full of shit or going about it the wrong way.

    There were some "power users" back in the day that the first thing they would do is start messing with "motor drives", impedance curves and all this shit you would never even be able to touch on an amp! Most of this only seemed to affect the sound as much as a small eq tweak would ...who in their right mind would even start messing with this shit before basic eq?


    Not to mention the morons that keep going on about "the kemper eq doesn't respond like the amp does"

    Well I guess every graphic eq, para eq, post editing tool/pedal is absolutely a worthless then!

    Apparently these people also have tested all the hundreds of amps on the axe-fx to the real thing and the knobs respond exactly the same...yeah whatever

  • I don't see how adding more flexibility makes it less simple? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say but even the Axe has an option to have the amp controls layout be simple or more true to the original. Same for kemper, some people don't tweak anything, no eq, no extra amp controls or cabinet parameters. If it doesn't sound good to start with a simple boost or overdrive then they move on. Never even switching cabs around.

    All I'm saying is a kpa2 could basically double up and have more amps at once and do pedal capturing while adding a touchscreen and a stereo power amp . The kabs are great and speaker imprints are good. Sure even the touchscreen is extra but now Hotone and Zoom have models with basic touch screens in them. Current power toaster and rack have a stereo mod that can be done and the stage has 2 stereo effects loops. How hard would it really be?

  • The way I envision an increment on the Kemper technology is a modeller with the profiling tech, like the Quad Cortex. Anything shy of that for a new Kemper would be a step back from the Quad Cortex, therefore it would arrive to the market redundant.


    Neural DSP have really kicked it out of the park with this one. I often find that when recording in studio sessions - the output from the Kemper does lack *something* that a plugin / amp modeller can add - so I rarely use solely a Kemper tone. The beauty of running modelling and profiling side by side is that the flexibility of modelling allows you add things in where they might be lacking from the profile, whereas the profile is very much pre cooked and rigid. The beauty of the Quad Cortex is that you can do modelling and run a capture simultaneously.


    It'll be interesting to see how Kemper decide to reply to this new competitor on the market.

  • I don't see how adding more flexibility makes it less simple? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say but even the Axe has an option to have the amp controls layout be simple or more true to the original. Same for kemper, some people don't tweak anything, no eq, no extra amp controls or cabinet parameters. If it doesn't sound good to start with a simple boost or overdrive then they move on. Never even switching cabs around.

    All I'm saying is a kpa2 could basically double up and have more amps at once and do pedal capturing while adding a touchscreen and a stereo power amp . The kabs are great and speaker imprints are good. Sure even the touchscreen is extra but now Hotone and Zoom have models with basic touch screens in them. Current power toaster and rack have a stereo mod that can be done and the stage has 2 stereo effects loops. How hard would it really be?

    By definition adding more makes things potentially more complex. The key word is of course potentially.


    The KPA is more complex to use than a tube amp because it has way more flexibility.


    Its then down to making the design to minimize the impact. So this is a trade off and my view is the the KPA does this great at the moment.


    So, adding more amps at once ( which people will then want to be able to blend, shift around, stereo vs mono etc) will add more screens as does most fuicntionality.


    Im not saying that a KPA2 shouldn't have these things, but there is a slight difference ( I feel) in philosophy between the manufacturers. The KPA to me is closer to a regular amp with built in effects than a complex tone generator ( I'm really generalising here to make the point, also noting I've never used an AXE :) ).

  • I only really have one point to add here - but the QC is more intuitive and simple to use than both the Axe and the Kemper due to it's focus on UX, and arguably it has more features than both (maybe not Axe, I haven't had much experience with the Axe Fx).

  • ///Please show me the guitarist who sounds better because of these supposedly better effects; I mean on a record or stage, not a youtube video isolating and comparing these tools in ways that we’d never use in the wild.


    ///Internal synth sounds would be amazing. So many great tones are achieved by doubling lines with synth tones. If the tools were cool, it would contribute to creative ways of making the guitar relevant in lots of musical contexts where it has been losing favor. Rhythmic filters and other supposedly “silly” colors would further that idea. Silly is only ever on the musician not the tools. Kemper’s synth tools wouldn’t be silly.


    ///I am not looking for Kemper to start modeling specific amps. That would be silly. It’s one thing to create a way to automate the cloning of iconic and/or personal tones for use in perpetuity. But in 2021 or 22 sitting around all day and night writing code that pretends to be some other thing .. I just don’t see this company feeling proud about or even interested in that dated endeavor. Obviously there’s a financial incentive but even so.


    ///However, since there is a vague assumption that Kemper’s profiles exploit a small group of internal building-block amplifier models, or however they would characterize it if pressed, it might be cool for them to make one master kAmp model, a signature Kemper amp if you will, with parameters that allow users to turn it in to whatever they want. Sort of like their approach to master drives and delays that achieve wildly different goals with different presets. A Kemper amplifier that isn’t intending for it to be a one to one copy of anything. We live in this pretend to be that other thing era of guitar history, but I don’t think that’s truly the nature of this company.


    ///Dual amps. Whatever. The internet chatter if that isn’t included in an update would be so frenzied that it might actually please CK to not do it just for sh*ts and giggles. I’m not saying it’s a bad option to have, only that it’s one of those things that historically has been done with analog amps professionally so rarely, yet if you read the internet, reads like a key deficit in any high end modeler. I’d say it probably needs to be done just to shut these people up, but that’s not the type of motivation that has historically driven this company.


    ///I would love for a surprise, futuristic new unexpected inspiring move from Kemper that none of us can predict. That said, there are all kinds of minor utility moves—modern USB jacks, minimum four exp jacks on all for factors, etc etc .. that might be helpful.


    ///But for g*d’s sake please no touchscreen. If it must be, I would hope it retains the sort of retro computer text vibe of the current model., or even more so. Hire a Massimo Vignelli disciple to design it, or Experimental Jetset in the Netherlands. Type in rows and columns versus icons allows for more clearly delineated specific information about exactly what’s going on in the device at any particular time. The QC’s touchscreen, from a design standpoint, is an incredible waste of real estate. Just because everybody has Adobe creative suite on his computer doesn’t mean that everyone can create information graphics that sing.


    ///ymmv

  • I can totally pass my guitar through my synth with a voltage regulator, been there done that. The results are..... weird, not really musical (I mean, it sounded like a moog, just in a weird way, and even more when glide is enabled). I guess there are pedals out there for this, but the closest I get is getting a moogerfooger low pass and some weird line 6 synth effect in front.

    I like to use a guitar/bass to MIDI converter (monophonic) before the PROFILER, send the guitar DI on to the PROFILER and the MIDI to a DSI Mopho for example.

    Then, I add a fx loop module in slot X and feed the Mopho audio to the PROFILER's returns, which let's me control the guitar/synth balance.

    Then some nice big delays and reverbs, which both signals go through, 'glueing' them together.

    With nasty doom/fuzz sounds this yields huge basslines/leads/tonal atmos all intuitively controlled via the controller I'm most comfortable with - guitar. :love:

  • I like to use a guitar/bass to MIDI converter (monophonic) before the PROFILER, send the guitar DI on to the PROFILER and the MIDI to a DSI Mopho for example.

    Then, I add a fx loop module in slot X and feed the Mopho audio to the PROFILER's returns, which let's me control the guitar/synth balance.

    Then some nice big delays and reverbs, which both signals go through, 'glueing' them together.

    With nasty doom/fuzz sounds this yields huge basslines/leads/tonal atmos all intuitively controlled via the controller I'm most comfortable with - guitar. :love:

    I used to have an old variax with midi out, it was a lot of fun to use it to control my moog 37, but never really got satisfied with just replacing the keyboard. Now the variax is gone, and you are making me want to get it back, but maybe I will just install a reliable midi converter (any suggestions?) and see what can I get from it.


    In honesty, I really want to use my guitar as a Oscilator into the input of my moog 37. Been working on limiters and signal conversion, but the ranges on the guitar are so wide and the amplitude so low, that amplifying I only get noise and musical debris :(

    The answer is 42

  • Ahh gotcha, I see what you mean now. I agree on that. I do like the simplicity design and at times have gotta by just fine. I do feel like the time to step it up is here. With the success they've had, I'm pretty confident they would hit the mark pretty hard to which I've said before that the kpa2 will be more like a kpa3 because of the way they do things. Fingers crossed they actually do it though. I don't see why they wouldn't though. There are some things they might not do but it's obvious that there is some things they would, like more effects blocks.

  • The covid lockdowns have been a real "amp in the room-killer". That's a fact.


    Modelers/plug ins/Sims have now a place in the studios even with the most hardcore tube fanatics.


    And Kemper has proven right with the Kone-concept. Also fact.


    All that being said the future is a guitar/synth modeler hybrid.There is no doubt about this. The "cliche rock sound" has already become more of a bass kind of thing in many music styles for example..and that's just one example.