Neural Quad Cortex

[2pods]

Alas, I no longer have a Trace cab anymore, but i will get around to capturing my Markbass combo at some point

[MrDinsdale]

I've been getting impulsive urges towards the Quad Cortex recently. What's the community like around it?

 

What sort of setups are people using? I'd probably pair it with the SLO, Cali76 and a couple of drives (unless I could get a decent capture) for a Hybrid setup.

Are you curious if you're using it for pretty straightforward tones or if anyone has been using it for more experimental stuff?

 

I've previously had the MOD Dwarf and the GT1000core, the QC seems to take some of my favourite features with the captures and routing flexibility. It looks to lack some of the lower-level stuff that those two could do like assigning parameters to input levels, the Dwarf even let you do some crazy stuff with CV emulation so you could have random value generators bound to controls allowing for some fascinating stuff. Can the Quad Cortex do any slow ramping between values? I guess like the HX One "Flux" functionality.

[Dood]

I'm using QC alone in a set up that, like my previous Helix and other gear has replaced silly amounts of rack gear. The signal path now is relatively simple outside QC. I'm in the luxurious posiion that the sounds I have created on QC are "FOH ready" and my backline and IEMs, when I use them receives exactly the same signal. (There's some tweaking that goes on around my IEMs but that doesn't change the output of QC). 

The path inside QC is based on a template that I edit per needs as there are some aspects that I don't change much, so if I switch from one patch to another, levels are relatively the same. Top rows are for "preamp sounds" and the bottom rows I like to use for modulations and time based effects (except when the preset has to be wildly different like, building a 3-4 band multiband compressor - which leaves little space for much else ha ha! I guess at the moment I'm not doing much experimental stuff, but its nice to know I can if I want to.

 

Using QC is a breeze, no issues there and for me, the form factor is important. I love Helix LT, but QC fits in the same bag as my amp, which is bonkers! Touch screen and rotary controls is a big yes for me too as I like the tactile approach and hate scrolling through lengthy menus.

I've not much to add in terms of manipulating CC's and other parameters, I've had QC for a while, but I still haven't got that far yet ha ha!! 

[MrDinsdale]

13 minutes ago, Dood said:

I'm using QC alone in a set up that, like my previous Helix and other gear has replaced silly amounts of rack gear. The signal path now is relatively simple outside QC. I'm in the luxurious posiion that the sounds I have created on QC are "FOH ready" and my backline and IEMs, when I use them receives exactly the same signal. (There's some tweaking that goes on around my IEMs but that doesn't change the output of QC). 

The path inside QC is based on a template that I edit per needs as there are some aspects that I don't change much, so if I switch from one patch to another, levels are relatively the same. Top rows are for "preamp sounds" and the bottom rows I like to use for modulations and time based effects (except when the preset has to be wildly different like, building a 3-4 band multiband compressor - which leaves little space for much else ha ha! I guess at the moment I'm not doing much experimental stuff, but its nice to know I can if I want to.

 

Using QC is a breeze, no issues there and for me, the form factor is important. I love Helix LT, but QC fits in the same bag as my amp, which is bonkers! Touch screen and rotary controls is a big yes for me too as I like the tactile approach and hate scrolling through lengthy menus.

I've not much to add in terms of manipulating CC's and other parameters, I've had QC for a while, but I still haven't got that far yet ha ha!! 

Yeah, the deeper parameter control (assigns on the GT1000 or Control Voltage emulation on the Dwarf) is a tricky one, it's cool to have that deeper level of control but if the effects were better then I'd feel less inclined to need it.

I do love the interface and the blend of touch, form factor and rotary controls seems perfect for me. It's also pretty overkill considering I'm not in a gigging band so it's just home use for the foreseeable.

[Dood]

58 minutes ago, MrDinsdale said:

Yeah, the deeper parameter control (assigns on the GT1000 or Control Voltage emulation on the Dwarf) is a tricky one, it's cool to have that deeper level of control but if the effects were better then I'd feel less inclined to need it.

I do love the interface and the blend of touch, form factor and rotary controls seems perfect for me. It's also pretty overkill considering I'm not in a gigging band so it's just home use for the foreseeable.

 

In all honesty, given that the bass side isn't so catered for as the guitar side of the QC, and I am only using it live for bass, currently in a band that doesn't need monsterous effects, maybe it is overkill here too. However, I need to spend some time dialling in some fat bass-pedal type sounds, in which case it will be very useful!

QC has a basic tone generator on board too, so it's possible to also create a very rough Taurus pedals 'thing'. (There's a fun default patch based on the chords of Shine On You Crazy Diamond intro on QC)

Edited June 10 by Dood
typos

[MrDinsdale]

Ace that's super useful!

TBH I'm always wrestling with using my pedalboard for both guitar and bass, means a lot of re-dialing in settings and values when switching between them. If I can capture my bass/guitar settings on my favorite pedals, even if it's just 90% of the way there, that'd be fine for rough recordings or demo stuff. I always have the option to re-amp it with the real pedals but it'd save me hours of faffing day to day.

I think I'm probably just gonna bite the bullet. I've sold a few bits and raised enough money to grab one, if it works out and replaces some more of my pedals then it could work out significantly cheaper.

Curious about what the drives are like for bass too, I've never really been sold on the GT1000, MOD (the Rude drive nearly won me over) or the HX drives. Certainly not when compared side by side with my analog drives.

[MrDinsdale]

Well, I caved and grabbed one. It ended up being £850 2nd hand with some discounts through work schemes, etc, so it was hard to turn down!

 

I think it's the captures that sell me on it. The HX stuff seems good for fx, but the drives I just couldn't get onboard with. If I can capture my fave drives and get like 90% there, I'd be sorted.

 

I've seen there are already some pretty solid captures of most my favourite pedals already have captures uploaded, which are apparently super close.

 

If anyone has any good patches, send over your usernames for the cortex cloud. It'd be a handy starting point 👌

[joel406]

12 hours ago, MrDinsdale said:

Well, I caved and grabbed one. It ended up being £850 2nd hand with some discounts through work schemes, etc, so it was hard to turn down!

 

I think it's the captures that sell me on it. The HX stuff seems good for fx, but the drives I just couldn't get onboard with. If I can capture my fave drives and get like 90% there, I'd be sorted.

 

I've seen there are already some pretty solid captures of most my favourite pedals already have captures uploaded, which are apparently super close.

 

If anyone has any good patches, send over your usernames for the cortex cloud. It'd be a handy starting point 👌

Welcome to the Light side.

QC is essential to bass when used in an IEM/Ampless environment. Of course, when used in a studio there is other worldly implications.

 

Search in the cloud for your favorite stuff. Check out the online list of devices available.

I have (and use) the Mesa CA400. I use a Noble preamp capture. Parametric EQ and HPF, LPF filter. And the Darkglass 212 neo cabs sims. I need to do some captures. Once my studio is built in a couple of months I'm gonna get them done.

 

For now, experimentation is what you should be doing.

[BigRedX]

I've just been reading up about Capturing the sound of a device.

 

Unless I'm mistaken it's just a snapshot of a single setting of the device you are capturing and how it reacts to whatever you happen to playing during the capture? A lot of sound processing devices will react quite differently depending on what the input signal is doing, whether it is how hard you are playing or whether you are playing single notes, simple or complex chords. I see a lot of the "how to" guides recommend playing 1st position chords (for guitar at least) as hard as possible, but surely that will only result in a capture for full chords played hard?

 

And if you need multiple settings from your captured device you have to save each one individually? How quickly does each IR load? If for instance I need to switch to a different setting mid-song?

 

How much processing power are we going to need in order to be able to model the action of each individual knob on the captured device? 

[Killerfridge]

44 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Unless I'm mistaken it's just a snapshot of a single setting of the device you are capturing and how it reacts to whatever you happen to playing during the capture? A lot of sound processing devices will react quite differently depending on what the input signal is doing, whether it is how hard you are playing or whether you are playing single notes, simple or complex chords. I see a lot of the "how to" guides recommend playing 1st position chords (for guitar at least) as hard as possible, but surely that will only result in a capture for full chords played hard?

I'm not sure where you've been reading this - you are correct in that it captures a single setting (i.e. a snapshot of how your current device is setup), but you don't do anything in the capture process - creating a capture involves routing the pedal/amp/device into the QC and letting the QC do the capturing. It will then play a load noises/whistles at a range of different volumes/pitches/intensities through the device and listen to how the device reacts After the capture process is complete (a couple of minutes) you can then A/B the capture against the device (I'm guessing that's whatever you've read is referring to) to make sure it reacts the same way/sounds the same.

49 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

And if you need multiple settings from your captured device you have to save each one individually? How quickly does each IR load? If for instance I need to switch to a different setting mid-song?

Instantly, exactly the same as if you were turning a pedal on/off

50 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

How much processing power are we going to need in order to be able to model the action of each individual knob on the captured device? 

Easy answer to that one - the "modelled" amps in the device (the SVT/B15/GK800RB/Mesa 400 and a couple of others that slip my mind) are exactly that. You have the same controls for these models as you do the original amp, because as far as I understand they have just been captured at every possible position

[BigRedX]

Thanks for putting me right on the capture process.

 

I suppose what I really meant by the last question was when will the tools be available to allow users to create their own fully adjustable models which duplicate the way all the controls on the original work?

[Kev]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

Unless I'm mistaken it's just a snapshot of a single setting of the device you are capturing and how it reacts to whatever you happen to playing during the capture? A lot of sound processing devices will react quite differently depending on what the input signal is doing, whether it is how hard you are playing or whether you are playing single notes, simple or complex chords. I see a lot of the "how to" guides recommend playing 1st position chords (for guitar at least) as hard as possible, but surely that will only result in a capture for full chords played hard?

 

 

I think the people who wrote those guides haven't touched a Quad Cortex!

 

You don't get involved with the capture process at all.  The QC sends all kinds of waverforms into the pedal to "machine learn" how it changes the input signal to create the output.  Provided the device is gain related, with no time based or otherwise oddities in the circuit, the results are borderline perfect.  I captured all my Darkglass pedals before moving them on and the captures were completely indistinguishable from the real thing (and the QC lets you AB afterwards).

 

The only "flaw" in the capture system is the capturer tends to set up the pedal based on how it responds to their instrument, so the more complex the pedal is, the more likely it is any individual capture may be tailored to a certain bass or a certain setup.  Not an issue if the capturer takes captures without dialing it in first like that.

[Killerfridge]

3 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Thanks for putting me right on the capture process.

 

I suppose what I really meant by the last question was when will the tools be available to allow users to create their own fully adjustable models which duplicate the way all the controls on the original work?

I think the likelihood is "never". The problem is you would need to do a capture, change the controls, do a capture, change the controls etc. This would take an insane amount of time (assume 4 controls on an amp - gain, bass, mid, treble. In a really simple world each control can have 10 positions, and a capture takes 3 minutes. It would take 3 x 10^4 minutes to get a capture of every position, i.e. 500 hours. And those 500 hours would need to be man hours, as you would need to be there to change the controls every 3 minutes)

[fretmeister]

54 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Thanks for putting me right on the capture process.

 

I suppose what I really meant by the last question was when will the tools be available to allow users to create their own fully adjustable models which duplicate the way all the controls on the original work?

 

 

My experience of capturing is Tonex based - but in general I find that using the controls to make small changes on a Capture are actually damn close to how the original unit would react, but when the changes are larger that's when it starts to not react the same as the original.

 

Subtractive EQing seems to work a lot better than Addition though.

 

As for fully adjustable - I'm not sure that capturing is the right approach for that as it would need the user to do manually set everything in all the millions of possible settings. Modelling has to still be the way forward for that, because that is already at the component level.

 

My concern isn't the processors etc for as component modelling gets better, it's the size of the files. They are already massive compared to the last generation, and that is the reason why there is no instant Patch changing anymore - that's why we have Snapshots / Scenes / Whatever so all the needed items are loaded into a single patch for instant use. But the bigger the files, the more DSP is needed, the fewer blocks available, or the more expensive the kit as additional DSP chips are added.

 

 

[MrDinsdale]

Yeah, I've done some captures on the MOD Dwarf. It worked great with overdrivess and distortion pedals, great for preamps like the Capo. Really struggled with stuff like fuzz pedals once they start getting into the spluttery territory or where you start getting heavy compression.

 

The AIDA-x models are much smaller than the neural ones, I believe.

[BigRedX]

6 hours ago, Kev said:

Provided the device is gain related, with no time based or otherwise oddities in the circuit, the results are borderline perfect.

 

But surely all devices are to some extent time-based in that the effect they have changes as the input signal fades away?

[MrDinsdale]

9 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

But surely all devices are to some extent time-based in that the effect they have changes as the input signal fades away?

It's still related to the input signal. There are no trails or repeats etc.

[WinterMute]

13 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

But surely all devices are to some extent time-based in that the effect they have changes as the input signal fades away?

 

"time-based" referring to effects the use a delayed signal like chorus or flange don;t work, it fares very well with EQ and frequency based systems and overdrives, especially valve, but not so well with fuzz, although it does work.

 

I've captured pre-amps and amps, done some amp/cab combos and they sound good, there is some variation available in terms of gain and EQ, but it v=certainly won't give you the option for a bright switch setting or the like.

 

It's better than an approximation, as it definitely conveys the character of the unit being captured to useable effect, but as you noted in an earlier post, if you want radically differing tones from a unit, it's best to take separate captures.

 

The QC has so much processing, that you can use multiple captures across multiple channels without issues.

[BigRedX]

To me it seems very similar to trying to capture the sounds of a synthesiser using samples. You'll get each individual capture pretty much spot on but you'll never be able to get every nuance and setting, and for me a "generic" EQ and drive models that have complete variation on all the controls is far more useful than a handful of super-realistic snapshots of a device, as I can guarantee that once I no longer have access to the original I'll be needing a capture that I didn't make. I know this from experience of spending the best part of a day sampling a set of Simmons SDSV modules before selling them. Within a month I wanted sounds that at the time I hadn't thought to sample because I didn't think I'd need them.

[MichaelDean]

On 17/06/2024 at 10:04, BigRedX said:

I've just been reading up about Capturing the sound of a device.

 

Unless I'm mistaken it's just a snapshot of a single setting of the device you are capturing and how it reacts to whatever you happen to playing during the capture? A lot of sound processing devices will react quite differently depending on what the input signal is doing, whether it is how hard you are playing or whether you are playing single notes, simple or complex chords. I see a lot of the "how to" guides recommend playing 1st position chords (for guitar at least) as hard as possible, but surely that will only result in a capture for full chords played hard?

 

And if you need multiple settings from your captured device you have to save each one individually? How quickly does each IR load? If for instance I need to switch to a different setting mid-song?

 

How much processing power are we going to need in order to be able to model the action of each individual knob on the captured device? 

 

I have heard of a new capturing process, I think it was on the Kemper. You take a reading at one setting, your goal, where you also enter the knob positions. Then you take two more, with dials maxed and all the way down. It then tries to make an educated guess about the travel of the knobs and how they interact. 

[2pods]

Liquid Captures ?

I think that's what it was being called.

[MichaelDean]

8 minutes ago, 2pods said:

Liquid Captures ?

I think that's what it was being called.

Yep, that's the badger. 

[WinterMute]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

To me it seems very similar to trying to capture the sounds of a synthesiser using samples. You'll get each individual capture pretty much spot on but you'll never be able to get every nuance and setting, and for me a "generic" EQ and drive models that have complete variation on all the controls is far more useful than a handful of super-realistic snapshots of a device, as I can guarantee that once I no longer have access to the original I'll be needing a capture that I didn't make. I know this from experience of spending the best part of a day sampling a set of Simmons SDSV modules before selling them. Within a month I wanted sounds that at the time I hadn't thought to sample because I didn't think I'd need them.

 

Inevitable with any capture or sampling tech, sample a snare drum and you're stuck with the mics, positioning and dynamics of the individual strike you sample, that's why multi-sampling and verity switching/zonal pads were developed. 

 

I'm treating the Neural Capture feature as very much a convenience and not an excuse to get rid of bits of kit I'll probably need later on, I can very quickly grab an amp state for a particular session and incorporate it into the rest of the QC units, plus IR's. Makes the QC a very powerful tool.

[Kev]

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

To me it seems very similar to trying to capture the sounds of a synthesiser using samples. You'll get each individual capture pretty much spot on but you'll never be able to get every nuance and setting, and for me a "generic" EQ and drive models that have complete variation on all the controls is far more useful than a handful of super-realistic snapshots of a device, as I can guarantee that once I no longer have access to the original I'll be needing a capture that I didn't make. I know this from experience of spending the best part of a day sampling a set of Simmons SDSV modules before selling them. Within a month I wanted sounds that at the time I hadn't thought to sample because I didn't think I'd need them.

I'm not sure you're fully understanding what a capture is and how it works, as it really isn't anything like a sampler?  You're capturing a device set up in a certain way, the Quad Cortex learns how to create that sound, and the capture reacts to your playing in the same way the real thing would, with embedded gain controls and 3 band EQ controls (with any number of effect blocks before and after) that are pretty functional in moderation.  I can't imagine ever needing to capture a device in so many different settings that it becomes cumbersome. How often do you dramatically change pedal settings?  Perhaps i'm alone with this, but I very rarely mess once I've found a particular sound I like, and the QC is more than capable of doing slight adjustments when needed.

 

Can you give a more specific example of a particular device you want to capture, and how you may wish to change this sound in the future?

[MrDinsdale]

I'm not planning on selling off my pedals,  I use the same across guitar and bass, so having captures of the settings I need for each is a huge time saver. Not to mention cheaper to replace!

 

I know with AIDA I’d have a low, mid, and high gain, for example. The built-in gain and EQ parameters were sufficient for any extra fine tuning. My low gain Capo capture actually sounded great with higher gain applied in the plugin. It's not the same character as the real thing but surprisingly close.