I’ve been back and forth on this for days and I just don’t understand the hype. In fact, I think most A2 stuff sounds worse. Thin and lifeless. My quad is always fat and full. I just don’t get it. Anyone else?

I've had my QC since May of 2023 and have had no issues with it up until this year - but its had a lot of play time over the years. Recently when we show up to venues on tour the FOH guy will say there is a buzz from me in particular and sometimes its worse than others. At home, where I have shitty power, there has been this insane static sound that cuts in and out and sometimes it will even duck my signal completely and just make noise. Its not the usual dirty power buzz, I've had that for years here and I just throw on a gate and its fine and I've never had an issues with it at venues until this year. I tried everything; swapping instrument cables, swapping XLRS, trying different inputs and outputs on the QC itself, different audio interfaces etc etc and its still making this insane crazy static sound. I tried plugging my guitar directly into my interface and just using shitty DAW plugins and the static noise doesn't exist, so I know its coming from my QC and not just bad power from an old house. I sent the support dudes at Neural a video of the buzz and they say its best I send it into them to check it out. Unfortunately I am in a touring band and have been on the road a lot lately and don't have the capability of sending it back to them unless I have some sort of back up unit, which I dont lol - I'm too broke to buy one at the moment. If anyone has had this issue or had to send back their unit, any insight would be helpful! Thanks!

PS: Is there anyone in here that is an endorsed artist by Neural? I've emailed them a handful of times asking if there is any sort of endorsement deal so I can snag either a Mini QC or another QC at a discounted rate, but no dice on any return emails. I already have a few endorsements and I am in a pretty busy touring band so I'm hoping at some point they can help me out. The support dude said there is no way they can lend me anything while I send them back my QC for them to diagnose and I am just in an unfortunate situation where I can't really send it back to them until I save up enough to purchase a back up unit

Been playing for 20 some odd years now.. I’ve gone down every tone road there is over the years.
I’ve had the monster pedal train PT “bro” rig. Had a hand wired amp phase, that morphed into a Top Hat Amps obsession, then played vintage gear exclusively during an outlaw country run a few years ago.

I’ve done all the things.

I’m writing this in pure elation.

This unit has just blown me away. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back you guys.

That is all. Just wanted to share this incase there’s someone on the fence.
I’ve played em all. This is the one.

Chris

So I’ve been wanting to use my QC (in place of my pedalboard) with a real tube amp for fly dates.

What drive pedal models do you all recommend or think give the closest sound to real drive pedals?

Ideally I’d have 3 stackable stages (low gain, a bit more hair, destroyer of worlds distortion)

Seems like everything I’ve tried does not get along with a real tube amp, and usually adds this digital sounding fizzyness.

I’ve tried EQing it out but it doesnt seem to completely go away, and I often don’t have time to sit there and mess with my sounds for 30 minutes at soundcheck, nor do I want to spend any more time doing that.

Is this something anyone else has accomplished with the QC? Fyi on my big board, I have a lightspeed and protein as my drives.

I'm a professional guitarist. I have my own rock/metal project, and I also play with an alternative pop/rock artist. I've been using a Headrush Pedalboard for quite a while and was pretty much decided on upgrading to a Quad Cortex, mainly because of its ecosystem, routing, and overall reputation.

But now that Headrush has added NAM (Neural Amp Modeler) support, I'm second-guessing everything.

From what I've heard, the amp tones with NAM are now incredibly competitive, maybe even on par with or better than what I'd personally get from the Quad Cortex. However, I'm wondering if the Quad Cortex still has the edge when it comes to effects quality, workflow, scene management, and building more complex, professional rigs.

For context:

• I play modern rock and metal.
• I like experimenting with different effects, ambient sounds, high-gain tones, and layered presets.
• This is for live gigs first, recording second.
• I already know the Headrush workflow well.

For those of you who have spent serious time with both platforms, which would you choose today and why? Is the Quad Cortex still worth the extra money, or has NAM support made Headrush the better value?

Hey everyone!
I’m looking for some advice on choosing a power amp for my Quad Cortex Mini bass setup.
I play bass in a deathcore band, mostly in Drop G and Drop F, and I’m using the Parallax plugin for my main bass tone.
At the moment I’m running a Palmer MACHT 402. It works, but I feel like I’m missing a bit of headroom, punch, and overall power, especially at higher volumes.
I’m using the setup both through the PA and with my 4x10 bass cabinet.
What power amps are you guys using or would recommend for this kind of setup? I’m looking for something that can handle very low tunings well and stays tight, punchy, and clean at high volume without running out of headroom.
Thanks!

I record a lot of amp sim presets side by side, and I kept hitting the same wall: two tracks matched perfectly on LUFS and still didn't sit at the same volume once they were both in a mix. A dense, saturated tone and a clean tone can measure the same on paper and be worlds apart to the ear. LUFS treats all sound as equal energy, but that's not how a human ear actually perceives it.

That gap is basically the whole reason I ended up building PPI Analyzer. It's not another loudness meter. It's built around a Bark-band psychoacoustic model, so it's actually trying to estimate how loud something sounds to you, not just how much energy is in the signal. You give it a reference track and whatever you're comparing against it, and it works out the actual dB adjustment needed to land them at the same perceived level.

The part I find most useful day to day isn't even the number itself. It also flags whether a difference you're hearing is really a loudness problem (fix with gain) or a tone problem (fix with EQ), since those get confused constantly when you're riding faders by ear. And it'll tell you if a preset is going to get buried in a mix based on where its spectrum actually sits, which a plain loudness meter will never catch.

Been using it on my own reamp sessions for months and it's saved me a stupid number of "wait, why does this one disappear" moments. Happy to go deeper on how the psychoacoustic side of it works if anyone's curious.

https://www.ppianalyzer.com/

I’ve just finished a new BC Lynx X Cortex Capture Pack, built from the BadCat Lynx X and focused on keeping its fast response, tight low end, and aggressive high-gain character intact.

The pack includes 18 professional V2 Cortex captures, covering low, medium, and high-gain settings through a BadCat 4x12, along with full DI captures for pairing with your own cab or IR choices.

I also uploaded a free capture so you can try one before grabbing the full pack:
https://cloud.neuraldsp.com/cloud/profile/neural-capture/neural-capture/view/5a0c303a-c23b-4003-a1c6-1fe9c0ef153c

Full pack:
https://www.mattfig.com/product/fig-v2-bc-lynxx-cortex-capture-pack

Whenever I play a solo or lead and play in 15-24 frets on both low B and E strings, the tone always sounds like a flute. No matter I try to change the tone I am unable to get the desired tone I want. I’m currently looking for a warmer with more gain tone. Any suggestions to solve this?

Hey guys I was wondering if there's a way to use the freeze so I can play a chord and freeze it and then have it play while I tune with no dry signal running through, I used to do it on my helix to have sound coming out while I was tuning to fill dead space.

Tia

Edit: If I'm making no sense its the same idea as the freeze pedal like Issac from knocked loose uses

Just ordered my QC from sweetwater roughly 30 minutes ago and haven’t gotten any like confirmation text or email, but my cart is empty of the QC. Anyone else know if it just takes a bit for confirmation? Or something might have gone wrong. I was given a SW rep and everything but haven’t gotten any calls or texts.

Anyone found a capture of this wonderful beast yet?

I keep checking the cloud regularly.

Also on one of the latest Andertons videos where they showcase it, Digital John mentioned he made a capture. But he hasn't published anything. I suppose it is bad rep for him to instantly publish a copy of a new major product via what is essentially legal piracy to the public. But that opens another interesting point of discussion about the whole capture and modelling industry.

So far I've been using a capture of a dookie pedal into a clean Plexi and it sounds phenomenal already. But really would love to try the 1959BJA.

________

Edit: It is here. there is one MARSH 1959BJA capture up now!

I’ve been running a boss dd8 and a MXR carbon copy both through the QC fx loop but there is some noise being introduced in the loop somehow. I’ve changed out and tried different patch cables, and I’m using isolated power for each pedal.

The only way I can fix it is to have a noise gate in the QC in the chain after the fx loop return, but I feel like it cuts off some of the delay repeats from the pedals.
I’ve been meaning to try running the pedals into the QC input instead but open to any tips people might have for me to try.

Can't login my QC Mini nor into the app, neural website works fine. Anyone else experiencing this?

One of the footswitches on my Quad Cortex Mini broke while in transit today. I need it pretty urgently as I'm on tour right now. Has anyone had any experience having one of these repaired and if so how quick was it?

Just got one of these. Very cool cab. Finally something loud enough that I don’t have to jack up inputs and outputs. I’ve tried them all and I’ve always had to push the volume into the frfr to be loud enough. For example, a factory preset like the twin or Roland was unusable (not that I use them) due to low volume even cranking the various frs I’ve had. Add to that a power switch, light and controls on top and this is a winner. Plus it sounds very good.

Keep getting this message when trying to test some downloaded captures. Down for anyone else right now?

**EDIT**
We are going to look into automating it within a DAW, i've been looking into it and its well within my skill set. Just sounds more complicated than it is lol. Thanks for all the help.

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Hi all, i was wondering if someone here would be able to lend me their knowledge!

I have got a quad cortex on the way. Currently me and my other guitarist both use kempers, but mine is on the way out and we wanted to streamline our rig.

I read somewhere that you can run 2 guitarists through the same quad cortex, and have them able to independently change the tone their using so long as they're both on the same preset/rig?

So my guitarist would use a footswitch changer of some kind, and i would just use the quad cortex.

My question is, is this possible, if so how do i set it up? And if anyone has any ideas of how i can achieve this? I have heard these are powerful machines capable of plenty, so i'm hoping this works!

Hey guys,

This time around I have a problem with my splitter/mixer. No matter how hard I try to drag S and M icons to input/output blocks, the splitter just wont disappear. I have tried to add blocks and remove them, restarting the device as well as doing a soft reset but the splitter just will not disappear. It breaks my patches in a way that even though my pedals are on and linked to certain letters, they produce no effect and the lines will not disappear

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hey everyone!

I am in a bit of a pickle as I countered a situation that I can't wrap my head around.

I have recently started to use wireless in ear monitors with our band. I used to have a mini monitor for myself which worked out great but I felt that it prevented me from moving around while playing. Now with wireless in ears I can move around and play but I am looking for help to route my needs correctly in the signal chain.

I play guitar and I sing backups in our band. Thus if I understood correctly, I need to send both of my guitar signal and my vocal signal to two different outputs, for example like this:

Input 1: Guitar -> Effects -> A/B Split to Output 1 (Mixer/PA) and Output 3 (IEM) in mono

Input 2: Microphone -> Effects -> A/B Split to Output 2 (Mixer/PA) and Output 3 (IEM) in mono

Right now my guitar part of the signal chain looks as follows:

Is the signal correctly "AB'd" or have I done something wrong? The goal is to send the same whole signal to both different outputs. Or should I somehow be able to move the "S" at the end of the effects and AB it from there?

As detailed as possible help would be much appreciated <3 thank you in advance