Agree with this.

The Kemper refine stage is meant to better measure attack transients from the guitar not from the profiled amp. Many including me find refine doesn't always make the end results better. Sometimes, refine makes the profile worse.

Perhaps over time the QC will have some refinement parameters. Needs some time to mature but at the same time, it really doesn't sound like it is was quite ready for release. Video game companies do this all the time, but run the risk of negative reviews of an unfinished product.

Still throughout all of this it's pretty amazing what the Kemper has done for a decade. That Christoph Kemper is a proper genius.

Here’s my gut feeling on a/b tests.

First off, a Kemper can sound glorious with the right profile, or lame. What makes a profile great? Not sure, I never made one, but I know some sound like they have low-mid garbage going on, but many others are beautiful.

The Quad Cortex doesn’t inherently sound “better” than a Kemper, but perhaps it’s more forgiving on a capture. I think if you’re a person like me who just uses 3rd party profiles, you’ll not care much. If you’re a person who takes the time to do the profile right, you probably also don’t care.

Talking about all the upper tier modelers/profilers is like talking about high end anything. Is a high end Les Paul better than a high end Stratocaster? People will have opinions, but it’s more about preferences than quality. Kemper has a one-amp-at-a-time architecture, but good effects and a lot to tweak to get it right. Quad Cortex seems to have very little to tweak but 4 lanes of processing. Of course, and AxeFX 3 gives you the tweaking and the lanes for a bit more money, and a ton of great effects.

What is best for you? Depends on who you are. I was impressed with the QC, but I had reservations about the effects offerings and lack of SPDIF out. When my budget went up, I started thinking about the AxeFX 3, and when my brother called me to do some ambient drone stuff for a project he’s working on, I thought, “f it.” I jumped ship on the QC because who knows when it will finally ship (I was told March 4) and I’m sure I’ll be a bit happier with the AxeFX 3. Not happier in terms of tone, I think I could be happy with any of them, but happier in functionality and options.

NDSP probably feels that their machine learning tech is better for most users than deep editing. They’re probably right about that since most users won’t ever profile/capture many (any?) amps or other gear. Nor, will they be willing or able to understand how those deep editing parameters work. Most users are happy scouring the stuff created by others to find what works for them. Only gear nerds like me will make tons of Kemper profiles and QC captures alike.

Being able to swap the cab section of a profile offers flexibility that I think even users who aren't into deep editing can appreciate. It's one advantage of profiles vs. captures that I think the QC could benefit from.

Yes, there's been an immense focus on captures, when in reality people will settle into the few that they make themselves and then begin to subscribe to what others provide. The point of the box is not to clone your hardware just for the sake of having a digital copy, it's to allow you to make music. As someone pointed out above, we will all customize our sounds -- even the captures we make ourselves -- for each individual track on each individual project, and the question is: which device gets you to your destination? Despite Kemper owners' best efforts to preserve the integrity of their purchases and removing the threat created by the QC, feedback and countless demonstrations have proven that the QC provides the necessary tools to make music as you hear it, without the artificialities which are prevalent in the older boxes. And the immovable glacier that is the Kemper's decade-old capturing scheme doesn't appear to be an issue with the QWC as Neural is aggressively updating and planning more for their box. As mentioned above, they're continuing to tread into better tones with each new release (Cory Wong was an upgrade from previous offerings, and the newer Soldano is yet another leapfrog in terms of sound quality).

Doesn't Neural offer a return? What's to prevent someone from trying one, with their hardware, in their studio? This incessant, one-sided bantering is entirely pointless. Yes, the Kemper/Axe can be made to sound terrible, or great, and that seems to be the case with the QC, and, guess what... also real amps/cabs/mics/rooms/engineers/guitarists/etc. It's ignorant to put so much equity behind the examples of other people.

That's a lot of typing for someone impartial

As for trying and returning, I did read that returns need to go back to Finland. Anyone know more on this?

I just finished capturing my Vox AC30H2L, Victoria Regal 2, and Fender 1966 Pro Reverb. All three were a one-step process, and came out sounding and playing indistinguishable from the amps themselves. No refining, no eq-ing, no nothing. I certainly made my share of KPA profiles of these same amps (which are on the KPA rig exchange under username Feck), and more than half the time I had to refine them to get them closer. It’s nice to not have to do that anymore.

Wow, I see the torches and pitchforks are out on TGP because you've decided to sell it.
Just out of interest did Neural offer to fix or pay for those blown mixer channels?

Glad to hear it.

There’s a 30 day return policy on the tier one and two pre-orders. They do need to go back to Finland.


I can take it. No worries

NDSP hasn’t made any other offers to me outside of the already excellent service I’ve received.

I'm guessing that QCs purchased from Sweetwater (for instance) could be returned directly to Sweetwater. I don't know that they've begun shipping though.

That's an uncomfortable position to be in, and sorry for the issue to begin with. Have you considered requesting that they take additional steps (assuming their faulty product is the sole cause of the failure)? I wouldn't want to fuel nor dissuade either decision, since you've undoubtedly already thought about it, but I'm curious if it's going to be left this way.

Sweetwater has 45 day return policy. I would assume NDSP wants the damaged unit back before making any promises. I'm ok with that. It'll ship back to Finland tomorrow.

I've been in the gear game long enough to know sh1t happens. I don't want to be that a-hole guy. Heck, I didn't want this problem in the first place. I'd rather make friends out of all this than enemies.

Yeah, I have only 187 amps at the moment. I fully agree i need at least a few more. Thats good advice. Will go and talk investment withe the BOSS right now.

I don't think it would make you an a-hole guy, but I greatly respect your position and attitude! Cheers!

This video was made yesterday.

hmmm.

aka the bare minimum required by law.

btw I actually think it a sad sign of the times that you had to make a vid to justify selling it.
But thanks for your honesty - it puts you morally above some youtubers.

just looked at The Bitch Page man alive ....

So I've had mine for a few weeks now, thought I'd chime in. Most if not all of the reviews I've seen so far have been from people that already have an AxeFX or Kemper and not really noticing a jump.

From someone who has never owned either and went from a Helix to Quad Cortex - the jump has been amazing in sound quality. Two examples. First, palm muting with distorted amp is not a sludgy mess. Low soft palm mutes building up to harder ones allows you to play off the amp / distortion.

Second, when putting a distortion pedal in front of an amp, I can hear both distortion modes distinctly, rather than one distorted sound - if that makes sense. The Mesa Raw has this crackle and growl and the rat distortion is more high crisp, tweaking gain and distortion on both of them allow tuning of the sound, which I've never been able to do with sims or helix.

Finally, the thing that really knocks this out of the park is the user interface with it. I never read the manual and I was building my own presets in no time, it just makes it more about playing guitar and getting a good sound than trying to tweak / engineer / hack a good sound.

I absolutely love it. I wish it was made 20 years ago.

And yet I see Jonathan Cordy has essentially gone back to the Helix now that the hype bubble has popped. Guys on Gearpage returning their QC going back to Kemper.

I'm sure it sounds good... but so do all the others.

Haha. In actuality, almost no one is doing that. And who is Jonathan Cordy? You're having to stretch pretty far to find these faux negatives which supposedly carry weight.

(I had to look him up but noticed that he just posted that he loves the QC but prefers the tactile scribble strips of the Helix; the aesthetics. He was quite complimentary of the QC)

During the time that this thread went dormant, many more units were delivered and the net has come alive with great reviews, and it doesn't take deep searching for obscure reviewers few have heard of to find them. There's still a thin stream of negative comments but they're generally inline with the number of people who own other devices and resent these types of favorable videos and written comments and/or have a different idea of what guitar tone should sound like. Most negatives are related to the youth of this device. People admitting that it could stand some further development and additional features (e.g. more effects).

Indeed it does.

Kemper, Fractal, Helix, QC...no difference. All sound great, all capable.

The reality is the QC has not been a game changer.
Nobodies game changed. All those influencers who got paid to fluff it up have gone back to what they played before. Haven't seen squat on the QC from Pete Thorn, Rabea, etc. since they got paid. It's an over-hyped me too device, with a touch screen.

For me it has been a game changer - note I didn't come from Axe or Kemper. Disagree on sound with Helix - QC was definitely a step up, particularly on the distortion sound and being cab IRs from the get go.

Rabea is sharing presets on the QC cloud service.

I wouldn't discount the power of a good UI - your mindset becomes more about the sound when the UI gets out of the way, rather than fighting menus, forgetting which knob does what.

Anyway, from someone who used sims all the way back with Amplitube 1, I'm very happy with it.

And how exactly did your game change? Were you not able to get a decent sound out of the Helix particularly with the latest update concerning oversampling?

Already said it in the first post, bro.

Let me know when a thread opens up where we can be positive about the QC.

We are getting close. Shills have been paid, honeymoon phase just about over, fanboys moving on to next object of affection and devotion.

Does that degree of fragility make it tough owning other things, too? I've rarely seen a more defensive and brittle self esteem amongst these guitar threads; and we're one helluva twitchy bunch!

I don't think you realized it, but you just answered his question as though he'd asked "let me know when a thread opens up where we can be *negative* about the QC," yet flipped it and took the opportunity to trash the QC again anyway with some nonsense.

A bit of advice: move on. At this point you're only coming off as a child throwing a tantrum because the neighbor kid just got a shinier toy.

what?

Oh stop projecting and trying to bully other people out of posting.

You don’t own one right? Why does this matter to you so much? You’re very touchy of any criticisms of the NDSP and desperate for it to be more than any product possibly could ever hope to be. It is what it is, not the second coming, don’t treat it like a religion.

There have been quite a few positive posts in this thread about the NDSP, as well as a number of criticisms. Same as everywhere else including NDSP’s own forums. That’s the nature of the beast, you don’t get consensus on the internet except with repression. If you read all the recent reviews out there then there’s a good mix, good times for guitarists, yet another sim, not many extremes one way or the other…

…except here. :/

I find it quite interesting that you've chosen to highlight my post (the one fighting for pure and balanced observation over thinly-veiled, thinly-skinned bias and misinformation) instead of going after the other guy's ridiculous statements with: "Oh stop projecting and trying to bully other people out of buying." I've already stated that I have no dog in the fight, except for one very important component: pushing the state of the art of guitar simulations and not squashing the newcomers like a Luddite. And, yes, it appears one-sided because those pushing the product are doing so with honest, hands-on feedback. The other side is merely trying to preserve their current investments. When the former posts I sit out because there's nothing to add. When the latter posts it's important to call them on their bullsh!t, and there has been quite a pile. If you've been following feedback, as you claim, then certainly you can spot this BS.

I wonder about your intentions and choice to defend the person trashing this product with obvious, hand-picked, self-serving banter fed by nothing beyond an damaged ego. Do you own a Kemper/Axe/Helix? Do you have something against the QC and the general consensus of user feedback, which, taken as a whole, has been quite great?