Frostbite
Periphery Shill
Yeah they hit what they needed to hit out of the gate. After launch support will make or break this unit. It's why the helix has stayed competitive
Neural DSP teasing something new (Quad Cortex)
- Thread starter HeHasTheJazzHands
- Start date
Vince
Contributor
FM3. Go with the known commodity. I have one and it's fantastic.
I'd you have to pick one get the Fractal. I'm extremely happy with mine and I highly doubt the QC will match it for options and quality for a while. The 3 buttons may seem restrictive, but you can set them up to do a lot of things, including held presses. So really you get a lot of options if you are smart with your configuration.
The only time I think the QC would be better for you from the onset is if you use very fx heavy presets.
I hope I'm wrong though, I hope the QC is awesome. But my confidence is waning.
Neural would be wise to heed a lesson from this thread. It's the thread for their product, and it's evolved into a dozen recommendations for their competitor instead because we:
1.) Don't have physical product to discuss, and all the conversations you can have about marketing and a spec sheet have run their course
2.) I don't care what anybody else says in here, it sounds like shit. There are innumerable clips of modelers from other companies out in the wild and first hand experience to go from, these videos are literally all we have to go off of right now and they sound like ass, address this.
I'm not saying the QC is sunk but I have a hard time believing they don't lose steam and have even lost people on the preorder list to these awful priories. I know I personally got on the FM3 list instead of this one because I had more confidence in the Fractal just because I saw them actually shipping and sounding good. This is the time QC orders should be going up, not driving people to their competitor.
1.) Don't have physical product to discuss, and all the conversations you can have about marketing and a spec sheet have run their course
2.) I don't care what anybody else says in here, it sounds like shit. There are innumerable clips of modelers from other companies out in the wild and first hand experience to go from, these videos are literally all we have to go off of right now and they sound like ass, address this.
I'm not saying the QC is sunk but I have a hard time believing they don't lose steam and have even lost people on the preorder list to these awful priories. I know I personally got on the FM3 list instead of this one because I had more confidence in the Fractal just because I saw them actually shipping and sounding good. This is the time QC orders should be going up, not driving people to their competitor.
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Let's remember some of the ones that are listed as "might not make it" may still be available on release.
To me there is absolutely nothing critical missing. It has way more amp sims than anyone would reasonably need and enough effects to cover all but the most exotic ones.
The device is not even released on anything but paper and you are already doom and gloom? They have already said that there will be YouTuber videos as well as product videos explaining the unit coming in the upcoming weeks as the first ones get sent out. While their current product videos have failed to impress, I hope at least 3rd party ones will show how it is in practice.
Meanwhile the Fractal FM3 is close to unobtainium 1.5 years after it was first revealed and 8 months after it started shipping. It seems to have a bunch of issues as well as not getting any better development support than the AX8 did, trailing noticeably behind the improvements the flagship Axe-Fx 3 gets even in terms of just bugfixes. IMO Fractal made some bad blunders with the design of the FM3 with the lack of headphone out on first iteration and having only 3 footswitches when there is clearly room for 5-6, which would let you avoid buying the very overpriced FC footcontroller for best integration.
My expectation is that the Quad Cortex is on par with the other units on the market soundwise and is just more fun to use due to the touchscreen and knob/switch controls. I'm not on the preorder list and I think I will wait until next year to see any initial quirks addressed with firmware updates. Hopefully by that time the BluGuitar Amp X is also out so I can choose between the two.
I'm not "gloom and doom", it'll probably get better after release but they're not a cheap unit, so losing $1500 here and there because you took too long to get to market, or worried people on what they were gonna get when it finally did ship, is not an insignificant number. I'll bet you right now they've lost at least $50,000 to $100,000 just from bad marketing videos in this thread alone.
Also, the FM3 is "unobtainium" for exactly the reason you knocked them, because they were as quick as possible to get a version to market even if it was likely to change by second wave. Nobody got off their FM3 preorder because the first one didn't have a headphone jack, or because updates were limited (it's still very early in the revision cycle).
Fractal was very good with discounting depending on circumstances, and they were good with making changes; like the addition of the headphone jack which shows listening to customers, which is feedback you don't get if the product isn't out in the market. Also, of course the Axe3 is going to get firmware updates pushed to it more often considering it's the flagship model and also more substantial hardware, it's secondary to rejigger a software update to work with the lighter device and also a lower priority. How many firmware updates have QC users gotten? None cause nobody has any.
I said it already, Neural should've pushed a handful of early releases to people on their list, even at a substantial discount knowing it was beta stage. The whole reason why FM3 is backed up right now regardless of things like the headphone jack on first release is because having even some of them in the wild showed the potential, so the outside observation was "this is great, would be better if...".
Can't say that with the QC. The interface looks great, the I/O looks great but the clips are ass. I can't reach through the screen and turn the presence knob down for them so until I see otherwise these sound like shit and other companies will keep eating their lunch regardless of how many dudes they have like you to make excuses for them.
nickgray
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To be fair, modelers are notorious for having shitty presets. Helix ones are borderline unusable for example, and its stock IRs suck pretty hard. Considering that Neural did a really good job with their VSTs, I think it's unlikely that the modeling part will be bad.
Imo, a far bigger concern are the usual teething problems with these sorts of products - it's their first modeler and it's a pretty complex piece of gear. Anything can go wrong. Hopefully everything will turn out fine, of course, but honestly, I'm just flabbergasted by people who are hyped as hell to pre-order it. Though I guess it's just a budget thing at the end of the day. Hell, people pre-order video games for $60, and end up being paid (not in the correct way) beta testers.
They haven't lost anything. Even those on the preorder lists have not even paid the full price for their units! I haven't seen people getting off the preorder lists either. You also cannot even buy the unit anywhere but US where you can join the Sweetwater preorder if you did not join the preorders earlier this year. You are asking for content for a product that is not finished and not released. It remains to be seen if NeuralDSP manages to ship the intended preorder quantities in an orderly fashion and how they fare getting the units after that to retailers.
They are just now ramping up to getting video content out there close to the preorders shipping. I can understand them not wanting to send an unfinished unit out there and then get flack for issues with that. IMO they should not even have been at NAMM early this year because the unit was so clearly incomplete and buggy.
Fractal don't really need to do much marketing for the FM3 because the tone you will be getting is pretty much known. They can just say "it sounds exactly like the Axe-Fx 3". Their issue is actually delivering the product more than anything and it seems they just don't manage to do better despite having this exact issue for years now whether it was Axe-Fx 2, AX8, Axe-Fx 3 or the FM3. I guess being "so desirable that you need to get on a waiting list" is one business strategy.
Agreed, although I'd add the caveat that one of the demos that scared me the most is this most recent one with Kiko and a dude dialing it in by hand at a recording desk. A suhccessful musician and one of the engineers sitting in a million dollar studio tweaking it and still sounding like hot garbage is not confidence building.
I recently moved on from my Bias Head, because I wanted a floorboard with effects built in to downsize. While I wait for a nicer pedal to materialize, I bought a Nux MG300 specifically BECAUSE there were clips out there that didn't sound like crap. One smart thing was getting Choptones to do early demos, and they also had them do a few presets on the US release that even include third-party IRs instead of the stockers. That's how you build confidence, forget the price point.
Fair points.
I say "lost" because, if it's like Fractal's waitlist system right now, they send you an invite and you have the option to ignore it. If I'm on the waitlist and end up getting something else that I'm satisfied with, you lost me. Look at this thread alone, at least a couple people in the last couple pages said they're on waitlist and considering forgetting it because they're inclined to buy something else because of the trash marketing videos.
I'm not so much saying release a bugged alpha/beta. They pushed back their first wave what, a month or a little more? I don't know exactly what the issue was with that, they said shipping and production delays because of COVID but I doubt they didn't 50 or less that they could've pushed at the first deadline. Pushing it back, then getting well produced BAD sounding demos and more incremental feature updates in between is, like, the LEAST confidence building thing to do while people are waiting.
Deadpool_25
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The FM3 is hard to get because people buy them. People buy them because they’re awesome.
The QC has some very cool stuff in terms of hardware and UI. That stuff seems better than the current units on the market including Fractal and even Line6, but that’ll be meaningless unless they get the sounds right.
Who’s the target audience for the QC? Recording folks? Live gig folks? Both? I’m still wondering if you can disable or minimize an amp’s power section. I’m also wondering if it’ll sound and feel as good as the FM3. I’m skeptical they can pull that off (it’s a tall order) but I’m reserving judgement for now.
The QC has some very cool stuff in terms of hardware and UI. That stuff seems better than the current units on the market including Fractal and even Line6, but that’ll be meaningless unless they get the sounds right.
Who’s the target audience for the QC? Recording folks? Live gig folks? Both? I’m still wondering if you can disable or minimize an amp’s power section. I’m also wondering if it’ll sound and feel as good as the FM3. I’m skeptical they can pull that off (it’s a tall order) but I’m reserving judgement for now.
I would say exactly the same folks looking to choose between a FM3, Helix Floor or Kemper Stage. The QC trumps them all in several categories:
- More foot switches than FM3.
- Smaller than Helix Floor/LT or Kemper Stage.
- More immediate knob control than any of the others.
- In theory more powerful than any of the others.
Fractal has the well liked Axe-Fx amp modeling and fx.
I agree that if the sounds and feel are not there then it's not going to work out. I have been testing the NeuralDSP plugins in the past few days and don't like the Cali or Omega. I could get like one sound I truly loved from each of them. The Cory Wong plugin was more versatile and I loved everything I got from the Plini. But soundwise they feel like polished guitar tones you can throw in any track but I am not so sure if they are realistic amp simulations. To me they don't sound and feel as "organic" as Helix Native or ML Sound Labs ML5 even when used with the same IRs. It's more like I am playing some sort of filtered sound.
So how accurate the amp models are remains to be seen.
On the flipside today I hooked up my BluGuitar Amp 1 ME direct from the speaker out to my Focusrite audio interface by using its -10 dB pad as Thomas Blug said that is ok to do. Through my favorite IRs I got some really good tones out of that and it was so nice to just turn a few knobs to adjust them instead of using the keyboard and mouse. Made me actually look forward to the BluGuitar Amp X again.
Bear in mind the FM3 costs 1266eu and the Quad Cortex costs 1599.
The FM3 has over 250 amp sims, the QC has less than 100.
The FM3 (pretty screen and other trinkets aside) currently offers better value to me.
I own one and am very happy with the tones and the current videos for the QC are sub par.
I'm in tier 1 and currently a nice new ESP E2 is looking like a pretty tempting alternative.
They need to get good video demos out soon.
The FM3 has over 250 amp sims, the QC has less than 100.
The FM3 (pretty screen and other trinkets aside) currently offers better value to me.
I own one and am very happy with the tones and the current videos for the QC are sub par.
I'm in tier 1 and currently a nice new ESP E2 is looking like a pretty tempting alternative.
They need to get good video demos out soon.
HeHasTheJazzHands
Well-Known Member
Man I'm glad I'm not the only one that hated that Kiko demo. Made a preset straight from scratch and in my ears it didn't sound much better than a stock Helix patch. Dude was ranting and raving about it (even in the comments section of the video) and to me it sounded like a bad Kemper profile.
MASS DEFECT
SS.ORG Infiltrator
Remember when they were teasing the AX8 and they had videos of Pete Thorn, Larry Mitchell, Chris Broderick, Mark Day, etc doing gigs, in-room demos, and live tones with them and it sounded awesome from the get-go?
That's the kind of marketing that the Quad Cortex should have.
That's the kind of marketing that the Quad Cortex should have.
Probably gonna get flamed, but uh stock fractal presets are actually good. They took the time to make sure of it. And if you want to twist knobs, fractal products also have those 
. Every time someone says "yeah the III is cool but I need knobs!" I mention the perform page.
No company is going to be perfect, but when you're the newest and you've gotten to see how others do it (and their results), I think the expectation is to come out swinging. This thread makes me think that didn't happen.
. Every time someone says "yeah the III is cool but I need knobs!" I mention the perform page.No company is going to be perfect, but when you're the newest and you've gotten to see how others do it (and their results), I think the expectation is to come out swinging. This thread makes me think that didn't happen.
I'd argue that Fractal has more than a decade of development behind them that extends to every product they make whereas NeuralDSP is starting that journey on the hardware end. Even Helix does not have all the features Fractal has. Purely based on the number of features Fractal is king.
But at the same time absolutely nobody needs 200+ amp models. Or even 100. There's so much overlap between them. You could consolidate the Fractal modeling down to the FAS amp sims without losing a single tone - just requiring more EQ adjustments from the end user. Could do the same for Helix and QC too.
IMO QC more than makes up its higher price with its better usability based on everything I have seen of its feature set and UI.
People ask for more amps of every modeller. The number they ship with is less relevant than how often than they update the list and listen to their customers about what to add. Firmware friday is a thing for some of us .
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Deadpool_25
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Yeah the over 200 amps of the Fractal is cool but more than anyone really needs. With that said, there are amps and FX I still want to see added to the Fractal library (Dumble SSS; Klon or even Klone—still a glaring omission).
I’m sure the QC will have effects added after release but the delay and reverb sections caught my eye. Those are pretty damn sparse for a unit at this level.
I’m sure the QC will have effects added after release but the delay and reverb sections caught my eye. Those are pretty damn sparse for a unit at this level.
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