Anyone transitioned from Fractal to QC, and why?

I have a Fractal FM9, which is a fearsome bit of kit to be sure, but recently tried out a few Neural DSP plugins (Soldano, Plini, Morgan, Tone King) and have to say that I found it quicker and easier to get usable tones from them.

I also found that, and I know this stuff is subjective, that I preferred the character of breakup on the plugins to that on the Fractal. In particular, I felt (at least through my Headrush 108s) that the fizz/crackle that occurs as a sustained chord rings out seemed more natural on the plugins.

Not Fractal bashing here at all. Like I say, all this stuff is subjective.

I guess that, fundamentally, while the Fractal has more amps and effects, on sample of four plugins, there seems to be something in the character of the Neural DSP modelling that I really like.

Has anyone switched from a Fractal modeller to the QC and why? Any regrets down the line?

Cheers.

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Me!

Iā€™ve posted a few times before on this topic. But I wanted to check out the big 3 modelers (Neural, Fractal, Line 6). And have one from each. QC is my favorite by far.

I have an FM9 and a QC and actually listed the FM9 on reverb for sale yesterday.

I prefer the ease of use for the QC. The workflow makes the most sense to me. Changes can be easily made on the unit itself because it mirrors Cortex Control whereas the Fractal editor is great but if you donā€™t have your laptop out I feel like a bull in a china shop trying to make edits on the unit.

I also feel itā€™s quicker to arrive at great tones on the QC. I prefer the ā€œfeelā€ of the QC. Iā€™ve also really been blown away by the capture tech. Iā€™ve got 4 captures of my Revv G50 with the two notes cab baked in and I think Iā€™ll be staying there. I think thatā€™s a big reason for using the QC. Itā€™s more limited but that also prevents option paralysis. And if you love the plugins itā€™s a pretty seamless transition to the QC if youā€™re using one of the compatible plugins.

Just be prepared for slower updates and less frequent updates compared to fractal but the QC in its current state works great for what I need.

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I have Helix, Quad Cortex and FM9. I like them all for different reasons. Helix is incredibly flexible and easy to use. I also have two Variax guitars and two Powercabs, so the integration with Helix for quick open tunings in gigs is fantastic.

I use Quad Cortex for my No Worries acoustic gigs for mandolin, acoustic guitar and electric guitar (Tele or ES-335). I love the footprint, overall design and ease of use. Itā€™s especially easy to change things during the gig. I donā€™t use captures, the amp models are fine to me and I prefer having the control. My biggest issue is with limited footswitch and MIDI control.

FM9 has fantastic amp tones and effects. What I like most is foot controller layouts, tap and tap & hold on every switch, and the deep editing capability on everything. The UI is a bit clunky, but itā€™s quite efficient if you use it enough.

I have directly compared Quad Cortex and FM9 with an A/B switch using similar patches. Theyā€™re pretty similar, more similar than different. The FM9 amp models are a little ā€œdirtierā€, with intermodulation distortion and fizz, just like tube amps. The amp models are more realistic and more dynamic. Quad Cortex in comparison seems smoother and less aggressive. I like them both.

Bottom line, FM9 can do almost anything, You can adjust the power tube bias, transformer matching and speaker impedance load simulation to reduce the intermodulation distortion and fizz if you want a smoother sound. The Amp block has deep editing capability to essentially allow you to design your own amp. The effects are great, especially the Rotary and reverbs. You can make an FM9 sound closer to a Quad Cortex, but you canā€™t make Quad Cortex do what FM9 amp models do, machine learning canā€™t capture the amp dynamics the way FM9 does. That may or may not be a problem depending on your needs and preferences. Sometimes I prefer the smoother Quad Cortex amp tones.

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Thanks guys. I think I know exactly what youā€™re saying. If the plugins are similar in character to the QC, then ā€˜smootherā€™ is definitely a good descriptor of how they compare to the FM9. Like a tube amp but with some of the non-idealities polished out.

Iā€™ve spent a bit of time this afternoon trying to match the FM9 to the plugins (using same IRs) and I can get really close. I guess the question becomes whether I want pure realism. I can see how the QC might flatter my limitted playing ability a bit more.

I should add, owning both would be an ideal but I need to choose one or the other :slight_smile:

Tube amps had a lot of design compromises and quirks. But that has resulted in their unique character that we love. The claim is all these tube artifacts contribute to tone that cuts through the mix where a smoother tone might get lost. On the other hand, if we could have gotten those smoother tones out of tube amps, we might be having a different discussion today about what is good tube tone.

The modelers have the capability of doing things tube amps couldnā€™t practically do. So they can give us more flexibility. I suspect modelers will eventually move beyond just trying to capture what tube amps do or used to do, and start developing new tones.

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Iā€™ve used Fractal for many years but now I use the QC. The Fractal gear is really awesome and the effects and options are over the top. For me it just got to where I had to tweak so much and still couldnt get the sound I was looking for. I tried QC early on and it wasnt there yet so I kept using Fractal but after a couple of years and firmwares later the QC was able to do and sound like I wanted and I didnā€™t have to do much tweaking at all. Iā€™m finally pretty satisfied with my setup. There are a couple of things I miss that the Fractal is capable of that the QC isnā€™t able to do but itā€™s something I can work around and its stuff I rarely use so I can deal with it.

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+1ā€¦iā€™m not the only one then!
In my case i have headrush Flex prime, Always considered HR models top notchā€¦and i have noticed better behaviour on Flex models in pick Dynamic.
The mid highs and highs too are more organic with Flex, real amp related; the QC move t
your ears in fatigue zoneā€¦and the highs Dynamic Is more ā€œplasticā€, expecially cleaning distorted sounds with pick.
QC sounds good, but i have noticed this as youā€¦thanksā€¦iā€™m of this earth then ahah.

I think that NN are able to capture the Dynamic of amps, but at the actual state, today, It isnā€™ t the case. They Need more density/resolution in QC models

I had a headrush prime boss gt 1000 +gx100ā€¦ the fractal on loan for a while headrush prime is rubbish amps are terrible cloning my nd plugins helped it but still the verbs were also terrible along with the drivesā€¦ The gx100 was betterā€¦ Gt1000 didnā€™t like much about how it sounded and 6 months with the fractal It was OK still didnā€™t blow my mind horrible to use, and had a tone that washed over every presetā€¦ I can tell anytime I hear one being used itā€™s a fractal

Eventually since my plugins sounded better than any of them, it made sense to get the QC and weā€™ll itā€™s bye bye to the restā€¦ But thatā€™s just my opinion and itā€™s not necessarily rightšŸ˜ itā€™s just an opinion and what I percieved

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I did, because I play bass and need a good transposer. The Fractal pitch shifting is not great, especially for bass or clean guitar. On my QC, thereā€™s basically no latency and no artifacts.

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the level of the user is if he is capable of a good sound on headrush in digital domain =)

What a stupid thing to say :grin:

play a game with me, set an amp at you taste common to the two units, then we post a sound, you with qc and me with flex =)

Itā€™s wild how bad the Headrush models sound. I hated Eleven rack and plugin models when they were a current thing. Headrush was just cheap and bought the outdated software to use for their modeler. A headrush rep contacted me about doing a sponsorship deal when they first started and I couldnā€™t bring myself to use the thing

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I left school a long time agoā€¦ And gone past having to prove myselfā€¦
I know what I hear and what I heardā€¦ I only gave my opinion and you clearly got defensive about the prime comment which was nothing to do with you was to the original postā€¦ Between fractal and QC and the prime gx and gt was just a background in were I came fromā€¦ In the latest versions of these things that Iā€™ve used since boss me5

I did an experiment in my DAW and I made the best sounding preset I could with my AXE-FXIII and I did the same on my QC. I recorded both and I picked the QC over the Fractal. So, I did more presets with different amps and even had my son listen because heā€™s a player and I didnā€™t tell him which was which and he picked the QC as his favorite on every recording I did. I did the same. So with much less tweaking I get great results.

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I got an FM3 in May this year, and just got a QC last week. Iā€™ve had 2 Kempers previously also. I wonā€™t say the Kemper or FM3 are bad units at all (ymmv, remember), but all i ever did with either one was endless (and I do mean endless) amounts tweaking. UGH.

The FM3 has great effects and I liked those far better than the amp sims. Their dyna cabs sounded way too fizzy and bright to my ears. I wound up using a couple of IRs from Ownhammer instead. I also didnā€™t hear much difference between a Dual Rec vs a 5150 vs a whatever else either. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I donā€™t think so. I literally spent all summer tweaking just about every setting possible and it was always ā€œwhat if I do this change, will it sound more realisticā€ only to have lost 3 hours that night but achieving nothing.

And if you notice, the big pro users (Vai, Petrucci, etc) are basically using their Axe FX3s for the effects part only most (if not all) of the time. I also noticed that some of the You Tubers (Fluff, Ola, etc) all skipped the deep dive parts of the amp settings when demoing any of the Fractal stuff and only went with the basic ones.

By comparison, within just a couple of hrs of testing the QC, I felt it is far easier, smoother, and better sounding than either of the other 2 units. I especially think it gets the top end of distorted captures far better than the Kemper ever did.

The next day I already started capturing my amps, and the process was so simple and painless it actually made me want to experiment with capturing amps at various settings. Within 2 days, I had captures of 3 separate amps. Best part is that they are based off of my own amps and not someone elseā€™s idea of what the amp should sound like.

Just my 2 cents, but the QC is the winner for me and I look forward to more updates and improvements.

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I moved to QC from Fractal AX8.
AX8 was (is) an amazing piece of gear. I pulled great sounds out of it. Still have it and itā€™s not for sale. It was a pain to program and NO WAY could you do things quickly, never mind on the fly, unless you wanted to tweak the ampā€™s knobs (theyā€™re physical).
On QC you donā€™t even need to open the editor. The screen, the ease, the speed, PERFECT. Itā€™s all right there. The tones are there too. Great, I think more organic too.
2 MAJOR differences that I miss from my AX8 are the quantity and (mostly) the quality of the effects and the great switching system, especially the dual function knobs

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Ta, for all the useful posts. Definitely a bit of a trend in the answers. Maybe the ā€˜averagedā€™ response is that the QC has similar amp tones but fewer and, possibly, lower quality effects. However, itā€™s useability means people are actually playing guitar rather than tweaking amp models.

I spent a bit more time tweaking yesterday evening and followed the method below. Created eight tones I liked from four trial Neural plugins (two each from Morgan, Tone King, Plini, Soldano). Took no more than 2 minutes to dial in each of these presets. I used a set of my favourite IRs (YA ones) and no effects at all. Just the amp and IR. I liked all eight of them.

I then took two hours to recreate them on the Fractal again using no effects and the same IRs.

Hereā€™s the interesting bit (for me at least). The Fractal ones were all very similar and, maybe, some were a bit more convincing in the end but, my word, what a lot of work to get there. Starting with a fresh, basic amp model (with itā€™s stock settings and no EQ) you seem to need to do a lot of work to get to the point where you want to actually start playing.

Playing devilā€™s advocate, maybe once youā€™ve put the hours in to build your library of needed presets, this problem goes away but I also found that the models in the plugins reacted more predictably to changes in EQ and gain (how I would expect a real amp to respond) while the Fractal ones would need a bit of ā€˜deep tweakingā€™ to get them to sound great again after (for example) a significant change in input gain.

Iā€™m probably at the point where I need to buy a QC (from a place that offers a decent returns policy) and see how I actually get on with it in the real worldā€¦

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Great summary.

Hereā€™s one more thing that irks me about fractal. They believe that with new updates ALL amp tones are fair game to change. And They do update their amp modeling fairly regularly and everytime I have to start from scratch. Itā€™s great they are always looking to improve but i find it annoying. Sure you can stay at the old firmware but then you donā€™t get the new stuff.

Neural seems to care about NOT making you restart from scratch. Even when they update some blocks they give you the option of keeping the legacy blocks like the 808. Or tell you where the old model went (like when they added the 64 deluxe and renamed the 65 reissue).

And with captures once you make yours itā€™s not changing. And I also donā€™t see the tones of the plugins changing either. So I feel better about investing time into the QC because with fractal I know that time spent could be lost on the next update.

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I changed from FM3 to quad as i found the sound just inspired me more. The Fractal is great and i miss the kettle lead, but it just didnā€™t have the same playability to my ears (subjective I know)

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