Hello everyone,
in september i will buy the quad cortex and i have a question.
In my current pedalboard I have a keeley compressor, I would like to understand one thing:
if i proceed with capturing my pedal with a low compression level, once i capture the sound, when i get the capture bloc on the quad cortex can i increase the compression level by raising the gain level present inside the capture block ?
I hope I have been clear and thank you.
Capture doesn’t work like that.
Compression as an effect sits somewhere between gain/drive pedals and, arguably, time-based effects (because gain reduction is based on attack and decay timing). The QC cannot capture time-based effects.
Capturing your Keeley compressor may “work” in the sense that it will model gain/distortion characteristics, but the resulting capture block will only behave like a drive and not a compressor. If you love your Keeley, keep it. If you can be satisfied with the other compressors in the QC–I like the Jewel and SSL blocks–go with them.
The QC (or any similar device) can only capture what are technically LTI (linear and time invariant) devices. In other words, things like gain stages, amplifiers, and speakers that theoretically respond the same way to a signal no matter the level of that signal, no matter what time. In the case of things like compression, the gain response changes depending on the level of the incoming signal, and the time transfer function of how it reduces that gain is often different depending on the incoming signal level, peaky-ness (crest factor, or how narrow the waveform transient is), and frequency response. This is complex and changes dramatically with time and input signal complexity, so there is no way to capture a compressor accurately. You can capture it in terms of the process, but what you get out the other side will be nothing like how your compressor sounds.
The short answer is that you can’t. You can, however put your Kelley in either the loop or before the QC