Let’s be honest — the endless wait for plugin compatibility on the Quad Cortex ended up doing more harm than good. A feature that not everyone wanted, uses, or even needs became the focal point for years, diverting time and resources that could’ve gone into things we actually care about: better UI, more effects, amps, or new creative tools — like the million ones already coming to the new Helix Stadium.
I’ve had the QC for 2 years now, and honestly, I haven’t seen much real progress in that time.
QC ended up becoming more of a promise machine than a usable, evolving product.
And now with the Helix Stadium just around the corner — bringing new tools and features people actually asked for — it’s hard not to feel like QC dropped the ball.
Nothing beats the form factor of the Quad Cortex — but at this point, that seems to be the only advantage left.
What do you all think? Am I alone in feeling this way, or are others here just as disappointed with the direction Neural has taken with the QC?
The main complaint from people for Neural BEFORE they added PCOM, was that they didn’t have PCOM. Now that they’ve been slow to roll it out….people will be like- we didn’t want PCOM that badly.
I think these companies promising a lot early on is hard. It helps get more people to buy the products….but Neural really shot themselves in the foot with their promises. The Quad is great, but maybe they didn’t need to be so cocky at first with what it could come with…..only to not have it on the device 5 years later haha. Kinda insane they had a huge list of effects on their website for the QC that was merely a wish list of what they might add to the QC. The list had since been hidden on their site haha
You are not alone, the PCOM were awaited by a lot of people and not very much by also a lot of others. I own 1 plugin for the moment, i can see have a few more and use it with the QC but i would very much prefer the QC to be updated more than having the PCOM. The QC is clearly not what it should be right now, completely agree with you.
It really seems to take all the ressources and the updates are very thin since a while now. Since more than few months it looks (feels) like the QC is a little bit abandonned by NDSP, the “aggressive update plan” was removed from the Neural site
Things like the synth block are still not available, effects quality diversity and quantity are not what it should be (imo)
I don’t know but, since 2025, the development update are less often and not very encouraging…
Of course maybe it’s on purpose and we will have a killer update soon but at the moment it feels like something is odd, maybe like they are working on a new hardware and put the QC under the carpet… (reallllyyyy hope it’s not the case)
I agree with you. At the end of the day, we are waiting for paid DLC. As people like Davlav have shown, the plugins are only marginally better (if at all) compared to the stock models in the first place. Meanwhile new effects and features that would provide a much bigger impact are shelved. All the while the updates take longer and longer to happen.
I like my quad cortex and I still think it is a very good device. For me, it does everything I need and do not have any plans to change yet. However, a couple of years down the line when I would consider upgrading, there is a very strong reason for me to NOT consider Neural’s product but rather go for the competition.
Honestly, the only plugin I really like is the Soldano, and kinda the Fortin Cali. All the other plugins of their that try to do a 5150 style amp sound way too gained out, scratchy, and I guess fake(?). The 5150 model in the QC itself is awesome.
Realistically the QC is awesome. Would love some updates to how footswitches can be assigned, expanded use of midi controllers, polyphonic pitch shifting…..but the QC does more than amps I’ve paid much more for, and it cuts down on fees for baggage, rental amps overseas, etc. Sometimes I feel people are more concerned with whether they’ll get new random amps/effects on it rather than actually playing/writing. I feel that’s mostly coming from the hobbyist community that really doesn’t play music out often and are bedroom players mainly. BUT, Neural shouldn’t have promised so much extra stuff because the expectation wouldn’t be there. Being able to rely on firmware updates has definitely made some companies lazy when they release a product, and they spend a few years slowly making it the product it should have been at release
You nailed it…very disappointing that here we are half way through 2025 and we’ve gotten minimal in terms of updates. What do they have 1 fricken programmer in the basement of his moms house working on all things NDSP? I agree with the sentiment that based on how they’ve developed their product (or lack thereof) over the past 5 years I’m not buying the next gen when it comes and will strongly consider trading out to Helix or something else in the future. Sad considering what could have been, but a real lesson on how NOT to run a business…
I tend to agree that PCOM has been a bit of a distraction. There’s too much overlap between the amps and effects available in the plugins and the QC itself. That may change in the future though as more plugins can be developed and delivered faster, while also providing an additional revenue stream.
But I’m still looking for usable footswitch and MIDI control. I can’t really use QC for gigging as there is just not enough control. The hardware is there, but not the software.
Another issue with the plugins that I find concerning is the dropout they add to switching scenes. Try changing the amp channel or bright switch in the Soldano plugin. Scene changes involving some plugin parameters have similar audio dropout as changing patches. I suspect this is because they are different models in the implementation that have to get loaded. So this also reduces the appeal of some plugins.
PCOM is a real disappointment to me. I assumed, perhaps naively, that it was going to mean that the unit would be able to then run existing plugins. Not that every single plugin would have to be updated, and then that individual plugins would have to be released one at a time with QC software releases. That, to me, is not “compatibility” in the sense that it’s normally understood. The pace is just unacceptably slow.
I’m a bass player, not a guitarist, so the plugins that do work on QC now are not very useful. Some of the others that are coming may be better. We’ll see.
But overall, I have been pretty disappointed in the QC’s effects and amp/speaker availability for bass. Neural seems to be sort of like Darkglass in their focus on more extreme and distorted bass tones. Meanwhile, we get prominent folks in the bass community like Ian Allison releasing very nice preset packages for HX Stomp that are applicable across a wide range of genres.
I will probably buy a Stadium. I’ll be able to load Ian’s presets into it, and Line6 seems to have their stuff together in terms of actually consistently shipping updates that add new effects. It also seems to really be built for future growth.
YES
Honestly, if NDSP doesn’t really update the QC with useful things for gigging (not PCOM, I said from the beginning that I did not give a f..k about PCOM, I still don’t…), I’ll switch back to Helix Stadium.
Not that NDSP should care anyways, they already got my money as I bought a QC.
I still love my QC but I agree with the sentiment here. I have a few of the plugin collections that are pcom and I rarely use them. I would rather see resources go to other well thought out feature requests i.e. midi improvements, Block presets, foot switch options, additional loops in the looper, etc.
In my opinion, Neural DSP is a company that has overreached itself in the last two years and set the wrong priorities. Too many promises have been made for the Quad Cortex that are being delivered at a snail’s pace. But of course if you then develop the Cortex Nano, the Quad Cortex just falls by the wayside.
QC wasn’t love at first sight, it was only at the second attempt, when the Plini and Gojira plugins were finally integrated, that I got on well with it. But since almost nothing has changed since then, I have returned to my Axe FX III and have once again realized how much more flexible the Axe FX is.
