Folks, remember to keep posts on topic of the thread. Thanks!
If anyone has any questions for me or any moderator, feel free to DM.
So there’s a midi feature where you load your setlist (actual guitar, bass, track etc) and you set switch points for the track - no more foot switching - it’s done automatically. This exist in many ways with other modelers but it removes the need for tedious control setup.
I thought it was pretty cool. Really they’ve just taken all the things that work on ALL modelers and streamlined workflow.
The switches have scribble strips (like the FM9 Fractal) and the whole platform just seems to have really gone above and beyond reasonable expectations.
I agree with the Moderator. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one modeler. That said, I am not limiting myself.
I have a FM9T that I’m incredibly happy with. I’m just really tired of waiting on NDSP to get it together.
Seems their focus is on the mini cortex. It’s been half a decade and the things they promised still haven’t arrived. Why not sell the QC and revisit it once they figure out what the heck they’re doing?
I’ve already done this once. I’ve only had the second unit since November.
As soon as I purchased it - the updates all but stopped. Unacceptable.
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Thank you very much for making this real, I hope we are heard as customers, dissatisfied with Ndsp’s negligence, no one here wants anything fancy, or something totally new, just what was promised, at the launch
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That’s not quite the way to think about it IMO. If people are dissatisfied with their QCs and sell them, then every one of those used sales is potentially displacing a new QC sale, so Neural loses that sale (and any associated plugin sales that would have come with). Also, if enough people are dissatisfied and showing a clear preference for a different platform, then people considering buying a modeler/multi-effects will get wind of that when they’re doing their pre-purchase research, and that costs Neural additional sales.
I think the Stadium is a big problem for Neural, and honestly, unless Line6 really fumbles, or unless Neural has a lot of stuff waiting in the wings ready to launch, I don’t think they have enough time to respond.
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I was a Helix user who switched to the Quad Cortex knowing I was buying a modeller with promised future updates. Early on, I was fine with the QC having fewer amps and effects than my Helix because it sounded great out of the box. That part hasn’t changed. But it’s now been five years, and in that time we’ve only seen two major updates: CorOS 2.0 and 3.0.
Neural DSP claims to have separate teams for the QC, Nano, and plugins, but the actual output tells a different story. The hardware itself is still powerful. I use pitch effects, delays, and reverbs heavily, and rarely max out the DSP like I often did on the Helix, where a single pitch block could chew through 30 to 40 percent of resources.
Plugin compatibility wasn’t a selling point for me. It was a bonus, but not the reason I bought the QC. Still, it was a key promise in their original marketing from five years ago. They said plugin support would land by the end of 2020 in a blog post. That clearly didn’t happen, which suggests either poor planning or wild optimism that never materialised.
The real problem with the Quad Cortex isn’t the hardware or even the slow update cycle. It’s the secrecy. Neural DSP has always operated in a vacuum, leaning hard on vague promises and the word “soon.” Even now, with users asking for clarity, they remain silent. Update #55 says they’ll share more details once CorOS 3.2.0 is nearing beta. Why wait until beta to share anything? Revealing what’s coming could build hype and reassure the community, especially in the wake of the Helix Stadium announcement.
If they’re short on staff or facing development problems, they should say so. The silence just fuels speculation, and that’s been the pattern for years. Right now we get about one major QC update a year. That’s not enough for a company that claims to have multiple dedicated teams.
Why not ship smaller, more frequent updates with a few amps or effects at a time? From the outside, it looks like they’re bottlenecked. It feels like a small team juggling too much, not a scaled company running multiple teams in parallel.
Some people dismiss the criticism as just gear lust or entitlement. Maybe that’s true for a few. But for many of us, the QC was a serious investment. I paid $3,500 AUD back in 2021. I’m not wealthy. That was a big purchase for me, and it locked me into the NDSP ecosystem.
I still use my Helix, and while the DSP limits frustrate me, every time I open HX Edit I’m reminded how much more the Helix offers in terms of flexibility and variety. The QC has a solid amp and cab library, but its effects selection still feels sparse. Helix might not have the best-sounding effects across the board, but it gives you a wide palette to work with like overdrives, fuzzes, modulation, glitchy effects, and creative delays and reverbs. That’s still missing from the QC.
People understandably have a right to feel upset and abandoned, it doesn’t even feel like NDSP wants to interact with its community. Once again, using Line 6 as an example, Eric Klein is actively interacting with Helix users on the Facebook group, in forums, Reddit, even some of their devs are active. And it might seem like a little thing, but it’s actually massive. Even Cliff over at Fractal interacts with Fractal users on their forums. It’s such a small thing that helps make the customers feel connected to the brand and more than just a sale.
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This is what i wanted to achieve with the Cymatic Audio LP-16, still hope to do it with cause it have a lot of output and having the guitars, drums, bass and synths, choirs, overdubs sent in seperate output can be great for us or soundman to adjust on the fly dependind of the place.
But if it doesn’t work properly and the stadium have this natively… well.
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Yes, smaller and more frequent updates was the initial promise (very agressive plan etc) and it feels like this hasn’t started yet.
Also i really thought that they would be adding a lot of original, ambient and classy effects in the territory of strymon, Meris etc etc, (i still think/hope it will eventually happen but the time is flying…) Not to mention (i always do i know 
) the synth block…
No offense I would never go back to a helix. The feel was not there and tbh I spent most of my time tweaking it and not playing. I like the qc. Amps come first then I like fooling with the quad. I just asked them a question they answered asap. Customer service has always been good to me. I think we’ve all been spoiled a bit. Remember the zoom505? Compare it to that. I don’t care about plug ins. Things will sound digital because they are they are not amps. When I saw John Mayer using one at Coachella with this guy zedd drumming on a huge kit I wasn’t looking. When I looked up John had the quad. Everyone was saying how great his sound was. The audience had no idea. It did sound good. Mayer was the only one I’m sure who could tell the difference. The song was called Automatic Yes. I see tons of groups using them. Tons of players online as well. Helix is plastic and cheap looking and seems like you guys like it for reasons I don’t get. Again, no offense I’m just not a fan. And yes I know how to get a good sound so no it’s not me I just don’t like it. I think you guys are being too hard on neural to be fair. It’s a perfectly fine item and I’m sure they’re constantly improving it. You always make assumptions about them and you’ve been wrong a lot of times. They’re working not sitting around
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100%. I have several questions answered from Cliff himself in the Fractal forum. It gives people a sense of care, belonging and not just another sale.
I think that approach is pretty awesome.
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Fractal is big enough Cliff could just choose to not respond on the Fractal forums and people wouldn’t even hate on Fractal because they’ve got such a mature polished platform. But I do think it’s incredible you have Cliff responding and you have Eric from Line 6 responding to people. And they’re not marketing managers or interns, they’re the big cheese.
Is there even a public face of NDSP? They lean heavily on artists, but who is the public-facing community person for NDSP? Closest to me is Digital John and we only ever see him when they release something that needs a demo. I’ve been around here in NDSP land prior to the QC and remember when Steven Ward was creating amazing content. He hosted livestreams, AMA’s, did awesome tone videos and was an all round great ambassador for NDSP. I don’t know what happened to him, he just vanished. They never filled the gap. I couldn’t even tell you what Doug Castro or Francisco Cresp look like. If you gave me a lineup with them in it, I’d have to guess. Which is weird, because I could easily pick something like Eric Klein out.
Well, yeah. But you’re also comparing a 2015 device with SHARC chips released in 2009 to a device (the Quad Cortex) that was released in 2020 with newer hardware.
My Helix Floor is a tank. I’ve dropped beer on it, I’ve dropped it onto concrete. The worse that happened was the enclosure got some dings. Try spilling a beer or dropping the QC. It’s a very pretty device, but it’s not a device made to take the kind of hits the Helix can take.
Most of John Mayer’s tone comes from his playing. John could have been playing through a Tone Master Pro and cheap Squier and it would have sounded good.
It has a lot more effects, amps, updates, support, community. I love my QC, but the first thing I noticed switching from Helix to QC was how shallow it was from a tone perspective. Limited delays and tremolos, no obscure effects like glitch and feedbacker. No trichorus. I could go on about the amount of options the Helix has and QC does not have.
It’s funny, so many artists use the Helix and it sounds amazing. A good example of a prominant Helix user is Dustin Kensrue from Thrice. He doesn’t just use it for live use, he has recorded their last few albums with it. Another guitarist getting good tones out of the Helix is Stevic MacKay from Twelve Foot Ninja (he was getting good tones out of the HD500x).
If the Quad Cortex was a mid-tier modeller like the ToneX, then yeah, I’d agree. But they’re charging prices that put them into the upper tier of amp modellers. You get a little less grace and lenience from people when ypu’re charging Porsche prices but providing customers a Toyota Corolla. Trusty and dependable, but lacking the bells and whistles.
Agree. Nobody is outright saying the Quad Cortex is bad. Read through this entire thread again. The common theme here is the lack of updates, communication and support. The QC itself is a great device, but it’s very underutilised. There is so much more it could do. My QC has 27gb of storage, all that DSP and it’s just waiting for more devices to take advantage of that hardware.
They’re not. That’s the problem. CorOS 3.1.0 was released 7 months ago. They’re promising CorOS 3.1.1 by the end of June 2025, but all it’s shipping is the new ESS Codec support because of the change in internal hardware (due to a deprecated chip) and a metronome in live view.
Where is the marketplace? The preset format is tied to the cloud, so you can’t easily share or backup your presets. Captures are a mess. There is a lintiny of presets on the cloud that are broken because the captures used in them were deleted by the author. Unless you have those captures already, they’re gone. So the cloud is actually this sea of broken presets. Neural alienated themselves from an entirely new revenue stream catering to third party preset/capture/IR sellers. You have people like the Worship Tutorials guys having to work around these limitations by making you friend them on the cloud so they can share the items you bought with you.
People only assume because of the silence, not because they hate NDSP or the QC. The people responding in this thread, on Discord and other platforms are doing so out of love, not because they want to smear the company or hardware. Like I said, I spent $3.5k on the QC, I don’t want to see them fail.
Nobody is saying they’re not working, the issue is Neural are not forthright with how the work is prioritised or shipped. Outside of the slick artist videos featuring Plini and other artists playing in expensive AirBnb’s or demo’s featuring Digital John, what else have we seen? Give us behind the scenes video of the NDSP offices, interviews with the devs/Doug/Francisco. Put some humanity into the marketing. NDSP feels almost like a faceless corporation.
All of these issues could be solved without spending a single cent:
- Do an AMA and answer questions, even the hard-hitting and difficult ones
- Be more open and less secretive (like Line 6 and Fractal)
- Release a roadmap. What are the goals for 2025, 2026, etc. Maybe back in 2020 when you had the shiniest and most powerful modeller on the market you had to be secretive because of the competition, but it’s 2025 and others have caught up. Even the Fender Tone Master Pro (which got thrashed in reviews initially) has received updates to improve it. Even a ToneX pedal with support for NAM captures is a contender. People have caught up. There’s no reason to feel the need to keep everything secret because you’re worried competitors will copy you. The Helix Stadium has already been announced.
- Engage with the community, show us you care. Respond in the forums, Discord.
- Give us insight into the company, Line 6 yet again is a great example to copy. They have videos on their subcomponent modelling process, you see the devs, they talk nerdy about the Helix ecosystem. Outside of the carefully released info and patents, I couldn’t even tell you how the QC works.
- Stop polishing everything. All of the marketing from NDSP is too highly produced and polished, it doesn’t feel authentic. We already bought the Quad Cortex, you don’t have to try and convince us how great it is. We don’t want polished marketing videos, we just want substance.
Neural, if you’re reading this thread, please do something. We are rooting for you, but right now it feels like the ship is captainless and we keep hitting icebergs.
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You were surgical, and that’s exactly it, what makes the quad a bad option is the silence and lack of transparency from the manufacturer itself, the only bad thing is the “transpose” that is really bad, I use this as a basis and compare it with the whammyDT and there the tuning change really works, I wanted more updates, mainly to reduce my pedalboard, today with what is being delivered by quad I can’t get rid of the Digitech, so the perfect algorithm is not as perfect as advertised
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Wow I’m overwhelmed with the support. Seriously, I can’t answer all of you. Yes it could be better. I was wrong the helix is metal. I thought the new one looks like plastic. It’s just my opinion that I didn’t like the feel etc. yes I think neural could do more but I like it. I like amps more so I’m not a full time user. I turned the quad down 3x because I was unhappy with modelers. Then rabea did that huge concert and I gave in and got it. I just had customer service reply right away last night. What do u mean u don’t know Doug and the other guy? Instagram has them on there. The axe is I’m sure great but I wanted a quick workflow. I hope you all enjoy whatever you get. I was just giving my opinion. That’s all. Cheers. 
ps I’m seeing a lot of players switching over to it. They play for big names. It’s good enough for them then it’s good enough for me.
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All, remember to keep things civil and on topic.
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Hey, I’m not married to anything. Sound, and function come first.
For me, It doesn’t matter who’s using what. If it mattered I would use Fractal and call it a day.
You have no idea how the new Stadium feels. There’s almost no videos for it as it hasn’t released yet.
They completely changed their modeling tech. It could blow them all away, I really don’t know yet.
All that said, I disagree with some of your feelings regarding L6
To say “I will NEVER go back” is a bit of a wild statement. I will go with whoever has the best pros and least cons for what I do.
I sold my first QC. It was pretty trash at release. I never said “oh, this is trash, I’ll never go back” I instead went to fractal and decided to give QC time to figure things out… I’ve don’t that and returned to NDSP — it’s been nearly a year and I’m disappointed.
I will absolutely check out the new Stadium. I’ll keep the fm9T - perhaps I’ll keep the QC (idk yet)
It’s hard to deny the promo vids I’m seeing over at L6
It’s beyond anything I imagined really. So I will check it out.
I’m tired of waiting on NDSP. Like 
tired. We will see what happens.
The update for QC was supposed to be mid month. I wouldbt be surprised if they give us another “sorry, it’s taking longer for this and so - next month etc”
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I agree. It’s a perspective I hadn’t thought about… they’ve already got my money. I own nearly all of their suites. I even bought the Mesa suite lol (impulse buy)
I have purchased 2 QC’s
I am with you on the Stadium. L6 really does have a fantastic team of forward thinkers.
I think it’s wild that there are people out there that “hate” L6.
I was never a special pleader for L6 or anyone else for that matter.
I am always open to new ideas.
That said, there are some companies that just listen / care more about people like us. We try to care enough to make some noise about issues or pain points- it’s received by gate keepers ‘round these parts and thrown away.
The fanboys are real, and will look for any opportunity they can to level people who have ideas or disappointments.
When I learned that NDSP doesn’t even come around their forums “take your ideas to NDSP Support if you want them to see it”
lol I mean talk about a severe disconnect.
Anyway, I’m with you dude. The new Stadium looks killer and I will have one as soon as I can.
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Going back to that Helix Stadium livestream video–not all of the features promised will be available at launch. The dude quoted 16 Agoura guitar amp models, and 6 bass amp models. The cloning engine (their version of captures) is expected to arrive next year.
I understand the sentiment of QC owners jumping ship to the Helix Stadium–but I would caution you folks that it is still an unfinished product and there is no guarantee that it will update as often or as quickly as Helix did in the past.
Just as people have said all along, “Be happy with your modeler as it is NOW, not for what is promised”, I hope for your sake that you folks will be fully satisfied with it at launch–not waiting months for _____ feature to come.
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Bro, you literally summed it all up. I feel exactly like you. Fantastic communication in that post.
I am sic of the carrots that never materialize. I am tired of the secrecy and I agree with your assessment of the dev teams.
Also why release nano cortex when QC is eons behind on promises!?!?
I have Fractal axe2 and FM9T and that company is consistent. There are no surprises and updates are frequent.
Also, they offer gapless switching between full fledged presets. Game changer imho.
Anyway, I agree with you. Thanks for posting!
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“when QC is eons behind on promises!?!?” Over exaggerate much? It’s gear, if you are unhappy and not getting what you want, simply move on.
I will also be getting the new Helix most likely because I like gear. If the Helix doesn’t turn out to be what I thought it would be, I will sell it and move on. But the QC is staying for the long term either way.
This thread has mostly remained civil which is cool and why it remains. Stay on topic If you want it to remain. If you want to bash the company, do it somewhere else. Don’t be the source of the thread being locked.
Since the QC is still one of the top selling multi-effects, it is still obviously alive and nothing killed it. Technically, the answer should be no, PCOM didn’t kill QC.
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I think most of us are willing to take the chance. Here’s my educated reasoning.
A company like L6 isn’t a company known for handing out empty promises. They have a track record of innovation and success.
Everything that you said about the Stadium is actual realized fear we’ve already experienced in the NDSP shipwreck.
There’s no more trusted ground left to stand on over here.
I do not question L6’s ability to maintain their standards for progression and taking care of / listening to their base.
We will see what happens I suppose.
5 years of QC and we got two real updates and a lot of empty / broken promises.
In the tech world 5 years is an eternity.
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Despite my grievances with how NDSP has handled the Quad Cortex, I still love it. But as you can tell, I’m a bit passionate on the subject of wanting to see NDSP turn things around. I still have hope that they’ll eventually get ahead of this and we’ll get a No Man’s Sky situation where the QC is a revered device and the days of PCOM and missing models are behind us.
I’m with you on this. I also own the DigiTech Whammy DT. The pitch shifting on the QC is adequate, but it’s monophonic, so unless you’re playing downtuned stuff on single string (like a lot of the djent/prog players are), you’ll immediately notice there needs to be some work there. I use my DT to change keys for praise & worship stuff so I don’t have to use a capo. The Helix has polyphonic pitch shifting, still not amazing, but it does work better for chords and other non-single string stuff. NDSP needs to add polyphonic pitch shifting to the Quad Cortex (I’m sure it’s on a feature list somewhere).
I live in Australia, so I’m kinda dreading the day I need customer support because there isn’t a QC repairer here (that I am aware of), so if anything happens to my QC, it’s gonna have to be shipped to Helsinki for assessment and repair (or somewhere else). Touch wood nothing has happened to my QC yet. It’s four years strong now, but I do treat it delicately though.
I’ve got Instagram, but I don’t use it. Maybe it’s an age thing? But I’m a mid-thirties guy and not really in the demographic they’re targeting then.
Exactly. I think it’s pretty safe to say they’re not going to release a new device and it sounds worse than a device they released ten years ago in 2015, ha. Worse case is it sounds the same as the 2015 Helix, but most likely case is it does sound better.
The Agoura amps are the new modelled amps, but it’s important to note on launch users are getting all of the effects/amps from the current Helix (which is extensive). So 22 Agoura amp models in total + all the amps from the previous gen. I’m curious how their capture functionality works and sounds too.
I think some of the discontent here is even though the Helix Stadium is launching without all of its promised features, it’s a technically more complete device at launch compared to the QC. It might not have profiling functionality, but Helix users don’t have that now, so it is seen as a bonus feature rather than essential. The fact it launches with all of the legacy amps/effects is more than enough for Helix users who are happy with their 2015 devices, but just wanted more DSP (especially when pitch effects would take like 40% of DSP).
Even if you take the Agoura amps out of the equation, you’re getting a more powerful device that is backwards compatible with Helix Floor and HX Stomp presets, you get all of the models you have on the current Helix, plus a bunch of new models. A lot of Helix users just wanted a touchscreen and more DSP in the same form factor, so what Line6 announced was actually more than what a lot of Helix players were asking for.
Cheers, my man. I tried to keep it succinct, but when you’re passionate about something, sometimes the words just flow.
I think the optics of the Nano Cortex definitely hurt them. I can see why they released it. Even Line 6 did the same with the HX Stomp and Pod Go. But I guess L6 were in better standing with its community than NDSP is right now. Even though they say the Nano Cortex team is separate, the underlying software appears to be the same as the QC software.
I think FAS honestly has one of the best approaches to its releases.The FM9 has had three firmware updates in 2025 so far (that firmware 9 release in April was NUTS). It’s funny, even the 2015 Helix has gapless preset switching if you enable “preset spillover”, it does steal DSP from an already limited DSP pool, but even L6 found a way with its super old 15 year old SHARC chips. I actually liken Fractal to Apple, their support and release cadence is something that all modelling companies should strive to mimic, they’re the standard (in my opinion).
Overall without sounding like a broken record and repeating my comment from above, I think the Quad Cortex is an adequate device. If you’re a hi-gain player, it’s a functionally complete device. For many it already does more than you possibly need. There’s a reason why when you see bands like Architects and Northlane switching to the QC, they’re using captures, it’s because for some, just the ability to capture your heavy rigs and travel less expensively is a huge selling point in itself.
For some of us that go beyond the basics of an overdrive + amp + cab, that’s where you really see the current limitations of the Quad Cortex. I think this is why there’s a bit of disparity between some people arguing the QC is fine and some people arguing it’s not. Which is why those aforementioned artists despite ditching traditional amps or moving away from Kemper still have pedalboards. It’s rare to see artists using the QC as a complete unit, there are always extra pedals being used with it to compensate for the lack of variety in fuzzes, overdrives, reverbs, delays, modulation effects, etc (things that cannot be easily captured).
I think we can all agree that the reason we are posting in this thread is because we care and we don’t want to see the QC “lose” or “fail”, nobody is rooting for the destruction of NDSP or the company give up on the QC. Competition is good, it keeps prices down, it keeps companies moving and as the consumer we are the winners because we make the buying decisions.
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