The profiling scene now consists of several products, paid like ToneX or free like NAM, which are closer to the source amp (when trying to profile hi-gain direct settings) than the Neural Capture feature. While those products do take longer to train the models, the resulting digital tone print is pretty close to the source & more consistently so.
Is there room for NDSP to bring enhancements to the QC Neural Capture feature (longer training signal or more epochs etc) to catch up with what the competition is doing?
I’m a QC owner (bought it primarily for the profiling) & still hold some hope the product I bought can get slightly better.
That said, it’s somewhat disappointing to see that the flagship feature of a unit that cost this much $ has been so easily overtaken by competing (or free, open-source) products. Obviously considering selling the QC.
Good for you. I bought the QC for its ability to accurately profile my gear (which competing products are currently doing better consistently); different strokes for different folks.
I want & hope NDSP do something to catch up as far as profiling accuracy goes.
I would vote but I have to wait until I get some votes back.
I’m personally not too concerned about this though. I’m sure that NDSP is aware and they will improve and implement these improvements as they go. This tech is still fairly new, and I’m sure we will soon see many others using it too.
Do you watch any of Leo’s videos on YouTube? I think he is Leo Gibson. He does some amazing work and is an excellent player as well. The Null test and his other things are pretty technical. All and all from what I gathered the QC is still holding up pretty well. I also understand there is a steep learning curve on the NAM. Can we really tell the difference by hearing? I am not sure. I too like to have the best of anything I can get, so I am with you on wanting improvements. In the meantime I wish you peace and enJOY that crazy machine!
Yes, I did. I have also started out with NAM pretty early on, since Steve made it available & training was a little bit harder to pull off.
There are amps where the QC does alright but some use-cases where profiling is really hard to get right for the Neural DSP unit whereas ToneX does alright & NAM wins flat-out.
I just hope NDSP manage to get the Capture feature at least in-line with the competing products.
It sounds like you know what you like and want. I do hope they do as you are asking. I play the edge of breakup Fenderish tones. I would imagine you can hear the differences more on the higher intensity tones and models? Do you play the higher gain type amps?
The difference is very noticeable when I try capturing my amp on, yeap, hi-gain settings. The amp’s based on a Ceriatone Molecular (which in turn is really a Cameron Atomica clone) with 2 Jose clipping modes.
The QC struggles to nail the tone of the amp when I have any of the clipping engaged; ToneX does it a little bit better & NAM gets me close to nulling out the amp if I flip the phase on recordings.
That said, NAM allows me to run long training cycles and use a lengthier training signal sequence so that also plays into the increased fidelity I guess.
Maybe this could be something Neural DSP could explore doing on Cortex Control - allow offloading the Neural Capture training to the attached computer.
I think what you are saying is worthy of their attention. It is all way over my head but I do understand the ongoing quest for our tones. I think my own personal needs are fairly straightforward. I was reading that Doug from Neural does like the higher gain sounds so I would imagine he would take heed to comments like yours. A pleasure to speak to you.
I just voted. Even though I have nothing to capture, hopefully this would lead to better captures from the cloud as opposed to some of the garbage you find there.
My quad has pretty much sat in a box since i bought it. Im unimpressed really, it was a waste of money. My main issues have been the fact that the obvious greed based decision to force people to use cortex cloud and not make it easier to fully backup your sets, presets etc on your computer, and thus make it harder for all the big modelling companies like top jimi, M Britt. If we could buy loads of amazing packs that would change everything, but being stuck with cortex cloud is like the kemper rig exchange, you may find the odd cool capture, but for the most part it’s useless and results in a lot of time wasted. Having a desktop editor will at least make it useable to me so that’s great, but with the release of nam and the tests i’ve done with it, it leaves all the competition in the dust.
As the community gets bigger and the tone xchange fills up, it’s only a matter of time before neural will discontinue all these services because people won’t bother buying it anymore. They REALLY need to up their game now and allow the saving and backing up of presets without the cloud. It would change the landscape a bit. It should at the least be capable of having the same functionality as the kemper. I’m basically just waiting for the right time to really give the quad a good go and it’ll be when i can do all the above!
Yes, I would have asked the same question.
It’s funny how so many people still buy the QC, most of them totally happy with it (like me). And we’re trying our best to have a nice and helpful community.
But then in this forum, a lot of posts go like “the QC is sooooo bad, I will sell it soon, Neural is bad, the competition is much better blah blah blah”.
Guys, get over it. If you think an FM9 is better or Tonex, buy one and sell your QC. And then maybe complain on the Fractal forums about something else.
I for myself have tried both and still prefer the QC, very sorry for that.
Please don’t feel too offended, but it’s so frustrating trying to help this forum grow and see so many negative posts with no added value.
If you have complaints, it’s much better to address them to Neural directly than to us users, isn’t it?
Massively agree with this. If I bought anything this expensive that wasn’t immediately useable for me, I would send it straight back.
I can’t fathom not only having enough cash to just leave £1500 sat in a box not getting used, but then also to keep complaining about it not being right for you.
I emailed Neural support directly before posting here. They were kind enough to hint that this may be achievable but asked me to post over here on the Unity forums to gauge community interest.
Do you want me to post that email? My post / thread was really not directed to bashing the QC but I feel the unit should be improved in some aspects - Neural Capture is one of them. Our choice of words is just that - our choice of words. If mine come across as complaining, yours comes across as fanboyism / defensive.