This is where I am at. Plugin compatibility was a cool shiny feature but they are two different hardware mediums and interfaces. Allow your product line to be diverse. Bedroom guitar player or producer? Plugins. You need to play a gig or have a session? Quad Cortex.
It already has the benefit of being the most user friendly and in my opinion most versatile modeler on the market. Plugins compatibility wouldn’t really add much to that, its just extra amp models and FX. The juice doesn’t really seem worth the squeeze when there are so many other things the QC could improve on like:
Desktop Editor. My back is killing me tweaking on the ground
More FX, Amp models, captures
Marketplace for creators to monetize their captures
Added functionality like any of the great suggestions on the forums
Maybe I’m just in a different head space about it. I got what I paid for. I didn’t pay for promises or should haves.
And they (NDSP) should not have cashed a check with their PR mouth their butt couldn’t cash. But they did. And 2 years later we still don’t have any paid-for NDSP plugins in our QC, or an Editor yet. When we finally have both, my head space will say I got what I paid for. They have had time… YMMV and that’s ok.
Hmm, funny that the QC still tops the “Top Seller” list at Thomann…
Look, there are some valid points to criticize; some others you’ll find others violently disagreeing (effects quality IMHO is anything but “nothing and shoddy”) but no need to be such a drama queen about things…
Overall, the QC is a great combination of features IMHO - and you’ll find things to criticize on any guitar device. Like with the Kemper, AxeFX, Helix, etc, some of the shortcomings will be ironed out with new releases incrementally, others will stay and keep bugging users. And users will find work-arounds to get things done with the existing shortcomings and issues, like with any music device.
If it is truly unusable to you, there is still a pretty reasonable second-hand market, so get rid of it and find something that works better for you.
I wouldn’t be keeping a device if I couldn’t use it reasonably in its current state - just waiting for some future update to suddenly fix everything is not a healthy way to go about things.
Sure, I do hope for future update to improve some things, but I definitely have found a way to use the QC productively in its current state and create amazing tones. And if it gets better over the next months and years, then that’s great! And I’m certainly not losing hope for plugin compatibility or a desktop editor (hopefully with a decent preset manager and setlist editor) - but I’m not betting my productivity on a certain date of their arrival, so as long as they’re not there, I work with what I have and have fun playing guitar…
Just throwing in something to think about: sound takes about 3 ms to travel one meter, so if your amp sits 3.3 m behind you on stage (which isn’t unusual), you have a staggering 10 ms of latency with a traditional amp setup. And monster guitar stacks are often more than 5 meters away - horror!
Having titled this thread ‘Not trying to throw the cat among the pigeons’ it seems I’ve unintentionally done just that. I’d apologise, but it also seems to me that there is a huge strength of feeling on this subject, and it certainly makes interesting reading
To be clear, then, you’re a moderator, but not affiliated with NDSP, is that correct? Do you have any direct contact with them? IMHO they should be made fully aware - if they aren’t already - of the concerns that are being raised here (and I specifically focus on the concerns as it’s the negative stuff they need to know about, not the positive stuff - Emporer’s New Clothes and all that…)
-Plugins were almost all converted in 2021 and soon to be done for QC. This is what NDSP CEO Doug Castro said. Was it a lie?
-Creating virtual amp models with Neural AI is so much more faster than component level modeling, that NDSP can put models out very quick. This was said, when Quad Cortex was launched. Quad Cortex haven’t seen that many amp models and Line6 for example has been way more productive in this area for the past two years, than ”Super Fast NDSP”.
-QC Latency gets very bad the more you add stuff on the preset.
-Noise Problems… yeah, I know! NDSP has all kinds of explanations ready for this one. Over a year in my case and there is no idea if/when a new power supply is out. If ever.
-Many have Wifi problems with this unit, that is married to The Cloud. Is cheap components a reason, did anyone test this?
-PC/Mac Editor has been photoshoped Day 1, when QC was released. Would be great to see one in real life.
When I look all of this. Something is off with this company.
Not promoting, just drawing the big perspective: QC is presently the top seller in all the retail webshops I could find here in Europe − and has always been. Take into account that the great Fractals only ships from one designated retailer here. Given the pricepoint that’s quite well done in these inflation times.
@BrianVallotton used the term “Future Proof” somewhere and that’s also a factor in why I bought it. The very nice guy I bought it from (spring ‘22) and I had this talk over the phone, and he agreed but liked (the biggest) Headrush better. The tone in Headrush is however too “dry” for me, though the sound quality is great. Only a matter of individual audio perception. Most must hear like us then?
I am a moderator but I do not work for NDSP. I have the ability to escalate anything support related directly when needed. As an owner, I appreciate the feedback and I definitely pass things on to the appropriate channels. This thread is fine, as long as it stays civilized and beneficial to the community, I support it 100%. Hopefully this thread stays constructive. In order to keep consistency within the threads, for matters not specific to the thread title, please reach out via DM rather than via post. Thanks!
I have no doubt everyone at NDSP is painfully aware of all the concerns raised here and elsewhere and that they are working on it. If I worked there, I would have probably had more than a few sleepless nights about this.
Personally, I am very happy with the QC. It’s more limited in fx quantity than my previous Axe-Fx 2, but it’s far easier to get a GREAT sound. The quality of what’s in there is very good, I think. Certainly don’t find the delays, reverbs or modulations to be any worse than the competition. It has mostly everything I need, but some features would be nice to have, such as the controllers like lfo’s and such like Fractal that you could assign to parameters. I also want a formant filter to use with my guitar synth.
The FX quality (moreso than quantity) is a big thing for me. They’re not bad or unusable, but they definitely sound more anemic than their plugins, which I always found weird.
Taking all the clickbait and social marketing strategies apart, I’d like to point out that although there are actual real complains around the net, there is a biased perception of trouble.
I think the vast majority of users are happy with their QC, and they don’t need to post messages about. As a result you see mainly messages of complain, that are real, but less than they seem, in percentage…
This happens for every product.
The QC is my first modeler. While i havent had it long enough to experience the frustrations of others, it is clear to me that the competition has been paying attention. For selfish reasons i want the QC to grow and thrive (i dont want 2-3 modelers of $1500+)… so I’m in it for the mid (if not long) term.
I saw a comment that NDSP decision makers/decision influencers (marketing interns dont count) dont read/follow this site? I hope I misunderstood that. With more years than i care to admit in business; thats an amber, if not red, flag.
If someone is interacting here, NDSP needs to pay close attention. We aren’t spending time here becsuse we are trolling. We are here because we believe in the QC vision. We WANT it to succeed. Their competition wants to knock them off the hill. If NDSP fails to engage, communicate, and deliver, their competition will succeed. History (and used gear stores) have many examples of products that were better, more innovative than their competition but faded away.
To clarify… i dont expect a CEO/COO to read every comment; however, someone reporting to them re: product dev/customer sentiment absolutely should be analyzing the threads (happy to tell them how ) … ok… enough ‘business’ … back to playing and digging into my QC
