I believe this is inevitable now,
multiple manufacturers large & small are working on NAM A2 pedals, eg Fractal.
Their recently released A2 tech blitzed all the proprietary capturing tech in recent vast scientific listening tests,
even their A2-Lite captures, which will run on pedals with $3 embedded chips,
rated higher than V2 Quad Cortex captures.
And now the Genome plugin has come out with NAM A2-powered Parametric Captures,
NAM A2 is the future in my opinion.
I LOVE my Quad Cortex pedal.
But why not have the highest quality possible and most realistic feel?
NAM A2 is basically indistinguishable from the reference amp.
And then you can also use the exact same model for recording via a vst like Genome.
I’m not talking out my arse or being ideological here at all,
observe the posted listening tests below.
Sorry, I call BS in this “scientific objective” test.
Gee, i wonder who set up the test and chose the testing samples? Surely a neutral, onjective party? Lol
You can think that, but they used over 1000 volunteer testers listening to anonymised digital amp models in a blind listening test using the MUSHRA blind listening methodology,
they had no idea which model they were listening to when they rated each one.
Blind listening tests
We also ran a large-scale blind listening test using the MUSHRA methodology, the audio industry’s gold standard for evaluating perceived sound quality, often used by organizations like the BBC and EBU.
Over 1,000 participants submitted more than 100,000 ratings, which might be the largest tone study ever. In each trial a participant heard the real recorded gear first as a reference, then rated several subsequent versions of that same tone, modeled with A2-Full, A2-Lite, A1-Standard, Neural DSP’s Neural Capture V2, IK Multimedia’s ToneX, and Line 6’s Proxy, without knowing which was which. Participants scored each model on how closely it matched the original recording, using a 0–100 scale.
Amp Modeler Blind Listening Test
Over 1,000 participants compared recordings of real gear to anonymized digital models using the MUSHRA blind listening methodology. Higher scores mean the model was rated as sounding closer to the original amp, pedal, or signal chain.
How many times are people going to make requests for this without checking if there’s already a thread? Doubt this will happen if Darkglass has it on their Anagram. Neural can’t have this cross into the territory for Anagram I’m sure. This already was strange with not bringing certain Darkglass stuff to QC
You mean the one marked as “solved”(!) and closed by mods because,
“The NCv2 update’s been pretty good and I’ve said it before - no need to keep this thread going.”
V2 is pretty good and literally saved the QC for me, but the A2-Lite still rates higher and with much less CPU.
Strange community when we can’t talk freely about improving the device we all own. What are we now, Fractal?
I think it’s inevitable if A2 progresses as it looks like. Proprietary captures that only play on one device and not at all in recording DAWs aren’t going to be the future. Lets check back in 2 years and see how that is playing out. I think NAM A2 will easily be the standard at some point.
The feature request was marked as solved by the person who created it because they thought it was solved. No one stops you from opening your own feature request (as long as it isn’t a duplicate).
We can talk freely. No one has been silenced. But that also means that people who don’t share your point of view can state theirs.
There have been multiple threads about this and similar topics because every few weeks (or recently days), someone comes along stating that “this new tech is the future and far superior and if Neural doesn’t implement it the QC will be a failure”.
Yeah NAM A2 is nice for what it is and if it gets implemented I’m sure no one will complain.
But to me the supposed improvements cited here feel a bit exaggerated. I mean 2% difference in a subjective listening test isn’t what I’d call revolutionary. Also claims of lower CPU usage than QC captures are total guesswork. At least I haven’t seen any reasonable attempt to estimate what a NAM A2-Lite block runing in QC DSP chain would actually use.
The point about the open ecosystems and usage on other producs/DAW is fair. Though I would argue that it also has its downsides, like not being able to use presets from cortex cloud because the NAM capture is missing. It really depends on personal preference.
And then there are also QC users who really don’t care for captures and want to see more tweakable amp models and devices as well as quality of life improvements implemented (along with NDSPs own capturing/modeling tech). There are at least 16 feature requests that each have more than double the votes of the NAM request that was closed.
Most people probably don’t care about 2% more realistic captures at 10% less CPU if they instead can have more amp models/effects, better midi implementation, secondary functions for footswitches and so on.
Unfortunately captures aren’t the future as modeling gets more and more accurate. It’s just an easier thing right now to use less CPU. I don’t know if any touring bands that use NAM captures live. The idea is cool, but unrealistic when it only exists on cheap consumer gear from Amazon, aside from the Anagram.
Either way, kind of a moot point to keep making new threads for NAM captures when there are multiple threads that have mentioned it
The DImehead also exists and runs 2 full NAM captures per preset.
And you might eat those words. The pedal market is literally about to explode because of the A2 update, where the same capture can run on a $3 chip, no conversions.
Something WILL be released that combines the Anagram capability with a slick guitar-focused pedal, it’s just a matter of time now. I’d prefer it was the QC leading the pack.
Were they about A2? No? That’s what my post was about. My only thread on the subject, ever.
You could have literally just scrolled on if you didn’t like my thread mate.
Good thread. I too am considering the Dimehead. But not in the effects loop. This would cancel out the latency advantage that makes it so attractive. Please do update when you start using this.
Are these nam threads coordinated? Neural has done an exceptional job and had their own algorithm for captures. While nam is open source, the Quad Cortex is not, just go with what works.
Some people swear by the ART SGX-2000 for recorded tones, while it sounds like shrill ass to my ears. Do I want to monkey with another format on the Quad Cortex? Nope. If I wanted to tweak to the nth degree, I’d get an AxeFx. And never play.
One can love a new technology but an objective person would atleast use it before claiming the obsolescence of a whole platform used by pros and hobby musicians everyday
It would be so confusing for Neural to add NAM even because of the naming haha. It’s already confusing for people learning about both types of modeling because both are called Neural.
Could you imagine what the ads would even look like? “Neural adds Neural Amp Modeling to the Quad Cortex. Now you can use Neural Captures and Amp Models along with Neural Amp Modeler Captures.”
It would be one of the most confusing things Neural could do to their brand. I hope they do it now that I’m imaging how confused people would be when trying to research the QC
Bevo you need to make a post in the feature request area under quad cortex I believe for other to upvote this. Im with you in that it makes sense to add nam a2 support. Its about to completely take off as mentioned.
The FX loop on Row 1 is 1.8ms latency, so like standing 2ft further away from the speaker roughly.
The Dimehead is 1ms, so less than 3ms all up, plus 2ms for the Quad Cortex, sub-5ms all up.
NB Row 3/4 has some unfixed bug still apparently where it adds high latency so avoid that row set.
I’m not getting the Dimehead at this point…I’m holding out for a much cheaper pedal that just plays NAMs, a Boss Nam Player would be ideal
or a moderately expensive one that plays 3 NAMS, 1 pedal plus 2 NAM amps in parallel (the Dimehead is limited to 2 NAM captures in series).
In the meantime I have a Blackstar BEAM Mini that I can place in the fx loop, so at least I can check the Amalgam captures on QC V2 vs the NAM A2’s Karlis is also releasing now.
I guess I should. You can see there’s a LOT of resistance from the user base here in the replies though (or maybe they’re just more vocal, dunno)
More latency on row 3/4 isn’t a bug. It’s how the QC is designed since you need to engage another set of DSP chips for those rows. More latency has to occur because of the extra DSP chips associated with those rows and how they function in the chain of processing
