Hmm, Neural is wise to limit what they promise in their updates but this one is particularly lean. We all already assumed they were continuing to develop and work out the kinks on Core Control as well as delivering plugins compatibility.
Was hoping to see more details on other development initiatives. Neural could still do more to improve its level of engagement with users. The length of time between updates makes the relative silence in between deafening. Anyone have any interesting direct from Neural comments to post, from Discord or perhaps announcements/articles/videos elsewhere?
Yeah this is… light.
I guess I expected at least on plug-in to be available before year-end, but that’s looking less and less hopeful. I wish they would just wait to announce these things only when they have an imminent release date 100% set. Granted, plug-in comparability was announce years ago, but I’m talking about the last update where they announced Pilini X and everything. Made it seem liked they release within the week
And yet when Neural doesn’t update, everyone loses their minds. It’s impossible to please everybody.
Enough of this. They only have significant updates once every two years and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. It feels like the QC is just an afterthought at this point. You and I both know this is such a non-update, so stop defending them. Curated presets are not an update.
Although I really cherish the beta release of cortex control, this specific development update (in terms of communication and content) feels like an 11th month anniversary.
@dan: Can you maybe add some detail to the term “getting close” (to the announcement of a public release)?
… I mean, this is literally an announcement of an announcement. 
And the announcement only refers to cortex control not to plugin compatibility… do you have any news on that aswell?
Well, here are my 2 cents. NDSP promised monthly development updates. Given that time frame, those updates can be quite meaningless, especially in between big updates or near smaller ones.
What I don’t get though is why those monthly updates aren’t released on a fixed date. This way everyone would know when to expect them.
This update feels kind of weird to me, as it is very late (11 days in) and therefor I was expecting news of some sort. But this could have been written at any time really.
A bit off-topic but still related to announcements / communication, was a winner ever announced for this? Win 1 of 5 Limited Edition Black & Gold Quad Cortex - Neural DSP
Last and completely off-topic, as a bass player, staff picks is kind of underwhelming. 30 picks so far, 0 for bass. Come on!
So… 2 months of no news? They make this big fuss about plini X… and the thing isn’t even out on the QC yet. I’ve heard that other modelers receive much more frequent updates and engagement, this is dissappointing.
Personally I’m happy to have the monthly update, even when the update is “no news yet”. Hardly surprising at this time of year when a lot of people tend to take annual leave.
I can understand why they can’t offer more transparency, the 10/90 rule applies to every software project. If we have something ready to go by spring time then NDSP will no doubt have been flat out to achieve that.
Plug-in support on QC is a key - yet, particularly ambitious - part of the product strategy. 2023 brought several important updates, but I think 2024 is going to be a big year for the company and I can’t wait for this to land!
I see, that it can be difficult to decide what to announce in a monthly update. But:
- Unique selling points have already been announced to be released at the end of 2020.
Despite our best efforts, running your Neural DSP plugins is not going to be a feature available for v1.0. We spent more time polishing the UI, modeling amps, improving usability and fixing bugs. However, this feature will be made available very soon after launch through a free update. We expect this to be available before the end of the year (2020).
Cortex Desktop isn’t going to make it for launch. We made the decision that releasing Quad Cortex so that people can play it is the most important thing. Delaying QC so that we could ship it with the desktop controller was out of the question, and we felt most/all users would prefer us to release sooner with the desktop controller to follow soon after.
See Quad Cortex Development Update #11 - Neural DSP
The latter one finally has been released as beta version, and I really love the result!!
But I assume, that it’s way more difficult to implement plugin compatibility.
-
During that period, 11 Software plugins have been released. (one of them today: https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/morgan-amps-suite)
I totally can understand, that plugins bring the revenue needed for hardware development. Nevertheless I think it is time to shift efforts in order to fulfill a longterm promise. -
The problem of miscommunication has already been addressed to NDSP.
My two cents are (sorry for repeating myself) the wish for a realistic and openly communicated timeline that doesn’t put the developers team too much under pressure and still guarantees good quality and a result.
E.g. development updates like:
- We have found 39 new bugs
- fixed 29 since our last update and
- have a total of 49 bugs left,
- from which 10 are major bugs.
- We assume that
- a roll out to beta testers can start in approximately 2 months for plugin compatibilty and
- Cortex Control can be released in about 1 month.
Instead of
Our development teams are continuing to progress Cortex Control and plugin compatibility.
which can mean anything from one month to another three years.
Gathering all those stats to share, which only invite more questions–
“10 major bugs? Which ones are those?”
“When will that get fixed?”
“Why aren’t you gonna solve the one niche problem that I have?”
“You said beta testing is starting in approximately 2 months–so which day is that, exactly?”
On the developers’ end, what a waste of time it is to have to turn around constantly and answer every nitpicking detailed question.
We know that QC development and plug-in development are two different teams. A lot of people have the assumption, “Well, just take people from the plug-in team and put them on QC, and everything will get done faster.” It’s not that simple.
… well, we’ve had the very same discussion about one year ago. (you might remeber )
How would you develop software in a team without any classification of tasks?
… maybe one developer is focussing on the perfect graphical design of an user interface for months, whilst others deal with smoking hardware.
… and I assume, that the marketing team also asks for dates.
Without any figures on the progress, any announcement would rely upon a feeling.
… I hope it’s “more than a feeling” 
But you’re right, that developers for VST plugins have a different skillset than those for embedded software. Still they need to interact and maybe some are also able to help out the others.
That’s a facet of their job, though. It’s also clearly not a constant.
God forbid there’s a back and forth between users and devs to help improve their units. We can’t have that now, can we?
There’s a massive difference between a back and forth or user input (which this forum goes above and beyond giving) and having users micromanage developers.
Even my own manager doesn’t look into my work as much as you seem to want to check up on the Neural Devs.
Almost any other company in the world gives users zero input on development progress (you ever seen progress reports from Amazon? Tesla? Sony? Microsoft?). Just be grateful that Neural take on board feature requests from here and other feedback. Obviously it’s in their best interest, but remember they are under absolutely no obligation to do so.
These threads are always the same with pointers out and the Neural defenders. I don’t buy the excuse of them having separate teams and why should we care? It’s the same company (which isn’t that big btw). Overall they’re slow and they always will be. You either accept that or you don’t but after 4 years it ain’t changing. Do I like the quad? Yes. Would I buy it again given how long things have taken? No.
I don’t want to reopen the discussion that we’ve had one year ago.
To put it short:
Within the last year, communication has improved a lot, in my opinion! Only that this certain development update (#43) appears like going back to square one.
I simply want to prevent, going back there and being left in the dark about those two (to me important) promises (Desktop app and Plugin integration), that made me buy this device two and a half years ago.
After that period of time, it seems reasonable for me to ask for a bit more information on the progress than a “soon”, even if I am quite happy with all the good ideas they have, aswell as with the firmware development and the device in general.