Quad Cortex Mini / CorOS 4.0.0

Quad Cortex
43

Putting on the electrical engineer hat, apologies in advance:

@MP_Mod This watt meter measures A.C. from the wall, not D.C. It can tell you Volts RMS and Amps RMS going through the wall to the power supply, but those values are not the same as D.C.

The best way to measure D.C. is to cut one side of the wire from the power supply to the device and insert a multimeter, as @InGainWeTrust has done. Somebody here will wind up doing it for the Mini; it would be the most useful to try it with the most amount of blocks activated, I/O plugged in, and at the highest screen brightness.

@citadel777 The QC was originally rated at 12VDC 3A but through lots of collective testing, everyone discovered it actually needed 1.8 to maybe 2.0 amps max. Neural later confirmed this. The Mini is rated at 1.2 amps, which is a significant 600 mA drop, but there’s no way the ESS codec accounts for all of that. Power consumption for those devices is very small.

@kimborg Not a good idea to run your power supply at maximum all the time. Once people figured out the QC actually needed about 1.8A, it became common to run 4 outputs on their Cioks DC7 units to get a combined 2A max. But… I have heard stories of people burning out their $250+ power supplies this way.

The danger would be to find out that the Mini [hypothetically] draws 1A, and then deciding to run 2 parallel outputs at 500 mA each, which is the maximum. If the Mini is rated for 1.2A, I would still aim for a power supply that can reach above that so it stays cool, even if the realistic current draw from the Mini is less. In engineering terms, this is called derating–giving your hardware some operating margin so there’s less risk of failure.

Maybe run 3 parallel outputs on the Cioks DC7 for a combined 1.5A available. One less parallel output needed is still a win.

And for everyone, I’ve mentioned several times in this forum that there are much cheaper ways to power a QC than paying through the nose for a Cioks setup. DM me if you want some links.

4 Likes
44

Ah, thanks for the clarification @DiffractionCircuit :slightly_smiling_face:

45

@DiffractionCircuit thanks for covering a lot of good points, especially about that watt meter showing the AC draw not DC. That’s why my method is valid, as the multimeter is inserted into the circuit between the transformer and the QC, thus measuring DC current.

With respect to your suggestion of maintaining the draw below max output, I agree. Now, both the CIOKS DC7 4-output merge (or using the Crux) and my VooDoo Lab PP3+ X-Link provide 2.0A of current so what follows applies to both. For 99% of the time the QC draws 1.4A or less, based on my pretty extensive testing. Only the boot sequence seems to draw more, in my testing it maxed out at 1.76A but let’s call it 1.8A. At that current load, it is still only using 90% of the available current for the minute or so that it takes the QC to boot. After that, I have not seen it use more than 70% of the 2.0A available in any of my healthy set of test scenarios. So I feel very comfortable powering the QC with 2.0A. I wish I had a QC Mini to perform current draw testing on, but I’m not really expecting to buy one, the original fits my needs just fine.

PSA in case anyone is looking for that extra cushion of current when setting up a board power supply for the QC or Mini, Trutone 1Spot has come out with the CS11 PS which has a dedicated 2.5A output that is stated for use only to power their XP5 or XP8 expansion boxes but that is probably because it is center positive polarity, as are the expansion boxes. If you used a reverse polarity cable, I would think it would work fine to power the QC or Mini. BUT I would check directly with Trutone on that, as I have no experience whatsoever with the CS11 PS.

image
image562×362 28.8 KB

3 Likes
46

Good call. Thanks for the clarification.

47

Run the QC and QC Mini with this and a PD Power Bank … or with a PD USB phone charger … :slight_smile:

2 Likes
48

Got mine yesterday. Was using tonex for a long time and was disappointed with the nano cortex.

The QC mini is crazy good. Soundwise is on par as the tonex, but the I/O, routing, FX is crazy good ! I’m able to play with my band (2 guitars, 1 bass) on 1 unit which just blow my mind.
I have no regrets at all, it’s a crazy good piece of gear and I’m so glad neuralDSP downsize the original QC !

4 Likes
49

My main complaint with Tonex is the awful noise gate… software has improved but is still pretty cumbersome.

QC and NC have a much better noise gate. It was night and day difference. The FX (in general) is also much better. I also found the overall sound quality to be superior. Not sure if this is a SNR thing, or something else.

2 Likes
51

Here’s my set. PD charger, PD tester, PD trigger cable(12V), really cheap.
A decent tester is better for sure.

(Reuploaded the photo

image
image611×394 124 KB

2 Likes
52

The amperage value my jump higher than that during bootup. Would you mind checking that?

1 Like
53

QC(2021) with CorOS3.x : 24W(12V2.0A) boot, 18W(12V1.5A) stable

QC(2025) with CorOS4.0 : 12-13W(12V1.0A) both in boot and stable

Don’t know whether the unit or CorOS improved. I thought my QC(2025) is with old ESS…why??

54

You mean cirrus logic? ESS is the newer DAC chipset. You can check this by going to I/O Settings and observing if input 1 (or 2) has a ‘‘Type” switch. If so, it’s the cirrus logic (older) DAC chip.

I would be keen to see which variant you have. Thank you!

55

interesting, I have a 2025 QC with the cirrus chip and my QC gets maximum hand warm but most of the time colder than my hand. My presets are using around 37% DSP or less and my screen brightness is at 1, because I use it only at home.

The only hardware difference that I see between the old and new pre august 2025 QC is that the old one has adsp-sc589 sharc processors and the new pre ESS like mine has adsp-sc587 processors. don’t know if that makes any difference in powerdraw because both are rated for <2 watt per processor.

56

Interesting. Does the 2025 variant have the adsp-sc587 ?

According to the datasheet, the cores run at 450mhz, not 500mhz like the sc589 variant.

  • 450 MHz ARM Cortex-A5 (with Neon/FPU)

    versus

  • 500 MHz ARM Cortex-A5 (with Neon/FPU)

See, links below

https://www.analog.com/en/products/adsp-sc587.html

https://www.analog.com/en/products/adsp-sc589.html

1 Like
57

that’s correct. the SHARC dualcore are running on both with 500MHz. only difference is between the arm a5.

58

What’s weird is that one cpu spec says 450mhz, not 500mhz (see links above), when you actually read further down to the core specs. There could be a 50Mhz difference between the two.

edit: Ok got it..the Sharc+ cores run at 500Mhz for both, however, the arm cortex A5 cores run at different speeds, with the ADSP-SC587 running @ 450Mhz, while the ADSP-SC589 runs at 500Mhz. So there is a processing speed difference

Does the newer variant have the slower ADSP-SC587 ?

If so, this could be running cooler and with less power, also.

1 Like
59

I actually searched for tear down pictures of the quad cortex and see on the very first units, that where shown on neural dsp website, before the release had the SC589. Another unit with old pcb made the 16th week of 2022 has SC587. another quad cortex made the 17th week of 2022 has the SC589. my quad cortex SHARC is made 10th week of 2025 and is SC587.

1 Like
60

Hmm, so ralatively low performance chip makes differnce of the current.

My QC(2025) has the type SW in the I/O control, so it should be a cirrus logic (older).

1 Like
61

correct. my quad cortex is 2025 and has the type as well, so cirrus logic.

Can you check looking through the bottom vents, which SHARC cores are on your quad cortex?

62

Checked and found SC587, that makes sense.

I swear I looked through the vent! :laughing:

1 Like
63

I’m pretty sure that you can run the SC589 at 450 or 500MHz. And I would be surprised if NDSP changed the clock speed.