The original list of fx, models, and features were revised before initial pre orders shipped out. NDSP offered a full refund after the revision. If I remember correctly, they were all out of office and in lockdown (covid protocols in Finland were tight) and they had a lengthy gap in development. Many of the models on the QC were on loan from other artists/ companies. They had to go back before the models were made.
Iâd rather they work on the existing captures they have. And make it really as great as it can be. I donât use the plug ins and I just donât care about them.
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So what you are saying is that before it was even released to the public they have been working on it. Which would mean they have been working on it for 5 years. And if they actually figured it out why arent all of the plugins ported if they now know how to do it. The fact is you read the TGP thread and are making assumptions. None of us really know what is going on behind the scenes and what they had planned or what they plan to do in the future. And thats the thing, Dont say you can do something without knowing if you can. And the plugins need to be broken down into blocks for the quad so you can separate and combine individual blocks and devices on the unit that arent plugin related. Imagine if you opened up a plugin on your quad and it was just like the desktop and you could only use each plugin as a standalone on the quad. Breaking it down into individual blocks was forsight knowing people are going to want to mix and match sounds to create unique signal chains.
Iâm not sure youâre grasping what Iâm saying-
When the QC was first announced before NAMM, there was no mention of it running plugins. Iâve already supplied several sources of this via ads from 2 different websites, plus interviews that took place at that NAMM.
It was after it was first announced, during the pre-order phase, that the idea of running plugins in on it came to be, before they were shipping the unit.
If reading Dougâs own posts on TGP is âmaking assumptionsââŚ.I dunno what to tell ya, man. Youâre free to go look them up yourself. You will not see any mention of plugins, or effects blocks made from the plugins, in any post for at least the first 50+ pages of the main QC thread there that was started on Jan 7th or 8th. The first mention of it I saw was when Doug said they can add Parallaxe by default (post #1106 on page 56 of the main QC thread), after they did the first live Q&A.
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Just saying, it was a thing very early on with the QC. Well before people would have ordered. It wasnât just a random thing after it was released or something. Regardless of covid, etc. It was in the advertised plans for quite a while.
well said. Have bass players received any love since the QC was released?
I think the talk about whether PCOM was promised or not as a feature is missing the point. There were pages of things promised for the QC - amp models, more FX devices, etc etc. None of these came to fruition. Why should PCOM - which again just a subset of the userbase will take full advantage of (I personally refuse to buy DLC for a ÂŁ1500 device) be the one promise that MUST be kept at any cost? How about they implement that page of many other features they promised which they removed from the website since? Or how about they implement some of the most-voted features that would benefit EVERYONE much more, like a multiband compressor? Right now the only way to achieve that is with a crossover splitter where you put a compression block in one of the paths - which takes up the entire!! chain for that row.
Who does PCOM benefit the most anyways? Anyone who has plugins before buying a QC obviously already has an audio interface and can simply using the plugins as they did before, from their computer. To me this seems to mostly benefit people who are gigging and would want to use the plugins - that is an extremely small minority of the QC users.
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Itâs because it not pay walled. When you buy a plugin, you get a plugin. Not just added blocks on the QC. The added benefit is (if itâs ported) you can use the blocks on the quad cortex. Thatâs an optional feature, not a pay wall. We have gotten additions to the QC out side of pcom and there are more devices included on the QC than there are pcom blocks. Updates will always be free. Pcom is an additional feature.
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I respectfully disagree and think the above doesnât adequately take into account how this actually manifests in real time. If the only way to get access to certain effects, is to buy a plugin, that appears to me like a paywall. Particularly if they are popularly requested pedals, premium pedals, or ones that commonly exist without an additional purchase on other devices/platforms.
âUpdates will always be freeâ, rings a bit hollow when they are few and far between, and they leave out premium options unless purchased. It is one thing to charge extra for additional custom cabinets, IRs, or presets. I feel differently when effects, functionality, or to some extent even amps, start requiring an additional purchase. To me that is a paywall. It is certainly Neuralâs prerogative to pursue that sales model, but we donât have to sugarcoat it, and it doesnât fully comport with the spirit of their promise that there would be little or no paywall, as stated by one of their previous posts.
I do understand their conundrum though and how it impacts the development cycle. To me it cuts to the core of the fundamental problem/challenge of a PCOM sales model. A model which I believe is inherently paywalled unless PCOM is limited to just providing Neural designed presets. Where exactly do users and Neural draw the line between what should be part of a free firmware update and what should be a paid âoptionâ? Definitely differing opinions on this.
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I agree with @DiffractionCircuit about the plugin tones on the QC. As good as the QC models and captures are, I think that the 3 plugins that I own and use all the time (Rabea X, Henson X, Plini X) are all amazing and superior to a lot of whatâs built into the QC. The Plini X plugin preset on the QC sounds fantastic and I am anxiously awaiting the Rabea and Henson PCOMs. Canât wait to see how the synth and multivoicer work on the QC. And yeah, I donât expect these tomorrow, I donât love the long development times but it is what it is.
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I agree : overall there are more ânon-pcomâ devices than âpcomâ devices on the QC.
Partly because only 4 plugins have been ported, partly because some pcom block are in fact âmultiple devicesâ (take the Plini Overdrive : it can switch from âODâ to Fuzzâ , and the Soldano 100 Block is in fact 3 channels âŚ) so, simply counting the number of block is not really relevant nor useful imho.
What is more interesting (and connected to my point) is that if you take a look at this official list : Quad Cortex device list - Neural DSP and filter the list to only keep â3.0â or â3.1â , and count the number of blocks we can clearly see a pattern (and again, not taking into account that a single pcom block could be seen as multiple block if we want to be fair, and that some 3.0/3.1 non pcom blocks were simple variation of existing blocks)
Everyone can draw their own conclusions based entirely on publicly accessible facts, not on vague promises or marketing sentences like âupdates will always be freeâ (which doesnât means anything, they could do free updates with only one free block, and it would technically be a âfree updateâ) .
I own a QC since December 2021, and bought a fair number of plugins, but when I bought the QC the main motivation was (for me) the form factor, the sound, the âagressive update planâ and âever expanding devicesâ.
At that time, I saw Plugin Compatibility as an âadded bonusâ, but not the main point. (at that time I only owned Petrucci)
Because Ndsp did not anticipate that porting plugins to the QC would be such a huge task is not relevant from my âcustomer perspectiveâ , I paid 1870⏠for my QC knowing its limitations at that time, but with the promise that it would âquickly and freelyâ evolve over time.
And it has: i saw 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 updates adding a lot of cool devices ! Then came 2.0, which was delayed for various reasons (supply chain, covidâŚ) but was huge and 2.1 a good update, but they began to seriously slow down the update pace, and since 3.0 the focus is clearly Pcom.
Even NDSP acknowledged the âlack of amp/device for everyoneâ in 3.0 (i remember a sentence like âthe team is acutely aware of the lack of new amp/deviceâ). 3.1 was marginally better with only one remastered amp and one ânewâ amp , the Cicular Delay is cool, and the other devices may find their way for some people, but we are still waiting for the âAnnounced devices that have not yet been releasedâ list to be implementedâŚ
The anger / bitterness feeled by many qc owner is not a feeling that comes out of nowhere, it is the result of setting high expectations (explicitly or implicitely) and not delivery (enough) to fullfill those expectationsâŚ
Take the Fransisco Cresp YouTube interview in August 2024 : he said that a Synth block would be coming on the QC âin a month , a month and a half (donât quote me on that)â (have a look at Doug Castroâs face when Fransisco said this sentence, it means a lot.) https://youtu.be/3Vii8WNNXvE?t=1678 , either he is completly disconnected from the dev reality, or he said that lighly in order to "do the buzz and sell more QCâ. In the end, it only stirs up feelings of abandonmentâŚ
I still love my QC , I play it nearly everyday, never had any problem with it, but the competition is lurking and I can assume that NDSP is really aware of it.
I hope that 3.2 will bring a lot for everyone , not only for pcom owners, because if 3.2 only add a metronome and two/three blocks, it would be a suicide move from ndsp at that point.
To conclude this (long) post, I should add that my sentence about âpaywalled devicesâ came from the fact that I was so disappointed by the lack of content in 3.0 and 3.1 that I bought (50% off) âPliniâ , âSoldanoâ and âCory Wongâ, and used my â3.0 giftâ for âNollyâ in order to add something new to my QC.
I never use the plugins on my PC. In retrospect, I feel that I shouldnât have bought those plugins, because it only screams to NDSP : âcontinue with PCOM, take my money, and more moneyâ.
Thatâs my bad. Lesson earned. Next modeler will be from a company that doesn treat their customers as cash cow while gaslighting them with sentences like âthere will always be free updatesâ while only adding one or two really useful blocks for the majority, along with some âmore nicheâ blocks, one or two remastered amps and call it a day, neglecting very basic and long awaited requests.
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Maybe itâs just me, but when I was originally hearing about plugin compatibility, I NEVER thought that it would be done on a plugin by plugin basis. I thought that NDSP would work on a general capability that would allow you to load ANY of their plugins onto your QC. I understand that a generic capability like that is an insanely complicated undertaking but that is how I looked at it at the time. This slow drip of PCOM releases could literally take another 5 years to fully complete, nevermind what new plugins are released in the interim. Like everyone else whoâs waiting on some plugin(s) PCOM, I hope the MY plugins are the next ones to be released.
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Maybe just move on?
If youâre not happy, then go with something else.
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Agreed. I feel like this thread has run its course. Iâll be locking the comments on this thread
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