Neural DSP - Cortex Control beta, CorOS 2.2 released
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Mongillo19
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It's been multiple hours on a workday. Where is the definitive review????
TheTrueZoltan!
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Mongillo19
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In all seriousness I hope everything is ok
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30 second review: XLR outs only, 1/4" ins at the board - *&$#^!
60 second review: I am not going to be able to reprogram every preset I want to hear via the Output 2 pair using the on-device UI.
3 minute review: Install USB and audio drivers, and the FM3 Edit program. I feel like it's 2005 again, but... it was easy and everything works well. Found a global setting to duplicate the Output 1 pair to the Output 2 pair, huzzah.
5 minute review: This thing sounds killer. Much wider variety of effects than on QC, breaking the amps in deep edit mode is a fun novelty, I still much prefer the feature set and workflow on the QC, but this is probably not an entirely fair comparison. (FM9 would be a better comparison, although the FM9 is OMG enormous.) Most importantly, this is about 5 minutes in; I haven't even scratched the surface. Probably won't have anything genuinely insightful to say for about 5 weeks...
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"Probably won't have anything genuinely insightful to say for about 5 weeks..."‘How about the 21 hours review?
5 hours later: "Not that that's ever stopped me."
Seriously, though, it's kind of a lot of homework taking on a new modeling platform and trying to decide how it stacks up to what you're already using. So far I've only heard the FM3 through my massive high fi speakers (and a pair of Salnotes Zeros.) These sound great, but they certainly don't sound accurate. I'm just now getting things wired up so that I can A/B between QC and FM3, and then at some point I should really move both to the mixer with studio monitors attached. And then there's the inevitable 4cm death match(es) with a couple of different guitar cabs.
So far, just spinning through presets and scenes, checking out block functionality that might pertain to my weirdo guitar synth setups, etc. (and these are just gut reactions):
The amps sound great. There's a potential honeymoon factor here, but my sense is that latency is somehow lower?? This can't be, because Leo what's his name says they're the same
and everybody else says it's impossible to hear a difference anyway. But I feel like I'm playing faster/more effortlessly on the FM3. That, of course, is about as anecdotal as it gets. I'm booting up the QC right now to A/B amp models and captures; I expect it to be close. I definitely like the FM3 amps better than I can ever recall liking HX amps. Important to note here that I've heard very few of these amps "in the flesh", so distinguishing one from the next and commenting on authenticity is above my paygrade. The variety is almost wasted on me if I'm being honest. But they sound good, so... The effects are a lot more versatile (ducking on all the delays and reverbs is a big plus, for instance). The synth block is great - smooth and fast.
I/O is, as one would expect, pretty gimpy compared to the QC. QC is pretty much identical to Helix Floor in this regard. FM3 has no Send/Return/FX Loop blocks per se, just Input 1/2 and Output 1/2, and then you play with global settings in ways that are fairly limited. There's probably a workaround for whatever you need here, but I like the workflow on QC better.
So far the UI is fine, for the extremely basic stuff I'm doing. Probably only a matter of time before it makes me crazy LOL. I certainly prefer QC in this regard (over everything I've tried to date.)
My thinking when I bought this was, "Oh god now I own QC, HX, and Fractal (and I'm barely even a guitarist anymore.) I'll choose the two that best suit my needs, and sell one just to be reasonable." If I had to hazard a very early guess: the QC is going to stay because it offers the most utility (and captures for good measure); the FM3 will probably replace my HX Stomp. (I lent my Helix Floor to a close friend and don't expect to see that again any time soon LOL.)
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Much as I love Digital Igloo and my Helix, I feel that both Fractal and Neural DSP have better factory presets at this point.
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Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by the QC presets, but they're mostly too dry for my tastes. Maybe in part because the effects were so mediocre at launch, or maybe because the target audience plays so loud that actual room acoustics compensate.
But OMG these Fractal presets are just gorgeous top to bottom. I'm just spinning the preset and scene wheels and shredding; don't know if I'll ever want to stop.
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Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by the QC presets, but they're mostly too dry for my tastes. Maybe in part because the effects were so mediocre at launch, or maybe because the target audience plays so loud that actual room acoustics compensate.
But OMG these Fractal presets are just gorgeous top to bottom. I'm just spinning the preset and scene wheels and shredding; don't know if I'll ever want to stop.
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by the QC presets, but they're mostly too dry for my tastes. Maybe in part because the effects were so mediocre at launch, or maybe because the target audience plays so loud that actual room acoustics compensate.
But OMG these Fractal presets are just gorgeous top to bottom. I'm just spinning the preset and scene wheels and shredding; don't know if I'll ever want to stop.
They only get more exotic and atmospheric as you go. At some point, tho, force yourself to stop and roll your own. Much better and efficient way to have a template to audition amps/cabs/fx.
Let's hope you won't begin to neglect your QC...Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by the QC presets, but they're mostly too dry for my tastes. Maybe in part because the effects were so mediocre at launch, or maybe because the target audience plays so loud that actual room acoustics compensate.
But OMG these Fractal presets are just gorgeous top to bottom. I'm just spinning the preset and scene wheels and shredding; don't know if I'll ever want to stop.
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I expect I'll be getting a lot of that LOL. I'm only just now starting to appreciate how incredible this thing sounds/ feels. Yesterday was more like, "OK, also good..."
Today is like... is "phwoar" still a thing? Am I using it properly?
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Not likely. I still really love the QC, and one of my projects will be to set the two units up in parallel and see whether a) the amp models are objectively all that different, and b) whether I can squeeze the QC effects and get them sounding more like these FM3 presets. Either way, the QC is still an incredible balance of features, I/O, and form factor. That stuff still matters to me.
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Gave this a bit more thought, and even R'dTFM. It is a bit of an Achilles' Heel after all. I no longer believe there's "a workaround for whatever I need here", unfortunately. And I suspect it needn't be this way.
The fundamental problem is that there are only 2 differentiated Input blocks and 2 differentiated Output blocks, even though the analog + USB I/O comprises more than that. What Fractal does is essentially overload these I/O blocks, by globally changing or mirroring their functionality. For instance, if I want to send audio to USB, it has to be USB3/4, and it can only be a dry input signal, or whatever's routed to the Output 2 block. The latter sounds reasonably flexible, until you consider that we've just used the Output 2 block. So effectively, I no longer have a physical FX loop, or an extra output to use for a guitar cab tap, or whatever. There are similar issues if I want to monitor audio from USB: the only way to get audio back onto the Grid for further processing (with these amazing Fractal effects
) is to steal the Input 1 block. It would be so much more powerful if there were just generic Input and Output blocks that allowed you to select whatever I/O was actually available, i.e. from the physical inputs and outputs and the USB channels.The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that this is all dictated by global settings. I can't pick my battles in one preset that's going to run a synth via USB and then choose another preset that needs the FX loop. It's all or nothing. The USB routing was clearly designed as an afterthought to facilitate DAW integration and reamping. There's a lot of room for improvement here.
I took a look at the FM9 manual, and things are somewhat improved on account of an extra input and SPDIF, but it's mostly the same deal.
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Mongillo19
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Please tell me you aren't moving the III already 
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Please tell me you aren't moving the III already
