Quad Cortex (A Love Story) Round 2

[FuzzyAce]

Boss/Roland nearly "hit it out the park"

That could be their slogan with most stuff.

 

[metropolis_4]

That could be their slogan with most stuff.

We nearly hit it out of the park!
But we screwed up just enough to piss you off

 

[northern_fox]

I would be curious to hear the FM9 A/B'd with the Quad cortex. Strength weaknesses ect

What is the basic difference in the approach of the Fractal versus the Cortext?

My take as an owner of both:

FAS tones are more "perfect", sometimes to the point of feeling overly precise and lacking the weirdness/rawness of real amps but gives you a lot more control over the sound and most importantly (IMO) addresses the poweramp/cab relationship in a way none of the other platforms do.

QC/captured tones are more imperfect, representing more "what this particular amp sounds like" and less what an ideal version of it sounds like. With stuff like the QC, some of the details can be smudged over a little and I think the low end isn't quite right, but in general it also feels very raw and lifelike if you're using it correctly. You're at the mercy of the reactive loads and signal chains used to capture equipment, and it's easy to do this poorly if you don't really understand it, so you'll find a lot more "meh" tones out there but also some really great ones. I tend to prefer capturing my own stuff because I can confirm that it sounds like it should that way. I'd use it for live, but not studio because the likes of NAM exist which do a better and more useful job.

 

[FuzzyAce]

We nearly hit it out of the park!
But we screwed up just enough to piss you off

But you know, Boss is like that scrappy hitter you can count on to always get on base and keep you in the game.

 

[Whizzinby]

More random observations running it through its paces.

• It took me way longer than I’d like to admit to figure out how to change the revised amps to their legacy version. They for sure de-muddied the SLO with the new version. (The biggest miss with the launch amps IMO) More cut and less mud.
• Gate on the input. No need to waste a block on the gate anymore. This is good.
• I tried the global EQ (for science, and JT) and I didn’t see the CPU monitor spike at all. Did they update it since 2.0? I was expecting the 10-15% spike but it didn’t move at all once engaged.

 

[Whizzinby]

This little gem still lives…

 

[northern_fox]

More random observations running it through its paces.

• It took me way longer than I’d like to admit to figure out how to change the revised amps to their legacy version. They for sure de-muddied the SLO with the new version. (The biggest miss with the launch amps IMO) More cut and less mud.
• Gate on the input. No need to waste a block on the gate anymore. This is good.
• I tried the global EQ (for science, and JT) and I didn’t see the CPU monitor spike at all. Did they update it since 2.0? I was expecting the 10-15% spike but it didn’t move at all once engaged.

You need that much CPU to spare, but I guess maybe it doesn't show up as using that?

 

[Whizzinby]

You need that much CPU to spare, but I guess maybe it doesn't show up as using that?

Ahh. I was expecting it to show on the CPU meter.

 

[Whizzinby]

I was expecting Aborted Hotub Haiku to be terrible as some meme preset I threw together, but it actually slaps!

 

[GTR37]

This little gem still lives…

View attachment 10560

You know you have made it when a preset references your hotub escapades

 

[laxu]

You can probably still find my Bogner Goldfinger 45 SL and Victory VC35 captures in the cloud under this same username. Give them a spin and tell me what you think!

Back when I had the FM3 and QC when it was released, I felt that for amps and effects it was a very varied experience. Some could sound very similar, others needed massively different settings to match the reference tone I had on FM3. Some of the fx were just not that great compared to Helix and FM3. I hope they've improved them since.

The SLO model was the worst offender though. Could not get it to sound good no matter what. So good that they revamped the model.

 

[GTR37]

You can probably still find my Bogner Goldfinger 45 SL and Victory VC35 captures in the cloud under this same username. Give them a spin and tell me what you think!

Back when I had the FM3 and QC when it was released, I felt that for amps and effects it was a very varied experience. Some could sound very similar, others needed massively different settings to match the reference tone I had on FM3. Some of the fx were just not that great compared to Helix and FM3. I hope they've improved them since.

The SLO model was the worst offender though. Could not get it to sound good no matter what. So good that they revamped the model.

I agree I think they kind of realized that when people compared them side by side to the plug in and went WTF ? So good that one got revamped
I always felt they did a great job on the EL34 amps the Freidman
JCM800 , Jubilee
It’s was the higher gain 6l6 models like Recto / SLO that were pretty bad at launch

@Whizzinby did yours come with a quiet power supply this time no ground hum?

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I’ve only used my mates QC briefly a few times but I always found the models much better than the captures. Neural’s “models” are more like captured anyway, you can just dial them in.

A couple were a little weird but for the most part they sounded and behaved as they should. Rectifier needed a really low MV setting but that’s quite typical for that amp.

I need to go back to the Fractal SLO again, that one always felt a bit different to me from other emulations of it

 

[Whizzinby]

You can probably still find my Bogner Goldfinger 45 SL and Victory VC35 captures in the cloud under this same username. Give them a spin and tell me what you think!

Nice. Got them queued up in the app.

 

[Whizzinby]

@Whizzinby did yours come with a quiet power supply this time no ground hum?

Looks like the same power supply. Haven’t noticed any noise, but I have it connected to other equip. I’ll try it with headphones only in the next day or so.

 

[mikah912]

More random observations running it through its paces.

• It took me way longer than I’d like to admit to figure out how to change the revised amps to their legacy version. They for sure de-muddied the SLO with the new version. (The biggest miss with the launch amps IMO) More cut and less mud.

You confused me when you said you tried to change the revised amps to their legacy version. Aren't the revised amp models (Diezel VH4, SLO and 5153 EL34) supposedly better? (Especially the SLO). Why on earth would you want to revert?

 

[Whizzinby]

You confused me when you said you tried to change the revised amps to their legacy version. Aren't the revised amp models (Diezel VH4, SLO and 5153 EL34) supposedly better? (Especially the SLO). Why on earth would you want to revert?

To A/B. I wanted to hear the differences between the original model and the revised.

I haven’t tried the other amps they revised yet, but the SLO was top of mind given it is one of my favorite amps. (And was one of the more glaring launch misses)

They all default to the revised versions, but you can toggle them to the legacy versions if you want.

 

[texhex]

My take as an owner of both:

FAS tones are more "perfect", sometimes to the point of feeling overly precise and lacking the weirdness/rawness of real amps but gives you a lot more control over the sound and most importantly (IMO) addresses the poweramp/cab relationship in a way none of the other platforms do.

QC/captured tones are more imperfect, representing more "what this particular amp sounds like" and less what an ideal version of it sounds like. With stuff like the QC, some of the details can be smudged over a little and I think the low end isn't quite right, but in general it also feels very raw and lifelike if you're using it correctly. You're at the mercy of the reactive loads and signal chains used to capture equipment, and it's easy to do this poorly if you don't really understand it, so you'll find a lot more "meh" tones out there but also some really great ones. I tend to prefer capturing my own stuff because I can confirm that it sounds like it should that way. I'd use it for live, but not studio because the likes of NAM exist which do a better and more useful job.

You totally nailed it! And this is 100% my experience with FAS vs. Kemper. I'd assume it's the same for QC.

 

[cragginshred]

My take as an owner of both:

FAS tones are more "perfect", sometimes to the point of feeling overly precise and lacking the weirdness/rawness of real amps but gives you a lot more control over the sound and most importantly (IMO) addresses the poweramp/cab relationship in a way none of the other platforms do.

QC/captured tones are more imperfect, representing more "what this particular amp sounds like" and less what an ideal version of it sounds like. With stuff like the QC, some of the details can be smudged over a little and I think the low end isn't quite right, but in general it also feels very raw and lifelike if you're using it correctly. You're at the mercy of the reactive loads and signal chains used to capture equipment, and it's easy to do this poorly if you don't really understand it, so you'll find a lot more "meh" tones out there but also some really great ones. I tend to prefer capturing my own stuff because I can confirm that it sounds like it should that way. I'd use it for live, but not studio because the likes of NAM exist which do a better and more useful job.

Great post! I feel that sometimes real amps can be a pain.
My biggest issue with fractal and any modeler is lower gain tones are really tough to dial in. Crunch rock type tones get thin fast when I dial back gain. I bring that up in the FAS forums and people act like I'm crazy

 

[mikah912]

Great post! I feel that sometimes real amps can be a pain.
My biggest issue with fractal and any modeler is lower gain tones are really tough to dial in. Crunch rock type tones get thin fast when I dial back gain. I bring that up in the FAS forums and people act like I'm crazy

Granted, I spend most of my time in mid-to-high gain, but I find crunch rock/low-to-mid gain tones a breeze on Fractal. In fact, I only ever use one preset for that stuff - a factory one that runs several Plexi variants in parallel with several AC30 variants. Very responsive to my volume knob, and it never gets thin - only chimier.