Neural DSP Quad Cortex Profiles

    I gotta say, I like these a lot better on the Kemper.

    On the Neural, the noise gate affects the playing feel, even turned to its lowest setting. Turn the gate off, and they are quite noisy. The high gain ones are awash in noise. Unusable for me.

    All of that noise disappears once profiled on the Kemper.

    Quote from Chris Duncan

    I absolutely love the irony of this.

    Well said, Sir!


    ...well, I guess the only thing that remains now is for someone to grab the eBow and start laying down some guitar tracks directly to multitrack tape, through an emulating mic into a modeling preamp, then sample and loop those to the pads on an Akai MPC, create some really sick beats and record those live into ProTools, then import the resulting tracks as samples into a mellotron plugin, rerecord everything by playing the mellotron, then groove quantize those tracks, upsample everything as high as it goes and then print to a 2-track analogue master tape machine through a summing mixer, slamming the VU meters so hard on the way that they turn into fishing hooks, and then pay a dude to press a small batch of custom acetates from that and slam them on a pair of Pioneer decks and... well... somehow convert whatever happens next into mpegs for release on YouTube, I guess...


    That's just irony, though. I honestly appreciate that the OP has given us this to try out, and I'm really curious to try these out! So, for the sake of utmost clarity: I'm not in any way trying to make fun of the OP here! Clear?


    Cheers,


    Bag

    I must apologize for intruding again, but something just occurred to me: Could this idea of profiling another capturing device potentially be the start of something completely new... if taken far enough, I mean?


    Are we, perhaps, on the verge of discovering a completely new type of lo fi here?


    It could also be that this idea is pure nonsense, but let's not get too serious, shall we?


    Here goes:

    What would happen if you just keep on profiling and capturing, going back and forth between the two platforms? How will the sound start to deteriorate? What will the amp sound like after, say, 20 or 30 rounds of "looping" like that? I would actually be really interested in hearing that!


    This is new. We simply haven't had two different devices that can do this before. Maybe the folks at Kemper and NeuralDSP have tried it at some point for shits and giggles, but the deliveries of the QC to regular customers have barely started at this point in time.


    My guess is that the inevitable digital artefacts eventually will start to sound quite different from other, more "traditional" forms of generational conversion loss, as we won't be hearing only the resolution loss and dithering noise from the repeated AD/DA conversion loops, but, in addition, the cumulative, possibly random interaction between the secret sauces and algorithms that power these two quite different capturing technologies... I also think it's quite possible that the core sound and character of the original amp may survive for longer than expected. But I know nothing, of course.


    One thing is sure - sooner or later it will start to sound different from the original amp.


    But will this flavour of different sound nice, like when bending 8bit circuits - or will it sound bad, like when cell phone signals hit the bridge pickup of a Stratocaster?


    The history of popular music is full of these sorts of happy accidents and unthinkable combinations that turned out to be epic in the end, right? The very sound of the rock guitar, as we all now, is the result of something conceptually very similar - abusing and pushing clean amps way over and beyond any and all of their designed limits, and THAT then suddenly starts to sound fantastic, right? How about badly maintained tape machines and flanging? Scratching vinyl, anyone? Bending circuits? Glitchy 12 bit sampling? And how about that lovely, screaming feedback that guitarists of the lead type so often turn to for effect when they get extra emotional during intense soloing work - there's even a pedal for that now, didn't you know? This scheme of breaking the rules has worked for us before, is all I'm sayin'


    If it turns out that this actually works and new, exciting sounds start forming at the inputs and outputs of our KPAs and QCs, then maybe it could be us guitarists - against all odds - that once more will be riding the cutting edge of digital audio sound trendsettery? Maybe our humble 50s Teles and 60s L'Pauls could once again be the magic wands that all chart topping soundmanglery eminates from? Could this, dare I ask, be the the new autotune - but this time around it can djent?!


    Of course, it could also sound f*****g awful.


    Someone with both boxes needs to try this, I think. And share. How about it, ur2funky - you up for it? Anyone else?


    Just putting it out there... late night over here... no harm intended.


    Carry on,


    Bag

    Baguette


    There has been a way to do this with a Kemper effect, ever since OS 1.1


    Rate Reducer
    This effect reduces the sampling rate of the audio signal passing through. The sampling frequency is controlled with the ‘Manual’ parameter. Lowering the sample rate results in a raspy, scratchy quality as well as aliasing. Use the ‘Peak’ parameter to continuously control the quality of the sample rate interpolation, which will alter the harmonic content drastically.

    Quote from paults

    Baguette


    There has been a way to do this with a Kemper effect, ever since OS 1.1


    Rate Reducer
    This effect reduces the sampling rate of the audio signal passing through. The sampling frequency is controlled with the ‘Manual’ parameter. Lowering the sample rate results in a raspy, scratchy quality as well as aliasing. Use the ‘Peak’ parameter to continuously control the quality of the sample rate interpolation, which will alter the harmonic content drastically.

    I know


    What I'm kinda hoping for someone (maybe the OP) to test, is a completely different thing, though.


    I guess I can see where you're coming from. If the Kemper and the QC were traditional samplers - which they most certainly aren't - then looping audio samples back and forth, over and over again between two samplers, would inevitable result in generational degradation of a type that the Rate Reducer partially can simulate. Even that isn't the same thing, though, but yeah - I get what you're saying.


    The process I propose has very little to do with trying to manipulate sampling frequencies, bit depths or aliasing errors per se. Sure, there may be some of that creeping in, too, as I already mentioned in my post, but the main point lies elsewhere. I'm curious about how the fundamental (?) differences between the algorithms and analysis of the two systems - as well as the inevitable imperfections or randomness of the respective processes - when "crashed" into each other repeatedly, would accumulate and warp the original amp tone and characteristics generationally, over time, and perhaps lead to useful results beyond what an amp normally can do?


    Remember that the raw material here are amps - not sound sources or audio samples. We would not be resampling audio over and over again. It's more about trying to find a new way to influence a multitude of (hidden) parameters by which any type of input audio - for example that of an electric guitar - gets shaped when fed through a device that after some serious mangling maybe can be pushed intp producing a behaviour that still resembles and feels a bit like a regular guitar amp, but now also has, perhaps, completely new characteristics not found in any real world amp. It would not be a basic, static effect that is slapped on top of the amp sound. Instead it could, perhaps, be another way of changing the amp behaviour itself - by using these devices in a particular, but technically "wrong" way. It's exploration - that''s all. It's probably complete nonsense, I know, but still...


    As I already mentioned in my previous post, the probability that it'll sound like s** is very high, of course. Kemper even warns us that profiling digital modelling amps sometimes can lead to unexpected artefacts. I fully expect artefacts from this process too, but as the QC seems to be a little bit like the Kemper - I'm thinking more complexity, dynamics and user induced process randomness here - , I started to wonder if maybe those artefacts sometimes could lead to something musical or musically useful, too? Of course, the starting point would likely influence the end result to an extreme degree in an iterative process like this - ie. if the original amp sound is distorted or not, for example, would matter a lot.


    I have no idea what sourcery is afoot inside the Kemper when it profiles. I do, however, have reason to believe that the makers of QC probably make use of deep neural network technologies for black box modelling of audio circuits in their device. Force-feeding real sourcery into a neural network training model, over and over again, sounds like a bit of weekend fun to me. I'm already married, of course...


    In conclusion, this is not a very serious proposal. I get that this is not what these devices are designed for, nor what they're bought for. I'm simply a bit curious, and I decided to put this out there - in a tongue in cheek spirit - in case someone with both devices would have the time and energy to maybe try it out?


    Okay - I'm done hijacking this thread now. My apologies to the OP. My excuse is that you kind of already started this process, in a way Also, you're the first person I've encountered that owns both boxes, and isn't a YouTuber Thank you for your contribution!


    Cheers,


    Bag

    Thank you so much for these profiles! I think they are really good individually.


    However, if you compare them to each other, they sound quite similar to me. More like different EQs based on one amp than real differences in dynamics, gain structure, saturation....etc.

    Quote from Veguero

    Thank you so much for these profiles! I think they are really good individually.


    However, if you compare them to each other, they sound quite similar to me. More like different EQs based on one amp than real differences in dynamics, gain structure, saturation....etc.

    They do sound nice, and some really usable tones.


    Many of the Cortex's presets, once profiled with the Kemper, i.e., the Reverb, Delay, and Modulations turned off for the profiling process, sounded nearly identical. So adding back a variety of effects and e.q. will give the tones a bit of variety.

    Quote from Theyetti1

    Agree cant wait to pull this up...

    PS are these the "presets" as you say or some with "Amp Matches" are applied??

    Sorry, I don't understand "Amp matches".


    I didn't try captures on the Cortex, since I'm finally in my happy space with the Kemper and I have sold off all my amps. I guess I could have tried capturing the Kemper into the Cortex, only to bring it back into the Kemper lol.


    These Cortex patches are shipped with the Neural. The only difference is reverb/delay/mod effects that don't get profiled in the Kemper, and some of the names have been slightly modified.

    Edited once, last by ur2funky ().

    I like the way you think! lol


    Unfortunately, I am short on time these days, working a new day job, I also have a vending business, I gig 3 nights a week, we're preparing to move, and my wife and dogs like some attention too


    And I sold/shipped off the Cortex yesterday. As mentioned, these Profiles sound basically identical to the Quad (other than effect settings), but feel much, much better 'under the fingers' on the Kemper.


    I do have two Kempers to profile back and forth lol...but I'm not motivated to try, sorry.

    Quote from ur2funky

    Sorry, I don't understand "Amp matches".


    I didn't try captures on the Cortex, since I'm finally in my happy space with the Kemper and I have sold off all my amps. I guess I could have tried capturing the Kemper into the Cortex, only to bring it back into the Kemper lol.


    These Cortex patches are shipped with the Neural. The only difference is reverb/delay/mod effects that don't get profiled in the Kemper, and some of the names have been slightly modified.

    No worries....My question was is was this just profiling the Quad Factory Presets as they were? Or is the presets in this including the Quads "Amp Captures?"

    Ok, so basically with preset settings sheets we could technically recreate the QC experience even closer by adding those effects back...


    Anyone got time to take this to the next level?