My QC arrived 2 days ago. I’ve had a number of guys using my Kemper profiles as their go to and suggesting I offer them for sale. It was then suggested, if I’m gearing up to do that, I might as well do captures for the QC at the same time. I looked to see who was offering captures for Quad Cortex and couldn’t find any, but found people wanting better than currently available. Ok, I’ll buy one.
Feeling a bit guilty seeing all the people that have been waiting for months for their QCs.... I bought it on Sunday afternoon and it arrived Tuesday morning......
I must confess to knowing very little about it, other than people saying it will be a Kemper killer, game changer, much more accurate captures/profiles etc.
I’ve only skimmed this thread, so excuse me if I’m repeating anything.
There are clearly a lot of interesting things you can do with the QC routing, but as far as being a game changer and having more accurate captures, it isn’t and they aren’t. Not yet anyway. It’s only been a couple of days, but this just feels and sounds like a glorified modeller. Obviously it’s early days for the QC and it will presumably improve, with time, as the Kemper has.
The QC is fairly intuitive, but that’s because it’s mainly surface. It doesn’t have the depth of the KPA. First thing I did was capture an amp I was already setup to profile with the Kemper. I didn’t read the manual, as I wanted to see if it was as intuitive as claimed. Just swapped the leads across and after finding where the menu was, captured the amp. Easy to do and sounds good. It doesn’t sound the same as the signal from the mic’d amp though. The QC capture is cleaner than the Kemper (which was truly indistinguishable from the original mic’d amp) and hasn’t captured the same depth and dimension. It sounds and feels more like a really good amp modeller.
I re-tried capturing the amp 3 more times with the QC, changing guitar and mic input levels, as all reports are that it is better than the KPA. Each capture was very slightly different, but still not the same as the reference signal.
At this point I thought I’d better check the manual, as I was obviously missing some hidden settings that would allow me to refine the capture. No, that was it. Nothing more. As I say, it’s easier to use, because there are no hidden parameters to tweak.
Now the QC capture doesn’t sound bad by any stretch, but it isn’t the “unprecedented accuracy” they advertise. For people used to using modellers; using the captures will be a huge step up and probably feel like a game changer. Compared to their modelled amps, the capture is significantly better. I was profiling/capturing a custom made Deluxe Reverb and their model isn’t anywhere near as good.
For those of us used to using great amps and expecting the QC to deliver those sounds in the same way the Kemper does, it will probably be disappointing. Obviously the standard of Kemper profiles varies widely, due to its accuracy. It will reproduce whatever you feed it (after refining). It sounds and feels like the QC has been designed so you don’t need the skills of a great engineer in the same way you do with the KPA. It’s like they’ve used the amp as a starting point, but still process it in their own way. It’s probably harder to get a bad capture with it, but then also harder to get something truly great. They seem to have homogenised the capture process.
I think the Kemper is a long way from being out of date. If the sound of the raw amp is important to you, it still can’t be beaten.