Did a gig with a Quad Cortex tonight…

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NerineNerine Frets: 1971
And I’ll be doing three more this weekend to give it a thorough going over. (I’ve borrowed my mates).
I built a scene that mimicked my usual live rig, albeit with a different amp. I used it in stomp box mode. 

Here are my impressions:

Sounded pretty good coming back at me through the wedges. 

Felt ok to a point, too. More on this below. 

Think it’s light on models in general. Amps, cabs, drives and effects. 

I ran it very simply. Guitar in. Left XLR out to the desk. I think CPU runs on this patch at about 30-40%

The worst thing??



THE LATENCY. 

What the hell? 

Seriously, on faster runs and choppy rhythms etc, I could detect quite noticeable latency - I’m very sensitive to it anyway, and it was off-putting.

I’m used to immediacy in the wedges. My amp is usually mic’d. 

It’s not catastrophically terrible, but it’s DEFINITELY noticeable, and I found it quite detrimental to the experience. On some of the fast stuff I occasionally bust out, it was pretty disheartening. 
Also, the responsiveness of the wah block was pretty crap. I had to almost preempt the foot movements and be ahead with them a little bit. 

I’ve gone on the waiting list for the FM9, but if the latency is anything like it is on the QC, I may have to have a rethink. 

I’m not convinced at this point. I could live with the sound of it - perhaps once it’s a bit more fully featured and it’s a bit more tweakable, some of the stuff sounded pretty good. 

From what I have heard, the Fractal stuff is better tonally, but I do think the QC edges out the Helix. 

I’ll do the next three gigs this weekend, but damn. Bit disappointing. I wanted to like it. It’s convenient for sure. Having only three cables to plug in was rather nice. 

Ugh. 

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Comments

  • NelsonPNelsonP Frets: 3347
    You are Rabea and I claim my £5


    9.40 in
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  • Not noticed any latency with mine and I’ve been gigging with it for a few months now, could be a routing issue with your monitors?

    Either that or I’m too slow to notice.
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  • PolarityManPolarityMan Frets: 7273
    Wow really surprised at latency issues on a modeller in that class.
    ဈǝᴉʇsɐoʇǝsǝǝɥɔဪቌ
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  • NerineNerine Frets: 1971
    Not noticed any latency with mine and I’ve been gigging with it for a few months now, could be a routing issue with your monitors?

    Either that or I’m too slow to notice.
    The routing is the same as if I had mic’d my amp. XLR into a channel on the desk. 
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  • NerineNerine Frets: 1971
    Wow really surprised at latency issues on a modeller in that class.
    Yeah. I’m a bit baffled honestly. I was expecting pretty much near zero. 
    Did a further two gigs today with it. 
    Same deal. One was on a large stage with a house PA, not our own. Similar outcome. 

    I’ve searched for it online and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of results. I can’t be the only person that’s noticed it. There are some pretty top drawer players that are using it. You would have thought they’d have noticed it. 
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  • monquixotemonquixote Frets: 17485
    tFB Trader
    Nerine said:
    Wow really surprised at latency issues on a modeller in that class.
    Yeah. I’m a bit baffled honestly. I was expecting pretty much near zero. 
    Did a further two gigs today with it. 
    Same deal. One was on a large stage with a house PA, not our own. Similar outcome. 

    I’ve searched for it online and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of results. I can’t be the only person that’s noticed it. There are some pretty top drawer players that are using it. You would have thought they’d have noticed it. 
    Maybe roundtrip an impulse through it with your DAW and measure it.
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  • exocetexocet Frets: 1947
    Were you also using a digital wireless system? What I find is that a combination of wireless + modeller = 15mS of delay - not a huge amount but it shortens the distance that you can move from the monitor before the overall latency becomes noticeable. 15mS = 5 metres distance from sound source.
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  • robertyroberty Frets: 10893
    Sent a blackstar modelling practice amp back for this reason
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  • NerineNerine Frets: 1971
    exocet said:
    Were you also using a digital wireless system? What I find is that a combination of wireless + modeller = 15mS of delay - not a huge amount but it shortens the distance that you can move from the monitor before the overall latency becomes noticeable. 15mS = 5 metres distance from sound source.
    No. No wireless. Don’t/won’t use one. 
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  • onyironyir Frets: 45
    I've been gigging mine for a year now and haven't noticed any latency at all, although I'm not a especially fast player. Rabea seems to do alright wit a QC and fast runs, though...
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  • uberscottuberscott Frets: 130
    I've gigged my QC for the best part of a year also - I go straight to IEMs via the QC's headphone jack. I have noticed a tiny latency if my guitar signal is part of the IEM mix coming back from the desk, but I'm able to blend the raw QC signal into the IEM mix (and drop it out in the mixer) as part of the headphone mix control. 

    The only other time I've noticed any latency is if I'm using a pitch shifter for any detuned songs (even Eb) - but for me it's better than the faff of retuning or swapping guitars. 
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  • NerineNerine Frets: 1971
    I did have a pitch effect in the patch I built, but it was an octave effect. Not sure if that would introduce latency in the same way as the full detune block. 
    Admittedly, I didn’t muck about with the scene too much, but looking back I should have tested it with all of the blocks removed, not just bypassed to see if that made a difference. 

    I could understand if it was delay introduced by the additional signal processing as the chains get more and more complex. 
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  • allenallen Frets: 698
    I got my Quad Cortex a couple of days ago and can feel a bit of latency from time to time so I did a more detailed test. Turns out that some presets can have a lot.



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  • TeleMasterTeleMaster Frets: 10103
    I noticed no latency. Also no latency on anything Fractal. 
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  • onyironyir Frets: 45
    I tried measuring latency in my QC by splitting the signal before QC with a DI box and then measuring latency between the DI unprocessed signal and the QC processed signal, both going into my audio interface. With that approach, I took one of the fuller factory presets I could find and then added captures until I wouldn't let me add anymore (end up with 8 captures in total in that preset). I measured the latency of this preset at 10ms. My usual gigging presets, with a couple of amps (captures or models), couple of OD (again, sometime captures, sometime models), delays, reverbs and modulation all measure around 6ms
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  • vasselmeyervasselmeyer Frets: 3664
    edited June 2022
    Check out this vide from Leo Gibson. He did a latency test on 23 amp modelling pedalboards. The BOSS FX 100 and the GT 1000, the Quad Cortex, the Fractal FM3, the Kemper Stage, the Line 6 Helix, HX Stomp and POD GO, the NUX MG 30, MG 300 and Amp Academy, the Mooer GE 150, 250 and 300, the Zoom G11, the Valeton GP 200, the Head Rush GigBoard and MX5, the Ampero and the Stomp 2, the Strymon Iridium, the Universal Audio Dream 65, and the Harley Benton DNA FX PR.







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  • duotoneduotone Frets: 971
    @vasselmeyer ;
    I was just about to post that.
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  • vasselmeyervasselmeyer Frets: 3664
    duotone said:
    @vasselmeyer ;
    I was just about to post that.

    Yep. It's a monster test and I was pretty happy as a Boss GT-1000 user. Under the fingers, it has felt absolutely the most "amp-like" of any modeller I've tried...as if there's nothing between me and the output. The Quad Cortex seems to come in at 3ms and I'm really not sure if I could tell the difference. perhaps there's something in the OP's IR or other effect chain that is messing up the response.
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  • NelsonPNelsonP Frets: 3347
    Atomic Amplifire has 0.8 secs latency. Doesn't even make it into those youtube videos though. The forgotten modeller?
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  • mrkbmrkb Frets: 6636
    NelsonP said:
    Atomic Amplifire has 0.8 secs latency. Doesn't even make it into those youtube videos though. The forgotten modeller?
    800 milliseconds! Surely not.
    Karma......
    Ebay mark7777_1
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