The remarkable rise of Neural DSP has just taken a very interesting turn with its second hardware release; the Nano Cortex brings the company's design, quality and usability to more players at a more accessible price than its acclaimed Quad Cortex. But it's also a pedal that sees it focussing on the capture side of that flagship pedal rather than amp and effects modelling – and that means something quite different in terms of the community of users a Nano Cortex owner can now find themselves part of.
Who better to discuss its development, Neural's aims and its future than the company's co-founder Francisco Cresp. Alongside his business partner Doug Castro, Francisco's passion for inspiring players and how that connects with this new piece of hardware is undeniable, and we also speak about the mission Neural DSP has been on since the first development of its plugins and launch of the Quad Cortex to remain at the forefront of digital modelling and capture technology.
The entry level point for our platform is really high and not everybody can afford that
What does the Nano Cortex mean to you?
"Having a second hardware unit, it means a lot to us, because the first one was such a difficult project that took so many years. Having had the success that we had with that product meant the world to us and encouraged us to do a second one.
"We want to make our platform available to more people. The entry-level point for our platform is really high and not everybody can afford that. We just wanted to do something simpler with the core essence of the company, which is Neural Capture, in a very small format but with other features."
Did you always plan to have a more accessible product, even when the Quad Cortex was in development?
"Yes. The thing is that when we developed the whole cortex platform, once you write software that is so complicated in the sense of the research of the library, all the routing capabilities, all the technology that was researching the Neural Capture side, all the user interface, the mobile app, the cloud – It's kind of natural to think about what other products can you create from the same research.
"Because it was such a long period of time and so much effort was put into building this platform that it just makes sense to try to make more products out of that. So this was in our mind for a while, and we just thought that it would be better to execute this one first from all the other ideas that we have."
Why did Neural decide to develop a capture device rather than perhaps a more streamlined modelling unit after the Quad Cortex?
"Neural Capture is one of the most sought after features of Quad Cortex and the Cortex ecosystem. Even though full amplifier or pedal models can offer a lot of flexibility and accuracy based on their analogue counterparts, Neural Capture is all about having your own tone. Being able to create and play Neural Captures without the need of an external application or device has not been possible in a small footprint until now. With its simplicity, Nano Cortex is made to be integrated with a pedalboard as the driving engine of your sound."
It's been over four and a half years since the Quad Cortex was revealed to the public, is it fair to say the Nano Cortex has benefitted from the experiences you've had since and the challenges Neural has overcome?
Many things have improved, and the experience of knowing our community definitely helps
"Oh, absolutely. The processes in the company are a lot more organised and formalized so we definitely learned by doing. Technology has advanced as well – chipsets go forward all the time, and it's always more powerful. Prices drop, and we also got over the shortages, which is a very good thing. We were able to to design a product without having to think about whether the parts would be available in the market for us to assemble everything. So that was a relief.
"Many things have improved, and the experience of knowing our community definitely helps. Knowing what our customers want. We ask them all the time – we participate in forums and we read their comments all the time. So yes, I hope that we can please our audience with this, and it would be great to see more people coming into our platform."
This area of the market is becoming increasingly diverse, were you aware of what other companies were doing in this space to the extent that it changed your own plans?
"We observed what the competition was doing, and funnily enough, when we were already doing the product, some other companies released very similar products from their platforms. So we thought, well, it seems that at least we're right that market wanted something like this. Now the risk is, are we better than the rest, or will the customer choose us over the competition?
The differentiating factor of our platform is that it can create captures on its own
"Of course, you always need to reevaluate everything that you have done just to make sure that there are no mistakes or oversights in the sense of releasing something after someone else. The one that releases something before you, they always set a bar, right? So it definitely made us review a couple of things, but the core was definitely there.
"The differentiating factor of our platform is that it can create captures on its own, and that was the thing that we wanted to do from the start – not depending on a computer or anything else. It can create and play and load captures just with the device."
To a newcomer, can you explain the difference between a Neural model and a Neural capture?
"A model is a full recreation of an amplifier, pedal or any device – it can be a delay or a reverb. For pedals and amplifiers we have our own technology. We have a robot [TINA] and we connect arms to each of the shafts of the potentiometers. Then we we run a script where we run all the combinations of pot [positions] possible, of which there are quite many, while running analysis signals. And then we train a full model in a neural network in the cloud. We still have a supercomputer at the office, but now we do it in the cloud.
"We can train a full model which is exactly what you see on the real unit. All the the knob combinations, all the tone stack combinations, which are not exactly a linear EQ, or just a normal graphic EQ or parametric EQ. The tone stacks of the amps do very weird things, and master volumes as well – nonlinearities happen everywhere. So we get the exact same thing – all of its features are represented in a model. It will behave exactly the same if you lower the gain, if you increase the gain, lower the bass, treble, mid. You will have exactly the same controls as the real unit that we might be modeling.
A model is a full representation of analogue equipment, and the Neural Capture is a snapshot
"A Neural Capture is a snapshot of the current settings that you have on your target device. So if you want another set of settings, you need to do another capture, and the capture doesn't really allow you to tweak the controls [like] the real device. We offer you some controls on top, but they are not learned from the source. So that's that's the biggest thing. A model is a full representation of analogue equipment, and the Neural Capture is a snapshot. It's a picture of the configurations that were set at that time."
There's this term 'deep capture' – is that how you would describe them? Are they more detailed than captures you might find of some other technology?
"The difference of Neural Capture versus other options is that we can learn what is the nonlinear behavior of the device that is being captured. It's more precise in a certain way. I can't disclose too much about the rest, but there is a certain advantage of a Neural Capture versus other competition products. So it is a little bit more precise, but a full model will be different because it will give you more options. But in the same configuration, they might react the same."
The potential appeal of this unit could be quite wide – including those who want to add capture options to their existing pedalboard to players who want to record with it. Was the idea of flexibility at the forefront of your mind?
The pedal format was always in our mind – how to have a Neural product that is the brain of your pedalboard
"We wanted to approach it more as a pedal, for users to feel less intimidated as they would by something too complex. Something as simple as a pedal – no screen, gain, bass, mid, treble, volume. Everybody knows how to use that and people feel less intimidated by something like this.
"So the pedal format was always in our mind – how to have a Neural product that is the brain of your pedalboard, for people that have other pedals – time effects pedals, distortion pedals, that they don't want to stop using. We saw a lot of people integrating Quad Cortex into their pedalboards. But then they would get these very big pedalboards, and then they would slowly try to capture their sounds. They would use the Quad Cortex as a size format. But some people just don't want to. So we thought about that from the pedal standpoint. We wanted it to be a simple pedal that can integrate with the rest of the equipment that you might already own.
"The other thing is that for digital products nowadays, it's really important for you to have the ability to record. I love to record my own music, and being able to have a top-tier guitar sound in the size of your palm, it's really important. And USB-C, having good AD/DA converters, and being able to record via digital straight from your capture source – you can create an album and send your favourite presets there. Take it to the studio, take it to rehearsals. It's so small that you can take it everywhere.
You can capture these sounds with something that is a lot cheaper than QC, with the exact same quality of sound
Will existing Quad Cortex owners be able to use their presets on this?
"Captures can be shared between Quad Cortex and Nano Cortex without any problems through the cloud. Presets are a little bit different. In that case you won't be able to translate a preset from one place to the next, but it's it's something that we can explore in the future.
"We can't really promise anything, but in principle, Nano Cortex presets should run in Quad Cortex, not vice versa, but you might be able to transition from one platform to the other. That will take a lot of work, and we can't really promise that we will do it."
Can you talk us through the range of effects available with the Nano Cortex?
"At first we wanted to keep it simple. So if you have an amplifier, we wanted to have a [noise]gate – we have our Adaptive Gate. Then we know that our users love the transpose effect from the plugins and Quad Cortex now, so we put the same pitch-shifter there as a pre-effect.
I took the best effects that we have from QC into this platform
"Then you have the capture, and we have our IR loader where we took the best of the cabs of QC and put a collection eight cabs for guitar and two cabs for bass, which gives you like a broad enough library for IRs, and then we allow you to import your own.
"Then the post effects are mostly utilitary, but they're very good quality effects. I took the best effects that we have from QC into this platform. A chorus that's really famous from Boss, that was a rack unit [the SDD-320 Dimension D]. The delay is an analogue delay based on our own. The [Mind Hall] reverb is inspired by a Lexicon 224 – it's what we have noticed that most of the users go for.
"We wanted to keep it simple and we are looking forward to expanding it a little bit in the future, but we can't really promise anything either. But in principle, it should be around capture with utilitarian effects. Some other companies have just a room reverb and a gate. We wanted to expand a little bit more into giving you a chorus, delay and a transpose [pitch shifter] effect, because then it feels that it's a complete rig. Maybe it doesn't have so many options, but you can definitely create a lot of tones with those utilitarian effects."
I was struck by how quickly I was able to get great results recording with this – plugging in and powering it via the USB-C. Getting a good sound for recording, and getting it quickly, can be a continuous barrier for people. But also the range of sounds here gives you a lot of options out of the box.
It's basically a distillation of the best of the QC library in a very, very small platform – that's how it feels
"I made sure to pick the captures and the IRs that we like the most from the Quad Cortex library. And the effects that we like the most. We also asked many users. So it's basically a distillation of the best of the QC library in a very, very small platform – that's how it feels.
"I also believe that there's a very fine line between versatility and simplicity. Where you go really far into options that not everybody needs, and then it becomes really intimidating with way too many options. And the simplicity of achieving, as you said, like a good sound and you find yourself playing an hour and time just flies by. That's that's what happens to me with with this unit. I could connect my Telecaster, and I separated all the banks into clean, edge of breakup, crunch tone, high-gain and bass. And then, depending on what guitar you have, you have five options for each of these.
"After the user gets the unit, it's up to them to keep it organised, right? Because there's no screen if you don't use the phone. So you need to be organised if you want to keep the same structure. I can grab my seven-string, and I know that I need to go to bank four. If I grab my Telecaster, I know one, two and three are still good. It's really simple to achieve whatever you want."
And as you mentioned, players can upload third-party IRs to further tailor the experience.
"Yes. So, the same ones that you have on your Cloud account, that you have might have uploaded for a Quad Cortex, you can just download it straight from the app and save them on one of the [Nano's] slots or on your library."
And there are captures in the cloud to be tried and downloaded too?
"The community has been creating captures from since we released the [Quad Cortex] and I believe there's around 34,000 now – it's a lot of captures. So you have access to all of that library, and you get to be part of the community, not with a cheaper alternative that falls into these shortcomings, but you just have less features.
"The features that do you have there are exactly the same as QC – the delay, the reverb, the gate, the captures, everything sounds exactly the same as QC. And you can share these captures back and forth between both platforms."
Is there any additional control over the captures within the app?
"It's exactly the shot or the picture that you took when you captured your target device. So if you want further customisation, you will have to move the real thing and capture it again. The only thing that you can do is the gain control that we have implemented in the capture player should give you a very precise feeling of what the amp should feel when you crank the gain and when not.
"But a lot of amps have different capacitors on the pots, and when you reduce the gain they cut some lows, so some of that feeling will not be there. But as a utility it is very versatile. And then the three-band EQ on the output is utilitarian as well. So you won't get the same as from the real amp, but there is some flexibility. In case you missed a little bit of gain, or it's lacking a little bit of bass – there's a little bit of fine tweaking in there that you can do with the controls on the platform."
Is the app connection Bluetooth only or are there any plans for a desktop version later?
"There's no software equivalent on desktop yet, but we're working on it. The app is the is the way to go for the time being."
We've spoken to Tore Mogensen at Universal Audio in the past about the challenges that smartphone updates and Bluetooth technology can pose apps that work with guitar hardware. Were there concerns and challenges on that side of things for you?
"There were concerns in the beginning, and I've never been fan of the protocol either, to be honest. But we tried it and tested it from the very beginning – that's the first thing that we started smashing. So I am very confident that it will work fine.
"Of course, there might be some edge cases – some issues that you know you only see when you start shipping thousands of units. People have all different phones, models and operating systems. And that's the trickiest part, that the app runs smoothly in all the phones that are around the world, which is a lot. But I feel very confident that what we have done is solid so I really hope that people like it."
The premise of why we wanted to do it more as a pedal format is that some people might want to use it as a pedal platform or capture, let's say, their overdrive pedals
In theory someone could also capture their drive pedal with the Cortex Nano as well as an amp?
"You can. The premise of why we wanted to do it more as a pedal format is that some people might want to use it as a pedal platform or capture, let's say, their overdrive pedals. They might have four overdrive pedals with the gate and the transpose in this before the before their amp. So you have the two switches that will work as four presets.
"You can have four booster pedals as presets or combine them. You can capture, let's say, a Tube Screamer and SD-1 both on at the same time, and that can be one capture.
"So you can, you can make stacks of things. You can capture your Tube Screamer with your SD-1 on and your amplifier on, with the cabinet, with the microphone coming back, and that can be just one capture. So it's really versatile in the sense that you can use it as a pedal platform, it can be your amp, your digital amp, or it can be everything and then you go straight to the front of the house. Or your interface – so there are a lot of use cases for it."
And you can download desirable pedal captures like a Klon Centaur too.
"Yes, and there's been a lot of people already doing that research, so the community is already out there. If you want it, you can just go to the app and there are plenty of people who have done that – have gone through the trouble of finding a Klon Centaur or they have clones of the Klon."
We always believed that a big part of the success of the product was to build this community around it
It must be amazing for you to have watched that community grow to what it's become now.
"Yes, we always believed that a big part of the success of the product was to build this community around it. We really trusted that taking this to people's phones was the way to go. People participate and use their phones all the time so we have been trying to work a lot on the mobile app to make it more engaging.
"Now, you can add pictures to the captures – it feels like you're shopping for something. You see this very vintage amp, and there's a picture of it now, and you can say, 'Oh, this is the one that was captured, this is cool'. And it's just engaging.
"When you're sitting on a desktop on a computer, it's a different feeling because you're there for a particular task that you might want to do – to record, to create. But when you're with your phone, it can be very spontaneous. So the community has been filled around this."
Do you have any advice on capturing amps, cabs and pedals for the first time with the Nano Cortex?
"We have included a meter on the gain knob which tells you when the signal is healthy. If it's red, it's clipping, so you should dial the gain back. If it's white, there's not enough gain, and when it's green, it's the right amount of signal. And that's the most important part, because the signal coming back to the capture is the one that will determine how good the capture training will do.
"Other than that, if you're capturing something complicated, like a tube amp connected to the power outlets, and then your nano cortex is connected to an interface, and the interface is connected to the power outlet too, and your computer is connected to the power outlet, you might find ground issues. These are very easy to find when you start connecting too many things. And ground is a very complicated electrical problem so we have included a ground lift in the pedal, which should help with most cases.
"But if you find noise in your system, most likely you will need to get an isolation box, or there are some products that are out there in the market to remove ground and dirt from the signal. So, as clean as the signal is, the less noise that you have and the better capture you will get. So use gain staging and being careful with the noise and ground loops."
I'll admit I'm not a big fan of using headphones with amps and modellers, but I've been impressed by the headphone experience with both the Quad Cortex and now the Nano Cortex. What's the process behind it?
"The fact that's USB-C powered – the next step would have been to put a battery on it, but then it's a different game. When you apply for certificates for things to have batteries inside it, it gets a little bit tricky. But we wanted to make it USB-powered, and that was a big challenge because the Nano Cortex has a lot of processing – to capture all these algorithms, all the LED lights, some RGB LEDs. It's just a lot of power consumption, and we had to restrain ourselves, but that's one of the reasons why we went without without a screen as well.
"This gives you a lot of portability. If you have a power bank, you can just connect it, or your phone charger in a hotel, and then you can just play on your own with headphones. And for me, that's that's something that I use all the time because I live in an apartment and I don't like people listening to my crappy playing all the time! So it's just a private moment that you have with yourself, exploring sounds and playing. For me, headphones are always very important. So we included that in QC, of course, and this was no exception."
This it's actually the part that I enjoy the most – to solve these problems, and the design team of the whole company, everybody that works with us, is just amazing
You've transitioned here from a market-leading touchscreen-based piece of gear to an intuitive compact pedal. Was that a challenge in itself?
"Yes, it was. In fact, the product in the beginning was like a little bit different in the sense that was simpler, and then we started adding more features, and it escalated to a very challenging UX UI problem. But I think that the years of experience have have helped me to make these decisions quicker.
"This it's actually the part that I enjoy the most – to solve these problems, and the design team of the whole company, everybody that works with us, is just amazing. Everybody is moving in the same direction. And it's just all these meetings when we have challenges like these are really productive, and we just work really hard to try to find the best solution, and we debate until everybody has agreed. So, yes it was really fun."
You've talked in the past about removing "unnecessary friction" from the user experience – this seems like a flagship for that.
"Yes, I agree. We wanted to make something that is simple to use for people who think think the QC looks too complicated. People who are used to pedals, they want just five knobs, in and out..
"I think this is something for people who want to keep it very simple. You really don't have to complicate it – you can just turn off the delay, turn off the chorus, and you have a pedal platform with the classic controls of a pedal. And you don't really need to complicate it too much. If you want to dive deeper, the hardware can go into specifics, and it can do almost everything without the app. Like, the only thing that you can't really do is, of course, interact with the cloud and maybe change the decay value of the reverb and the controls of the effects, which are in the app.
"Other than that, you can do everything and you can keep it super simple, or go with the app and dig deeper into all these extra features. So we mostly wanted to appeal to people who feel intimidated by all this digital world, right? And trust their ears more than looking at the screen all the time. So I think that experience is what we were aiming for."
There's been this temptation to pitch tube amps against amp modelling and captures, but there are clearly different use cases for everything that make that kind of thinking somewhat redundant for me. You could own a tube amp, use it, but also capture it and use its sounds for small gigs and home recording with the Nano Cortex.
Tube amps are beautiful things. And they're really complicated
"Absolutely. I mean, tube amps are beautiful things. And they're really complicated. There's a lot of mystical things happening in the output section and the transformers. And if you connect it to different voltages, they will sound different.
"I have an amp from Marshall, from '86. It's a model that an artist of ours also has, and it sounds completely different from his. It's just completely different. So even though they're the same year, the same batch, they're like a unique thing. Even if they're from the same production line, they might sound different from each other. The tubes age. You might change the tubes. Somebody might have modded it if it's vintage, you never know.
"So analogue platforms can be very different from each other and the use cases are, as you say, very different too. Amps are loud, you need a cabinet, and even if you put the master volume at minimum, it's loud and you probably can't use that in an apartment. If you have a rehearsal space, then sure. Enjoy the blast of the speakers. That's lovely. But not everybody has that privilege, right?
"So if I'm traveling with with hand luggage, this is a great thing to take with me, because I can take a Strandberg guitar, which is super small, put this in my backpack, and all of a sudden I can play guitar anywhere – and without mains power. I just need to have my power bank charged, or my laptop, and I'm good to go. So it's a very different use case."
This kind of technology is also about accessibility of course - giving people a feel for different amps, and using those sounds. Amps they may never encounter in the real world, or plug into themselves anyway. That's an incredible thing really – and the opposite of elitism.
"Yes, for me, it was really difficult when I was younger to get good sounds. I come from a very remote place in South America – the very, very end of it, and there was one music store, and they had maybe one tube amp there.
"None of my friends had tube amps, it was really difficult to get a good-sounding piece of gear for guitar, and the fact that we have been able to do the opposite, make it available to everyone with the reputation that we have today – Neural Capture is one of the best-sounding modelling techniques there is out there.
"Of course, several companies do it well too. I'm not going to say that we are the absolute best of everything, but I believe that we have been able to bring these good sounds to everyone. It's really affordable now, and you can participate with a community of people who have been hunting and searching for tones and guitar gear for all these years. So having access to that in two minutes, it's quite incredible."
You mention other companies but a lot of them have a much longer history than Neural DSP. You've built this at a remarkable pace and I know there have been ongoing challenges like plugin integration with the Quad Cortex, but you are committed to delivering on the things you have set out to do from that NAMM show in 2020 when there was the huge buzz around the Quad Cortex's reveal. What things stand out for you as a particular source of pride in the time between then and now?
It's been the most intense years of my life, for sure
"Our resilience, to be honest, how stubborn we are and driven we are for our own goals. It's quite impressive. I always say the same thing with Doug, that if we had known how difficult it was going to be, we probably wouldn't have done it.
"The NAMM show back then was a very difficult time, because it was a very early prototype where we had to orchestrate the moves of everything – every single block in the grid – to make it work with what we had back then. But we just knew we could do it. And yes, it was really, really challenging. It's been the most intense years of my life, for sure. And I'm just happy that people like it, and that people are using our products live and in the studios. And then you listen to a record that you like and find out, oh, they use our stuff – that's awesome!
"You know, it never ceases to amaze me that that people really love our products, and we, we definitely put a lot of sweat and tears into it. Iit's really nice that people like them, that that makes it all worth it."
It's crazy the amount of artists who are using our platform
The artist side of things must be especially interesting to see grow.
Yes. Max [Taylor Grant], our Artist Relations Director, always gives us a monthly report of people who have been asking for the gear or using the gear. To be honest, the list is endless now, it's crazy – from all the biggest pop acts in the States and in the world, to the biggest metal shows. It's crazy the amount of artists who are using our platform. It's just impressive, to be honest.
"I love to go to their shows as well, because then I get to see the gear on the stage. I meet the techs, I meet the band, and I enjoy the show, then go home. My heart is full of joy and happiness. It's really nice to see them in action."
Now, there are players who have come from the tube amp world, but there are also younger musicians who may never have used a traditional amp – or even needed to. It's an interesting time!
"Absolutely. To be honest, I never owned a tube amp before starting Neural and I always played with digital tools. One of the main drivers of that for me to start making hardware and software was that I couldn't get the sounds that I wanted to get. And the only opinion that I found on the internet is like, 'Oh yeah, you need a tube amp, because digital is not good'. And I just couldn't believe that.
"So then our stubbornness was bigger, and so I think we got pretty close, or at least different in the same, good way. So yes, it makes me really happy that a lot of people who have used analogue gear have transitioned to our platform for convenience, or for people who never really needed a tube amp because they make music at their home studios, or they play shows in digital, synchronised with a tempo and with a session.
"Plini is a very good example of this. We always put Plini on the spot for this one, but he never really owned a tube amp. Then we made his plugins, he started using QC, and now he has his plugin in QC, and that's what he uses. There are many examples like this one as well, especially as you say, with younger generations."
Digital modelling has really highlighted the impact speakers and cab configurations have on a guitar sound, and with something like the Nano Cortex you can hear the impact immediately as you try different options. In the analogue world, that process would be time-consuming and costly.
"That's really tricky, because the speaker interacts with the output section of a tube amp. So you can't just unplug the speaker, you might actually burn the output transformer. So it's something that you need to build a switcher for, or go through a load box and then go through a solid state power amp, or something like that. And it just gets really tricky. So yes, the benefits of digital, in that sense, to compare sounds, it's brutally better than anything that you can achieve in the analog world, for sure."
We try to remove that friction to make you create more music, to give you more time to play your guitars
Do you have any pointers for people using the Nano Cortex for the first time?
"First, update! Update to the latest version and keep the unit up to date, there's more surprises coming. And as people may know now, we always maintain our platforms, so just keep yourself up to date.
"The other one would be, enjoy playing guitar. I think that the main point of our products is not to go through the rabbit hole of analogue versus digital. Or, how accurate can I get something to sound, even though, of course, we concentrate on that, but we try to remove that friction to make you create more music, to give you more time to play your guitars. If you only have 15 minutes because you have children or a family or you have a rush for whatever reason, you can play for 15 minutes and be very pleased with the sounds that you're getting.
"Just enjoy yourself and be creative. I think that's the main driver of our products, in general. So I hope it gives people a similar experience."
- For more information visit Neural DSP and read our Nano Cortex review
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