Neural DSP has confirmed that the long-awaited guitar plugin compatibility for its flagship Quad Cortex amp modeller will arrive on 31 July, and users updating their units with the CorOS 3.0.0 operating system have double reason to celebrate – because they can choose a free plugin of their choice from the Neural catalogue.
The CorOS 3.0.0 will be a game-changer for Quad Cortex users, who can finally curate a digital electric guitar tone eco-system encompassing a hardware device and their plugin library.
Once the guitar plugins have been downloaded onto the Quad Cortex, players can then mix and match virtual devices from the Archetype plugins suites with the devices on their unit. This has always been the tantalising promise of the Quad Cortex platform.
The first plugins to arrive on the unit will be the Archetype: Plini X and Archetype: Gojira X. Neural DSP’s signature collaboration with Plini yielded one of its most versatile plugin suites, its Gojira collaboration yielded on of its heaviest, with all of Joe Duplantier’s signature metal guitar tones and more available digitally at a mouse click.
Judging by the introductory video, it looks like these plugins and their presets will seamlessly integrate with Quad Cortex – certainly, John Connearn makes it look easy enough.
And there will be considerably more options when creating new presets now that players can choose, say, a virtual guitar amp from the Gojira plugin and a cabinet from Plini’s, then add delay and reverb from the Quad Cortex. It is all up for grabs. Players can also deploy those plugin sounds when creating scenes. “It opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your sound,” says Connearn.
Understandably, having waited considerable time for this moment, Quad Cortex users will be champing at the bit to get this upgrade up and running, but Neural DSP advises them to take a couple of minutes and make a backup before initiating the update.
As for the free plugins, you can choose any plugin from the Neural DSP catalogue – they need not be the Quad Cortex-compatible X plugins. But all plugins will eventually be updated to X plugins, which have historically been available to existing users as a free upgrade and this presumably would be the case here, too.
You can find out more at Neural DSP, check out how the Archetype: Plini X and Archetype: Gojira X integrate with the sounds on the Quad Cortex in the video above, and see below how the people at Sweetwater reacted when they first heard the plugin-enabled Quad Cortex after the CorOS 3.0.0 update.
One player who will be counting the days down for 31 July will be Slipknot's Jim Root, who told MusicRadar last month that he had been using the Quad Cortex live in recent months and the project to downsize his rig had been successful.
"The Quad Cortex is working really well," he said. "I don't have any, like, massive complaints about it. Maybe I need to spend a little bit more time with it, like dialling some things in, and I have noticed, ironically enough, that I like using it better direct than I do with a power amp through a speaker cabinet and having a mic in front of the speaker cabinet. I think it does what it's meant to do better that way."
