Neural DSP Quad Cortex

The Pros:
Tons of reviews about sound quality and they are right, it is top notch. So many big bands use it live (Megadeth being one of them).
Materials are solid and build quality seems great, (but I wouldn't drop it). It's got more buttons than my shirt, very easy to use live, very easy to do everything either from the buttons or touchscreen. Connectivity is a sandbox, you have all the options you want. Form factor, it's great. Would've been perfect with an incorporated expression pedal.
The desktop app is great, especially after the last update where they made the UI a little bit easier to navigate.
Superb active community that uploads presets and captures and there's nothing you can't find there.
So so so so maaaanany features that - for me - outweighed the cons (see below)
The Cons:
Looper is a joke, there's no metronome, no drum machine, no option to load tracks or do something creative with it. This unit should not be allowed to not have these features in it's price range. It's very limiting in terms of on-the fly creativity/solo writing. I am comparing it with Headrush products which completely blow it out of the water and are significantly cheaper. Even Mooer, Ampero or Valeton have more options here.
No expression pedal.
This is serious: No NDSP plugins support yet, except for Gojira and Plini. This was a promise NDSP made many years ago and to this day, is a serious let down and one of the biggest issues the community has with the QC. Btw, no free plugin when you buy a new unit. You need to purchase separately.
Regarding sound - the built in amp models, pedals and cabs are good. But I prefer the captures. You clearly notice the difference.

many people would say that I'm a Pro, due to the fact that I play both big arenas in rock/metal settings + big stages with Big Band

I also use a combination of bass + doublebass + cello ... and this is the main reason I got the QC .

but to my surprise, this unit simply sounds at a different level that everything I had before (and I always bought the best gear possible)

I got compliments from absolutely every.single.person in the past few months.

- 2 soundguys absolutely loved it
- my tech crew loves it for it's simplicity
- my band mates loved it at first glance
- in studio sounded awesome
- in my in-ear the bass sounds bigger and clearer, has a definition I didn't had before, without any harshness

I don't usually leave reviews, but this device is absolutely PRO. It sounds MASSIVE, has beautiful tone details, and it's a breeze to use it with multiple instruments.

Plus - you can play through your laptop with a portable keyboard if you wanna use a synth or something. So no need to buy a separate expensive device.

Direct Monitoring feature still is unusable on Windows as of January 2022. I have tried every QC OS update/USB driver/windowsOS workaround on the PC of every bedroom producer I know and all with the same result. The entire signal gets bitcrushed when you record, fizzy unusable mush. Line-outs work just fine. Never had this issue occur on a Mac.

Side-note: I'm pretty disappointed that many teased features (such as being able to load Archetype plugins, having a desktop editor) have not been added and at this point never will be. I anticipate they'll put out a new unit with this feature in a few years and leave any early adopters in the dirt. This unit is rusting away, a waste of potential. The company's focus seems to have shifted almost entirely to their plug-in users. Not acceptable conduct at this price-point. I dare you Neural, prove me wrong in the next update

Lastly: flimsy unconditioned power supply, should come with something more reliable. USB 2.0 Type B is practically extinct why is it on this unit? Why doesn't the app have audio demos for user presets? Why is it so cluttered to navigate? Why is there so much latency switching presets?