Everything about the QC is better. Notably the captures. I don't care for the stock tone options in the Anagram. The captures (especially v2) are unreal. Capture tube gear in surprising realism.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini VS Darkglass Anagram
- Thread starter archisland
- Start date
Well then I probably wouldn't use any digital modeler type system that requires booting up.
At home it’s more than 53 seconds. You basically have to switch to another activity during that time, like making a coffee, and that ends up taking even longer.
If the current boot time is an issue for you I’d suggest dropping a note to Neural support with the complaint. They are typically quite responsive.
Honestly your endorsement is enough for me to give the QC another go
With the QC Mini, is it possible to use it like a BDDI? Where I send an amp sim through the DI, then a parallel unaffected signal to an actual amp?
This new band I'm in, the way it's going I'm either going to have to start to embrace a giant pedalboard, or look at something like a Line6 Stomp into a BDDI so that I don't have 6-8 different effects pedals. This demo has me wondering if the QC on its own would also be an option.
This new band I'm in, the way it's going I'm either going to have to start to embrace a giant pedalboard, or look at something like a Line6 Stomp into a BDDI so that I don't have 6-8 different effects pedals. This demo has me wondering if the QC on its own would also be an option.
Yeah you can split the signal however you want and route it to any of the outputs
- Apr 3, 2003
- 35,515
- 19,944
- Disclosures
- Editor-in-Chief, Bass Gear Magazine
We were able to check out the QCm at the NAMM Show it ended up winning a Bass Gear Magazine Best of Show Award. Being familiar with the original QC, the ability to pack so much of its functionality (and 100% of it tone/sound) in a dramatically smaller, but still sturdy, unit, is very, very impressive. 
or possibly use a USB-PD power pack to power the unit. I know the Anagram can be powered that way, I suspect the QC can too.
53 seconds for the QCm to boot up? That’s is really too long.
Agreed. If your problem is power blips or brown outs you have a larger problem, and that can harm digital devices, btw.
You need a UPS to maintain power during blips and protect against these “blips”. But that is home power issue not a QC issue. You should do that to protect your expensive electrical equipment regardless of boot time.
Idk, I don’t really get this whole boot up time “issue” thing. Sure, it would be slightly more convenient, but c’mon. I power it on, then grab my bass and plug it in, thrown on my practice headphones, and it’s ready. Maybe do a couple warm up licks of I have a few seconds to spare. Or I open my DAW and turn on my interface and again it’s ready in about the same amount of time.
And if it’s a power issue at gigs then the whole band and FOH will have issues too and you’re all in the same boat. Or if you use it in a place you know has questionable power (home, rehearsal space) then keep a small UPS to provide uninterrupted power. These are solutions I’d use for any powered musical device, not just QC.
When I keep it home, I keep it on standby and it awakes instantly.
Last edited:
I’ve been using the Anagram for about 4 months now, have had the OG QC for ~5 years (selling to one of my guitarists), and now the QCm for 2 weeks.
I’m really leaning toward the QCm. For the tones I need 99.9% of the time, Parallax is utter perfection. It gives me clean, aggressively clean, clean and fat, gritty, overdriven, vintagey overdriven, prog metal drive (eg. Jacob Umansky), raging distortion, all out fuzz, and anything in between.
And it does it so well and so easily in a single block without fussing with a whole chain of effects. It’s just too d@mn good!
The platform is much more mature, and for what it lacks in amp/cab sims there is a plethora of great captures available. Personally, I don’t need them but it’s nice to know they’re there if I ever do.
Additionally, Parallax is also a plugin available in the DAW so I can use the same tone and presets recording at home, or jamming at my guitarist’s house without bringing the QCm at all, or live of course. This is a really cool benefit I get a LOT of use out of. I recently heard from DG there are no near-future plans to port over Entropia to a plugin.
What it really comes down to that I’ve come to realize these past weeks is:
- When I try to dial in Entropia on the Anagram, I’m constantly struggling to get the sound I’m looking for. It takes a lot of EQ adjustments, cab sim and mic searching, harmonic enriching, general experimenting, a lot of blocks…
- When I open up Parallax and start playing, it just puts a smile on my face every time, and it’s so easy to dial in. I get immediately excited and literally play sometimes just to hear the tone
Just my quick opinion and experience and takeaways for my tonal goals bearing in mind that my gigs these days are basically all modern metal and aggressive genres and that I’m not interested in the cover band scene any longer that I did for ~25 years so YMMV.
I’m really leaning toward the QCm. For the tones I need 99.9% of the time, Parallax is utter perfection. It gives me clean, aggressively clean, clean and fat, gritty, overdriven, vintagey overdriven, prog metal drive (eg. Jacob Umansky), raging distortion, all out fuzz, and anything in between.
And it does it so well and so easily in a single block without fussing with a whole chain of effects. It’s just too d@mn good!
The platform is much more mature, and for what it lacks in amp/cab sims there is a plethora of great captures available. Personally, I don’t need them but it’s nice to know they’re there if I ever do.
Additionally, Parallax is also a plugin available in the DAW so I can use the same tone and presets recording at home, or jamming at my guitarist’s house without bringing the QCm at all, or live of course. This is a really cool benefit I get a LOT of use out of. I recently heard from DG there are no near-future plans to port over Entropia to a plugin.
What it really comes down to that I’ve come to realize these past weeks is:
- When I try to dial in Entropia on the Anagram, I’m constantly struggling to get the sound I’m looking for. It takes a lot of EQ adjustments, cab sim and mic searching, harmonic enriching, general experimenting, a lot of blocks…
- When I open up Parallax and start playing, it just puts a smile on my face every time, and it’s so easy to dial in. I get immediately excited and literally play sometimes just to hear the tone
Just my quick opinion and experience and takeaways for my tonal goals bearing in mind that my gigs these days are basically all modern metal and aggressive genres and that I’m not interested in the cover band scene any longer that I did for ~25 years so YMMV.
Last edited:
What’s the power consumption of QC? Anagram draws about 7 W, I measured it (a single chain, including the Entropia block).
I don’t know about wattage, but the Anagram requires at least 1.7A while the QCm requires only 1.2A.
Edit:
If my googling of wattage calculations is correct (V x A), then on paper the Anagram consumes 20.4W while the QCm consumes 14.4W. Obviously depends on your setup and the processing required. Not my area of expertise though.
Last edited:
"Requires" and "consumes" are different things. The current will also be different at different voltages. And when we talk about consumption, we care about power, and not peak power but average power.
Anagram runs for about five hours on my small 10Ah power bank.
Yes, but I can’t give you any relevant information about the actual wattage consumption as we are running different presets with different processing requirements consuming different amounts of power. So I think what I have above is most relevant from an objective standpoint.
Best you could do is have them side by side with presets replicated as close as possible and measure.
Unless you intend to do that I think it’s most helpful to stick with the objective data and I think we can realistically surmise the outcome from that to one degree or another.
Last edited:
yeah, I'm easily getting enough for a 3hr gig on Anagram with a D'Addario 10,000mAh USB-PD power bank. After 3hrs of rehearsal or gigging with steady use, I have only seen the USB power bank go down to 60%. Of course, I don't know if power drain is linear, but it seems to be plenty of power and its very convenient to not have to use yet another wall wart.
okay friends. I need help.
Say I had an anagram and a QC or a QCm, and I wanted to use them both on my Temple Audio board, what power supply should I look into?
Say I had an anagram and a QC or a QCm, and I wanted to use them both on my Temple Audio board, what power supply should I look into?
