To start with the positives, I tried capturing two of my amps yesterday and the results were genuinly incredible... I've never heard any other digital unit, whether its technology was based on modelling, profiling/capturing or whatever, reproducing the detail and clarity of a real mic'd up amp as accurately as the Nano Cortex. I haven't tried the ToneX, but I don't really see the need to - it physically can't get a hell of a lot better than this. The NDSP capture process is relatively fast and painless as well, more so than the ToneX process from my understanding. A couple minutes of ghastly noises that would make any priest worth his salt immediately go fetch his bottle of holy water, followed by a couple minutes of number crunching in silence, and you're left with an impressively accurate capture.
On the negative side, it's very unfortunate that Neural DSP decided to dumb this unit down as much as they did. It's simply not going to be a comprehensive rig for the vast majority of players. Myself included, who admittedly don't have the biggest demands or need the most complex rig, but having a little bit of "headroom" feature wise in a unit like this is never a bad thing. The fact that they did include some effects makes it a somewhat "neither fish nor fowl" kind of product, and thus a bit unclear what exact purpose it's intended to serve. The way I see it, it's pretty expensive for a pure capturing device, and they probably realised that and decided to add a couple of extremely limited, half baked effects to make it seem like a decent deal compared to something like the Kemper Player.
I've dreamt of something like this for a long time, a tiny unit that fits in a gig bag pocket and sounds killer. And while it certainly does fit that description, it still leaves a lot to be desired. I'll have to either expand it with something like a Line 6 HX Stomp, or simply swap it for a Quad Cortex to make it cover everything I need. Which, again, isn't all that much.
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