Quad Cortex vs TONEX - Who's The Capture King? 

Both sounded great. I have a QC and I love it. But, what the ToneX does for its price is fantastic and the new ToneX mini pedal must be a game changer with its functionality and price point. That will push all modelling companies to up their game. We all win. Thanks Paul

Without hearing the original amp in the overdrive setting as well its a little bit senseless because maybe the real amp sounded a bit darker as well but thanks for taking the time 😂

People are saying the TONEX is darker, yes it was, but that's how the amp sounded.... the QC brightened the capture.

That was an strange test... At the start, both captures sounded really close to the amp, but when compared between them, they both sounded clearly different!

On the more overdriven tests, I felt the QC sounded closest to the amp. The TONEX sounded a bit darker with not as much clarity. That’s easily fixable with a touch of EQ, though. The clean play through’s at the beginning, though, you couldn’t tell a difference. I have two different boards that I play through consistently on a weekly basis. One with the TONEX as my “amp” and my other board runs with a Quad Cortex. They are both absolutely incredible pieces of gear and I don’t plan on going back to anything else besides using those two as the heart of my main live rig boards. Awesome demo, Paul!!! BTW-your capture packs are killer, brother!!!

Thanks Paul! I own both pedals. I don’t think you can go wrong with either pedal. They both sound different but great in their way! There may be a little more clarity in the Tonex, but I love both!!

Ok, so… I have really good headphones and don’t own either of these units. What I got from it was the ToneX sounded extremely close for the clean tone… bright and stringy where, the QC lost something in the highs. The QC sound very close with the gain tone and also took the OD pedal better than the ToneX but, really… in a full mix or live, it would be next to impossible to tell which is which. Personally, I wouldn’t mind owning both. Great post as usual, Mr. Drew. We appreciate your time and talent. Be well.

Great comparison - thanks for vid! Your results reflect the difference i've been hearing between both consistently very well.

The Tone-X sounds warmer and more organic. The Quad sounds a bit sterile with a digital sheen in the high-end. I don’t own either product.

The Tonex capture process takes much less time if you use a notebook or PC with a dedicated NVIDIA Graphics Processing Unit, also a relatively cheap one, e.g. a gtx 1650.

I didn’t know anything about either of them and had no idea of their cost. To me to Tone X sounded better especially with the overdrive pedal added at the end. Surprised to see how much cheaper it was 😮

I'd be very happy with either, but I did prefer the Tonex

I own neither, so no big bias one way or the other here. I thought both captures sounded good and that both were very useable, but I thought the QC sounded fuller and more like the amp overall. Great video !!!

I am a Tonex owner. The QC sounded a bit brighter to me and I prefered that. Both had a great sound and you could dial them in to sound more or less the same.

Thank you! But why did you only compare the two captures side by side without the real amp. This would have interested me the most especially as the two captures behave differently with clean and gain. So now I don’t know which is closer to the real thing.

The routing options, form factor, sound and ease of use, no need for a PC etc, make the QC the clear winner in the modelling world for me, at least at the moment. I have been a valve amp guy for over forty years and, of course, know the difference. Mainly play CCM these day so the QC is perfect for the semi silent stages I mostly play on now. Do I miss the days of playing festivals on pretty loud stages and massive PA systems, with my jeans almost feeling the push from my Dual Rectifier Trem-O-Verb, or other amps I was using at the time. Of course, but I love my QC. Seriously thinking about a Tonex One as a great sounding backup though. My Cornford Carrera for home use is getting less and less of an airing these days!!

Did my first Tonex capture - Klon KTR Pedal. Damn, it sounds identical (other than a touch of EQ). Very impressed … just wish the Tonex had FX. Now I have to figure out how to capture the correct gain structure as the real pedal has more gain available (sweep) than the capture (assuming I need to capture the pedal at a bunch of different settings?)

Keep in mind the refine process depends on an an NVidia video card and it "cuda" cores. With the proper video card the processing time is dramatically reduced. I am able to do an advanced refine in about 10 minutes.

Matter of taste, i like the two to be honnest, the darker tone of the tonex doesn't bother me, but for the price difference, the tonex is an absolute winner to me. Profile game is now accessible to a lot more people. That said, what a great amp you have. I just buy your Matcheless profiles that are absolutely fantastic ! Cheers from France.

I’m slightly leaning towards the QC being slightly closer, but both sound great, and the ToneX is 1/4th the price. Also, the ToneX capture is optimized for use with Nvidia cards. It’s much slower on computers that do not have an Nvidia card.

They both are good. If you already have a good amount of pedals you like the ToneX is just an easy choice. Great comparison here. Love that amp you captured.

Paul I noticed that the amp sounded a little darker with the Tonex, even before the capture process. Does Tonex darkens the sound even turned off? It almost sounded like needed a buffer.

Hi Paul. I have both and prefer the mid hi clarity in your QC capture, but I have learned how easy it is to EQ something in. I’m sure I could get that shimmer on the Tonex with some knob twisting…lol Cheers!!!! Dave

I think we are missing the original driven amp sound to make a judgement. The purpose of this test should be which is closest to the original, but we can not tell. As a Kemper owner if the Kemper would sound that different you would hear a lot of complaints. Maybe the tester is payed by both companies.

The QC sounded a bit better to my ears, but I think you would be hard pressed to tell the difference in a band mix. I’m sure the differences were more pronounced to you live. Thanks Paul for the comparison.

Hey Paul! Thanks for the test. I noticed that the control at 2:13 (QC) and 4:36 (ToneX) sound pretty different. Did you say there were no changes to the mic or amp settings? I wonder what accounts for the tone difference?

You should have also let us listen to the original amp in the crunch version, even if the quad seems richer and brighter and with a slight increase in volume, we don't have to evaluate which of the 2 sounds we like more, on the contrary we have to evaluate which of the 2 profilers is more faithful to the original.

For me without any questions the winner is the ToneX !

Really intuitive video Paul 👍🏻 great work. 🎸

The ToneX does sound pretty dark on the humbucker. You mentioned, you captured your amp including a mic'd cabinet. Have you accidentally added some Cab/IR to the ToneX preset?

Something was not the same in the two captures, you can hear the real amp reference also sounds darker on the tonex

I will say.. this model is thee best tone ive heard out of a modeler. I downloaded it and cant get enough on the tonex…. I wanna buy the packs soon!

both do very good work but i think QC is closer and better... as always good video Paul.

Tonex definitely sounds noticeably darker, even on iPhone speakers.

Timely, exactly the video I needed as I'm about to buy. Thank you!

I own both, the QC has definite higher end sound but the Tone X has more low end structure. Both are excellent! So now if you have both then you run both off same guitar and all your woes are taken care of!

All I can say is, I can afford the ToneX. Thanks for doing this one!

i thought the qc had a brighter sound but i didnt think the actual amp was as bright. i think the tonex was closer to the actual amp but that doesnt necessarily mean it was better. i like brighter amps myself so for me the qc would be perfect for me. but if accuracy is the benchmark id hand it to tonex

I own a QC and have done for some time now. I often find that most captures with mics or DI box sound like they have less gain than the real amp. Tonex sounds great considering the price difference!

Quad cortex for me. I have the QC and the palisades which is a great pedal as Paul has not gotten rid of it proves it. But tbh I still love my amps first. Quad next.

You could always stick with speakers. I have two Marshall half stacks, four 2 x 12 cabinets supporting eight amplifiers inside a 4‘ x 4‘ iso enclosure. I just tested the decibel levels and the Marshall does 92 decibels whereas the rest of the amplifiers do 87. To me that’s reasonable my neighbors never complain, but sometimes my wife does. Nobody wants to sit in that room for long but where I am playing I can’t even hear them. This is nice because I can properly set the EQ. I just added a panel to reduce cross talk between the eight microphones. And it’s a midi guitar rig one button patch changes. All of this because I really wanted to capture the cabinet resonance. In order to do that you have to be somewhat loud. But you play very nice. I’m sure your neighbors would love you. I really enjoy everything you play here. The side benefit is you get to record the actual speakers, such as greenback vintage 30 etc. I have four different styles of green back pairs in the Marshall cabs, vintage 30 in a mesa 2x cabinet, Alnico blue pair, Redback, and eminence speakers in a pine cabinet for a real fender sound. All phase aligned because sometimes you take a capture of all the microphones. With your variety of guitars and amplifiers, you should be able to record every tone you could imagine. One day all of this technology will catch up but so far… I’m waiting.

Listened to this a few times. What I’m hearing is that your amp sounds different with each device before you capture it. The Tonex sounds warmer than the QC before the capture. Both are capturing their respective amps very closely. I have the Tonex, spent lots of time learning how to capture accurately, setting levels etc to get the best captures. What I would say is that Tonex isn’t as simple as it appears, there’s quite a big learning curve. Also it is very dependent on your computer to make it a practical option. I needed to upgrade my old PC to make ToneX workable ( was due an upgrade anyway) .

Now theres a NAM Player, and according to Leo Gibsons tests, it is the best quality amp capture unit right now

Everybody has the same doubt... is the amp dark as the Tonex or bright as the QC?

I don't own either (Line6 Helix user here!). The QC sounded airy to me with the Tonex more focused sounding. Both sounded good although I liked the cleans on the QC but overdriven on the Tonex.

The amplifier sound is also different in the two cases. The main difference is that there is a different preamp and converter in the audio interface and the qc and this colours the sound. The qc sounds raw the tonex sounds pleasant. The amp sound is richer than the captures.

It sounds like the amp was set differently for each example? When the real amp is played, it sounds darker when the Tone x was being used, not sure if that was the case but both sounded great

The test would be more helpful for me if we could hear the same riff on the amp, the QC, and the ToneX one after another. Leaving the amp out for the dirty stuff doesn't really show how accurate the capture is. I do hear some high end in the QC that I find missing in a lot of digitial devices compared to a real amp. I may have to try a Quad Cortex.

I'd love to see a comparison of Quad Cortex vs Tonex vs NeuralAmpModeler

Kemper FTW, with liquid profiling

I have a quad cortex and sticking with it . I got it at launch and they delivered the desktop 🖥️ control which is great! Now we are getting plugin support and then I am sure we are getting a quad cortex pedal - 1X haha where we can copy captures in so it will be even playing field . Just depends which one you like more and prefer

If I were to spend the money, it would be the quad cortex, maybe one day. I like the capabilities and price of the tonex one and I could be quite happy with it and a capture of my badcat amp.

Why didn't you include the OD with the amp? Surely the measure of which is best is which one sounds like the amp? But only including the OD with the modellers you just have 2 modellers that sound different...

I am a ToneX user but must admit the QC had more clarity. Big price difference to get that clarity mind you. I had to put on headphones to really get a taste of the difference but it does appear the QC has the edge. Is this capture available in any of your ToneX capture packs Paul?

QC definitely had a little more chime. I’m sure you could eq then Tonex to get into the same territory. The QC mimicked the amp slightly better imo. Post tweaking could pull a great tone from either. I’m satisfied that my Kemper does what I need without the need to change. Either of these platforms plus either a helix or a fractal would get you there too. How good to be a guitar player!!

What about the 'feel' though? Which one feels most faithful to the tube amp itself?

Interesting comparison. Neither of the captures were 100% for me listening over YT. The ToneX seemed closer, although a little mid focused. I've always found the Quad to be a little sterile. Not as bad as the Kemper, but close. Neither of these sound as good as the Two Notes Opus for quality, dynamics and feel. Please do a video on it and compare it with other modelers.

both are good but I like the clarity of the quad cortex more on this one!

With how different the overdrive captures sound, why didn't you include the overdrive sounds from the amp as well? That would make it obvious which one models the actual amp better. It seems like maybe you're trying to avoid hurting the sales of your captures, or the sales of companies that sponsor your reviews.

I have a Tonex One on order. Otherwise i have never played either. I preffered the sound of the QC on overdriven tones, it seemed brighter and more defined. On the cleans however, i found both nearly identical.

Hi paul thanks for that, but I think it would be great to hear your honest opinion, only those affiliated with the brand would take offense.. I’d wanna know the feel of both how they compare, sag, natural compression, in comparison to the real amp I’ve notice on my quad cortex capturing my vintage amps that the tonality is there of the amp but there’s a lot missing from the original once I do a fresh ears check up. Thanks paul

The QC is "fuller" sounding, just sounds bigger and more organic... but is it worth $1200 USD more than the ToneX? Not if amp captures are all you're after because the ToneX is truly almost as good (to my ears). If you want an all in one solution then the QC is best, but for just captures, get the ToneX. (I own both a QC and ToneX if that matters at all). Excellent video as always.

Man, in side by side, or drive mode, you need to put the original sound of the amp, for reference ... We can hear the difference between two modelers .. but we dont know wath is the sound of the original .. 🤔 but, very good video for comparision

For the clean tone, both were fine - but when it came to overdrive QC did a better job. However, with tonex you can just use your PC which is very easy and versatile.

QC sounds quite better to me out of the gate with no tweaking - but Tonex is much cheaper and I think with a few small touch ups you could easily get close.

They're both really, really good. I like the Tonex more.. just slightly. What feels more like playing through a real amp?

I own neither pedal. The Tonex sounded better to me, however, in both cases, the actual amp sounded better. I'm curious if @The Studio Rats can comment on FEEL? Does either pedal feel the same as playing that amazing amp?

The quad cortex is definately more open sounding. Particularly in the lower mids with gain. I prefer that from the clips, though couldn't say which is closer to the real amp. Totally unbiased as an axe-fx user.

I preffered the sound of the QC, disappointingly considering the price difference. The Tonex had a mid frequency hump that sounded like it was played through a 1x12 cab. The QC was clearer with a wider freq response. I'm a Headrush Gigboard user.

There is something strange about this test. The Quad Cortex and the real amp sound the same but brighter than the Tonex and the real amp, which also sound the same but darker than the previous setup. So which one is closer to the original?

Great Vid. I’m not a fan of any modelers I’ve had them all, that being said, I thought during the process both of them sounded very, very close but back to back the QC and the Tonex, there’s quite a difference. The QC definitely had more sparkle, and the ToneX sounded a little more mid heavy in the back-to-back comparison. To the end user, which one feels more like a tube amp is the big question.

It doesn’t matter which sounded “better”; which sounded closer to the amp?

In my opinion as a consumer advocate, a very subjective and/or minor sonic difference can be easily overlooked for a 400% price savings.

the quad cortex is brighter because for some reason the amp was bright ( listen @2:13 the orginal sound of the amp) ..now listen to the same amp that the tonex try to profile @4:35 : the sound is way darker ...so i think the mic position was not the same during capture, because orginal amp doesn't sound the same .. and that's why at the end QC and tonex doesn't sound the same as tonex (and why they sound close to the amp they each profiled)

I couldn’t say there was a clear winner. On some sounds the Tone X was far better but on others the Quad Cortex was superior. I don’t own either pedal but I will be getting the Tone X One soon.

Gram jeszcze na Kemper. Planuje przejść na QC ze względu na możliwości grania na dwóch wzmacniaczach jednocześnie. Brzmią oba bardzo dobrze. QC zabrzmiał trochę jaśniej.

I think for the cost difference, I could dig the Tonex.

Is it me or does the captures sound better than the real amp? In real life I'm sure it dont but the RU-vid video audio isn't the best but sounded better than the real amp

it sounded like the amp was dialed in differently or the mic changed position between the two captures. If you compare the amp sounds in both AB comparisons, it sounds different.

Think the Cortex sounded better. Thanx for the video Paul.

I'd like to hear the mic'ed amp in the mix for comparison. Maybe one sounds more like it? Maybe neither sounds like it?

You would never be able the difference between either capture or the real amp in a studio mix let alone live at a gig. I own (will continue to use) a Helix LT but plan on getting a TONEX ONE once they start shipping to have as a backup, or tiny live/direct rig, or for practice, or just to have the option of amps that aren't currently part of the Helix family.

What’s the song right at the start? You play it all the time and it gets stuck in my head every time

I think the Quad Cortex sounds like a better recreation than the Tone - X. The Tone - X reminds me of the sound of a PODxt. I don't have either or any simulation rigs, only tube amps, but I would now want to buy a Quad Cortex.

Clean crunch sounds was equal, more distorted and with the pedal the ToneX is more "muffled/dark" and not to my liking... but the little lead riff the Quad sound thin. For bias, I really want to like ToneX and buy the ToneX One, but not so sure anymore... thank you ! (I was nearly convinced I had to have ToneX to supplement my GT-1000 Core, because everyone on the GT forum said so... ;)

I preferred the ToneX clean and the QC with overdrive.

Generally I prefer the sound of ToneX in these kinds of tests, but in this one QC sounded better. One thing I can say for sure though is that it's always one of these two that sound better. They are usually first and second and both usually sound very good the blind tests that happen so often online these days. If given the choice, I'd much rather own an QC but budget and form factor also has to be a consideration. ToneX One for example.. hard to beat but both the price and form factor if captures are all you care about. QC is a great all in one solution. In conclusion.. I want both. "Utah.. get me two".. ✌

To be fair, both captures sounded awesome! However, as evidenced in Fractal’s latest firmware update, usually the darker sound is actually more accurate to the amp. Therefore, the Tonex was probably more accurate to the original. When I first listen to the QC I thought that it actually sound the best! But then after I heard the Tonex capture and then going back to the QC, the QC seem to have some upper- mid snarl that was a bit abrasive. But again, in the end, both were great. But speaking strictly in terms of “accuracy,” I’m inclined to think that the Tonex has the edge.

for gain preferred the quad cortex, but eq prob would sort that, one thing, in the image of the quad cortex you display on screen, the chain looks quite complicated, certainly not just an amp and cab, be interested to know if that was the chain used, and how the chains in the two devices compared

The actual amp is more juicy and slightly more overdriven. I can hear harmonics which are not present in the captures. Using NDH-30 by Neumann for this. Between the two capturing devices, ToneX is weaker, darker and more muddy.

For me the Tonex sounds more similar to the original amplifier, the sound is less muddy and is more pleasant to the ear. There is dirt in the QC that shouldn't be there.

I closed my eyes in the beginning and could not tell them apart, they was a big difference in the examples in the video especially the more gain was used. I thought the tonex was a closer capture to the amp. For the clean too edge of breakup they were about even to me, maybe I preferred the tonex but with the higher gain the differences were so vast for me it would depend on context. The tonex was darker and deep in a warm way I guess but to me there was more definition in the quad cortex one. I don’t own either but could only afford the tonex so there might be some unconscious bias there😊

They do sound a bit different, but the basic sound is still there on both. With a bit of eq tweaking, either one could (I believe) sound like the other. The QC seemingly a bit brighter and the Tonex sounding a bit more muffled. I certainly could work with either one. No complaints.

On this video I liked more the sound of Quad Cortex, I don't own any of these but if I had to buy one I maybe buy the ToneX One as I don't have amps to profile, I just want to find 4-5 really good profiles and that's it, I'm a HX Stomp user and it's great so maybe I'll use the ToneX One to free up DSP from HX Stomp and use it only for FX and have the ToneX one on the FX loop for amps/cabs, I can also use the ToneX One for my iPad where I have a lot of FX apps and it'll work as audio interface too

Don't own any of the modellers but the capture on QC is better compared to TX. TX capture sounded bassier, brittle & dull. Costwise, it makes sense.

What graphics card do you use? It seems counter intuitive, but modern NVidia graphics cards make the Tonex captures FAR faster. Otherwise, yes they are slow.

Thanks for the test . . . it seems to me that the Cortex has a little more treble sound. And otherwise it sounds the same.

Awesome content Paul thank you !

Thanx Paul for another great video comparison. Don’t let that DrKevGuitar tool from the comment section on the tone one review keep your opinions from us. I appreciate your input, well done

Thought the QC was better, but not worth the extra cost, hard to beat tonex on quality for price, but I’d buy the amp 👍