Cortex Control and backups
The free desktop editor, what it does that the unit cannot, and the only sane disaster plan for three thousand presets.
Back up to your computer before you need to. Cortex Control is free, and a factory reset is one panicked footswitch combo away.
A real editor, which the Nano has no equivalent of
Cortex Control is free for macOS and Windows and connects over USB. If you have used a Nano Cortex and found preset management on a phone tedious, this is the difference between the two devices that nobody puts on the spec sheet.
- Bulk preset operations — copy, like, upload, download and delete many at once instead of one at a time on the glass.
- Local backups on your own computer, with rename, update, delete and recall.
- Drag-and-drop IR import, available immediately on the unit or in Cortex Cloud.
- The full Neural Capture process, end to end, from the desktop.
- Device editing, auditioning and a live tuner on a real screen with a real mouse.
How to get hereFree for macOS and Windows, connected over USB Type B. On Windows you also need Neural's USB Audio Driver installed separately.
The whole library, on a real screen
Presets, captures, IRs and backups in one sidebar. Managing 3,072 presets on a 7-inch touchscreen is the thing Cortex Control exists to stop you doing.
Select many, act once
Copy, like, upload, download and delete in bulk. On the unit these are one-at-a-time operations, which is why people's setlists stay messy.
Drag IRs straight in
Drop WAVs onto the window and they're available on the unit or in Cortex Cloud. They're still converted to 48 kHz and 1,024 samples on the way in, whatever you feed them.
Local backups — the only real disaster plan
Create, rename, update and recall backups on your own computer. Do it before you need it: Recovery Mode's Factory Reset wipes everything, and it's one panicked footswitch combo away.
The Windows gotcha
Windows needs Neural's USB Audio Driver installed separately, on top of Cortex Control itself. macOS does not. A Windows machine that cannot see the unit is almost always missing that driver — or using a USB-C cable that was never going to fit a Type B socket.
Cortex Control also expects current firmware. Since CorOS 4.0.0 the firmware and the app share a version number, so “are these two in step” is finally answerable at a glance.
IRs are converted on the way in whatever you feed them: any WAV at 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96 or 192 kHz becomes 48 kHz, resized to 1,024 samples — about 21 ms. A long IR with a real tail does not stay long, and nothing on the unit changes that.
Quad Cortex Wiki: FAQBack up now, not later
There is a recovery combo on this device — hold footswitches A and H during the first six seconds of the splash screen — and it offers two options. Reset Settings keeps your presets and captures. Factory Reset does not.
The moment you need that combo is the moment you find out whether you have a backup. Make one with Cortex Control while nothing is wrong.
Write the A + H recovery combo on a card and tape it inside your case. It is the fix for a unit that will not boot, and there is no way to discover it from the hardware.
Quad Cortex Wiki: FAQ