devices · Nano Cortex · learn · 09 of 10 · 10 min

presets and playing live

Four sounds under your feet, the switching gap, MIDI, and a pre-flight checklist for the gig.

the one thing

Four well-chosen presets cover a set. For more, add a MIDI controller and treat the pedal as a sound module.

four presets, 64 slots

There are 64 presets. Four are reachable by foot: IA and IB on Footswitch I, IIA and IIB on Footswitch II. The rest live under All Presets and need MIDI.

BANK cycles capture banks, not preset banks, and it is a hand control.

There are two modes. 4-Preset Mode is the factory default and works as described. 2-Preset Mode makes Footswitch I toggle A and B, and turns Footswitch II into a global bypass.

combine, don’t multiply

With four presets, think in songs, not amps. Clean, crunch, lead and lead-with-delay get you through a whole set.

Neural DSP staff argue the limit is a virtue: it makes you rely on your dynamics and your playing, not on switching.

the switching gap

Changing preset produces roughly 60 ms of silence. NanOS 2.0.0 introduced it deliberately as the cost of the flexible signal chain. Switching was gapless at launch, and rollback requests have been declined.

Delay and reverb trails continue across the change. Owners are split: some call the gap a live deal-breaker, and others on recent firmware don’t notice it in a band mix.

Keep the modulation, delay and reverb identical across all four presets. Several owners report this makes the gap effectively inaudible.
Better still, don’t change preset mid-song. An expression pedal or MIDI CC isn’t a preset change, so it has no gap.

solo boosts

There’s no dedicated boost. The clearest workaround is mapping per-preset capture volume to an expression pedal: gapless and continuously variable.

The alternative is to mirror your lead preset into the adjacent slot with a higher capture volume, so one tap boosts. That costs one of your four footswitch presets.

MIDI, if you gig regularly

A MIDI foot controller over TRS Type A unlocks all 64 presets, mapped automatically to Program Change 0–63. Neural DSP staff have endorsed the Nektar Pacer, Morningstar MC6, Behringer FCB1010, Harley Benton MP-100 and Fortin Hydra. Owners also favor the Morningstar MC3, Luminite Graviton M1/M2 and the M-Wave Chocolate.

Set the EXP/MIDI port to MIDI mode in the app first. Until you do, nothing happens, even with the right cable.

There is a confirmed bug with MIDI over the TRS port: the cab and capture blocks mishandle certain incoming CCs and the CAB/IR block can randomly disengage mid-rehearsal. Neural DSP support has acknowledged it with a fix planned and no date. The workaround is MIDI over USB-C, which costs you the audio-interface use of that port.

Forum: CAB/IR block randomly switching off

gig pre-flight

Run this before every gig.

Firmware at 2.2.1 or later—2.2.0 could fail to boot with an expression or MIDI pedal connected.
Take a cloud backup. You get five slots.
Power from the DC jack with a regulated 600 mA-plus supply. Never USB at a gig.
Balanced TRS out, into a DI box if the run is long. That also buys you a second ground lift.
Level-match all four presets at gig volume, not bedroom volume.
Identical post-effects across presets, to bury the switching gap.
Parameter Lock on (hold EXIT for three seconds), so nothing moves if you kick it.
Turn LED brightness up. The LEDs are hard to read in daylight, not on dark stages.
Pre-sync everything in the app while you have signal, then plan not to need the phone at all.
Learn your preset positions by feel. There’s no screen to check.