Neural DSP won Best of Show at NAMM 2026, beating out Yamaha and Boss with its new Quad Cortex Mini. The Helsinki-based company, founded in 2017 by Chilean immigrants, has spent less than a decade climbing to the top of a market owned by Universal Audio, Kemper, Line 6, and Fractal.
The backstory matters here. Neural built its reputation on $100 plugins using machine learning and impulse response technology to model $10,000 recording chains. In 2020, it moved that tech into the Quad Cortex floor unit, a hardware device packing hundreds of amps, cabs, and effects into a single box. The Mini is the next step: the same modeling power in a smaller footprint.
The full review digs into whether the size reduction costs anything in processing depth or real-world usability, and how the Mini stacks up against the original Quad Cortex in a live setting. That comparison is worth your time.
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