Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Heard a cool Kemper tip from Keith Merrow the other day. He profiles amps at a very low gain setting. He says if you do it this way, when you add gain on the Kemper, it seems to bring out more of the amp’s positive qualities. Said it usually ends up sounding better than the actual amp with the gain up high.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Heard a cool Kemper tip from Keith Merrow the other day. He profiles amps at a very low gain setting. He says if you do it this way, when you add gain on the Kemper, it seems to bring out more of the amp’s positive qualities. Said it usually ends up sounding better than the actual amp with the gain up high.

So one if two things is going on here:

- the Kemper doesn't work well profiling the amp at high gain
- the Kemper works great, and he's profiling amps at high gain that he doesn't like the sound of

 

[Demanic]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

So one if two things is going on here:

- the Kemper doesn't work well profiling the amp at high gain
- the Kemper works great, and he's profiling amps at high gain that he doesn't like the sound of

Or, Kemper profiles high gain just fine, but gain being what it is, if you start with a lot, and then add more, it's always just going to descend into complete chaos the more that you continue to add.
If you profile at a lower initial gain, you have more room to turn the gain up later.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

So one if two things is going on here:

- the Kemper doesn't work well profiling the amp at high gain
- the Kemper works great, and he's profiling amps at high gain that he doesn't like the sound of

By that same logic, anyone who uses an overdrive pedal into their amp bought an amp they don't like the sound of.

The Kemper takes a digital picture of your amp/signal chain set a particular way. The controls on the device are not necessarily going to behave exactly the same way they do on your amp. Earlier, I posted that it's not accurate to call it a modeler. Someone said I was splitting hairs. That guy does not understand what each device is doing.

Even if the Kemper sucks at modeling high gain devices, or Keith doesn't like the sound of his amps at high gain, who cares? The guy has an arsenal of tools, and figured out a way to make one of them do something cool that the others don't do.

 

[67Mopar]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

What's a Kemper?

 

[chadd]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

What's a Kemper?

Twenty bucks, same as in town

 

[Aceman]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

The Kemper takes a digital picture of your amp/signal chain set a particular way. The controls on the device are not necessarily going to behave exactly the same way they do on your amp.

See - this is what I find odd. I'd think you had to model the amp by setting every knob at every level, etc....

A treble knob going from 7-8 might be a different change than 8-9, and maybe 9-10 does almost nothing, and so on. Same thing with gain curves, etc....

My "one pic" of an amp is useless the moment I turn a knob that doesn't work the way the Kemper algorithm says, if I'm all about the 'reproduction.'

That said - maybe it does cool things. - just not exact copy things.

 

[El Dunco]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

I'm inclined to agree that there's some unknown unknown at play here. Keep pushing tech support to make them do their d@mn job (it sucks you just can't rely on people to do their job and you have to micromanage everything but it's just a fact of life sometimes).

They're not that flat/honest. Big bump in the lower end and swings between +/- 10 dB for the rest of the frequency range.

I never completely trust the frequency response graphs they include with mics and speakers. They do some "smoothing" f'ery to make them look just a little bit flatter etc. than they really are.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Yeah, but that's not even close to flat after the smoothing!

 

[El Dunco]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Yeah, but that's not even close to flat after the smoothing!

Exactly, who knows what it's really like without specialized equipment?

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

See - this is what I find odd. I'd think you had to model the amp by setting every knob at every level, etc....

A treble knob going from 7-8 might be a different change than 8-9, and maybe 9-10 does almost nothing, and so on. Same thing with gain curves, etc....

My "one pic" of an amp is useless the moment I turn a knob that doesn't work the way the Kemper algorithm says, if I'm all about the 'reproduction.'

That said - maybe it does cool things. - just not exact copy things.

This is why when everybody's saying, "Modeling/Profiling" and I'm saying, "They're not synonyms," it's not splitting hairs. They are NOT doing the same thing.

Now, the only person I've heard point out the example I used was Keith Merrow. If you're familiar with him, you know that absolutely nothing he does is focused on recreating classic amp tones of the 60's and 70's. If having every tone possible from a Deluxe, a Plexi, and an AC30 is the goal, getting those amps is probably still the best option.

However, your "maybe it does cool things - just not exact copies" statement is the key here. I'm interested in coming up with new stuff, so I'd rather have cool things than copies.

 

[chadd]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

See - this is what I find odd. I'd think you had to model the amp by setting every knob at every level, etc....

A treble knob going from 7-8 might be a different change than 8-9, and maybe 9-10 does almost nothing, and so on. Same thing with gain curves, etc....

My "one pic" of an amp is useless the moment I turn a knob that doesn't work the way the Kemper algorithm says, if I'm all about the 'reproduction.'

That said - maybe it does cool things. - just not exact copy things.

Kemper doesn't model the amp, maybe that's the next step. That will take a lot more processing bandwidth than replicating snapshots.

 

[Jacew]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

This is why when everybody's saying, "Modeling/Profiling" and I'm saying, "They're not synonyms," it's not splitting hairs. They are NOT doing the same thing.

Now, the only person I've heard point out the example I used was Keith Merrow. If you're familiar with him, you know that absolutely nothing he does is focused on recreating classic amp tones of the 60's and 70's. If having every tone possible from a Deluxe, a Plexi, and an AC30 is the goal, getting those amps is probably still the best option.

However, your "maybe it does cool things - just not exact copies" statement is the key here. I'm interested in coming up with new stuff, so I'd rather have cool things than copies.

I always thought the whole point of Kemper was that you get to "freeze" the sound you have. When there's all these countless factors affecting tone, Kemper is the closest you can get to maintain "that exact tone".

 

[Sirion]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

As a scholar I have, in fact, looked a bit into the possibilities of using the Kemper as a scholarly tool, but as far as I can tell, reproductions do not seem to be accurate enough to make it worthwhile.

 

[Aceman]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

However, your "maybe it does cool things - just not exact copies" statement is the key here. I'm interested in coming up with new stuff, so I'd rather have cool things than copies.

That's why I really love my Digitech Chorus Factory. It starts with a foundational chorus tone, but then adds other stuff to it. Could you model an "exact" chorus and setting? Yeah, I suppose with some major tweaking.

Can I get get awesome chorus? All damn day easily.

 

[Aceman]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

However, your "maybe it does cool things - just not exact copies" statement is the key here. I'm interested in coming up with new stuff, so I'd rather have cool things than copies.

That's why I really love my Digitech Chorus Factory. It starts with a foundational chorus tone, but then adds other stuff to it. Could you model an "exact" chorus and setting? Yeah, I suppose with some major tweaking.

Can I get get awesome chorus? All damn day easily.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

I like the chorus of comments about the chorus factory. Very meta.

 

[chadd]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

I took the plunge last week and....

At rehearsal tonight our singer said "holy ****, that thing sounds exactly like your amp". There are some fantastic profiles out there, but I really like using my dirtier tones and profiles two channels in my amp

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

I don't know how Kemper does it's profiling, but the way my Mooer GE300 does it's "Tone Capturing" is very effective (apparently different from Kemper's approach) and uses an onboard amp-model of the amp being profiled as a sort of 'blueprint' for the tone being captured from your actual amp that you're profiling. As a result your controls respond like the amp model 'blueprint' after the profile is done so it's actually insanely close to your real amp at any setting.

In the case of the Mooer you need to to match the output & gain levels of the onboard amp model you're using as the 'blueprint' to output and gain levels on the real amp (that you're profiling/capturing) when you're doing the "Tone Capture'. Do that right (easy as pie) and the results are always pretty sweet..

 

[Hank-]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Mooer uses Fractal approach of Tone Capture. It would be fascinating to know if they copied the code from another amp modeling giant, they were sued by ehx lately for copying theirs. Their tone capture process makes me wonder if they have fractal algos running under the hood :saeek: