Stupid Clean Sense and most probably Stupid me...

    Wow, so much confusion.


    Let me give you some more information:


    The Clean Sense control is an input trim and a balance between clean and distorted settings at the same time.
    The trick is, that the distortion level is compensated. When you turn down Clean Sense, any distorting entity such as the amp, or a distortion pedal increases its distortion in the background, so that the sound stays independent from the setting of Clean Sense.
    This is why only clean sounds are affected by Clean Sense, hence the name.


    It is much smarter to level the guitar by ear than by eye, but it seems that only a minority trust their ears and follow the simple guideline we gave.


    There is several reasons why we have changed the treshold of the level led, but no big deal.
    I found out that it's a good idea to hit the yellow light at a level, where the guitar is leveled about right. Before it was more green, which does not give too much of information.
    We have tested several guitars. Once the perceived level of clean and distorted rigs are in balance, you never hit the red light.
    In the respective threads (including this), nobody has ever mentioned that he hits the red light, while the level is set correctly. I wonder why there is no such feedback.


    I am surprised that some of you get a red light with a passive PU. That means, those PU's are louder than active PU's. I have never experienced such guitars.
    However, this should not be a problem. The input has loads of headroom, even when you hit red in the peak.


    You can make a simple test: Dial an arbitrary rig, switch of all effects and turn amp gain to zero.
    Now turn Master Volume down (just in case) and turn Clean Sense up, until you hear the soft clipping. You'll see you have to bring it up very far, to produce a clipping artifact. Still the LED will be red all the time, to indicate that the guitar is not too loud, but "unnecessarily" or "unbalanced" loud. At a very high level you will hear the clipping, when you use hot pickups. This is what is mentioned in the manual.
    Now turn the Clean Sense down to the value where the setting is the best. Watch the Output LED. You'll see that it peaks even darker than the Input LED.


    This brings us to the Output LED. In another thread it was mentioned that the Output LED is going into red. Can you make it with your rig, while the input stays in the limits? I guess not.
    The Output LED will only go red if level settings or certain effects significantly increase the level. In this case search for the cause and set the according levels to the mid position - the unity level.
    The output again has a reasonable headroom and a dedicated soft clipping. There is enough space to boost a solo sound by 6 or 9 dB, even if it goes into the red light a bit.


    The Profiler is not designed like a classic digital device with hard limits. It is soft. The soft clipping is actually much softer clipping than a tube has ever clipped! (Yes, that is possible.) It is hard to make a bad sound by applying too much level.


    Now again to the ones with the very hot guitars: I bet you are into metal.
    Take your favorite metal rig with high distortion. Turn the Clean Sense up to the red. You will not hear a difference.
    The reason is, any soft clipping happening in the input will be eliminated by the much harder distortion later in the signal flow, which is nice physics.
    And let me repeat: The soft clipping will not be hidden in a way, it is completely eliminated.


    CK

    Quote

    I am surprised that some of you get a red light with a passive PU. That means, those PU's are louder than active PU's. I have never experienced such guitars.
    However, this should not be a problem. The input has loads of headroom, even when you hit red in the peak.


    It's OK for me.


    So, this time, I should have it :
    - flickering/transient red light has never warned for "unwanted distorsion" (whatever thresholds are set in the background)
    - the KPA has plenty of headroom so no fear for clipping (even when sustained red)
    - with hot pickups (in my example, LP with 500T, drop B tuned, strumming high strings on a "clean" rig, not metal), if you need/want to rise clean sense for adjusting balance, only use (and trust) your ears


    Thanks CK for being patient and pedagogue ! :)


    And please, everyone, excuse me for having been so slow to understand something finally simple and obvious :)

    Thank you so much Christoph for this very clear and thorough explanation.


    I finally got it, stupid me (like I said in the original post title)


    I should put a piece of tape on those LEDs and do as I was suggested here and trust my ears.
    I think my ears are pretty good by the way but since I've never had any formal training or no one to teach me what to search for in sounds, I go by trial and error. Getting better slowly after so many mistakes and misconceptions. Gladly, this forum has helped me tremendesly for the last year now, thanks to all you guys!


    Again, thank you for all your answers and clarifications.


    Marc.

    Thanks CK for chiming in ill give your wise words a try when im back in the studio. Must say im not in to metal at all but my PRS Navarro seems to be veryhot and they are passive pickups and with clean sense on -12db it still flashes red. So from what you are saying is that its fine, there is no clipping. This is good to know as -12db is the limit on the KPA and i cant turn it down any more.

    Quote from Raoul23

    Thanks CK for chiming in ill give your wise words a try when im back in the studio. Must say im not in to metal at all but my PRS Navarro seems to be veryhot and they are passive pickups and with clean sense on -12db it still flashes red. So from what you are saying is that its fine, there is no clipping. This is good to know as -12db is the limit on the KPA and i cant turn it down any more.


    I'm curious, are you plugging directly into the front input on the Kemper or into some other pedals first? Secondly, have you ever been checked for color blindness? I mean that in all seriousness. I didn't know something was wrong until middle school and wasn't officially confirmed until college. There are many degrees of color deficiency and those of us who suffer from it don't all simply see black and white.


    http://colorvisiontesting.com/online%20test.htm

    A quick note to say that my guitar signal hits red on the input with no pedal. Adding a boost actually keeps the signal green. The problem I am having is that the noise gate doesn't seem to fully engage. This is lessened with the boost as well. It wasn't like this with the prior firmware. Before the noise gate would compress the signal when at the extremes, now it does not. Not a big deal as I use an external boost most of the time anyway.

    Quote from Will_Chen

    I'm curious, are you plugging directly into the front input on the Kemper or into some other pedals first? Secondly, have you ever been checked for color blindness? I mean that in all seriousness. I didn't know something was wrong until middle school and wasn't officially confirmed until college. There are many degrees of color deficiency and those of us who suffer from it don't all simply see black and white.


    http://colorvisiontesting.com/online%20test.htm


    Quote from Will_Chen

    I'm curious, are you plugging directly into the front input on the Kemper or into some other pedals first? Secondly, have you ever been checked for color blindness? I mean that in all seriousness. I didn't know something was wrong until middle school and wasn't officially confirmed until college. There are many degrees of color deficiency and those of us who suffer from it don't all simply see black and white.


    http://colorvisiontesting.com/online%20test.htm


    Trust me I'm not colour blind I will actually film me playing my guitar so you can see what I mean. I'm going to try CK's way of setting up the CS and see what happens I hope it works. Must say my cleans are a lot quieter that my distortion rig even when clean rig volume is on 0 db and distortion rigs are on -4 db. But if I increase CS to even them out I get solid red input LED ?(

    Quote

    I am surprised that some of you get a red light with a passive PU. That means, those PU's are louder than active PU's. I have never experienced such guitars.


    I have a Les Paul equipped with Häussel 1959 pickups, you can hardly find Humbuckers with lower output. I have set my clean sense to -6.0 db and the input LED is still going red when i hit the low E-string a bit hard. Anyway, I don't hear any distortion or clipping so thats fine for me.


    What I still don't understand is how to dial in the distortion sense setting. For example, if I download a rig, how do I set it to get close to the amount of distortion the amp had during profiling? Most of the time I simply don't know how much distortion a profile is intended to have. But thats where the profiles sound best imo. Is listening to it and trying to find the sweet spot the only way?
    I always thougt setting it to 0 db should do it, but is this true if the amp is profiled with a setting of, say, +4 db. Is the distortion sense setting used during the profiling process at all?


    That thing really confuses me ?(

    Quote from Raoul23

    Trust me I'm not colour blind I will actually film me playing my guitar so you can see what I mean. I'm going to try CK's way of setting up the CS and see what happens I hope it works. Must say my cleans are a lot quieter that my distortion rig even when clean rig volume is on 0 db and distortion rigs are on -4 db. But if I increase CS to even them out I get solid red input LED ?(


    Because each rigs volume can be variable not only due to effects but in the way the profile was created, you really need to set the clean sense using a single rig and compare volumes with the gain up vs at zero. Once that is balanced then relative rig volume needs to be set using the the volume knob.

    OK here we go......


    Followed CK's instructions about setting CS i used the AC30 clean factory profile, turned all effects off and gain at 0 played my guitar (PRS Navarro) to make both input and output LED's glow red to clip(must say CS was on about +8.6 before i hear any clipping) both LED's were glow RED constant.


    I then rolled the CS down back to around -6.5 where i thought it sounded quite good. Input light was flashing red quite alot but no clipping could be heard.


    From here i turned the gain up to full on the amp to see if the volume was the same when clean and distorted and yep they were. OK thought i was on a winner here :thumbup:


    Changed to a patch i use for rhythm it was the mesa boogie triple rect from TAF and dam the input light was nearly red all the time ?(?( I thought the CS wasnt ment to affect distortion sounds ?(


    i then backed my CS off to around -10.5 and the Input LED started glowing less RED. Well now im totally confused ?(?( Maybe im reading more in to this than is needed, i dont know ;(

    Quote from deadpan

    A quick note to say that my guitar signal hits red on the input with no pedal. Adding a boost actually keeps the signal green. The problem I am having is that the noise gate doesn't seem to fully engage. This is lessened with the boost as well. It wasn't like this with the prior firmware. Before the noise gate would compress the signal when at the extremes, now it does not. Not a big deal as I use an external boost most of the time anyway.


    We didn't change anything in the signal flow. The noise gate is the same.
    It has never compressed the signal, which is an interesting conclusion btw.
    A noise gate usually expands the signal rather than compressing it. :)

    Thanks for the response CK.


    The compression I refer to on the noise gate may be a misperception, but for me on 2.1 when the noise gate was set above nine I would lose some high frequencies which makes me think the signal is compressed. You would know more than I on this.


    Is it possible that the transfer form your prior sense scale to dB shifted the level to where the lowest settings are not longer achievable?


    Thanks for your patience!

    Quote from Raoul23


    Changed to a patch i use for rhythm it was the mesa boogie triple rect from TAF and dam the input light was nearly red all the time ?(?( I thought the CS wasnt ment to affect distortion sounds ?(


    i then backed my CS off to around -10.5 and the Input LED started glowing less RED. Well now im totally confused ?(?( Maybe im reading more in to this than is needed, i dont know ;(


    I had a similar experience Raoul23, and it drove me nuts initially. I understand this is not how clean sense is designed to work, the way Mr CK has explained it, it seems more like a tool to balance clean and distorted tones.


    But I definitely see that red LED blink less when I turn down clean sense while using a distorted profile. And, subjective as it might be, I think my tone was better when that red LED wasn't blinking.


    Could be psychosomatic, but you know how good tone is all in the head, from a certain point of view ^^

    Quote from Firebird

    What I still don't understand is how to dial in the distortion sense setting. For example, if I download a rig, how do I set it to get close to the amount of distortion the amp had during profiling? ?(


    Simply leave it untouched, at the default setting.

    right, distortion sense at center (0) would match the original rig. what it is used for is to get the same gain levels between different guitars with different output levels. So if you have an axe with EMG's and another with medium gain passives, you can change distortion sense to compensate, so that your patches have the same gain levels between guitars without tweaking every patch.

    Quote from nightlight

    I had a similar experience Raoul23, and it drove me nuts initially. I understand this is not how clean sense is designed to work, the way Mr CK has explained it, it seems more like a tool to balance clean and distorted tones.


    But I definitely see that red LED blink less when I turn down clean sense while using a distorted profile. And, subjective as it might be, I think my tone was better when that red LED wasn't blinking.


    Could be psychosomatic, but you know how good tone is all in the head, from a certain point of view ^^



    I am happy to repeat it in different words again. :)
    Clean Sense controls the input level to the Profiler.
    By doing that it obviously controls the volume of clean sounds, while the volume and gain of distorted sounds remain unaffected.
    The volume of clean sounds is dependent of the guitar you use, while distorted sounds will remain mostly unaffected by the guitars output volume. That's physics.


    You can utilize Clean Sense to balance clean vs. distorted sounds by controling the volume of the clean sounds.
    As a side effect, the input of the Profiler gets leveled well by this procedure. That's all.
    When leveled this way by ear, the Input LED should rarely hit red.


    If you believe the sound gets coloured by Clean Sense, even though I stated a dozen time that there is no coloration, then you add some complexity to the topic, and there is no way I can help.
    Indeed the Input LED is affected by the Clean Sense, even on distorted sounds. Clean Sense controls the input level, as mentioned, so that's a natural fact.


    I dont hear any difference in tone on distorted sounds when i increase the CS but as you just stated CK that CS does effect the input LED on distorted sounds. This is what i was not quite clear on if the CS should do that. hank you for clarify this :)

    Still so much confusion on this topic.


    http://www.wikpa.org/Setting_input_sensitivity


    Clean Sense SHOULD be set so that you are not clipping the KPA's input during normal playing. If you set Gain to 0 on any rig you should get a completely clean sound. If normal playing causes you to hear clipping sounds (I would use headphones to determine this), you need to reduce Clean Sense. As long as you are not clipping, Clean Sense should have no impact on the tone. It will only affect the volume of a clean tone vs a distorted one.


    If you are clipping the input, this will affect both clean and distorted tones. Distorted tones mask input clipping by covering it with distortion, but I assure you it is there. Try playing a smooth, creamy lead tone. It's impossible - the input clipping will make the tone rough and more poorly defined. Don't believe me? Dime Clean Sense and play some lead tones.


    If you have reduced Clean Sense as low as it will go and are still experiencing clipping (again, determined by the sound on a 0 Gain rig using headphones, not by looking at the LED), then you need to reduce the output level of your guitar. Blackouts have a jumper you can put on the connector pins that will drop the output level. I had Blackouts in a couple guitars. They are ridiculously high-output without the jumper. Otherwise, you could research wiring a resistor into the guitar, or lower the pickups relative to the strings. Unlike EMG's Blackouts are not recommended (at least IMO) to be raised right up to the strings.


    What is confusing is that Clean Sense, while affecting the overall input gain, doesn't seem to affect the amount of gain on distorted tones. This is because it is a smart control. It automatically compensates the amp model's gain, so that Clean Sense has no impact on your distortion gain. This compensation is completely invisible to the user. You won't see it on the Gain knob. You can't hear it. This is by design. Without this compensation, it would be very difficult to compare the volume of clean vs. dirty tones, because not only would the clean volume be changing, but the amount of distortion would be too, preventing you from focusing only only the volume levels.


    Distortion Sense is basically a global Gain parameter, only affecting the amount of gain on distorted tones. It has nothing to do with input clipping.


    The purpose of these controls is to retain clean vs distorted volume ratios and distortion gain levels when switching between guitars with different levels. So let's say you switch guitars from a hot guitar to cold guitar. Now your distortion levels are lower. You adjust Distortion Sense upwards to compensate. Then adjust Clean Sense to acheive the same clean vs. distorted volume ratio. Because it compensates the distortion gain levels so that the amount of distortion stays constant, the volume comparison is much easier.