I frequently transport my KPA between 2 rooms, one with a desktop computer I use as a DAW connected to studio monitors and the other with a more "live" setup, connecting to a PA speaker/wedge monitor and using a laptop to run Rig Manager. I have bought quite a lot of commercial packs and also downloaded a lot of free rig packs not available on the Rig Exchange. I like to keep the unaltered rigs on local hard drives. And even though Rig Exchange is awesome, I don't want to get caught in a situation where there's no internet and I can't access a rig I want. I also want .kipr files on my local HD's, not have them buried in the Rig Manager database files - there are times when Rig Manager's files can get corrupted and it won't open. However, importing via USB drive is a pain, so I want them in Rig Manager, which is mainly how I'm going to load them.
So to recap, I have 2 computers that I want to have the same folder organization with .kipr files for all my rigs, and I want these to stay in sync. I want these organizations to be loosely sync'ed with my local library folders in Rig Manager, and I want that to be sync'ed between computers as well.
To sync files between computers, I use dropbox. I have a Kemper folder in my dropbox folder, automatically syncing between computers. I have a few folders in the Kemper folder:
- Commercial Raw
- Commercial Mods
- Free Raw
- Free Mods
- Favorites
- OS
- Utilities
- Backups
OS has subfolders for each FW version, with the kaos.bin file for that version - useful if I ever need to revert. Utilities includes installers for Rig Manager, Cab Maker, and various 3rd party software used to make Kemper life easier. Backups just stores the backup files I copy off of my USB drive.
I separate free and commercial profiles to make sure I'm only sharing free stuff. Free Raw consists largely of profile packs that aren't available on the Rig Exchange but are shared as dropbox links on the forum. I have a subfolder in there for random Rig Exchange profiles I like. Usually I'm importing local files into Rig Manager, not exporting from Rig Manager to my local file system, other than modifications, which are easy - I always put "MAB" in the rig name for modified rigs. In Rig Manager, I look at my profiler and search for "MAB" to see all the modified rigs. Usually it's apparent by the author's name whether it is commercial or not, but if necessary, I can search for the identical rig name w/o "MAB" to see if it appears in Free Raw or Commercial Raw to figure out which it is.
Now, to sync Rig Manager, I make a "Rig Manager" folder under my Kemper folder in dropbox. In here I'm going to copy the entire contents of the Rig Manager data folder from one of my local computers. That's C:\users\username\appdata\local\Kemper Amps\Rig Manager\. I make a shortcut to this folder for each computer (since I have different usernames and thus different paths on each) and also store those shortcuts in my Kemper\Rig Manager folder in dropbox. When I'm finished using Rig Manager on either computer, I close the program, go to my DropBox\Kemper\Rig Manager folder, open the shortcut to the Rig Manager appdata folder, copy the contents, go back to DropBox\Kemper\Rig Manager, delete all the files (except my shortcuts) then paste the updated files. Now when I go to my other computer, before I open Rig Manager, I do the process in reverse. I copy all the Rig Manager files from my dropbox folder, open the shortcut, delete the local files, and paste the copies from the cloud. Boom - everything is in sync.
If you ever have Rig Manager hang on you or it won't start up, I found that the RigExchange.db file can get corrupted. To fix this, I deleted that file, then went into RigExchange.xml and deleted all the <rig ... > lines. Then Rig Manager started up correctly and downloaded any missing Rig Exchange rigs.