Flash Inialization?

    Ingolf, that was my question.


    Deadpan posted this in another thread and it tweaked my curiosity:


    "When I first got my Kemper there was a sameness that disturbed me. After doing a flash initialization not only did the rigs have their own identity but it was like hearing stereo for the first time. Not sure why but I am not the only one to have this happen. Even at the time there were many reports of the issue here and that's how I learned that it might be experiencing a bug. It was night and day."

    I bought my Kemper a few years ago, close to when the Powerhead came out. I was experiencing a phasing sound on the high strings that sounded like bending 2 strings that were going just out of tune to each other only it was occurring when only playing one string. I was sure it wasn't normal so in my research I found others on the forum here that were having the same issue. Going back to when I believe it was firmware 1.4??? there were other reports. If I remember right Kemper could not see a cause and users were saying that it was normal. Anyway, this phenomenon was from the factory as I and others were experiencing this new out of the box. It seems that the firmware was not written perfectly to the flash memory, it was well enough for all to work but with a bug. Note this is all my experience and not confirmed by Kemper. I didn't know at the time that the Kemper didn't sound right other than the phasing sound. I ended up bricking my Powerhead by loading an OS that didn't support the power amp and in doing so I was forced to do the flash init to get it back up. To my amazement the phasing was gone and there was a clarity and definition of sound that wasn't there before. Not sure what happens or why but this is my experience that has been shared by others. There should be documentation on the board here if we can find the posts from the old forum version.


    Apologies if I gave you cause for concern.

    Quote from deadpan

    To my amazement the phasing was gone and there was a clarity and definition of sound that wasn't there before.

    What might happened: you changed some global parameter in the OUTPUT section or changed parameters in the INPUT section before, creating some undesired effect. By initializing the flash memory you only force default values to those parameters. Sometimes users do unlock the INPUT section which changes the way the Rig reacts to the guitar (that's why it is usually locked).


    I really and completely advise against using initialize flash to set everything to default.


    Please, perform such procedures only when support advises you to do so.
    It reminds me a bit of the times when everybody was reinstalling Windows 95 once a week because something was broken (actually always by the users itself that weren't able to remember what they did).

    From the wiKPA:


    Quote

    A flash initialization simply erases all rigs and cleans the file system. The flash memory has no influence whatsoever on volumes, noise, aliasing or S/PDIF. We have no evidence that the flash format has solved any sound problem. But we had a number of people that lost their sounds by that, because they haven't done their backup right.

    I tried flashing this morning, rigs do sound clearer, less muffled. But in saying that, it could have been a case of me fiddling with a global setting and not remembering what i fiddled with. I'm not technically minded, so this seemed an option

    I bought the Kemper when the firmware was .8 or something like that. I had issues. Odd things would happen in terms of output volume and tones. I did perform a Flash init. After that one time, everything has been find with my Kemper for the last 3 years. I expect something was corrupted at the time.

    Quote from timo


    It reminds me a bit of the times when everybody was reinstalling Windows 95 once a week because something was broken (actually always by the users itself that weren't able to remember what they did).


    My first attempts to fix Windows 95 = I tried to delete "Windows" folder from within Windows. It only was helping partially, once system tried to delete itself :) But overall reinstalling Windows at that times was quick way to get system stable.


    Another time I was trying to delete "unnecessary" files. I could shrink Windows folder to 37MB and it was working. Off course that was after it was not working many times at <37MB.

    As Timo himself wrote time ago,


    Quote

    We've all heard about flash memory failures resulting from too many writes, but the KPA’s flash can be definitely updated several hundred times. In those cases when a flash memory reset is advisable, and the operation doesn’t bring the expected results, you can try and update it more than once: the firmware flash has several partitions and the update process will try them one after another. Before you do that, turn off the unit by leaving it on and pulling the power cord. Then wait 1 minute. After that, connect the stick, press and hold the Page buttons and turn the unit on.


    OTOH,


    Quote

    The initialization of the flash memory was only necessary after a bug in 1.0.5 where a memory corruption bug could also mess up the flash memory organization.


    and


    Quote

    [[CKemper]] A flash initialization simply erases all rigs and cleans the file system. The flash memory has no influence whatsoever on volumes, noise, aliasing or S/PDIF. We have no evidence that the flash format has solved any sound problem. But we had a number of people that lost their sounds by that, because they haven't done their backup right.