KPA pet peeve of the day #1

  • Hey fellas, long time no see.


    Today's pet peeve is this: real speakers compress frequency response in what I'll describe as a "natural" way (it's a simple inductive load after all).


    My KPA doesn't seem to behave exactly like that. On a real amp, no matter how hard you crank the highs, it's not going past the speaker response, but in the Kemper it does. Not by a lot, but enough to feel disturbing and unnatural, IMHO.


    Which begs the question: can this be improved?


    That's it for today kids, thanks for reading :)

  • The Stack EQ is not designed to match the behavior of the profiled amp. It is always the same, has a wider range, and the controls are not interactive.


    If they release some Tonestacks based on some of the more popular amplifiers, they would act more like the amps, but would still likely have a different range, because each profile is made with a different tone control setting.


    For now, don't turn up the highs quite as much :)

  • Yes, I suppose I could tame the highs using EQ, still not as good as the way a speaker compresses the high end to my ears. The new high cut parameter in the studio EQ might get me closer though, have to experiment more with that.

  • Deny, I'm probably missing some part of your line of reasoning... Are you talking about cabs or the Profiler? I mean, are you using the Profiler with a guitar cab and ascertaining the overall response is different than a real amp, or rather using a linear cab?
    The reason I'm asking is that the cab profile is got via mic'ing a real cab, which should - by definition - compress the highs, as you wrote, in the expected way...
    ... Any chance the feeling you have refers to something different than "cab compression"?
    If it relates to just the EQ, I found that Pure Cab does a great job :)

  • Deny, I'm probably missing some part of your line of reasoning... Are you talking about cabs or the Profiler? I mean, are you using the Profiler with a guitar cab and ascertaining the overall response is different than a real amp, or rather using a linear cab?
    The reason I'm asking is that the cab profile is got via mic'ing a real cab, which should - by definition - compress the highs, as you wrote, in the expected way...
    ... Any chance the feeling you have refers to something different than "cab compression"?
    If it relates to just the EQ, I found that Pure Cab does a great job :)


    Hey Gianfranco, I'm hooking the Kemper to a Yamaha DXR10 so my observations are in regard to FRFR response. In my experience the cabs in the Kemper don't seem to compress the highs the same way a real cab does, that's precisely the point. I agree pure cab helps a lot, but I feel there's some room for improvement in that area, just sayin' ;)

  • the cabs in the Kemper don't seem to compress the highs the same way a real cab does


    Got it :)
    So I guess the next question would be: when you hear a mic'ed cab an a concert, can you find that particular kind of compression you're missing?

  • Even if I'm sober (which I'm usually not), probably no, hence the "pet peeve" in the title :D


    Also there's that damn fletcher-munson curve that ruins our best efforts to set up our rigs at lower than concert volumes and screws up the high end onstage anyway ;(

  • So might it be the mic'ing after all?


    :)


    I honestly don't know, could be, but if that was the case, once the mic's response curve was compensated using pure cab the behavior should be nearly the same as the original amp, wouldn't it?


    Mr. Kemper once said the KPA had difficulty profiling some amps accurately, particularly ones with multiple gain stages, maybe the same limitation applies to a certain degree to some of the aspects of a speaker's behavior.

  • The pure cab feature will not turn an frfr monitor into a guitar speaker, they are still two very different things.
    The pure cab will analyze and remove typhical strong mic artifacts that sometimes is heard, and it will analyze each profile differently depending on how much it detects, so it will never react the same on each profile.
    If you prefer the sound from guitar cab speakers (not miced sound) then play that, or do as I and have both options (cab and monitor) depending on the situation.

  • This. There's no way that PC, being predictive and adaptative, can know exactly what constrains the mic'ing is applying over the real rig. It's like removing\swaping the cab in a studio profile: results can be extremely musical (which is all I need actually) but can't be 100% accurate in terms of reproducing the exact behaviour of that specific power amp with that specific cab.



    I honestly don't know, could be, but if that was the case, once the mic's response curve was compensated using pure cab the behavior should be nearly the same as the original amp, wouldn't it?