This can't be... what am I doing wrong?

    Hi Guys,


    I suspect some of you that have been following my posts of strange questions are wondering if I've even been playing the KPA at all. The answer is yes, all along, many hours learning the core functionality trying to assess what this magic box can do. Really impressed with the concept, features and flexibility, however at the end of the day it is about tone & feel. And right now it's not cutting the mustard. I been playing tube amps for over 30 years, and after a week or so of downloading rigs, reading, tweaking, testing I was getting closer - but all I had to do was go back and reference a real amp track and the difference was obvious (to me anyway). To me, the tones sort of remind me of an old J-Station spliced with a POD but with a lot more flexibility and cool "stuff" to tweak. Thinking this just can't be right, I decided to move ahead and try to an actual profile of one of my own amps. This is something I really did NOT want to do. So all day I'm dragging gear, cables, amps, cabs, baffling, etc out of the closet and going through a big headache hoping to prove this magic box can at least duplicate the tone of an amp. Figuring I just must be missing something with other peoples profiles. Well, no such luck. The profile turned out quite bad, especially on the bottom end (quite a mess) and still generally has that modeler vibe going on.


    What am I doing wrong guys? Any thoughts?


    Sonic

    I second what @Michael_dk said. Start by posting two recordings, one of your real amp and one of a profile captured with the same setup. Good/bad tone is so subjective that I think this will help the forum and you reach a resolution quicker.

    I A/B'ed the sounds when profiling. Didn't feel the need to record things, it was that obvious. The bottom end sounds over-compressed, garbled, sounds very much like grunge rock when playing on the E string.


    Here's some more information FWIW:


    Passive pickup Ibanez, SM57 off axis, V30's, I'd describe the gain as moderate (think maybe 80's hot rod but backed down a touch for recording purposes), micro amp volume not too terribly loud (certainly not full stack loud). Had to turn up the return input adjust on the KPA about +12db if that means anything.


    I'm just not hearing midrange sack or the right organics in the KPA on any profiles,.there's a certain thickness to the chords and notes with a tube amp and what I'm hearing is thinned out just enough, along with some other attributes giving the KPA a modeler vibe. Played by itself for a while you can start forgetting, but the minute you listen to any tube amp it becomes apparent the KPA is just not getting there, it sounds fabricated rather than replicated if that makes sense. True, there's hoards of tweakable things that can impact the EQ curves and the feel to an extent. REALLY cool stuff. Cab tweaks and all kinds of features. But it's just not getting there tone wise and I'm having a really hard time accepting this is how the device actually is, but it may indeed be the case. <confused>


    Does the over-compressed, grungy low-end provide any clue as to what I may be doing wrong while profiling, or have something set wrong?? BTW, yes I did the refining step and no improvement.

    How were you A/B'ing?


    If you're A/B'ing between a mic'ed amp (the kemper profile) and the sound of the cab in the room, there's no way in hell you'll get anywhere close - same as for a regular recording of a tube amp.


    That's why I asked if you had recorded a snippet from both and compared them (obviously gain staging matters here, as does equal volume on both tracks)

    Extremely familiar with both live and recorded guitar tones. Engineering background in both recording and software development. Recording is all I do musically these days since I'm too old to go globe hopping anymore.


    What was I using before the KPA? For quick tracking song ideas I use a POD or J-Station, but otherwise for recording its tube amps. Early 70's Marshall vintage amps, Splawns, Peaveys, some micros, Soldano, ADA MP1. Fenders. Lots of amps. Can't really use them any more though, PITA neighbors. So I been patiently waiting and watching the KPA get fleshed out over the years and finally pulled the trigger. Hoping this was going to be a solution.


    The A/B was done with me and the KPA in one room and the amp in the other. So I could A/B between the amp and the new profile during the profile process. I thought they were supposed to sound nearly identical after the profile process and any slight difference would be worked out by the refining process. Not the case here though, and I was only using monitor headphones (albeit very quality ones). As I said, it didn't even justify recording at that point.

    Quote from SonicExporer

    The A/B was done with me and the KPA in one room and the amp in the other

    OK, cool. That should definitely be good enough as long as the isolation is decent. I assume it is given what you wrote.


    This might be somoething that could be solved with a reset or something along those lines. I'd advise you to contact support (link is in my signature). it would be ideal if you could have a recording of the original amp and a profile taken of the same setup, I'm sure, if you decide to try profiling again.

    Hope this doesn't offend anybody, but the sum of what I've experienced tonally with the KPA in the last few weeks got me to thinking just now. I wonder if what has been typically portrayed as the KPA building an amp tone from scratch (using reference signals and studying the behavior of the amp) is not accurate. Maybe instead it is simply collecting extra data that is then applied to a vanilla baseline model. Maybe a clean model and distorted model depending on the case. This would explain a lot of what I'm hearing, and also explain the very small size of the profile files. Anyway, just a theory that crossed my mind. If correct the KPA would be better described as a self-adjusting modeler rather than a profiler.


    I am totally willing to accept the fault may be mine, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but at the moment nothing seems apparent...


    Sonic

    While I'm not expert enough to know what's going wrong for you, I do suspect there's a problem somewhere in your chain. I've been playing through a variety of (now) vintage tube amps for ~40 years, and once I was through about my first month of Kemper use, I had no problem getting tones every bit as real as my amp collection. I've now had the Kemper for about a year.


    Learning how to tweak definition, EQ, and such were essential to me in getting true amp tones.


    I honestly never use headphones, but instead rely on my studio monitors or an Atomic CLR, both of which can play at very low volumes when required. I will say that while my own profiles sound really good, professional profiles of the same vintage amps from MBritt or TopJimi usually sound better to me - probably due to my limited set of mics and lack of engineering experience compared to these folks.

    Something doesn't smell right here IMHO. Either something's amiss with your Kemper or your Profiling M.O., or you simply don't want to believe it's truly capable of capturing your setup accurately.


    Might I suggest having some faith in its capabilities as a starting point, as opposed to harbouring doubts? IMHO, at this point, the attitudinal angle you approach this from will be the greatest determinant of the potential outcome for you.


    Just MHO and how this looks from afar. I've seen similar doubts expressed by Fractal Heads™ who obviously didn't want to accept the efficacy of Profiling and inevitably "disappeared". I truly believe that if you genuinely want to capture the tone and feel of your setup/s, you'll get there; it's just a matter of getting to the bottom of this.


    Sorry I've nothing concrete for you, Sonic. One thing 'though - did you try tweaking the Clarity and Definition parameters in order to clear up that "mud" you spoke of?

    Quote from SonicExporer

    Hi Guys,


    I been playing tube amps for over 30 years, and after a week or so of downloading rigs, reading, tweaking, testing I was getting closer - but all I had to do was go back and reference a real amp track and the difference was obvious (to me anyway). To me, the tones sort of remind me of an old J-Station spliced with a POD but with a lot more flexibility and cool "stuff" to tweak.

    If really none of the existing profiles came at least very close to the real tube amp for you, then there is no need for you to continue profiling. We can exclude bad speakers too, because you claimed that A/B the real thing with the profile through the same mic / speaker has been performed.


    Congratulations. You've got the very, very rare diamond ears - even better then the golden ones.

    Ne travaillez jamais.

    Like 1

    Not sure its feasible but you might try finding someone else local to your area who uses a Kemper successfully and see if playing through their Kemper helps you arrive at different results - at least that might help rule out any rare, remote possibility of it being a hardware issue.

    I'll admit my ears are more sensitive to various attributes of guitar tones from years of applying every trick in the book in studios to extract the best tones possible (or salvaging them so to speak from guitarists with less than stellar gear). But what I'm hearing now is enough that I suspect most people could tell something isn't matching up well.


    There's no fancy signal chain involved. Guitar --> KPA --> Amp. Then 1 mic back to the KPA. That's it.


    We know the signal is getting into the KPA just fine, both the guitar and the return amp tone via mic. We know this because I can hear it fine while A/B in'g using the KPA. So whatever is going on is happening inside the KPA. Now, what I'm not sure. Again maybe I have something set up wrong.

    That's odd that you're getting significant difference between the profile and the recorded amp!


    Are you sure:


    1-that there's enough input feeding the KPA as you profile
    2-Noise gates are turned off if you have any on as they interfere with the profiling process


    I know you said you can hear the guitar so the signal is getting into the Kemper but look at the input indicator to make sure it's green when the profiling noises are being fed into the Kemper. Also some amps (very few) might have built in noise reduction. This might not be the case but I'm going through the process of eliminating known issues.

    Quote from Dean_R

    That's odd that you're getting significant difference between the profile and the recorded amp!


    Are you sure:


    1-that there's enough input feeding the KPA as you profile
    2-Noise gates are turned off if you have any on as they interfere with the profiling process

    Funny you mention this because I just now realized the noise gate knob was active. I'm not sure if that counts the same as having a noise gate effect patched in or not. But the gate controlled by the knob was on. SO I will turn that off and try again. Also, I noticed I am occasionally clipping on input. First time I ever saw anything of the sort with this passive pickup guitar...Do I need to be trimming this somehow or is that still analog pathway at that point? (Scanned the manual and nothing leaped out about input clip leveling)


    Tried metalmike's suggestion and turned off PureCab, it helped some but then the overall character changed not in a good way. What DID actually seem to really help clean up the bottom was cranking up the Definition.


    Should I be having to make non-trivial alterations after the fact to try to match an amp I just profiled? Isn't the profiling process supposed to do this? Hence the name "profiling process"? :rolleyes:

    There's probably some strange psycho-acoustic thing going on here as well. We all hear differently and some are very sensitive to certain frequencies, I absolutely believe you're hearing something in the sound. I suggest breaking it down first:


    1) get a profile you like listening to (say, an MBritt profile or maybe my favourite a Top Jimi profile)
    2) load that into your kemper and record something with it
    3) compare your recorded region to the one recorded by the provider of the profile to rule out problems with your Kemper
    4) Isolate and mic up your amp, profile it from the control room, so you're only hearing the mic'd amp, you want to make a fair comparison between your mic'd amp and the profile
    5) compare it to the profile. Refine it. It should sound pretty much the same, 99% or so
    6) post the profile here, and let others judge the tone, a different opinion can help too


    If at some point some thing sounds really bad it may be your Kemper or the way you're interpreting the sound (we're human!). Maybe the Kemper just isn't for you and you'll have to deal with your PITA neighbours in another way (are they related to my neighbour by any chance???).


    Good luck!