DI Profiles and Merged Cabs

    HI all,


    Appreciate an bit of insight/experience with the above.


    I will predominately be using my KPA with my existing cabs and hence I'd rather be using merged profiles to give me the most flexibility further down the line. I may well move to FRFR cabs on stage however won't push the button on this for a while at least due to cost!


    Having done some research on the commercial offerings for the most part these are either Studio profiles or DI and even those that do offer some merged tend to be a subset of the total profiles on offer.


    I read that it is possible to combine DI profiles with the cabs from merged profiles should the need arise and I wondered how well this works? I did also see that it's possible to purchase cab/mic IR profiles and use these - this is a bit beyond a philistine like me at the moment but I'd be interested to understand how well this works?


    Appreciate any advice.


    Regards,


    Simon

    I can give you some of my experiences so far:

    • I'm not sure that it matters much between breaking out studio profiles i.e. turning off the cab and running the profile to your existing physical cab or using the merged profile. The merged profile or a direct profile made with no cab should be more accurate, but it was made likely with a certain cab attached to it so whether it's "accurate" will be different than whether it sounds good or "right". My experimenting seems to suggest you can use studio or direct/merged profiles to run to your real cab and get good results. I prefer using direct profiles or ones I made myself. They're easy to do well. I think studio profiles are much harder because it's about mic technique, the room, etc. I stick with MBritt studio profiles for that and use his IRs
    • If you go FRFR, 3rd party cab/IRs are hit and miss. They sound different. I loved Ownhammer IRs when I had an AxeFX and they really worked well for that. Here, the Kemper IRs don't sound good to my ears. IRs created with the Kemper whether through studio or direct/merged profiles sound "right" which makes sense. But, I'm thinking that there is a some au jus from the amp pairing that follows the IR and vice versa, some au jus of the IR that follows into the amp profile. That seems to happen on any type of profile. Case in point...the IRs of the same MBritt cabs and speaker but different amps all sound different. Some dramatically different. Even accounting for different mic placement, the mics, cab and speaker are all the same so this shouldn't be the case unless there's a trickle effect. Goes back to my original point on the bullet above. It can still sound good if you figure out which flavor you like or you're pairing an IR made with a like amp to the amp-only profile you have.

    It can be a cop-out to say, but the old adage of "use your ears" applies here. Studio or merged can split out the way you want to sound good and serve either purpose.


    If you are looking for some excellent Merged profiles, in which you can accurately separate the Direct Amp profile from the Cabinet profile (and save the Cabs as separate cabinet presets)...check out:


    Till's Cablab:
    http://www.tillschleicher.com/tills-cablab/


    Top Jimi Merged profiles (a few rig suggestions, below):
    http://www.topjimi.com/NEW-BEye-Pack-BEYE-20161228.htm
    http://www.topjimi.com/NEW-Brown-Sound-Pack-BROWN-SOUND.htm
    http://www.topjimi.com/NEW-Med…ce-Pack-3-MEPO-BFACE3.htm


    Or, for some sweet Free merged profiles, I recommend you check out Tim Owens HAWP sessions, here:
    Have amps, will profile the BE100: Lets make some profiles...
    I particularly recommend Session #53, The entire group of sessions is available here:
    http://foobazaar.com/kemper/HAWP/



    Some other great free DI and Merged profiles, are available on Rig Manager / Rig Exchange, by the author "Thumas". A specific example would be a profile named "Soldano HR 4 TS Merged".


    Good Luck, and cheers,
    John