Kemper vs. Real Amp Test - Cameron CCV

  • What I hear in the clips is not just a matter of eq. The cleanest notes sing in the real amp while they are compressed in the profile. Dynamics cannot be recovered while mixing and, for low gain players with lots of dynamics, the difference is very important as they influence the way you play.

    Playing live, you would not have the luxury of an A/B direct comparison to the real amp. The differences are very subtle to my ears. There is nothing subtle about a live sound environment.


    The room is noisy, generally the PA is finding comb filtering and reflections all over the room. The microphones are picking up the drums .... most of you know ..... it's a hot mess up there.


    I find it pretty hard to believe someone in the room would be able to sit in the audience and think "I can tell the guitar is playing through a Kemper vs a Mesa" in the middle of a loud Green Day song among all the other crap going out through the PA.


    @ColdFrixion, I might be willing to bet you a cold one on this ;)

  • Playing live, you would not have the luxury of an A/B direct comparison to the real amp. The differences are very subtle to my ears. There is nothing subtle about a live sound environment.
    The room is noisy, generally the PA is finding comb filtering and reflections all over the room. The microphones are picking up the drums .... most of you know ..... it's a hot mess up there.


    I find it pretty hard to believe someone in the room would be able to sit in the audience and think "I can tell the guitar is playing through a Kemper vs a Mesa" in the middle of a loud Green Day song among all the other crap going out through the PA.


    @ColdFrixion, I might be willing to bet you a cold one on this ;)

    Live, on a CD or absent an A/B comparison, no one would think twice, but an A/B mix test could be another story.

  • In the clip posted by Webb, 8 people could tell which one was the amp.

    I must stress here while I guessed which was the real amp, I wasn't 100% certain if I was right but pushed I'd have put money on that I was correct as I was almost certain. What I was sure about was that I thought the second clip, which proved to be the real amp sounded better to my ears.


    As I said, I hear certain things through experience, the same as @sinmix hears when you have made a lot of profiles and you have A B'd them a lot. The differences I hear though are about 5% different in total tone at worst to sometimes while really, really listening 1% if the profile captures the amp successfully. Usually it's the dynamics/decay/compression how the profile reacts, things like that more so than the frequency range it captures. I could take 5 profiles with identical settings and setup literally seconds apart and have 5 different minutely different profiles, especially after refining, but usually these would be so so close to each other and the real amp, but not exact. That's about as good as my expectations are really and I suppose its good enough for me.

  • This was just a quick, non-scientific test for fun. I think if I spent a little more time on it I could have gotten them closer.


    Having said that, I posted the same clip on another forum and the votes were much more split...with many people choosing the first as the real amp. I honestly don't think anyone can say the Kemper clip sounds "bad". And if that tone was in a mix with a little eq, most people would not even question whether or not it was a "real" amp.


    Here is the thread I posted on Rig Talk -


    http://www.rig-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=186925

  • I agree. With a little EQ, you'd be seriously challenged to tell them apart aside from the gating between palm mutes, and I'm not so sure there isn't a parameter in the Kemper that could improve that, as well.

  • Thanks for playing along. The results:


    1st clip - Kemper
    2nd clip - Amp


    Good job to those that guessed correctly. I do hear a difference between the two, mainly that the real amp sounded more open. But I think any differences would be more or less minimized once you get it in a mix.

    Ha i knew it ^^ i think ther is always a difference in the mid an lower mids ... while the real amp is thick and full there and saturated the kemper seems to have less body ...

  • Ha i knew it ^^ i think ther is always a difference in the mid an lower mids ... while the real amp is thick and full there and saturated the kemper seems to have less body ..
    .

    I agree 100%. The very same tonal frustration I am having can be heard in these clps. There is just something in the mids and lower mids that isn't right some of the time. It is less of an issue with scooped Z-flat style tones such as this sample clip we are debating (no offense to the OP). But it becomes even more apparent the closer you get to standard tuning, and the closer the tones are to the classic metal style (hot rodded Marshall). Those tones are all about midrange sack and clarity. There is a certain upper midrange clarity and lower midrange growl that when combined create the unmistakable Marshall "snarl". And which keeps solos clear, singing and tight. These are lacking in most clips I've listened to online and I am struggling with it as well. There are 100+ reasons why the KPA is great, but as far as this specific type of tone goes I'm still having a bit of a struggle. I am not deterred in making the KPA work for me though, the quest will continue.... :D

  • I agree 100%. The very same tonal frustration I am having can be heard in these clps. There is just something in the mids and lower mids that isn't right some of the time. It is less of an issue with scooped Z-flat style tones such as this sample clip we are debating (no offense to the OP). But it becomes even more apparent the closer you get to standard tuning, and the closer the tones are to the classic metal style (hot rodded Marshall). Those tones are all about midrange sack and clarity. There is a certain upper midrange clarity and lower midrange growl that when combined create the unmistakable Marshall "snarl". And which keeps solos clear, singing and tight. These are lacking in most clips I've listened to online and I am struggling with it as well. There are 100+ reasons why the KPA is great, but as far as this specific type of tone goes I'm still having a bit of a struggle. I am not deterred in making the KPA work for me though, the quest will continue.... :D


    You can add mids and low-mids back in via EQ if need be.

  • @pacocito IMHO you can with Ozone 7 dynamic EQ. If we're talking about the same thing. With a properly saturated profile adding dynamic EQ with Ozone is no issue at all. With a poorly saturated profile, no amount of EQ will help it.


    Of course this only applies to recording and not playing live.

  • I don't play loud Green Day songs but low gain music in a trio.

    You can try to compensate it but you can't boost what's not there.


    The KPA is the best digital gear I've ever had, but here is room for improvement in those frequencies.

    You can definitely get there with EQ. The mids and low-mids are obviously there. If they weren't, the tone would sound completely scooped. They just need to be boosted, which is what EQ is for. These are the same clips with a bit of post EQ'ing to the KPA sample:


    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

  • it is not just eq imo ... try to profile a very fuzzy or creamy amp and in that area the amps will sound completely dirrerent ... i made a comparison if you check my thread in feature requests out... the less low mids a sound has and the les that sound is saturated in that area the more spot-on is the profile but that area remains at least different i every profile i ever made ... i thing thta always helped was boosting 120hz infront of the ampsim ... i gets closer then

  • it is not just eq imo ... try to profile a very fuzzy or creamy amp and in that area the amps will sound completely dirrerent ... i made a comparison if you check my thread in feature requests out... the less low mids a sound has and the les that sound is saturated in that area the more spot-on is the profile but that area remains at least different i every profile i ever made ... i thing thta always helped was boosting 120hz infront of the ampsim ... i gets closer then

    It's not just EQ, but that's a large part of it.

  • @Bommel goes back to my post about a nicely saturated profile. If you cannot fix it with dynamic EQ then try to make a new profile and push the preamp more. For me a clean boost works best.
    Also I highly recommend using a dynamic EQ instead of a static standard EQ.

  • External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.
    as soon as the amp is too fuzzy or distorted the profiles will sound very off teh source ... at the moment the kemper just works with very moderate settings of the amp


    as soon as i turn the gain down and the profiles will be almost spot on but even here the saturation in the 120hz area is not there


    External Content soundcloud.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.


    both sample are without a cab because now it is clearer to hear ... with the cab the difference gets very small but it is like it is...

  • i hope you get what i mean, if i push the real amp more it will work even less on fuzzier/ creamier amps ... like you hear in the first comparison ... but by pushing the kemper before the distortion with will aleast distort that areas more eventhough it is not the same kind of distortion

  • i hope you get what i mean, if i push the real amp more it will work even less on fuzzier/ creamier amps ... like you hear in the first comparison ... but by pushing the kemper before the distortion with will aleast distort that areas more eventhough it is not the same kind of distortion


    The problem is no one compares direct samples.

  • but they should ?


    you don't put a blanket over a picture when you want to look at it right ? ...