Into the void aka You moron, you traded away the Kemper

Royer ribbon mic and SM57 = good combo, killer info, thanks. Interesting that he has a Rivera Rock Crusher, I wonder what he needs it for given that he has a soundproof room for the cabs.

Quote from schreckmusic

@nightlight Slash supposedly used a Riveria Rock Crusher Studio. Guess what I bought? A Rivera Rock Crusher Studio.
It sounds like garbage on its own. They used tons of rack gear after it to get the tones. I even called Rivera and they have know idea what Slash used.

Which one is the Rockcrusher studio? I could see a regular rock crusher and a recording one, but not the studio.

It could be just a marketing tie up, but I'm not sure, look at the sessions guitarist in the above video, he also has a rock crusher.

Quote from Dimi84

I can only say I generally get better tones with kemper vs my amps, if I have to mic up at home, if not at studio. Why? Apartment. And I don't live close to studio that lets me do whatever I want anymore, so it's not easy to to record that way, and costly.

But I usually prefer the results I get using a loadbox like a torpedo at home when it comes to profiles of my own amps. Kemper is not my amps. It's a kemper version of my amps... which is fine and great and all, but you loose nuances, and torpedo load box lets me keep these nuances better imho even if it does add its own thing as well. There is a bigger difference from amp to amp through torpedo than there is through profiles of these tones. Nothing "new" about that either, to me at least.

About micing up real amps: I cannot do it well enough in my situation... but given enough space, no, I don't think you need 2 million dollars in gear to get good tones; neither is micing so difficult that the only choice is going the modelling route. I used to record micing a 2x12 cab and I dare say many would be surprised by the results. There's a lot of voodoo about all that but it is possible to have great results without becoming a nuclear scientist in micing.

You think Ola Englund's approach is that super complex when he records at home? Nah, not really. It's fairly fairly straightforward. It's not like his brain melts when he's about to put an SM57 in front of a cab (btw he's made a video about specifics) and he can only use Axe Fx and Kemper to record.

Good luck!

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Is there any latency with the torpedo, Dimi? I might pick up a Torpedo Cab to run after the Reactive Load I'm supposed to get.

"Supposed to get" lol. Perhaps the deal will fall through and things will be back to square one again haha

What do you guys think of these clips, playing be damned? My ears aren't too good at telling problems with this kind of thing. Good tone? Bad tone? I think a bit too much bass, but nice body.

EDIT: One more video, this one is much better, I think. Really trying to figure whether an iso cab makes sense or I'm being nutty.

Quote from schreckmusic

Sorry, meant recording. I buy so much gear I forget the names. Needless to say it's collecting dust and I never use it.

I wish I could have shown you this video earlier @schreckmusic. I think it sounds quite bad too. It's part of the reason I don't trust guys who endorse tonnes of gear like Pete Thorn and Ola Englund. They can make anything sound good and it has less to do with the quality of a product.

Guys, the internet service provider where I live has blocked soundclick.

Could someone listen to this and tell me if it's good? I may only be able to listen to it when I get back to SG. Unless they've blocked it there too.

http://streamer2.soundclick.co…6/freemp3/zorran+fyes.mp3

Quote from Dean_R

I had a similar setup in my house, I turned a closet into a virtual ISO cab after watching a Pete Thorn video where he did a similar thing (not worried about the neighbors as they're too far, but my kids who sleep on the second floor directly above)When I got the KPA, I started recording DI tracks, to see if I can get similar results with KPA and the results were that KPA had much more variety and sounded much more polished.

That sounds awesome, I wish I was living in my own house and not a rented accommodation, I'd have soundproofed a room and made it into a proper studio

Whenever I listen to Sinmix's latest comparison tests, however, I got to wonder whether I've been looking at all these different ways to record guitar all wrong and should just learn to mix like the pros do.
I mean the man takes a Helix and makes it sound like a Kemper? And they both sound like something into an IR? And all three of those sound similar to a guitar with mixed cabinet?

I'm scared to say somebody shoot me now for fear someone might take me seriously and report me

"You hear me, mods, you can't throw me out now, somebody's already taken my license registration number!"

Quote from P3t3rB

Hi
The link doesn't work and if I search for zorran+fyes.mp3 I get no results.

P.

sorry about that @P3t3rB. This is a thread where I got it from. Rave reviews. A pity if the clip has been taken down.
http://www.harmonycentral.com/…itar/acapella-28/1484010-

I am mainly interested in the ISO cab that was used, I need to really keep volumes low when I try out my latest crazy scheme.

Quote from Dimi84

You cab get great tones using most of today's amp sims with a good cab sim @nightlight

Very similar to kemper. You don't need any magic mixing tricks to get them to sound similar.

It's just that just because things sound very similar it doesn't mean they feel the same. Small tonal nuances will be different. And these nuances can matter to people (they most certainly matter to me).

Kemper also sounds very similar to real amp but there are differences.

I have also cloned kemper profiles and used in bias fx as backup.

They are not 100 percent the same, but very close.

Kemper is more "immediate" than software sims I use through my audio interface, pc. It's also quite amazing at creating cabinet simulations.

There are many ways to get great tones. Helix is an amazing unit as well. Most tests don't use custom IRs, where the weakness of the line 6 stuff generally is -- the cab sims.

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That's what I'm driving at. There is more than one way to skin a cat and people who know what they're doing can approach a mix from any direction and make it sound good.

One way we can therefore differentiate between devices therefore is the feel. I think the problem with most IRs are that they are static, whereas the Kemper used some kind of dynamic process. I've also heard tell that the feel of the Kemper is much better than other digital devices.

It's interesting that you term the Kemper more "immediate" than amp sims. I am most curious to know what it's like to play something without any latency, having played digital equipment all my playing lifeX The Kemper latency is barely perceptible, but it's there as some users have demonstrated through graphs when the unit is loaded with heavy FX. Not that it'll make any difference, but I keep wondering what that's like.

Personally, I see no problem with what the Kemper does, it does a smashing job, and I am sure there will be a point where I will decide to procure another one. I just need to try another approach and it's more than likely I will be hanging on to these amps.

Hah, I keep telling myself that Kemper 2 will be out soon and then everybody will be envious of me!

Quote from ColdFrixion

A real amp with a Suhr Reactive Load is a great combination. There are obviously pros and cons to each route. The pros of the aforementioned combo is undoubtedly the tone, which is practically a no compromises solution, though it does come at a small price if you're mic'ing things up yourself; consistency. The IR route is much more consistent, though there's still the issue of tonal continuity depending on how long your amp's been powered on. If you prefer the sound of one or two amps over a multitude then the real deal with a Reactive Load can be a great solution.

@ColdFrixion Thank you for the insight. The Kemper aside, you'd prefer a real amp into something like the Reactive Load into an IR or into one of those Torpedoes over running an amp into a cabinet and micing it up? I mean personally in a home situation versus paying for a studio?

I will definitely be trying the amp into Reactive Load approach before I even get around to reamping the amp and capturing the output with a mic. Heck, I don't even own a cab at the moment. There are a few IR loaders and free IRs that I can try out, hopefully the sound will be good.

But this experiment as I think of it is less about "having a good sound" than learning more about the craft that most of us have as a fun diversion or hobby. Things had got so serious that I had finished 8 out of 10 songs on my demo album. I was burning the midnight oil, spending all my time recording DIs, auditioning on the Kemper, recording, testing FX, redoing things, the works. And I think I thought at some point during the process, "What's more important than tone?" Having fun, I guess. The Kemper had become... boring, for want of a better explanation, I'm sick and tired of it.

And perhaps even more deeply troubling and disturbing to an iconoclast like myself, I had suddenly grown tired of metal. The Kemper was my metal amp, my ticket to a dream of putting together a metal demo and sending it to some labels who'd toss it in the trash without giving it a listen. I've heard of it happening to people before, I just didn't think it would happen to me.

Not really selling the bike shop, you know, I might put up a metal track once in a while or just demo some heavy tones or an interesting riff. Heck, maybe I'll even get around to putting it all down when I'm 40.

But for now, it's not worth my time to put so much time and effort into metal. Maybe the market isn't right, whatever. Not going to quit playing, actually I'm looking forward to playing something radically different.

Parting with the Kemper is almost like a fresh start, you could say.

In that respect, for one thing, I am dying to try a nice amp into a cabinet. I didn't have a powered Kemper and have always been using FRFR or the PA system. I keep thinking, "Lovely, hook up amp to speaker cabinet after checking impedance, let amp warm up before flipping standby, and bam! Tone for days without ADAs! Or bam! A busted valve! Bam! Spread a little chaos!"

Volumes, touch wood, aren't a problem at the moment, though in the interests of harmony in my neighbourhood I plan to pick up attentuators and an iso cab. Once those are in, I'm going to have fun choosing DIs (can the reactive load do this well?) and a reamp box. Just good times messing with stuff you don't understand... It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Ideally, by the time I think about getting a Kemper again, I would like to be able to have the skills to put together a mind-blowing profile of my own. May take a few months, maybe years, I have no idea, but you can bet I will be keeping tabs on the latest developments in the technology.