Latency

Quote from Guitartone

And here we have guitarists discussing latencies of between 2ms and 5ms.

playing in latency with other musicians and playing in latency with your own instrument are separate topics. the right comparison would be: give a player genetically enhanced superlong arms and let him play his instrument several feet away from his ears... funny image but that's a comparable case. violinists are perhaps 3 feet away from their neighbor, but their instrument is super responsive since it is a) half a feet away from the player's ears and b) in direct contact to his body.

playing guitar means: direct contact with your body (although not as direct als violins) and hearing the (much louder) sound several milliseconds after the body feels it. this is quite a mess...sensualwise.

Quote from JJ

But the Kemper not only sounds great but she feels the best out of the many I've had

interesting

Quote from elfredo

interesting

Somebody is really loving his Kemper .....

One of the things that always gets me about the axefx is the feel. Yes it IS very nice to play and it reacts very well to guitar volume changes, pick attack etc. Much better in fact than many (often high end) tube amps.
I think a lot of it comes down to personal preference. You might prefer the feel of the axefx to anything else, much like I might prefer the feel of a Marshall amp and you refer the feel of a Bogner say.
But the KPA is there to replicate those real tube amps.
When you do some profiles of your own you suddenly realise which one (axe or Kemper) sounds and feels real, and its the Kemper by quite a long way. The compare function really wakes you up to how close the amp and the Kemper are in all respects.
Im a big Marshall fan and have owned many of them over the years.
I spent years trying to get the axefx to sound and react the way the real deal does. Tried many others patches in the process. Got nowhere near in reality although I did get some really nice sounds.
Profiled the amps with the Kemper and the sound/feel was right there.
Like I said before, the axefx can and does feel very nice to play, but does it feel real? Sorry but in my experience no it doesn't. It was the best of the bunch but not any more. Its just a bit too refined, well behaved and clinical when compared to the real deal.

I was hoping for you to share your experience on this, sheguitarplayer. Thanks

Quote from elfredo

playing in latency with other musicians and playing in latency with your own instrument are separate topics. the right comparison would be: give a player genetically enhanced superlong arms and let him play his instrument several feet away from his ears... funny image but that's a comparable case. violinists are perhaps 3 feet away from their neighbor, but their instrument is super responsive since it is a) half a feet away from the player's ears and b) in direct contact to his body.

playing guitar means: direct contact with your body (although not as direct als violins) and hearing the (much louder) sound several milliseconds after the body feels it. this is quite a mess...sensualwise.

I agree, but as a live player, I am rarely closer to my amp than, say 6 feet away, and more often about ten to fifteen feet way. How many ms is that?
When rehearsing and performing I move around quite a lot, and am often closer to the drum kit, vocal monitors or bass amp than I am to the guitar amp. Not trying to be clever, but I reckon we are in the same boat as the 'orchestra' example in many ways and 2-5ms (whichever it might actually be, I certainly don't notice it) is very small in that context.

It's hard to know where the KPA fits in, studio or on the road, in some ways it seems it's more geared to on the road. The other possible thing is while you profile there's also going to be that added roundtrip latency going to/from the guitar/kpa/amp/kpa. So if it adds the delay caused by latency to the profile then it's adding the latency of it's own roundtrip in there on top of anything the amp itself has. And of course if you then go through a convertor/mixer that oculd add a bit more during profiling, and if the mic is placed further back... and all this is making the huge assumption that the KPA even takes this into account and adds a delay on purpose to match the feel, (which I kinda doubt).

As I said though, what I feel about playing the KPA and it's profiles and their responsiveness may or may not have anything to do with latency. In my situation I'm using it with studio monitors at between near to mid field distances (i.e. from sitting at a desk that they're mounted to, to standing up a few feet away), I'd have thought that even at 5ms the latency wasn't that much of a factor, though I know I really start to feel latency at 10ms in this setup (feels like slapback echo to me at that point), instead I'm assuming the play-feel i get is more related to the amp sim itself and it's characteristics.

KPA feels great compared to the AxeFx II IMHO.

But the noise gate takes away something.

Without the NG it works great with the NG ok - there is room for improvement.

I did not measure it but feel a larger latency while in profile more.

Quote from Armin

KPA feels great compared to the AxeFx II IMHO.

.

Ha ha, yeah, cos it feels like the amp you've just profiled.
I know Im labouring this point, sorry guys, but honestly, if you haven't already, just try it. Its a revelation!

Quote from Dogman

When I measured the Kempers latency from input to output I got 5 ms - which is already noticeable
.....
And by the way: those 5 ms seem to be a stable figure no matter which rig I use or if I turn all effects and the amp-modeling off or not.

This intrigues me as I remember getting similar numbers when testing this myself when I got the KPA, but I thought that maybe it was just down to an error in my testing. Anyways, the feel of a KPA is great, but as the latency should be around 2 ms according to Kemper could these higher latency readings be caused by some kind of bug and there would be room for some improvement?

This really does not matter that much to me - the KPA does react fast and feels really nice to play. Just a thought that came to my mind.

Please remember, that additional A/D and D/A conversions also add a little latency to the signal, normally 1 to 2 msec. When i started using a SPDIF digital connection from the KPA to my audio interface i had the impression that Playing the KPA felt a little more "direct".

I then did a little test. I recorded the KPA signal over spdif to one track. Simultanously i recorded the signal that uses the analogs outs of the KPA into the XLR Inputs of my interface to a second track. Here´s a screenshots when zooming in both tracks:

[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5902643/latency.jpg] 
Though i connot say exactly how many msecs the latency is, you can see clearly how the two additional conversions cause an additional delay.

If you have a noticable latency you might try a spdif connection. To me, it feels a little better.

i have no shame in calling my Kemper a "she" !!!
you know -you have to be honest about these things.....
And i also think "sHE" looks very sexy in a kind of fifties radio/ telefunken/ sci fi / start trek/ BORG-kind of way

XXX
JJ

Just tested this with the following routing:
KPA direct out to analog instrument input of my audiointerface recorded to one track.
KPA SPDIF out to SPDIF input of the same audiointerface recorded to separate track.

(As I understood from a post by Mr. Kemper on a separate thread there is no AD/DA conversion inside KPA when using the direct out, it just passes the analog signal through).

The difference between the simultaneously recorded signals on tracks was around 180 samples which to my understanding would be around 4 ms at 44.1 KhZ (the direct out obviously being 4 ms earlier). Adding to that around 1 ms AD conversion for the analog instrument input of audiointerface (that is missing from the 4 ms latency between tracks) would make the latency of KPA measured from guitar input to track about 5 ms. Not that much, but still different from 2 ms. Maybe/probably this test has a flaw in it - I'm not that familiar with these matters.

Anyway I’ll get back to playing guitar as this 2 or 5 ms really does not matter to me feel wise at all. I’m a very “happy Kemper” and more amazed by this unit day by day. But my tech-nerd side is intrigued – eventhough I try to subdue it.

Quote from kojak

i also noticed an increased latency when using the PROFILER mode. I was using headphones, which i'm used to with my AxeFX standard. In BROWSER mode, i haven't noticed any substantial latency in direct comparison to the AxeFX.

Does this matters? I mean, if you're profiling you're not playing... Not meant to to be unfriendly

The latency is NOT 5 ms. That is how long it may have taken to go through your DAW via conversions. I am using it via TotalMix direct monitoring, and having played at 3ms with plugins for several years, I can tell you this is less than that. The original 2ms figure is correct.

One has to wonder why Mr Kemper bothered to do latency tests himself, he could have just waited for the results of latency tests posted here.

Quote from Guitartone

One has to wonder why Mr Kemper bothered to do latency tests himself, he could have just waited for the results of latency tests posted here.