Amazing tone FOH, but horrific through IEM’s

    Quote from fourstrk


    2nd: I see my IEM as a control over my playing. I do not expect to have the most monstrous mix on my IEM. I use it primarily to keep the focus on my playing. The mix and EQ I need for this differs to the tone I expect from my rig for FoH sounds.


    But you are right: the KPA's performance on high gain profiles with IEMs lacks a little bit for me. I do not blame the unit for this since I am not sure if it's me not being able to dial it in correctly.

    I thought this at first, but later I realised a brittle tone in ears was affecting my playing. A great sound always makes you play better and cutting some top end and 4K, while boosting lower mids worked for my IEMs.


    It is certainly not Kemper at fault and you just need to find what works personally with in ears.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7

    Like 1

    Thanks guys, I wasn’t blaming the Kemper at all, just so you guys understand… I also used UE UE7 IEM’s with my Bogner amplifier and a 4×12 cabinet and I had to really place the mic very carefully in order to just get any resemblance of a tone I could play to.
    Karlic, You are so right, I play much better with great tone… It almost completely destroys the fun playing to crap garbage tones.


    What I am experiencing is just the utter joy of IEM‘s
    :thumbdown: Personally, I hate them…

    I have recently moved to IEMs... was the last one in the band to do so as was a little reluctant.


    At first, I was getting the same problem.. very hard and spikey sounding.. no warmth at all.


    I seemed to have found a solution now that works for me and that lovely Kemper guitar tone I know is back and I couldnt be any happier.


    I use a Behringer P1 headphone amp. https://www.bax-shop.co.uk/hea…calj7t-Oom48aAjILEALw_wcB


    The Behringer amp has two XLRs... Sound guy sends all the band to one XLR (minus any guitar). I then send from Kemper monitor out to the other XLR and control my guitar monitor volume with an expression pedal.. I call this my 'More Me' pedal. A few adjustments in the monitor eq section, adding some Mid, Low end and reducing the treble and presence.


    Sounds very pleasing to my ears.

    Hmmm, I have the opposite problem with the Kemper... the tone in my IEMs is almost always better than what I'm hearing from FOH.


    With real amps, the FOH sound is almost always better than the IEMs sound.


    I get generally good results by setting up my Kemper profiles using a combination of IEMs and live monitoring through my studio monitors, using the studio monitors to detect anything that might come off as too bright through FOH. My FOH desk EQ's are generally flat, with cuts only at the room resonance peaks.

    Unfortunately this is an all too common issue with IEM’s. I play sundays in a very large church that’s has an auditorium for about 2-3 thousand people. In an attempt to kill stage volume we can only use in-ears. It always sounds dreadful and depending on who’s running monitors it can be better or worse. One issue is that I can’t justify dropping $600 on a good set of ears. We have shure 2 driver iems that sound ok but are bottom of the barrel when it comes to quality iem’s. It can sound so bad that my heart isn’t even in playing. That’s terrible considering I’m playing at church! Sorry I have nothing to offer. It’s a frustrating problem that’s plagued me for years.

    I hear you, madseason... Our church seats 1500 people and every single week I struggle with what I am hearing in my ears… We all used shure 215’s and 315’s And a couple guys splurged and got the ultimate ears UE7’s. They kept telling me that I would have a much better experience with these so I bought a pair (thinking they would pretty much fix my guitar tone issues) and I must say the ‘overall sound’ is completely incredible, but it only helped my guitar tone maybe 30%…

    I think the key to getting the best experience with IEMs is to go stereo. Panning each instrument will make the world of difference to recreate that 3D sound image we are all so use to when playing with wedge monitors, backline, acoustic drums etc.


    With conventional mono set up, its just not the same and can sound like playing in a box. Everything being centre will eventually cause fatigue confusing the brain. And some ambient mics putting some of the room back into the mix.


    Also, having control of your own mix. There are plenty of apps both for IOS and Android that can connect remotely to the sound desk.


    It just takes time to get use to them and to use them in the right way.

    Quote from fourstrk

    It's not about mono/stereo but about harsh distorted sounds.

    That is true, but using stereo in ears makes it a lot easier to hear the definition of your guitar parts with keys and other things spread wide. Try a full mix in mono and it is hard to hear anything in particular.


    I am currently on the first tour since I started to eq the Kemper signal for in ears and it is a revelation.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7

    Edited once, last by karlic ().

    Like 3

    If I'm the only EG, I'll run stereo and pan hard left and hard right. If I'm not the only EG I'll pan myself hard right and the other EG hard left.

    Quote from SQUAREHEAD

    Thanks Mr. Boyce…
    Keep guitar right in the center, Or just slightly outside of the bass and kick?
    Everything else way outside of that…


    Boyce,
    Check your messages…

    Here's what has worked beautifully for me. I don't use outboard gear, only the Kemper. I have found that adding outboard gear degrades the signal do to all the conversions that has to happen between the analog and digital equipment. Also, after much experimentation I've noticed that setting the output presence to around 9 pm takes any digital harshness away and makes the kemper sound even more analog. I also use the pure cabinet set at around noon. To get a more separated sound I play around with the space feature.


    Here's my signal chain:


    Guitar into Kemper input.
    Stereo in ear monitor mix coming to me (minus guitar) goes into Alternate and Return inputs on the Kemper.
    Kemper main out goes to FOH.
    My in ear monitors get plugged into the Kemper headphone jack.


    The Kemper has the option to set the volume of the alternate input and its destination. This allows me to monitor the guitar directly from the Kemper, thus getting the best guitar sound possible. Only one conversion of the guitar signal and straight into my ears.

    Hmmmm.... very interesting. Never really thought of it this way, might need to give this a go. Of course, this will indeed do away with any need to have the headphone amplifier.


    Going to give this a try.


    So can I unlink the alternative and return from the Kemper master volume?

    I disagree that the AD/DA conversion of outboard gear into the Kemper degrades the sound. Any AD/DA converter available has the bandwidth and sampling rate to accurately convert a guitar signal. CD's are sampled at 44.1khz in order to achieve 2x the highest desired frequency response (20khz) and CD have been around for 30+ years. Technically, you could get away with 1/2 that sampling rate for guitar since you'd rarely have signal above 10khz.


    Kemper only lists the sampling rate of the S/PDIF in/out but it's listed at 44.1khz/24-bit. I suspect the other onboard converters at least match that spec.