Kemper Doesn't Sound Quite The Same When Tracking On My Daw...

    First off I am running my Kemper Spdif Into a Scarlett 18i8, and then into my monitors. I'm not saying it nescessarily sound bad, but it sounds like something is missing from it. It doesn't have the same fullness to it that it does when I listen to the spdif channel directly in my monitors rather than arm my track and listen that way.
    I'm Kind of a noob at this stuff. Has anyone else had this problem before?

    It could be just a volume difference causing it to sound different to your ears. That's normal, as the frequency response of your hearing changes with different volume levels.

    Thanks for the replies!


    Paults: the tracks are soloed


    Michael_dk: no just arming 1 track spdif stereo.


    It sounds great when I play my Kemper Straight to my monitors. It still sounds ok when going through my DAW, but TBH I feel like I lose the low end, the response of the amp, and the air behind the tone. (hard to explain that one).

    It sounds like you may have both direct monitoring through your interface and software monitoring through your DAW on. If that's the case the latency of the software path will slightly delay that signal causing it to be out of phase with the direct monitored signal. That will result in a loss of low end like you describe. If you mute the signal from your DAW can you still hear your guitar in your monitors? If so, you'll need to mute either the DAW software monitoring or the interface's direct monitoring when you record.


    Brian

    Quote from ba_hill

    It sounds like you may have both direct monitoring through your interface and software monitoring through your DAW on. If that's the case the latency of the software path will slightly delay that signal causing it to be out of phase with the direct monitored signal. That will result in a loss of low end like you describe. If you mute the signal from your DAW can you still hear your guitar in your monitors? If so, you'll need to mute either the DAW software monitoring or the interface's direct monitoring when you record.


    Brian

    Good call

    HI Thank you all for the replies


    Most of the time i do use monitoring from my DAW exclusively. The tone was always wimpier then as well.
    I can record a single track on my DAW, stop recording and play it back. it still will not sound the same as direct monitoring.
    Like I said I am a noob, but I was to understand witht the signal being spdif that there should be no change in tone whatsoever.

    Quote from GeekoSquad

    HI Thank you all for the replies


    Most of the time i do use monitoring from my DAW exclusively. The tone was always wimpier then as well.
    I can record a single track on my DAW, stop recording and play it back. it still will not sound the same as direct monitoring.
    Like I said I am a noob, but I was to understand witht the signal being spdif that there should be no change in tone whatsoever.

    Yeah, if you don't change anything on the kemper, the same signal hits the interface - so any problems are not related to the Kemper.

    So I went through the main outs of the Kemper into the front analog inputs of my scarlett (1+ 2). It definitely sounds beefier with the preamp of the interface, but what does
    this mean? Do DAWS color your tone?

    most likely it is a volume difference that fools your ears, or it could be the "contact sound" you get when playing your guitar - the guitar's body pressed against your ribs will actually conduct sound all the way to your ear drums (structure/solid.borne sound), a recording will obviously not have this effect.

    I tried this as well. The Kemper is able to play pretty loudly through spdif cable to where I can clip. The difference is when I crank the Kemper on my spdif through my DAW I still get a harsh fizzier tone that has seemed to lost some low end. when I crank the volume through the analog inputs the bass stays pronounced.

    If you've already adjusted the Focusrite Control, SPDIF volume slider and settings, and still can't get what you're looking for, try lowering the buffer setting in your DAW, to 128, or 64. That increases CPU overhead, but decreases latency overall.


    If that still doesn't fix it, try the XLR out from Kemper-Mains, to 1/4" inputs in the back of the Focusrite, instead of the front pre-amp.


    Do you have two XLR to 1/4" cables, for stereo connection?


    With XLR, if your DAW is up to it, try a 96KHz sample rate with a buffer setting of 128, or 64. This will give you a much faster I/O round-trip and lower latency than 44.1KHz -for monitoring and recording in real-time.

    Hi Geeko.




    I'm having exactly the same problem you had in 2017 with the volume of the output in the Kemper via S/PDIF. You described it very well, it sounds a lot less loud, cutting off air and bass. And there's no way to turn up the signal.




    Were you able to fix it?




    Thank you.

    Hello All,

    I have the same problem - cutting bass and air. Have anyone identified whether problem relates only to Scarlett or it happens also on higher class audio interface such as RME?

    Thank you.