Welcome! and make sure nobody from the Fractal sees your post - you will be hunted and killed LOL 
I have only been eyeing in this forum for years without posting much but this is a very nice community.
I have owned AXE FX II for about 3 years before switching to Kemper and have had zero regrets since.
Only thing I miss is the USB recording and the Editor (yes I have to mention it!)
Very nice set up you have there.
Welcome aboard sir. I had a similar path I followed, I was tossing up between the Axe and 11R and for the difference in price I went for the 11R. It took me awhile to get it up and running to my satisfaction and then had a couple of years gigging it but there was that something missing. I then went the custom amp build and pedals..........anyhow. I started researching again and the Kemper hit the radar. My biggest regret???? I didn't purchase it 3-4 years earlier!! And now that i'm done with gigging (for the time being lol) I have better tones than ever (between Mbritt, Cililab, LRS, NickK and some random Rig Manager stuff). It's made me a better player to I believe. And this forum (other than the recent changes!) is bloody fantastic. Awesome people barring a couple, but they have been pretty absent recently lol. Enjoy
2 track reel to reel spotted! Proper old skool
Saw that too, Alan! Nice space! 
Welcome!
I owned one of the first AxeFx ultra in the EU and the AxeFx II as well - they are great boxes - nothing compares in regard of FX, routing and flexibility.
As you mentioned I spend also hours of tweaking - just to find that after the next firmware update everything sounded different - and I as well profiled all my favorite AxeFx sounds and sold the box - love the Kemper now 
Enjoy!
2 track reel to reel spotted! Proper old skool
Someone noticed that! Good eye Wheresthedug. I LOVE tape saturation. I love digital recording and my DAW as well.
I've been too busy to post this week so I'll post my aggregated comments tonight. Sorry if this got too long. Before I forget, the KPA gets better every day. I'm thrilled to death with it.
I use tape as an effect to "warm up" a track or to add texture to a track. By "warm up" I mean generate low order harmonics that are musically related to the source. I occasionally bounce tracks through it to get real tape saturation although lately I've been using a couple of VST plugins that sound pretty close. Gem TAPEDESK and Waves Kramer VST are my favorites - I've compared them directly with tape including saturated waveforms and they sound and look ALMOST like tape to me, but not exactly. By using the play head to monitor the recorded sound it's easy to adjust how hard the tape gets slammed and how much saturation effect you get. Once I get the levels right and I like the sound I bounce a track through it using my DAW. Since there's a delay I have to slide the bounced track back in time (to the left) to line up with the source track.
The thing I love about tape distortion is that there are no high order (harsh) harmonics generated. If done properly it can add another dimension to the sound and really "thicken" it up. It's also a great zero attack and zero release time limiter that is almost transparent if used judiciously. My practice is to record everything digitally, then apply tape saturation to those tracks I feel can benefit from it.
My favorite things to apply tape saturation to are bass and vocals. Drums can greatly benefit as well. If I slam tape with a bass track it adds an audible octave above the fundamental as well as strong 3rd and 5th order harmonics, making the sound of the bass much richer and fuller. It also limits the peaks inaudibly. If you record a sine wave you can see the spectrum generated by the tape using an RTA. There's almost nothing above the 5th order harmonic so there's no high frequency "rasp" that sounds objectionable (like the sound a heavily over-driven a tube amp would create). IMO the best sounding recordings were made using analog tape, that is until engineers realized what was missing from digital recordings and started correcting for the "problem" of perfect reproduction by digital recorders. With accurate tape simulation plugins and an awareness of the imperfection of analog tape contributing to the sound of a recording in a positive way, things have gotten better, again IMO.
I actually use a Tascam deck (22-2 or 22-4 not pictured) to bounce tracks through for the tape saturation effect, not the Akai in the photo. The Tascam is a professional deck that has about 25dB of headroom (above 0VU) in the amplifier that drives the record head, which means the tape will distort long before the record head amplifier. In the Akai consumer deck in the photo the record head amp with distort at about 12dB over the 0 VU reference. This prevents it from being able to heavily distort high bias/high output tape. I purchased the Akai so that I could create tape distortion but was disappointed when I tried to use it. The transistors in the record head amp would distort before the tape heavily saturated. Then I did my research and discovered I needed a deck with a lot more headroom. The Tascam will distort the tape as much as I could possibly want to.
The speakers are technically too far apart but I've grown used to it. I don't sense a "hole". However, I plan to mount them to the wall above the monitors to get them ideally spaced for my seating position. Haven't gotten to that yet. The bigger problem IMO are the room reflections and resulting unnatural frequency response. I recently started using ARC, a VST plugin that analyses the room response and applies corrective EQ. It REALLY helps even out the bass in a small rectangular room. The "boominess" is gone! It's definitely preferable to treat the room acoustically, but when you're crammed into a small bedroom it's impossible to get rid of all the reflections, especially the bass. Even with bass traps in every corner the room response will still stink. But ARC helps a lot. It's not very expensive either unless you buy it at the wrong place. It's $100 online and worth every penny IMO. Comes with a microphone that needs phantom power. And no, I have no affiliation with the company that makes it.
The monitors are 43" Samsung 4K TVs. This translates into four 21.5" 1080p monitors "stuck together". At native resolution everything scales to look like it would on a 21.5" 1080p monitor. I love it. There are two computers synced together, one monitor for each, and the computers are networked together to be able to transfer files. I use one computer for playback and processing of all the recorded tracks, and the other computer just to track guitar and bass. By not having more than a few tracks on the computer used for recording guitar, I can run the buffer at 32 samples, running the dry guitar into and back out of an audio interface and then into the KPA. That allows me to record the dry guitar for reamping later if I change my mind about the profile I used, and to record guitar while playing without noticeable latency. Once I record a guitar track I import it into the other computer (that has a large buffer with high latency for the numerous VST effects and tracks) for playback and move on to recording the next guitar/bass track.
I hope somebody has time to read all this or even cares - jeez - I got long winded!
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time
Provided with toys and 'scouting for boys'
You brought a guitar to punish your ma
And you didn't like school, and you
Know you're nobody's fool
So welcome to the machine....
The bigger problem IMO are the room reflections and resulting unnatural frequency response. I recently started using ARC, a VST plugin that analyses the room response and applies corrective EQ.
The Sonarworks Reference 4 VST plugin has also been getting a lot of buzz for this sort of thing. I couldn't get their demo to work so gave it a miss, but I already had a hardware based solution, DBX's DriveRack PA2. It lives between the mixer output and speaker input.
It's' the same class of creature. Measure the room and it auto generates an 8 band parametric adjustment. I just watched a YouTube video on ARC and it's going to help people a lot. That said, from the video it looked like measure, pick a response curve and you're done. In my experience, the auto generated correction stuff gets pretty close, but there's still lots of room for improvement. If their actual resulting frequency response is really as flat as represented in the video that would be unprecedented from the products I've seen thus far, but perhaps the video was the typical "demo in an ideal situation" thing. Either way, for 100 bucks it's almost a must have for someone who doesn't have other options.
With SonarWorks you have to remember to disable the plugin before you render or it'll stamp it's EQ curve onto your final mix file. I would imagine you have to do the same with ARC.
The DriveRack allows me to go in after the fact and tweak each of the parametric settings. Even then, the result isn't exactly flat, but it's reasonably close. And mind you, I've already spent thousands on 703 acoustic treatment in the control and live room prior to this. Of course, the DBX unit is also $400 vs $100 so I'm very impressed with the ARC. Looks like an extremely good bang for the buck.
What a lot of people don't realize is that unless you bring in a professional acoustician and do exactly what they say (massive thousands of dollars), your room's still not going to be flat after treatment so something like the ARC or other products are still an important part of the acoustic arsenal.
An equally important tool in my bag of tricks is Melda Productions' MCompare plugin. There are a few product like it out there, this is just the one I happened to go for. Its value is making it very easy to check your mix in real time against reference mixes, which is arguably as important as acoustic treatment and monitors. If you're using reference mixes in your environment and your mix sounds like your reference mix, you're well on your way to success even with a less than perfect world in terms of speakers, room acoustics, etc. While that doesn't guarantee that your mix is portable (I still do car and iPhone tests here and there), it gets you a long way down the line toward radio quality results.
I love geeking out over other people's studios. You've got a cool room there!
An equally important tool in my bag of tricks is Melda Productions' MCompare plugin. There are a few product like it out there, this is just the one I happened to go for. Its value is making it very easy to check your mix in real time against reference mixes, which is arguably as important as acoustic treatment and monitors. If you're using reference mixes in your environment and your mix sounds like your reference mix, you're well on your way to success even with a less than perfect world in terms of speakers, room acoustics, etc. While that doesn't guarantee that your mix is portable (I still do car and iPhone tests here and there), it gets you a long way down the line toward radio quality results.
I may look into MCompare. I use a few albums I like as references for my ears. Having a plugin to assist with that sounds like a plan!
Thanks!
I use Sonarworks 4, it is a really good software. In my old apartment, when I used it for the first time, it was like a blanket had been lifted from my ears and I could hear everything properly.
What's even cooler imo was that when I finally *got* why my mixes weren't working, it automatically helped me mix better because I knew what to look for when the plugin wasn't active as well.
Amazingly, in my current apartment, the room is really nice acoustically, so when I use Sonarworks, there is actually very little correction done in comparison to my earlier space. But the plugin still helps, and when I upgraded my monitors, using Sonarworks helped me acclimatise to their sound so that I don't have to rely on it like a crutch.
Not that it's a crutch, the software is worth every penny if you can't treat your room (I can't because my landlord would have a fit). It's also got correction suggestions for certain headphones, which makes them invaluable mixing tools as well.
Not that it's a crutch, the software is worth every penny if you can't treat your room (I can't because my landlord would have a fit).
No matter which plugin or hardware you use for this, I think it brings a value of its own in both treated and untreated environments. Even after you've spent a lot of time and effort treating your room there will still be peaks and valleys remaining, which this helps smooth out. While it's unlikely that the room will be 100% flat in the end, it's the closest I've seen yet.
I see this particular tool as making a final pass with fine grained sandpaper after you've done the heavier sanding with room treatment. And when treatment simply isn't possible, it can often get you in the same ballpark on its own.
Welcome!
I use Sonarworks 4,
So do I, it's great.
For best sound results in the room, it makes sense to proceed in logical steps:
1. speaker placement
2. room treatment
3. software like Sonarworks
More details can be found here. I downloaded Acoustic Insider's free guides on speaker placement, then spent €150 on Rockwool and fabric, to build absorbers, mainly to deal with early reflections. After setting up the speakers and treating the room (and setting up my work table so that it's at a small angle, not parallel to the ceiling, and covering the stone surface of the table with a rubber mat and fabric to reduce reflections), I took measurements with Sonarworks Reference 4 (I used one of their calibrated microphones).
All these steps, combined with excellent monitors (KS Digital C55), resulted in a great mixing environment.
And the Kemper sounds great too...
Display MoreSo do I, it's great.
For best sound results in the room, it makes sense to proceed in logical steps:
1. speaker placement
2. room treatment
3. software like Sonarworks
I stopped at broadband absorption. I literally don't have room for adequately sized bass traps. I will say that ARC (and I'm sure Sonarworks as well) makes a HUGE improvement in bass response at the calibrated listening position. It's not the perfect solution but it really works wonders when your options are limited.
