Rig Manager 3.0 Editor

  • There are a few priorities from Kemper that I frankly don't understand. Coding of UI-stuff generally doesn't require more than a fraction of the effort involved in developing algorithms and code for complex audio processing.

    This is exactly the opposite of reality. UI and workflow takes far longer than anything else in software development. Most algorithms are trivial by comparison because they are definitive, they just work or they don’t, UI meanwhile is a subjective art form where everyone has an opinion and your goal is to make a complex algorithm seem simple and easy to use, which means endless fine tuning and many many subtle details and elaborate interplay’s. Powerful tools are the ones you can use... with ease.

  • I know that the changes made to a profile in the editor and Kemper are going to be linked. But I think it is important for the editor to be able to be linked to other hardware controllers as well. Editors that are limited to mouse and QWERTY keyboard control are extremely limited. Adding hardware control with knobs, faders, buttons, continuous controller pedals, etc. adds a ton of usability.


    The benefit is that you have could have control of parameters that are not top level on the Kemper. So you could assign parameters to direct knob, switch, fader etc. controls on a MIDI controller. This could be any controller (foot, keyboard or DAW controller) with MIDI learn.

    You'd have more assignable hardware controls for the editor so deep menu diving wouldn't be necessary.


    I am assuming that the Kemper Remote can do this right out of the gate because it controls the Kemper so it can affect the editor. Since my RJM Mastermind GT10 can do the same, it should be able to control editor parameters too. At least I am hopeful that this will be the case.


    But MIDI learn support in the editor would open up editor control to a whole range of hardware.


    I'd also like to see the editor work with two Kempers. Two Kempers could be set up with different parameter controls, effectively covering more parameters with hardware (knobs, buttons, etc.).

  • This is exactly the opposite of reality. UI and workflow takes far longer than anything else in software development. Most algorithms are trivial by comparison because they are definitive, they just work or they don’t, UI meanwhile is a subjective art form where everyone has an opinion and your goal is to make a complex algorithm seem simple and easy to use, which means endless fine tuning and many many subtle details and elaborate interplay’s. Powerful tools are the ones you can use... with ease.

    I beg to differ. You would have to code your GUI in assembly for that statement to be true. I've been a network-engineer/sysadmin/developer since I graduated in the late 80s and my experience is the exact opposite given all the high-level tools and libraries that are available for UI. I have also developed DSP-filtering microcode and that is different world of complexity. While a skilled developer can produce a rather complex UI in a single week, audio-processing algorithms take 1000s of hours of coding and lab-testing, trial and error. The hardware-UI on the Kemper is excellent and I would guess that took a lot of skill, experience and work to come up with, much because trial and error in hardware is much more time-consuming than for software. For the GUI on the LCD (KPA+remote) and the current rig-manager I would be surprised if the development effort has been more than 2-3% of the total number of engineering-hours for the KPA.

  • Worked on UI stuff for web/desktop/mobile 99% of my professional career and I have to say writing good UI is difficult not to mention complications from using multi-platform (win/mac) framework and testing given all permutations of settings/optiona and hardware to hardware comms. My closest experience is working for Serato which is in very similar situation writing software that communicates with external hardware working identically on both Win and Mac platforms. It's not trivial.

  • UX/UI is probably the most nebulous and difficult concepts for a development team to master. This is what separates the like of Apple from their competitors. It's one thing to create a legendary reverb algorithm but it's quite another to make access to that legendary reverb intuitive that a 5 year old would feel at home producing cavernous presets on...

  • I beg to differ. You would have to code your GUI in assembly for that statement to be true. I've been a network-engineer/sysadmin/developer since I graduated in the late 80s and my experience is the exact opposite given all the high-level tools and libraries that are available for UI. I have also developed DSP-filtering microcode and that is different world of complexity. While a skilled developer can produce a rather complex UI in a single week, audio-processing algorithms take 1000s of hours of coding and lab-testing, trial and error. The hardware-UI on the Kemper is excellent and I would guess that took a lot of skill, experience and work to come up with, much because trial and error in hardware is much more time-consuming than for software. For the GUI on the LCD (KPA+remote) and the current rig-manager I would be surprised if the development effort has been more than 2-3% of the total number of engineering-hours for the KPA.

    Where are you drawing your line between algorithm and UI development work here? Based on where you describe your expertise it sounds like possibly you’re defining UI dev as front end only and algorithm as the whole of the back end.


    The whole of the Kemper is a UI, a workflow design concept.


    UI design and development is intrinsic from the off with commercial tools. It dictates the algorithm. The programming interface of the algorithm will be the result of making decisions about what the user will have access to and what the workflow will be. For instance deciding which controls will be available in a delay or reverb or amp block, which will be consistent across all FX, how you will deal with physical controls and try to maintain ease of use and consistency despite adding in more features (and in this case having it work on a DSP). That stuff isn’t simply a case of building a front end, the ui development most likely starts with the original concept. The algorithms can be coded to fit the UI rather than the other way around, that’s the function of architecting, the final UI is designed to fit the known algorithm parameters though.


    We could always ask Christoph how much dev time is invested in UI and workflow vs raw sound processing algorithm work. I’d be surprised if it were only 3%, the Kemper is a very nicely design price of kit and clearly they take their time over features like the editor and preset browsing, limiting down the number of controls to be powerful, consistent and intuitive etc, but only he knows, I could be totally wrong.

  • Two days ago I went to the fractal forum to read about the fm3..and was heavily surprised that I read a lot of comments about how happy the guys over there are with the AF3 because of its front panel for "fast editing" with no laptop.Specially the musicians who indeed play a lot of live and do a lot of recording are happy that they don't need to depend solely on the fractal editor..


    The whole (little) amp section of the Kemper does not need any editor anyway.The profiled rig is already the "edited and tweaked rig" ..it is not serious to compare this to other modellers which you need to edit "from the scratch".There..you need an editor.


    That being said..the new editor will be a big help for tweaking FX,selecting cabs and most of all (and here I guess the whole thing needs a lot of work untill summer) for morphing..I am no software developer(like half of this forum here..obviously..) but I can only guess that a flawless morphing for all parameters needs indeed some time.This is for sure not an easy task which can be done "in a week".

  • limiting down the number of controls to be powerful, consistent and intuitive etc, but only he knows, I could be totally wrong.

    This shows how fundamentally different view we have of UI-design. I consider the work of limiting and organising parameters to be passed to an algorithm an integral part of developing the algorithm itself. By your definition things like the linux, BSD or windows kernel with hardware drivers etc would all be user-interface. To me it is only the X11/Motif/gtk/QT-whatever bits that are GUI-components of an OS. Not to say that the development of GUI-frameworks are insignificant, but the vast majority of UI-developers never dig as deep as to extend or modify core (G)UI components. Instead they use most (G)UI-components as is and tie them to their own application logic and algorithms.


    I believe that a considerable part of the KPA has a lot to do with interfacing the hardware and very little to do with user-interaction. There is some generic hardware and some OS/kernel as a base, but a lot of the Kemper is custom hardware that require ditto software. By my definition there is only a few data-driven apps that approach equal effort in front and back-end development, and the reason for that is that the development-tools commonly used for such applications are designed to generate much of the back-end-code used in the projects. Most apps are 90% or more back-end and application-logic.


    Never-mind, what I'm criticising isn't the methods, but the priorities. A simple thing such as categorising effects-presets by effect-type isn't exactly a new idea and I found it shocking that the KPA didn't do that. The front-panel design is excellent, but to me it seems almost as if the development-team ran out of steam once they turned their attention to software (LCD and RM)

    Edited 4 times, last by heldal ().

  • Two days ago I went to the fractal forum to read about the fm3..and was heavily surprised that I read a lot of comments about how happy the guys over there are with the AF3 because of its front panel for "fast editing" with no laptop.Specially the musicians who indeed play a lot of live and do a lot of recording are happy that they don't need to depend solely on the fractal editor..


    The whole (little) amp section of the Kemper does not need any editor anyway.The profiled rig is already the "edited and tweaked rig" ..it is not serious to compare this to other modellers which you need to edit "from the scratch".There..you need an editor.


    That being said..the new editor will be a big help for tweaking FX,selecting cabs and most of all (and here I guess the whole thing needs a lot of work untill summer) for morphing..I am no software developer(like half of this forum here..obviously..) but I can only guess that a flawless morphing for all parameters needs indeed some time.This is for sure not an easy task which can be done "in a week".

    If you had the option of an easier IU along with software editor, then you have the best of both worlds. Seems reasonable that people would be happy with both. It's not a zero-sum game where it has to be one or the other, nor does it prove the superiority of one over the other.


    The usefulness of an editor is also not solely for the amp/cab portion of the profiler. There are pages upon pages of deep editing parameters for FX and I/O settings. The profiler is a multi-effects unit, not just an amp. The comparison to other competing modelers, especially since the same demographic of consumers choose between them for the same stage & studio use, is absolutely reasonable. The main difference between Kemper & other modelers is the methodology in how you get a core sound. Other than that they attempt to serve the same function in a single package.

  • So there we have it, a simple miscommunication. You are confusing back end boilerplate and architecture with algorithm.


    The UI isn’t an afterthought, it cannot be. Admittedly GUI is a subtopic of UI and even there it is likely to be the lions share of development time when it is a consideration from the start.


    Put it this way - very very little of the back end or time spent working on the back end will actually be functional code doing the job, the actual algorithm. And yes the vast majority of an OS is UI work, even back when it was just a text based UI. That’s sort of the purpose of an OS, you know, to make computers easier to use for users, they are a user interface. The kernel itself, well it’s users are other developers, so of course the libraries have “interfaces”, but they do tend to be quite small and simple. The raw building blocks need to be,


    With regards how you handle presets on the Kemper - when the unit first came out there were very few presets to deal with, a simple list was efficient enough. That’s obviously not the case anymore. No-one but the people at Kemper know how much work is involved in building their UI either coding or design wise. One thing for sure though this aint making a SQL request and slapping a DreamWeaver or Wordpress component on the result.


    I would say their priorities are probably exactly right for delivering the kinds of features that we have all been asking for, and complaining that it takes way too long because we don’t understand the basics of their development and design process or what obstacles they face achieves nothing IMO, especially as they’re not the sort of company that likes to educate their users on the inner workings with blog posts and updates. I think they’re rather we were playing guitar. Speaking of which...

  • The UI isn’t an afterthought, it cannot be.

    That wasn't the impression I wanted to make either. My point is that most developers use (G)UI-frameworks as is and tie ready-made components to their own application-logic and algorithms. Most developers spend a lot more time on making the application do the right things than on how it looks.


    It's not that I think the KPA is all bad. If so I would have ditched it years ago. There are occasions when improvisation is key, and for that I still prefer a traditional amp and pedal-board because that is an order of magnitude faster to dial in, but mostly I'm happy with the KPA. At least it has a front-panel that is much more functional than that of any competitor. Let's just say that there is room for improvement in the UI.


    Note that I focus on the KPA and remote more than the RM. As a mostly live performer it would have to be something very convenient such as a tablet or smartphone-app connected over Bluetooth to make it usable on the road. I use the RM at home for software upgrades and to upload rigs to the KPA, but never take it on the road.

  • ... The KPA is also branded primarily as a studio tool and many of those people will tell you that for them it's all about workflow. Everything is at their disposal in software form and they don't especially care for needing to have the Kemper either right next to them or go to where it is ...

    As someone running 2 studios I can assure you that this isn't what usually happens. The Profiler typically is within reach of the musician. As a sound engineer you'd rather have the musician make the changes he wants ... with you being ready to show and explain only when needed. ;)


    But maybe you were referring to a very different kind of studio. :)

  • As someone running 2 studios I can assure you that this isn't what usually happens. The Profiler typically is within reach of the musician. As a sound engineer you'd rather have the musician make the changes he wants ... with you being ready to show and explain only when needed. ;)


    But maybe you were referring to a very different kind of studio. :)

    I don't run a studio myself, but based my comment on the same sentiment and feedback from several others who do, some of them on this forum in years past. Of course every studio is different in terms of setup and available space that make some setups easier.


    And of course some who run their own studios solely create and make their own music, in which case having the KPA next to another musician isn't such a necessity.

  • If you doing movies/scores-stuff I could imagine that an editor might help "with a million cues"...but honestly..in my experience the engineer does everything when mixing the guitar.How many "different settings" can you do with a marshall rig or a deluxe/JC120 anyway?


    As for fx..well..how often did the engineer ask me to decide myself on reverb or delay and let me record it from start with my own tools?Hmm..


    I don't know..I just talk from my own experience and from other guys I have met over the last 30 years in "several studios"..so I can be of course wrong..;)

  • I think you consistently undersell the amount of parameters, even when it comes to I/O and how much control you have even over the cab portion of a profile. Engineers using, say, and Axe FX in the studio make those same adjustments on the fly with their editing software in place of hours or days spent mic'ing a cab in the right place with the right mic.

  • If you doing movies/scores-stuff I could imagine that an editor might help "with a million cues"...but honestly..in my experience the engineer does everything when mixing the guitar.How many "different settings" can you do with a marshall rig or a deluxe/JC120 anyway?

    It's not altogether uncommon for an engineer to reamp a DI.

  • If you doing movies/scores-stuff I could imagine that an editor might help "with a million cues"...but honestly..in my experience the engineer does everything when mixing the guitar.How many "different settings" can you do with a marshall rig or a deluxe/JC120 anyway?


    As for fx..well..how often did the engineer ask me to decide myself on reverb or delay and let me record it from start with my own tools?Hmm..


    I don't know..I just talk from my own experience and from other guys I have met over the last 30 years in "several studios"..so I can be of course wrong..;)


    Do you only play in the studio?


    I think it would be an amazing tool to craft your performances and rigs for live performance.


    Also, think of sitting in front of a computer while mixing a project. You are trying out a Kemper profile for a guitar sound, but want a bit less presence, or want to lower the rig volume or increase the noise gate or tweak the green scream in front.


    Do you really want to reach over and dive through menus on the Kemper?


    It's obvious that an editor would be of use in such situations.

  • Actually in my case..I will use the editor very much as soon as it will be finally released..I wont even touch the knobs of the frontpanel anymore for anything to do with morphing(which slowly becomes key for everything I do now with two kpa´s)..


    So I would be nuts to say anything negative about the editor.;)


    But this dont change some facts:

    The KPA is the modeller which reminds all "usual tube guys" most of all modellers of an amp.

    You can use it as an amp with all its "classical" knobs for gain,EQ and volume.

    You can "copy" the sweet spot of your own amps.

    In general it is "simple to use" untill you go for a lots of FX,morphing,changing cabs etc..then ofcourse things will become tricky.But in the very first years of the KPA all the new fx and the morphing feature did not exist.Back then the editor was not important.In hindsight we must admit this.


    Today..as a tube amp guy you will use the KPA very much the same way like an amp.For the first periods of time.Whatever happens then..the editor will be the biggest help for "discovering" everything the KPA has to offer now.

  • Today..as a tube amp guy you will use the KPA very much the same way like an amp.For the first periods of time.Whatever happens then..the editor will be the biggest help for "discovering" everything the KPA has to offer now.

    I get the point about "tube amp-like" hardware UI.


    That said, the gain control on kemper does not work like any tube amp I've profiled. Increasing usually sounds very different -- and most often, to me, in a bad way so. Decreasing sounds closer to my amps, but still different -- it's why this offers some interesting possibilities to me personally considering it seems to retain more of the tone while reducing "distortion".


    And then... there's the EQ section, which feels closer to some post-EQ applied in a daw. Good or bad, it's typically not what you'd expect from a tube amp, working with it.


    On that end, even though I think there's more convergence between "modelling" and "profiling" than some may assume, I am not sure I'd call kemper a "modelling" unit per se. You would expect these most basic controls to work more like the amp modeled (and, perhaps unsurprisingly, more like most other examples of that particular model) that being the case.


    Of course, considering how kemper works, dialing in amps in terms of typical tube amp controls is what one supposed to do before profiling. And there's other, easily accesible controls kemper most often not found in tube amps nonetheless presented in a convenient UI.

    In general it is "simple to use" untill you go for a lots of FX,morphing,changing cabs etc..then ofcourse things will become tricky.But in the very first years of the KPA all the new fx and the morphing feature did not exist.Back then the editor was not important.In hindsight we must admit this.

    If you profile amps a lot, and care a lot about emulating the source well enough, it's likely you will jump between amp and kemper in A/B mode often. There's ways around this, sure, but if one is going to use the A/B mode from kemper itself.. to put it simply, I ended up with shoulder soreness maaaaany times because of comparing as much before.


    At some point, it became clear to me some did not always care so much about profiling going as well as it can, and hence shooting 42793 profiles seemed less of an issue. Feed short DI, check for 2 seconds, done, neeeeeeext :) And some were clever enough to compare in a more convenient way than I used to.

    The bonanza

  • Dear @Dimi..


    This is what I really love about the KPA..it brings us guitar players to admit what close minded creatures we are..


    Synth,bass-players and drummers had to adjust much earlier during the last decades than us electric guitar players..thanks to the KPA we finally start to discuss interesting issues like "amp-in-the-room",FRFR,the role of different speakers,cab sizes and finally the "real role of the EQ" on vintage tube amps..all funny stuff but yes we finally did it.Congrats to ourselves!


    Anyway..


    Believe me my friend..if there is something you should be happy about then it is the fact that the EQ of the KPA does not "work exactly" like the ones of the profiled amps.It is a funny issue indeed and it would take pages to discuss this..plus a lots of Humor..



    The gain-knob is a very different issue.Tricky enough..we must admit that Kemper achieved a good solution.Can it be done better?For sure.In the future I guess.But right now and in my personal opinion the solution we have now is useable for a lot of (good) profiles and does sometimes "interesting and very musical" results to a few profiles I use.


    The point I agree is the "modeller"-thing..I also never saw the KPA as a modeller but always as a "sweetspot-copy generator" which allows me to profile my amps in the way I love them to sound like.Pkus to get all the very personal results of other players and their "view on things" plus their skill to get their preferences into the profiler.


    I guess there is not a single person out there who uses at least 60-70% of the current KPA-capacities and will not admit that we indeed now really need an editor.