Help!

    Interesting but I struggle to see how a click being consistently 6ms slow can feel like it's dragging without something else to reference against. I suspect that is anecdotal and a bit of a PR statement to make him appear to be special. I noticed the entry also describes his sense of timing as "preternatural". I had to look that up ; "beyond what is is normal or natural"^^


    Clearly some people must have an unnatural sense of timing and you may be one of those people. If that is the case I am sure it is both a blessing and a curse in much the same way as some people with super sensitive pitch recognition struggle with tuning discrepancies that most folk don't hear.


    If 3ms of latency is noticeable to you and affects your ability to play and enjoy music I suspect the Kemper isn't ever going to be right for you. That's not a judgement in anyway. Everybody has their own personal needs, ways of working, preferences etc. What is right for one person won't necessarily be right for another. Neither Kemper nor the vast majority of users seem to have any issue with the current latency so I doubt it is something that the mothership will treat as a major priority to address given their existing workload.

    Quote from Mark1964

    Larry Mullen of U2 quotes a figure of 6mS for detectable latency leading to playing problems (see his wikipedia entry). He seems like a 1/2 decent musician...

    "This will be my last post" post #37


    Must have been the latency that this post #41 showed up? Lol ;)

    Quote from Mark1964

    Anyway, I'm a bit disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a solution from Kemper to the latency issue. It feels like I've inflamed a sensitive spot (that spot being Kemper latency), because nobody has made any suggestions on the other issues I have with Kemper in my OP.

    Mark, I did make two suggestions. They may not work for you but I recommended that you feed your DAW signal into the Aux-in of the Kemper.


    It will not make the latency go away but at least you will hear all signals with the same latency. Which is btw what the Yamaha article is about, NOT the overall total delay from pluck to hearing.


    Also, I mentioned that the article itself makes a distinction between headphones and speakers. It may be worth trying that to see if that helps.


    The Profiler (say) 4 ms internal latency is something that we - people on the forum - just cannot tell you how to decrease. It is probably the minimum the Kemper engineers can get it down to. (Knowing what I know about digital processing of sound, I am actually very impressed how lot it is.)


    You mentioned that you started on a piano - so did I. Piano players have it easy as an "analog" piano has basically no latency. By the time the key bottoms out, the hammer hits the string. (The string to ear distance of course still applies.) The digital world is not quite so nice ;)


    Also as you saw in the thread, it is not an issue for most. That being said I understand how frustrating it must be for you if it affects your playing and no one else seems to be even acknowledging that this is a problem.

    Mark1964 Apologies if you thought I was making light of it, I was not.


    My point is that there is latency all over the place in various scenarios. Lower latency is always better, but not sure there is a solution in the Kemper because it is what it is..


    I also don't agree with the attack comment but then perhaps I'm not a half decent musician ( no offense taken).


    Not sure there is any answer except going back to analogue or your POD.


    I do hope you find some answers and sorry if my comments put you off posting.

    I know I said a few days ago that I'd posted my last post...


    But here's an update after a few more days experimenting. I bought my Kemper just before Christmas btw.


    The music I'm doing at the moment is various classic rock covers with band line-up of vocals / bass / drums / guitar / keyboards. All predictable stuff, and the guitar is pretty varied depending on the song. In most cases there's a lot of organ (Hammond XK1) to blend with. Also, it's a "patch-up" of a live gig recorded as a multi-track a few years ago. We were fortunate in having a great singer guesting for us (this guy's band had a 5 album deal in the 80s, and he is still going strong), so the mission is basically bringing everything else up to the standard of the lead vocals. This wouldn't have been even remotely possible a few years ago, but with today's technology it really is - sample-replacing the drums, re-recording pretty much everything else and "fitting" it to the vocals - a bit like some songs on Queen / Made In Heaven. Then add lots of applause... A fun and interesting project from a playing and technology perspective, and the results are fooling even the band members!


    The constraint though is - because it's "live" there's no double (or triple or quadruple) tracking of guitar allowed: the guitar sound needs to stand up on its own as single performance, and "sit" in the mix with everything else.

    So, I've tried:

    1) real guitar / amp mic'd up in another room (and variation thereof: amp sound recorded via THD Hotplate, and then put through a cab emulation or IR in the DAW)

    2) POD (1998 original)

    3) Kemper

    4) Using various guitar amp sims. (as stand-alone apps., not via Logic) on my laptop: Waves GTR3, AmpliTube4, Guitar Rig 5.


    All of this btw is being recorded to a completely separate outboard mixer / recorder (not my laptop and not Logic).


    Each of these has pros and cons.

    1) is good, negligible latency, but there's a lot of wires, hassle, reproducibility is a problem... ...and it usually ends up sounding a bit like guitar recorded in a bedroom. (And the variation doesn't seem to work very well, possibly due to the Hotplate attenuation mangling the sound).

    2) also has pretty low latency, and it's very quick and simple to set up + certain patches still sound OK even 20 years on.

    3) is, like POD, great from a simplicity standpoint. It has IMHO a latency problem but also, of all the above, it doesn't seem to sit in the mix: no attack, too bass-y, lack of sustaining harmonics relative to the real thing (and the other sims.) - so it's not just latency (and I know most of the posters on this forum aren't cursed like I am, and thus can't detect "dragging" latency), there are some other issues as mentioned right at the start in my OP.

    4) was a bit of a revelation. The overall latency is about the same as Kemper, and the sounds go from being dreadful to amazingly good, depending on the patch. But the real difference is that you can hear these sounds in the mix straight away - if you find a decent patch - without any real fiddling about.


    I think 4) is the way to go.

    Cool project.


    For the Kemper part, is there a way you could post the profile names and some audio so we can hear what you're hearing? Even setting the latency issues aside, my son and I play 80s stuff all the time (mostly high gain stuff) and the Kemper has some fantastic profiles for 80s music. Also we seem to get great sustain on harmonics so maybe some settings need to be tweaked.


    I am sure the more experienced Kemperites would have ideas who to do these tweaks if they could hear what you are hearing.

    Can we all agree here that there is no latency 'problem' with the Kemper? It's performing as advertised. The problem is that Mark1964 has what amounts to much better hearing than most - if no all of us on this thread. I certainly cannot hear 4/.x ms of latency in a live setting, and I'm pretty sensitive to glitches like that.


    Lets continue to focus on how he can improve his workflow so he can truly enjoy the Kemper.


    Mark1964- you did a LOT of testing. Is this actually stopping you from playing on the record? Are you totally bricked by this? Because if you're not, then you can time-align things in Logic pretty easily.


    If you ARE bricked by this - and man, I'm sorry- I suppose ignorance is bliss on my part because i'm sure it would drive me nuts - you're saying this isn't as pronounced when using an amp/cab combination - or your pod. You indicated you have a split somewhere in your signal chain - can you take that split and run a muted, dry track into your DAW- and play the other side of the split through your amp - right in the room?


    You could THEN take the dry signal and re-amp it through the Kemper to get the sound you want. The Kemper reamps *beautifully*. You can even automate (via MIDI) patch changes in the DAW to get timing of effect or rig setting changes spot on.


    Just thinking out loud, I don't really have a better solution for ya. At 4-something MS I doubt there's anything wrong with your Kemper, but it might be worth talking to support anyway.


    :)


    KPA Unpowered Rack, Kemper Remote, Headrush FRFR108s, BC Rich Mockingbird(s), and a nasty attitude.

    Like 1

    I think whatever you do, record using the sims because as VST's you can then play with them post recording or reamp until you're hearts content to find the right sound.

    So, in the interests of being helpful to other users, here's what I've come up with. The aim was to USE the Kemper. I spent a lot of money on this, and I really want it to work... ...and loads of other people say it's really good! So the problem must be me.


    On the issue of a rather bass-y, flat sound: a big improvement seems to be to use a lighter plectrum. I use a Jim Dunlop 0.60mm nylon. I know it's unfashionable to use such a whimpy pick with quite overdriven sounds (which is what I'm doing) but it works for me. In fact, this is what I always used to do, and then for some reason I changed to much heavier picks. I guess the lesson (re-)learnt is: don't under-estimate the effect of the pick on your sound.


    Second, on latency. What seems to work - for solos - is: plug the cans direct into Kemper and listen to your guitar with one can on one ear, but the other ear "open". The "open" ear listens to the backing track only on the studio monitors. And then do the take. After a dozen failed attempts listening to everything through headphones via my audio interface, this particular solo got done 1st take with the new approach. Hmmm, maybe this is psychological, but maybe not. But it works for me.


    So, the good news is - a success with Kemper. An entire track finished. And btw the profile I ended up using is the GT75 Scream stock one. This seems to work just fine with my Strat and Les Paul and sounds similar to my Marshall 2203, except - I have to say in a home recording environment - it sounds better. The distortion rolls off with the guitar volume similar to the real amp. Maybe this is because it's a merged profile. I seem to find myself general liking these more than studio profiles.

    as someone who played the PODs in their various incarnations when they came out, as well as pretty much all the VST amp sims out there before getting an AxeFX Ultra, using custom IRs and then finally switching to the PROFILER - I can only imagine there is something weird going on with your monitoring, guitar or your PROFILER has issues.


    Occam's Razor comes to mind:

    Which one is more likely, requires less assumptions, that thousands of players worldwide, including top pros are fooled and play a device that sounds no better than a POD, or that something is off here? ;)

    We really need recordings of your PROFILER, preferably with an unaltered Factory Rig so we have a common basis. :)

    I just spent the whole weekend (my wife was away) trying to get Kemper to work for me. But I just can't.


    The real issue is still latency: it just DRAGS.


    In contrast, my "analogue" silent recording chain comprises a Marshall 2203 into a THD Hotplate, and record the DI out of the Hotplate. Put up with the fizzy sound whilst tracking and then insert a 'speaker emulation on the recorded track.


    Whilst tracking, the above has an immediacy and a precise response that the Kemper seems to lack. And the sound is, well, I think it's much better in every respect.


    So at this point I give up, and my Kemper is going on eBay.

    Dear Mark1964 ,

    sorry to hear that the PROFILER does not work for you. I'm still surprised by your latency issues with the unit, since this has never come up since the PROFILER was released in 2012. And is btw. very similar to what you would experience with a tube amp a few meters away or in a typical studio setup.


    But in the end you have to choose the gear that works for you.


    Best of luck. :)

    I think there has to be something else going on here but totally understand you've had enough.


    Good luck dude, let us know what you decide to do next!