Kemper started making digital clicks halfway through gig

  • I was playing a festival last night and using my Kemper for once. I had updated to the latest V6 stable release a few days ago and set up my performance and everything was fin ein rehearsals this week and soundcheck on the night. Towards the end of the set the artist I'm with leaves the stage and I play a solo track form my new album. Last night as she left and switched to my 'Ambient' patch for the tune, when I rolled to volume up to check everything was good I started to hear digital sort of clicks coming from the kemper, they were triggering the long reverb I had set and as it was a big stage and PA they were very loud. I had to call the artists back and make apologies to the audience and move on as I couldn't continue solo with these noises. It only was happening on the patch with the long reverb I use as a freeze for a pad. The other patches for my 2 acoustic gtrs were fine. I'm using my own JM/SSS profiles fro electric gtrs.


    I remember a few years ago having a similar thing with a beta OS that was fixed with an update so I've never used BETA OS on gigs since then. V6 is official but there's obviously something not right, so my question is should I update to the latest Beta? I've another gig with this artist tomorrow night and can't have this happen again.


    Anyone else had this issue? a forum search didn't bring up anything.


    M

  • V6 is official but there's obviously something not right, so my question is should I update to the latest Beta?

    Hey Marcus.


    As far as I know there hasn't been a newer beta since the 6.0.0.14574 Public Beta was elevated to Release status.


    With this in mind, the only thing I can think of is to test that Rig often and try to map the frequency of the clicks' occurrence. This should help you determine whether or not you're confident-enough to use the Rig again in a mission-critical situation.


    It could be that the "simple" act of rebooting has already corrected the problem. If not, I'd definitely suggest you ensure that the Kemper has the opportunity to run the housekeeping routine that takes place when you power down using the chicken knob. If you've been switching the unit off externally and rarely going the chicken-knob route, all the more reason to do this IMHO.


    These sorts of glitches are often RAM-related in my experience with other digital-outboard gear, where bits of information somehow hang around and find their way into places they ought not to. Again, clearing (and ideally compacting, which is something I've always assumed the power-down routine carries out) the memory should in-theory help, if indeed that's what the cause was.


    The other thing I'd look at is how many Rigs, Presets and Cabs you've got residing in the unit. The more stuff you've got occupying the Flash RAM, the less room there is to manoeuvre, and as you'd know, delays, 'verbs and something like the freeze effect would logically be more RAM-hungry than something like an overdrive stomp.


    HTH, mate. If none of this helps and a reset doesn't either, you might have to do the ol' Support Boogie™ I'm afraid.

  • thanks Nicky, My first thought was to reboot but it takes quite a long time in a mission critical situation so I had to bail on it. This is why on big gigs people have a spare ready i suppose :D


    I'm going to go through it all now and see what I can find. I don't have anything other than factory sounds and my profiles on there. I could do a clean out and get rid of 90% as I don't use them.


    What's the best way to do that? rig manager and just delete from the profiler ?


    thanks again for chiming in, it all helps.



    M

  • What's the best way to do that? rig manager and just delete from the profiler ?

    I'd say so, mate.

    thanks again for chiming in, it all helps.

    My pleasure bud. Sorry I couldn't come up with anything more-concrete.

  • Hmm, just gone to the studio to set everything up and no clicks but strangely the looper is malfunctioning, it records but will not overdub, when I hit the record/overdub after the first pass the stop light comes on as well but it won't let me overdub! Somethings definitely gone squirely.


    I need to reset without loosing my performance patches.


    m


    edit. Done a factory reset and so far all seems good.

  • Hi Marcus,


    i remember some people here couldn´t do no more overdubs and kemper support found out that they were using too much "dsp-hungry" effects at the same time. I know digital clicks from maxed out digital recording software. I think you should open a support ticket. :(

  • Bugger!!! did it again last night towards the end of the gig!!!!!! so the ONLY things in the whole kemper were 1 performance with 4 patches. The unit was factory reset with it completely empty and I just loaded the performance I needed.


    Did exactly the same thing, digital random clicks. we managed to re arrange the set list and I rebooted the machine during another song and it was OK for the last 4 numbers after that.


    I'm wondering if it's some kind of memory leak issue, as it seems to come on over time.


    It's really made me loose a bit of confidence in the unit as it's a real problem when it starts to do this, one thing you need when gigging is reliability.




    M

  • I'm wondering if it's some kind of memory leak issue, as it seems to come on over time.

    I realised after I posted the quote below that those were the two words that, had I thought of them at the time, would've saved me a whole-lotta typing in an attempt to describe the phenomenon, Marcus:

    These sorts of glitches are often RAM-related in my experience with other digital-outboard gear, where bits of information somehow hang around and find their way into places they ought not to. Again, clearing (and ideally compacting, which is something I've always assumed the power-down routine carries out) the memory should in-theory help, if indeed that's what the cause was.

    :D


    It'll be interesting to see what support says. You'll probably be asked to send a .kpabackup file so they can "simulate" your machine whilst running the offending Rig.


    Fingers crossed something jumps out at them sooner rather than later, man.

  • A couple years ago, my Kemper started with digital clips and pops all around, but it only happened while I was plugin the guitar in any of the inputs. While reamping through SPDIF, those clicks had gone. I took the profiler to the only Kemper dealer in Brazil, and they replaced (at least they said they did) the input soundboard. It costed me around U$ 1k at the time. A couple of days ago the problem returned. I don't know if it is really a hardware problem, or maybe it has something to do with the moist weather where I live (South Brazil).