Anybody with Live Experience? Dynamics to the wind???

  • Hi everybody


    i am very interested in your comments on how the KPA works live.
    i do not, or rather seldomly, play live anymore, but sure enough am interested in reports.
    today i had the oportunity to play my KPA via a PA. while the sound was good i had the impression
    that the dynamics, the attack got a little bit lost. everything fine, but on pretty much the same loudness
    level. didn´t bother ME that bad. what about you?


    anyway please post what you think, what went wrong and what´s been good.
    look forward hearing from you live animals :D


    cu

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

    Edited once, last by Geraldo7 ().

  • I believe nobody having problems, lots of people playing live here. If you make a search with "first gig" or live you'll find a lot of reports. Look for the one from AndyI, he's in WW tournee with Johnny Clegg, lot of picks in FB as well.

    "Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music" Serghei Rachmaninoff


  • I've used the Kemper live, and I haven't noticed any loss in dynamics.


    Could it possibly be the PA that you plugged into?


    Many PA consoles have gates, compressors, and/or limiters on the input channels. Most are simple one knob affairs, which can wreck the tone of your Kemper if not kept in check.


    Some sound guys crank these input channel processors up by default, thinking that it will help, but it can destroy certain signals.


    If you have some great presets, that you've finely tuned, don't let the sound guy at your next gig destroy it. Ask him or her to disable input channel processors. You've already handled it in the Kemper.


  • Right!
    If you bring a good sound on stage it will still sound good. If not, it's the PA.
    Your favourite CD should also sound good through that PA. If not, you would not blame the CD.


    You were probably listening to stage monitors only. Try to get used to a sound that is not always familiar. This is how keyboarders monitor their sounds since decades.
    Trust the guy on the mixing desk.
    He is receiving a sound from you - a closed microphone cab - that he is familiar with, so he can make the best sound for the audience.

  • I don't hear any loss of dynamics with a PA, I think what happens is some patches in any model/profiler and keyboards, is they sound a certain way with small studio monitors and then when people plug it into a huge PA system they get surprised that it doesn't sound the same, the secret has always been(for me anyways) to program live patches with decent size flat as possible PA system, in order for them to translate well with most large PA systems, I've invested in a full size QSC KW 3 way 1000 watt PA speakers just for that, live I just use IEM and go straight to FOH, it seems to work well, I go in front at sound checks sometimes with a GTR wireless just to verify and make corrections to the patches, but it had been a struggle for me trying to get patches to translate well to PA, programming with just studio monitors, even decent monitors, another thing that I'd suggest when making live patches is to get some backing tracks without GTR, with music similar to what you play and select the amp profiles while playing along with the backing tracks mixed similar to what it would use at a gig, i find many patches that I think are great, sometimes don't blend well, this happens with both guitar sounds and keyboard sounds, I know most of you know everything i'm saying here, this is just for those who might not have much live experience going direct to PA. And yes like it's been already mentioned if the sound guy has trouble controlling dynamics especially on clean sounds(most of the time with bass players) is they'll insert a compresso/limiter on your channel strip and kill all your dynamics, for this reason it's best to already use a bit of compressor on your clean sounds so the sound guy won't decide to fix it for you! :)

  • thank you for your suggestions.


    the thing is that i could handle the profile sound very easily with the volume knob of my guitar e.g.
    that i had @3 a clean sound, at around 5 crunch and @>7 a lead or riff sound which was all very fine
    BUT I COULD NOT OR HARDLY REDUCE THE VOLUME
    it sounded as if the KPA has some kind of monster compressor on board for EVERY sound.
    maybe i am wrong, or maybe it has been the shitty PA.
    i´ll postpone this until my next session where i will play the KPA


    thanks again

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

  • Ive been using the Kemper for a couple of months live. I use an old Boss multi effects only to midi trigger....


    after that its both XLR's into the desk one hard left and the other hard right. Monitor output into a DI box into a separate channel on the desk which feeds back to my monitor.This allows me to alter the monitor volume from the KPA.Also allows me to EQ the monitor separately from the FOH. Works great !!! :thumbup:


  • not sure if i understand u correctly, but if you want to control the amount of distortion with your guitar volume AND the clean sound to have less volume when dialing back on your guitar you might wanna try lowering the clean sense input setting on your kpa. the distortion sense then should be able to vary the distortion-increase-curve pretty nicely...

  • Thanx for all your answers, but kilihahn: you are on the right bus.
    remember, i am german and sometimes it is very difficult, because i don´t have the necessary vocabulary.


    Quote

    if you want to control the amount of distortion with your guitar volume AND the clean sound to have less volume when dialing back on your guitar you might wanna try lowering the clean sense input setting on your kpa. the distortion sense then should be able to vary the distortion-increase-curve pretty nicely...

    while this is a good idea, the thing that puzzles me is that i cannot lower the volume at all!!! if i want a quiter passage — be it crunchy or clean or whatever —
    i have to lower the input level before recording or edit the wave in cubase, which is no big deal, when you are @home, but what about live? or while rehearsing?


    this is why i asked you guys who play in bands because at my age, after all those years in bands (more than 30) i am momentarily retired and not keen to return to
    those awful levels of the yesterdays. we called the drummer in my last band "the thresher". this man is I.N.S.A.N.E., but a nice chap once he has left his drumset.


    this thing it doesn´t really bother ME. but it surely would be an issue to the working rock ´n´ roller, wouldn´t it ? you experience the same same?


    cu

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

  • Maybe it's about the rigs you selected to play with live. The ones that sound full and fat at home at low monitoring levels are not the ones with the best dynamics and they are not the good ones to play live over a PA. You got to crank up the volume a bit at home to notice unwanted compression or loss of dynamics and highs to find out wich are the right ones. The best ones almost have no compresssion , lots of highs and presence and not much bass, the soundguy will love you ;) when you come on with the right ones.

  • Possibilities to lower the volume in a profile:
    1. Volume pedal in post amp position
    2. EQ in the X - effect slot. Adjust the Volume (-x dB) to taste.


    Also: make sure that the compressor in the amp settings is off or not set too high.
    Otherwise you will Pump up up your Sound with Compressor when rolling off with your guitar volume pot.

  • Possibilities to lower the volume in a profile:
    1. Volume pedal in post amp position
    2. EQ in the X - effect slot. Adjust the Volume (-x dB) to taste.


    Also: make sure that the compressor in the amp settings is off or not set too high.
    Otherwise you will Pump up up your Sound with Compressor when rolling off with your guitar volume pot.


    That's actually the nice thing about it! To clean up without loosing volume....

    "Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music" Serghei Rachmaninoff


  • i learn a thing a minute here :thumbup:


    Quote


    That's actually the nice thing about it! To clean up without loosing volume.... {guitarnet}

    now we´ve nailed it!
    while i think it is nice, this extreme extent of cleaning up without loosing volume irritates me a little. will check compressor setting tomorrow asap!
    thanx

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

  • Turn the amp block compressor to 0 and you'll be back to normal. Reduce the clean sense as well.

    "Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music" Serghei Rachmaninoff


  • Yeah that's what I was suspecting.
    Personally I absolutely LOVE the way the amp compressor works.
    Lets me clean up my AC 30 profiles better than anything else, even than the real thing.
    But for being able to really turn down the volume you must dial it down near zero.

  • I have been using live since this little machine arrived before that played through th Eleven rack...the trick for me has been to set my sounds to the P.A....I actually took the powered monitor home and adjusted to it...Sometimes that means reducing the reverb which sounds glorious in stereo to just ok in mono or either adding or subtracting distortion or relative volume between patches...the difference the pickups make is extreme...going from my low output Strat to my Duesenberg can take a semi crunch patch to 80's Van Halen (not that I can play like him)

  • i learn a thing a minute here :thumbup:


    now we´ve nailed it!
    while i think it is nice, this extreme extent of cleaning up without loosing volume irritates me a little. will check compressor setting tomorrow asap!
    thanx


    I appologize for the extreme dynamics. It's a feature! :P