High end problem with high gain profiles

    Hi!


    Last weekend I visited GuitarSummit in Mannheim again and joined the "Kemper in the studio" workshop hosted by Thomas Dill.

    I took some interesting impulses from this workshop e.g. something like (not quoted word by word) "theres a specific profile for every recording situation" or "if you have to touch the EQ-section or the studio EQ in the stomp section, then maybe the profile is either bad or not suited for your recording situation".

    I came back to my Kemper and went through my profiles I adjusted just a few days prior (with headphones (direct from headphone jack) at home, in the rehearsal space I play Monitor out to cabinet) and couldn't get a good sound from any of my higher gain profiles without cutting the highs at around 9500Hz. It was all just too fizzy. In the rehearsal space there is no such problem because the guitar cab doesn't have this wide of frequency range as my headphones.

    Are my ears corupted, or why is it, that I can't get any Rig sounding good without an EQ cutting the highs? Do I miss some output setting? Is this a thing that all the profiles have this much high end? I played with Pure cabinet and the settings in the Cab section but I can't overhear this now...

    Thanks in advance for your responses!


    Greetings!

    I'm sorry, but I have not found a profile that I have not ended up tweaking. The problem is that people are different. How people perceive the sound coming from their system is different. What one person wants is not necessarily what I want and I have no qualms performing surgery on profiles that are not quite where I want them.


    I have loads of profiles, but not that many I would actually use and I think that I have yet to actually record with an unedited profile. I nearly always use the tone controls in the amp section and nearly always edit the amp section. Yes, I sometimes record with a low pass filter. Let your ears dictate what you want to do. There are no hard and fast rules if it sounds good.

    Quote from manuxhaag

    I came back to my Kemper and went through my profiles I adjusted just a few days prior (with headphones (direct from headphone jack) at home, in the rehearsal space I play Monitor out to cabinet) and couldn't get a good sound from any of my higher gain profiles without cutting the highs at around 9500Hz. It was all just too fizzy.

    It's a general thing due to Fletcher-Munson (Google). If you want your rigs to sound good at rehearsal level, there's no way around to tweak them at the same level. Don't tweak at home level if the rig is used live (and vice versa).

    I could have farted and it would have sounded good! (Brian Johnson)

    Like 2

    Ok, just to explain, the isophonic curves correspond to an analisys of the perception of volume from a signal to the general human hearing, and determines in simple terms how several frequencies become less or more perceptible to the human ear with the increase of volume, and to certain extent, sound pressure. In your case, you should be aware that no output source is the same, as no ear is the seam, being even yours, left and right.


    Maybe your headphones have a lovely spike in the upper trebble (it is pretty common in mid ends to try to get that area of the spectrum loaded so they "sound" detailed) and that might turn into the sibilance or fizzyness you are hearing, try to get some more neutral sounding headphoes (I use AKG K701 with a G109A amplifier, works flawless and sounds as my mackie pair of studio monitors).


    Maybe your cabinet (as most low end cabs do) kill the top end of all you have played on them, so you dont know how some other cabs or amps sound before the kemper, and you not liking it, is just a natural thing.


    Or in the end, your ears might be too perceptive at low volumes to high frequencies, that according to the isophonic curves, it might not be so far fetched.


    Anyway, you should try mixing things around, find headphones that sound comfortable for you, I bet it is not the profiles, as you clearly have your fun with your cabinet. Try some M50s or something.

    The answer is 42