Noise gate being locked to input

  • Hey. I just wanted to try and start a discussion, not sure if it sticks, but I want to discuss the noise gate being stuck to the input section.


    If I am switching between a clean and a high gain profile, I can either set the noise gate to the clean profile and have lots of added noise on the high gain profile, or I can set it to the high gain profile, eating up a lot of the clean tone. I can lock the input section, but that also locks the sense options, which means if I switch between guitars (which I do) I have to edit those settings every time.


    So it's either noise/squashed sound, or I have to edit either the noise gate settings or the clean/dist sense settings every time I swap profiles or guitars. There's currently no way to be able to set up so it's plug and play unless putting some limitations on yourself, like only using one profile, or only using one guitar.


    It seems to me the noise reduction should be its own separate thing (separate from stomps, amp, cab, eq, post fx - it's own separate entity in the chain) / attatched to the pre amp Stomps section somehow / should be in the rig settings. Or something to that effect. Is there a particular reason why it isn't? Has this been suggested by anyone before, have Kemper made official comments on the matter? What are other people's thoughts?

  • Like the level of Clean Sens the level of the Input Noise Gate is related to the guitar and its pickups. Clean Sens, Distortion Sens, and Noise Gate level are stored in every Rig.


    So you can either unlock the Input Section and load their stored levels optimized for each Rig - because you typically use a particular guitar with each particular Rig. That is the default in Performance Mode by the way assuming you are setting up your Performances for particular guitars. Or you lock the Input Section and adjust Clean Sens and Noise Gate for the guitar you currently use checking out various Rigs from your browse pool. That is the default setting in Browser Mode.


    In addition you have the stomp noise gates, that you can optimize by Rig.

  • The noise gate is stored as part of a rig. It is not 'stuck' to the input section, but is part of it. It is independent of stomps/stack/fx.

    When you change to a different rig, the noise gate value will change as well.

    “Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

  • I strongly share the OP's concerns!


    The most noisy part of a rig is a distorted amp. The practical consequence of this is that, if you use several rigs with the same (quite) guitar, if you want to set NG differently per rig (because only some of them are very noisy) you have to resave each rig and unlock the Input section, which defeats the purpose of creating Input presets for different guitars (mainly in order to differentlyset CS and DS ).


    IME (40 years of playing electric), a noisy amp/setting is much more frequent than a noisy guitar.
    This imply that it would make much sense to let NG be set per rig (in order to "heal" noisy profiles) and have the player add a NG stomp if they are using a noisy guitar (which BTW should be fixed by itself... as has been discussed on this board many times (both explicitly and implicitly), it doesn't make sense to add a feature on the KPA destined to fix something whose cause lies elsewhere (the same goes for "creative" requests for electronic drums, metronomes or the like).


    Sure, one could add a NG stomp when using noisy amps, but it's perhaps redundant to point out that the Profiler is the device that allows to use the least number of effects in its price range, and sometimes it's just impossible to devote a slot to a NG.


    Burkhard : I play in several cover bands. I own one (electric) guitar only, with which I play every kind of songs. TBH, it's hard for me to believe I am in a minority.

    Anyway, in order to optimise CS and DS (regardless of how many guitars I use) I should nevertheless save 100 rigs one by one (I usually use 1 performance (1-5 rigs) per song; sometimes I can use the same rig for two songs, rarely the same whole performance).


    So here follows the scenario many players find themselves in:

    • you optimise your Input for a given guitar;
    • you are hence stuck with a given NG setting;
    • if you tweak NG in order to fix a noisy profile, the tweak gets locked itself;
    • if you don't lock Input, each rig will carry its own settings and mess with your CS and DS settings;
    • consequently, with the current logistics there's no way to have a locked Input and fix a very noisy rig/amp w/o having to sacrifice a slot for an additional NG (which will anyway sound differently from the one in the Input, as we know).

    What I don't share with the OP is the idea that adding NG to the Amp section would not be a good idea: on the contrary, for all the above it seems to be by far the best placement for this control, because you'd be able to optimise it depending on the profile's intrinsic noise.


    Hope this clarifies!

    Still chasing a worthy one :/

    Edited once, last by pippopluto ().

  • IME, the potential for noise lies in these areas (in order of greatest potential)

    1. Guitar with single coil pickups (depending strongly on the amount of RF in the environment)
    2. Gained up/distorted amp (good amps are usually pretty quiet, but there is a noise floor that comes up as the gain goes up)
    3. Compression/Gain pedals (outboard, or on a pedalboard)

    In reality, there should be a noise gate at the input of the Kemper AND at the output of the Kemper, but they should both be defeatable and able to be saved by rig, and locked globally.

  • Hello all ( or some of you ;) )

    If you have a little "padlock" symbol to the right in your screen after

    pressing the "Input" button, press the "Lock" button and the padlock

    symbol disappears, then you can save different Clean Sens , Distortion Sens

    and Noise Gate as you wish to each rig and press "Store" .... + "Entire Rig" .

    Then "Save as" or "Replace" .... I´ts up to you. Simple as that :)

    Rock on !

    The adjective for metal is metallic. But not so for iron ... which is ironic.

    Edited once, last by Hoki Toki ().

  • I agree with much of what the OP says.


    I rarely have an issue with noisy guitars. Even when I do (single coils with a lot of interference in the room) the noise gate threshold required to deal with this is often so high that it kills sustain so badly that the noise is the lesser of two evils.


    However, all mid to high gain amps (I’m an old school classic rock kind of dude not a total high gain metal head) have some noise floor. This is usually more annoying than pickup noise in my experience as it is persistent (pickup noise stops when I turn the guitar volume down). However, the noise gate setting required to deal with this is clearly very different from rig to rig. I almost never change my CS or DS settings; even though I have multiple guitars they are all similar enough to not need to change anything on the input when I swap between them) so CS/DS are always locked on my KPA.


    Some people use one guitar for a whole gig (or at least a few guitars that are similar enough to use the same CS/DS settings) but I would imagine very few people use just one rig all the time. Some will use one for every section of every song. Others, like myself, may use a range of core sounds (maybe 4 or 5) with different gain levels and therefore, different noise floors.


    Noise gate threshold needs to change from rig to rig for optimal results. This would mean either


    A) unlocking the input section and saving all settings on a rig by rig basis


    B) adding a noise gate stomp to each rig that needs it ( ties up an FX slot which could be used for something else) but this is a different noise gate and functions more like an audible effect than the excellent transparent gate in the input section


    C) just accept sub-optimal settings


    While I can see the advantage of being able to lock the Noise Gate with input settings in the case of a guitar with noisy pickups, I believe that a solution to amp noise is at least as big an issue.


    Therefore, my suggestions would include:


    Allow the current NS to be independent of the input settings lock. Before anyone says that would be illogical as the idea is to lock everything in the input menu remember that the input selection isn’t currently able to be saved as part of a preset either. To me it seems totally weird that I cant set up a preset that includes my input routing including CS levels for reamping so a noise gate change wouldn’t be a big departure from current thinking.


    Add a similar noise gate to the Stack section with a pre/post option similar to the tone stack settings as both option will affect the outcome differently.


    However, I think my ideal solution would be to have a logic based setting which works somewhat similarly to Pure Cab. Noise Gate could be set globally in the input section and locked as it currently is. BUT add the same control to the Stack section as well. If both have a value then the higher value takes precedence and overrides the lower value. In this scenario we would be able to set and lock the input Noise Gate to the lowest level necessary to deal with noise pickups (which doesn’t change from rig to rig) but automatically increase this to the optimum setting to kill amp his on higher gain rigs. That seems like a win/win solution which should be easy to implement given that Burkhard and the rest of the team have already implemented the same logic in the pure cab code.

  • +1 Here.


    In my scenario I have over 50+ performances with 5 rigs each. So If I want to swap to a guitar with lower output pickups I need to adjust the distortion sense 250 times? And the gate as well?


    I need to be able to look the distortion sense without touching any other settings including the gate.


    Ideally I need to be able to adjust the distortion sense globally and save it as a preset for each guitar.


    I go from clean to high gain so need the gate independent of how hard the guitar is pushing the profile.

  • Im a bit confused on what the request is?


    Is it the ability to globally adjust CS and DS, alongside the noise gate to avoid making changes to every rig ? Would that work? Surely the interchange between the gain levels etc would still not be right and require tweaking?


    Or is it to lock only the noise gate without change CS and DS? Surely you do that with a stomp...


    I think I'm being a bit stupid but I want to be able to tweak every rig and save it. There are few global settings I'd want..

  • Op may have slightly differing views but I personally would like to see the clean/dist sense independent of the noise gate.


    For example if I use a lower output guitar I may want to raise the dist sense by a few db. As I use a ton of performances I'd need to lock it.


    Unfortunately this locks the whole input section including the gate. This is pretty useless as I have to swap between clean and high gain rigs which use different gate settings stored by rig. so it's either set it low and have massive noise on high gain or crush the dynamics of the clean tone when set high.

  • Op may have slightly differing views but I personally would like to see the clean/dist sense independent of the noise gate.


    For example if I use a lower output guitar I may want to raise the dist sense by a few db. As I use a ton of performances I'd need to lock it.


    Unfortunately this locks the whole input section including the gate. This is pretty useless as I have to swap between clean and high gain rigs which use different gate settings stored by rig. so it's either set it low and have massive noise on high gain or crush the dynamics of the clean tone when set high.

    Can't you just use the stomp noise gate? I find the stomp version better anyway?

  • Im a bit confused on what the request is?


    Is it the ability to globally adjust CS and DS, alongside the noise gate to avoid making changes to every rig ? Would that work? Surely the interchange between the gain levels etc would still not be right and require tweaking?

    If I could pick and choose, what I'm asking for is for "Clean Sens", "Distortion Sens", and "Noise Reduction" to be separate, so I can lock one or two or all three to global, or save them to a rig, irrespective of one another.

  • Anyone tried the noise gates 2:1 and 4:1 from the effect list?


    We recommend (in the manual) to combine the noise gate in the input section with an additional noise gate in a module before the amp, when using high gain sounds. As you say, those sounds need individual noise gate settings, in contrast to clean or crunchy sounds.


    Both input noise gate and an additional expander noise gate (2:1 or 4:1) make a perfect team, as they work with different technics.


    CK

  • What I don't share with the OP is the idea that adding NG to the Amp section would not be a good idea: on the contrary, for all the above it seems to be by far the best placement for this control, because you'd be able to optimise it depending on the profile's intrinsic noise.

    You did a much better job than me explaining some of the challenges some might face, but I just wanted to clarify I agree with you that it would work there on the "Amp" page too. I personally think the best place for it would be on the "Rig" page. So it would get saved to a rig, which is basically a profile.. It could be in the "amp" settings sure, in my head a noise gate is part of a rig but amps don't usually have one built into them, so that's really the only reason why I suggested/think it should be under "Rig" and not "Amp". Semantics :P

  • You did a much better job than me explaining some of the challenges some might face, but I just wanted to clarify I agree with you that it would work there on the "Amp" page too. I personally think the best place for it would be on the "Rig" page. So it would get saved to a rig, which is basically a profile.. It could be in the "amp" settings sure, in my head a noise gate is part of a rig but amps don't usually have one built into them, so that's really the only reason why I suggested/think it should be under "Rig" and not "Amp". Semantics :P

    :D


    Don't get me wrong Preacher, I do believe it would do for a great treat in the Rig section :)
    After all, that specific amp is not an "amp object" :) But, should we save the Amp section as a preset, since that typically is the worst source of noise in the rig, it would make sense if it carried its own NG setting with itself.

    Hope this makes sense :)

    Still chasing a worthy one :/