Kemper Stage Less Warm/More Shrill Than Kemper Rack???

    I bought a Kemper Stage a while back to replace my Kemper rack. The plan was to sell the Rack and keep the Stage, and until I got all my stuff setup on the Kemper Stage (because busy at work), I used them side-by-side for a few weeks. Well, I started noticing that the Stage seems to be slightly less warm, slightly more shrill with the exact same rigs/settings.


    Yes, this sounds rather dumb since it's just the same thing in a different enclosure, but I've been tweaking to no end trying to get rid of the shrillness. It's not a real noticeable difference but it's something you notice after a while. Without saying anything to them, I have heard from a few other players who thought my rack sounds a little warmer. I use Analysis Plus cables and good equipment, so it's not anything in my setup. Am I missing something here? Is there some kind of setting that I need to tweak on the Stage to get it to sound warmer, more natural like my Rack?

    I have no suggestions beyond wondering if unit to unit, part tolerance could account for some sonic variance.

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

    I'm wondering that. I once had an amp repaired and they only replaced a single capacitor, same value, but different brand, and it was brighter after the repair. Who knows but I bought it directly from Kemper several weeks ago and regret waiting too long to exchange it for the head version. I recently sold my rack so now I'm kinda stuck with it. It still sounds amazing, just that little extra sizzle.

    Paul beat me to it, but PC was what sprung immediately to mind here, MG. Make sure both the Rig as well as Global statuses are switched-off, just to be sure.


    It's a pity your rack has already gone 'cause a side-by-side spectral comparison (using a plugin or app) of each unit using identical settings might've been instructive IMHO.


    As for the part-tolerance possibility Ruefus kindy suggested, I'm not buying it 'cause it's a digital device, so the number of areas where such a thing could come into play is greatly-reduced compared to a traditional amp. We'd be talking op amps and ADC / DAC's basically, wouldn't we? If so, hard to imagine that such an obvious difference to your ears could eventuate thusly. Hmm... :/

    Quote from Monkey_Man

    Paul beat me to it, but PC was what sprung immediately to mind here, MG. Make sure both the Rig as well as Global statuses are switched-off, just to be sure.


    It's a pity your rack has already gone 'cause a side-by-side spectral comparison (using a plugin or app) of each unit using identical settings might've been instructive IMHO.


    As for the part-tolerance possibility Ruefus kindy suggested, I'm not buying it 'cause it's a digital device, so the number of areas where such a thing could come into play is greatly-reduced compared to a traditional amp. We'd be talking op amps and ADC / DAC's basically, wouldn't we? If so, hard to imagine that such an obvious difference to your ears could eventuate thusly. Hmm... :/

    What do you mean by rig and global status? Where can I find those settings?

    I've a feeling there are slight differences, SH, but at the level of quality we're talking about here, if there were any, they'd be indiscernible-to-the-ear, you'd think. They'd certainly not constitute the difference between "shrill" and not-so IMHO.

    Quote from MistaGuitah

    What do you mean by rig and global status? Where can I find those settings?

    The manual explains it better than I could, MG. I'll quote it here 'cause it covers disabling properly and also the override behaviour depending on settings:


    PURE CABINET is available as a global setting in the Output Section and affects all Rigs that you listen to. However, the original sound of each Rig remains unchanged, and you can switch PURE CABINET on or off whenever you like. There are two parameters for PURE CABINET in the Output Section, on the “Output AddOns” page: use the corresponding soft knob to set the desired amount and use the corresponding button to do a quick A/B comparison against the original cabinet sound. To completely disengage the global PURE CABINET, you must uncheck the switch, as it still has an effect even when the controller is at zero.


    If you would rather have individual settings of PURE CABINET per Rig or cabinet preset, there is a second parameter in the cabinet module. There is no switch for the local parameter - it is disengaged by setting it to zero. Both values of PURE CABINET interact such that the larger of the two values is always given priority and will be applied as the actual intensity of the PURE CABINET effect.


    There is a possibility that your Rack unit had the global PC set to zero, whilst your new Stage in fact had it disabled which technically doesn't disable it, or vice-versa. Given that you found the Stage more-shrill than the Rack, if anything in this context, it'd mean that the Rack was the unit set to zero and the Stage disabled.


    HTH, mate. ;)

    Quote from Monkey_Man

    I've a feeling there are slight differences, SH, but at the level of quality we're talking about here, if there were any, they'd be indiscernible-to-the-ear, you'd think. They'd certainly not constitute the difference between "shrill" and not-so IMHO.

    Not necessarily. Heck, the normal tolerances on basic capacitors are enough to change the way a circuit operates, so even a change in supplier of those caps - built to the exact same spec - can end up changing the sound in a perceptible fashion.


    [Full disclosure - I run a hardware product development team in my "day gig", and I have run into this more than once.]

    Quote from SteinbergerHack

    Do we know whether or not this is 100% true? Are the D/As and analog output stages identical and laid out the same way in all three KPA products?

    Well, I meant essentially the same overall. I wasn't trying to assert it was 100% component-for-component. I wouldn't know that at all without taking them both apart and comparing every little component, and even then, I'm not qualified enough to know exactly what to look for. However, I do know that innumerable factors can potentially affect sound. For example, I know that a wire cut in two parts would have a bit more resistance in the longer one, or that there are tolerances in precision of the microscopic sizes within electronic components, but whether any of it ever translates into something audibly perceptible is totally by chance in the aggregate variances of a device.


    In any case, my assumption is that the same components. However, comparing toaster vs rack, the rack doesn't have the lights for rig volume. The stage though has several different or missing knobs/features, plus it interacts with a whole network of foot controller electronics, so you would think there's no avoiding some degree of audible difference. None of this I know with a degree of competency, so these are just some of the things I thought about in trying to account for what I'm hearing in my profiler stage.

    The settings are identical in everything as far as I can tell. I don't think anything came turned off or on that's aberrant from factory default.

    I'd assume that doing Init Globals on both units would make them sound the same if everything else is the same, but you should definitely try to identify the difference so you can make the Stage sound like you want.