Boot speed

  • Is there any way of speeding up booting up?


    Am I right in thinking that as you have more profiles the boot time takes longer. So therefore it's the loading of the profiles that's the slowdown?


    Can an option be added to allow "load on selection" rather than "load at boot"? I'd be willing to sacrifice "instant" switching between profiles on the first switch after turning on if we could get much faster boot times, and it would just load in the profiles as you encountered them.


    The way I see this working (if it would help with speed) is that it would boot and just load in the first profile, with performance mode when that's eventually added it would load in all the profiles attached to the song/set in the perform list, so for that mode you'd always have instant switching. And then when you switched to a new profile that's not been loaded yet it would try to load that in as quickly as possible. The loading should happen in a second thread so that if the user jumps off to the next profile before the current one is loaded it'll break the thread, cancel the load and move on to the next profile rather than holding things up.


    Really anything to speed things up at all. I'm beginning to get quite desperate because it's at the point where I'm no longer thinking "oh i'll just switch on the KPA and do a little noodling" but instead "hmm, do I have time to switch on the KPA and wait for it to boot up to do some noodling?", which takes away a lot of the immediacy of the creative process, and if I were playing live I'd be seriously concerned about the boot times in case of some incident.


    So I'm begging you Christoph, please anything at all that you can do. Fire up that Vtune/Shark or whatever it is you use on a DSP and kick some boot optimization butt for us.

  • Well, even a real tube amp takes time before being playable :)
    This having been said, I like the idea of a sort of selectivity!


    I like to think that Performance mode could be the answer to this: Normal mode would be devoted to tweaking, trying new stuff, ordering, coupling amps and cabs... and only the selected rigs could be recalled when switching to Performance mode.


    If this is not planned/possible, then a rig selection option could be added to the KPA, where only the selected rigs are loaded at the next startup. I'd not limit it to just the first/current rig.


    Of course, the possibility to add rigs on the fly from the (internal) storage memory to RAM for an immediate use w/o the need for rebooting would be really useful.

  • With over 1500 rigs on it the booting takes more than 2 and a half minutes. I don't care. But if I would then I'd make a copy of my actual backup file on my pc and look in there using total commander and delete everything that I don't need for the rehearses or the gigs. You can also have a full usb backup on one usb stick and another one with the togo presets only, a livestick.

  • Someone in this forum (I don't recall who and where) stated, that the amount of rigs has only a minimal impact on the startup time. If i remember correctly there was about 1 sec difference between 200 and 800 profiles. I'm not 100% sure with the numbers but this has been discussed.


    A quicker boot would really be nice. But it has nothing to do with the rigs I guess.


    For live use I think it would be helpful if the Kemper would reboot the last setting in a very short time and while you play it, the rest is loaded in the backround. It could display "loading" or something, what would tell you, that you cannot switch rigs or anything else yet. But you could play with the last setting the kemper had before powering down (or crashing down :D )


    That would solve a lot i guess...

  • 1500 profiles?.........Man I'd hate to see that set list.... :)


    Seriously, I keep 2 backups....on 2 different USB sticks. One for home another one for shows.


    The home backup has pretty much all of the available profiles on it. The gig backup only has about 50 profiles that I may want to use at a show.


    At home, I can restore the home backup and fart around. At shows, I load up just the necessities.

  • Wow... two and half minutes?


    That's indeed very long... I already think the Eleven Rack with its 10-ish seconds is already long, so over 30 or 60 seconds it's really something I need to rethink seriously. That's kind of weird, my MacBook Pro with a SSD needs only 12 seconds for a cold boot, so is that two and half minutes the right number?


    Can anyone else confirm this number?


    Thanks,
    Phil

  • Two and one-half minutes is death if you are performing live...

    Has your KPA frozen on you when playing live?


    It's interesting how many guitarists have "imagined" the KPA freezing on them whilst playing live, and how many guitarists have "actually" had the KPA freeze on them whilst playing live. :)


    Have some faith, my son, if G-d wants the KPA to freeze on you live then so be it, it was meant to be, it's all pre ordained. :D

  • Has your KPA frozen on you when playing live?


    It's interesting how many guitarists have "imagined" the KPA freezing on them whilst playing live, and how many guitarists have "actually" had the KPA freeze on them whilst playing live. :)


    Have some faith, my son, if G-d wants the KPA to freeze on you live then so be it, it was meant to be, it's all pre ordained. :D

    Unfortunately thats not the point ;) As a pro touring guitarist Radley has to consider a lot more into his gear than "Oh well, I guess it will work..." If your a hobby musician, semipro or even in the studio, a crash and a long boot afterwards is not the best thing to happen, but one can live with it. But when it comes to playing in front of thousands of people who have payed a lot of money, the game changes a little. Up to a point where your boss (in his case Diamond) can come to him and say: "Well you really are a good guitarist, but on stage I want a reliable guitarplayer with reliable gear." And even if nothing happens, is he supposed to pray in every song "Dear lord, please don't let my gear crash, when I play my next solo" ;)
    So I can totally understand him for not choosing the kemper live yet, since it yet has to proove it's totall reliability. And as I said, as a pro he has to put the interesst of his boss and his music over the fact that he might have different personal preferences. Although I'm pretty sure, from his posts, that he enjoys the unit just as much as everybody else ;)


    Of course there is a lot that can go wrong, even the simplest setup can let you down. But on stage I'd try to minimize the risk. And IF there is a total powerdown, PA, stage, everything goes out and dozens of speakers, on a PA with 100000s of watt and 100s of meters of cables are booting faster than my little guitar unit, well then something is wrong.


    But this is not about freezing or not freezing. The topic was if the boot time could be shortened :)

  • i rember some time ago there was a official statement. this is NO quote, but as far as i remember it was like: we know booting lasts a while. we want to improve it. it won't happen in a day, but it's on the list.


    in the meantime, the only thing that helps (a bit) is to have only few profiles.

  • Steeldom: +1


    If the two and half minutes is true, the Kemper Amp won't happen for me and for now, regardless how good or even better it could be.
    It's a "no no"... you can almost play an entire song in two and half minutes. It comes as a blow...

  • The boot speed is related to how many rigs are loaded.
    Here is a thread from tgp with some measurements.
    http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1011876


    "38,10'' sec for 21 rigs loaded."
    "boot time is now 40,41 sec. (53 rigs loaded)"
    "It takes 50:59 to mine. It depends on how many rigs and profiles are into."
    "Just took my iPhone Stopwatch.... 57,4 seconds"