Kemper Stage headphone outs sounds dreadful

  • Hi Guys!

    Complete newbie here so please bare with me if this has been brought up before. After a quick set up, I plugged my Strat into the headphone out of the Kemper stage and it sounds like its clipping. Doesn't seem to matter what volume its on. I then put it through my Scarlett, vi the man outputs and it sounded great.

    Is this a well known issue with the headphone out, or has anyone had this problem before? Am I missing something?

    Thank you!

  • You plugged your guitar into the headphone output?

    Kemper PowerRack |Kemper Stage| Rivera 4x12 V30 cab | Yamaha DXR10 pair | UA Apollo Twin Duo | Adam A7X | Cubase DAW
    Fender Telecaster 62 re-issue chambered mahogany | Kramer! (1988 or so...) | Gibson Les Paul R7 | Fender Stratocaster HBS-1 Classic Relic Custom Shop | LTD EC-1000 Evertune | 1988 Desert Yellow JEM

  • Hahahaha. I plugged my guitar into the guitar input :)

    Yeah I’ve tried different headphones. It’s sounds like a digital distortion, and is the same at any volume. Wondering if there could be an issue in the signal path? I’ll have another mess tomorrow

  • this may sound strange - but try pulling the headphone jack out ever so slightly... I’ve found that some headphones don’t “sit” in the input correctly and when you push them all the way in... sounds distorted as you mentioned,

  • this may sound strange - but try pulling the headphone jack out ever so slightly... I’ve found that some headphones don’t “sit” in the input correctly and when you push them all the way in... sounds distorted as you mentioned,

    mate!! That worked! I can’t believe it ahahaha. Basically, I have Bose quiet comfort, Logitech gaming headphones, and an old pair of sennheiser and for all of them it sounded bad. Now, if I just pull the headphones out “one click” it sounds great. So strange! But thanks to you I can now get back to making some patches! Thank you guys :)

  • Glad it worked - I was a tad bit frustrated myself before I heard about this trick... sounded awful before you pulled it slightly out. Interestingly enough - I’m using Bose Headphones as well.

  • Just another little oddity with the headphone jack; I had the same issue but the above fix didn’t work. I had to make sure my head phones were plugged in when I powered it on to make sure they worked. If I plug them in when it’s already on they sound terrible. Maybe the headphone? I have Audio Technics pretty nice headphones and they work on everything else perfectly. So clean. Anyways just though I’d share in case this doesn’t work for everyone. Cheers.