I've had my KPA Rack since 2013. Best bit of kit I've ever bought that wasn't a guitar. It goes into a Focusrite 6i6 via SPDIF using top quality cables at 48khz and into Reaper. I play predominantly on a clean tone with some compression and have a range of profiles to choose from but tend to gravitate to M.Britt profiles of Fender Deluxe amps or Dumbles etc. What I'm about to explain affects all profiles when it appears, regardless of maker from Fenders to Marshalls and beyond. It affects all guitars from my PRS to a Strat, I've changed leads, updated soundcard drivers etc, all to no avail. It's intermittent, I can go for days without hearing it.... and they are the worst! I don't use pedals, just the KPA FX (normally the Compressor, some EQ, Reverb and Delay only).
About 6 months ago (perhaps longer) I would sit down (same room, same position) to do some practice and immediately know the sound was "off". It was (and here's my take on what I'm hearing) about 30-50% more boomy, thick, too loud (like the profile or FX was being applied twice). Almost muffled like you'd backed the tone pot off 25% or carved off the reverb top end at 5k. No "sparkle". These are subtle changes from normal though, which makes it hard to pin down, but just "wrong". I could go days without this happening then boom, I'd start a new session to practice some and there it was. I thought it must be me, my ears, the air pressure or something else? Was the door open, was the blind in the room shut? None of these things made a difference when I really started to troubleshoot to remove variables.
Yesterday, I sat down to get some practice in and it sounded as above. The previous day it had sounded so sweet. Same guitar, same profile, same lead, but yesterday it sounded awful. I rebooted the PC, the Focusrite and the KPA. Same thing, still sounded too thick and muddy but if I could only have one word it would be "boomy". The low E and A string was just flabby. This is a predominantly clean sound too, with a bit of compression.
In frustration I rebooted the KPA yet again and hey presto! Everything sounded sweet, tight bottom end, sparkly top none of that over thickness of before. So I am guessing that sometimes my KPA is booting into a mode that perhaps applies incorrect values? Or double applies FX? or something. I don't know, it's really been doing this on and off for probably a year. Six months ago it got more frequent and I stopped thinking it was me just having a bad day and that it must be something else.
I did a factory (hold the soft button) reset about three months ago but that didn't change the ability of this random change to appear. I also update to the latest release firmware when it's available via the Editor/RM.
Grateful for any pointers!
