Profiler in studio

  • Hi all,


    I am building a studio with a seperate live room and control room. My Kemper will be in a rack in the control room (since I will do most of my guitar recording there), but I would still like to have access to it from the live room (and feed back the mix to the monitors in the live room) when I am playing there with my band.


    This is how I was thinking of setting this up and I would appriciate some confirmation that this is correct (or corrections if it isn't :):(


    - All my live room inputs will be XLR, so I would use a passive DI box to turn the guitar level up to mic level and use an XLR cable from the DI box to the wall input

    - In the control room, I will have XLR outputs so I would put an XLR cable between the XLR output in the wall and the profiler's return input (XLR) in the back

    - Then I would just feed the profiler's output to my mix console (A&H Qu32)


    Some of my concerns:

    - The profiler expects an instrument level signal, but the signal coming from my live room will be mic level. Do I need a reamp box in between or can the profiler handle this?

    - I have read that the Aux input/SPDIF inputs are automatically blocked when a guitar is plugged into the front input. Is this also the case for the return input or should I change the input source when swapping between using it in the live room and the control room?


    I hope it's clear, thanks in advance for your feedback.


    Regards and stay safe.


    Andy (Belgium)

  • Hi Andy


    I don't use the Kemper in this way as I record and monitor in the same room but what may help is knowing that the SPDIF and Aux inputs are not disabled in any scenario. What does work this way is the front input and the alternative input where if you plug a guitar into both the front input takes president.


    It may be worth understanding if you are trying to reamp the sound or not. Also may be worth understanding how you intend to monitor the guitar signal in the live room where the Kemper is (studio monitors, physical guitar cab)


    My personal way of doing this:


    Guitar front input - DI out to soundcard - feed the DI signal to the Return in on the Kemper - Main out to soundcard.


    This allows me to reamp the sound from cubase and monitor via cubase. I am sure you could then send a mixer signal back to the live room.


    I hope this helps a little, as I say I don't work in the same way.


    Mike

  • Hey Mike,


    Thanks for your feedback. As for the input scenario, I will just have to try it I guess ;)


    And no, I don't necessarily want to reamp the sound, I just need a good way to get the guitar signal from the live room to the Kemper via XLR inputs/outputs (mic level signals), since I will not be running jack cables through my wall.


    As for monitoring the signal, I will put a couple of Mackie speakers in the live room, fed by one of the stereo outs on the mixing console. I am hoping I can do all that without latency :)


    Cheers,


    Andy

  • The XLR direct input on the back of the Kemper can’t be configured as the main guitar input. The only it can be used is as the Reamp Input. However, this requires a much stronger signal than a guitar sends. I just checked it with a Passive DI (almost no signal), and Active DI (more but still nothing like the level required) and also with a straight through line isolation transformer that can convert from XLR to 1/4” or phono. In all cases the signal was significantly lower than required even with the reamp sensitivity set to the maximum +12db.


    You will either need to convert the signal at both ends to feed a 1/4” TS signal to the KPA or convert one of the XLR sockets on your studio wiring to TS. To be honest, I would stick a few TS on the patchbay and wall boards to allow guitar but also to run speaker cables from the control room to the live room incase you ever want to mike a real valve amp anf cabinet while playing in the control room and having the ability to tweak tones without running into the live room. These old fashioned valve amps don’t have desktop editors you know ?

  • Is this something that can be solved with the Remote ?? :/

    ( I don´t have a Remote myself so I´m guessing here )


    Or just put the KPA in small rack of its own and move it

    between the rooms ..... Connect XLR and mains and go :)

    ( And perhaps a speaker cable , if you´re not monitoring

    with headphones while rehearsing / recording "live" )


    Cheers !

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

  • Thanks for the input, a lot of useful suggestions.


    Or maybe I will just buy a second KPA for the live room (but then a head model instead of a rack model). Will depend if there is any budget left ;)


    Cheers


    Andy

  • Wheresthedug has it sussed. You'd need a balanced line driver with a unit at both ends like this Radial SGI if you want to guarantee you don't pick up interference with long TS lines. An economic solution in my mind would be to put the Kemper in the live room, run a USB extension and tweak it from the control room remotely using Rig Manager. You could then spend the remaining cash filling those now-empty 4U of rack space with something else :)

    Also, purely out of curiosity, what mixing console are you installing?

    Ed / Audio Systems Engineer / Kemper Stage + Fender fan