Digital Rights Management

  • It seems what everyone is really worried about it the prospect of free profiles going away. That's the underlying fear. Not inconvenience. but the perpetuation of free stuff.

    never used a free profile, bought all the interesting commercial profiles i was interested in, and everytime i checked for similar things to what i liked in rig exchange what i found sucked compared to commercial profiles. never gave anyone my commercial profiles and never had anyone offer me theirs. i know a dozen or so K users who operate on the same principle. also pretty sure theres people stealing apples in the supermarket down the road but would be strongly opposed to every apple being in a blister pack to prevent it.




    -------------------------------------------------------

    free you mind and your ass will follow …

  • I still totally fail to see how partnering with amp makers is a benefit to anyone except the amp makers.


    I have now doubt that a new kick will eventually come to town and will be a big step forward in tech terms. And you are probably also correct that it won’t be too far down the line either. However, I totally fail to see why being a DRM limited closed ecosystem will be perceived as a benefit. As far as I can see it is just a limitation and an inconvenient annoyance.


    the genius of the Kemper is its simplicity, ability to perform amazing sound production with minimal processing power all in an amp like box and user interface.

    Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kemper already know that a new kid in town will eventually take their market and, rather than trying to evolve the profiler CK just decides to make a totally different product to solve a totally different problem as evolving a Profiler MKii is just too boring for him. He already has form in that respect given the Access Virus synth.

  • There are some "brutal" facts, Kemper would not talk about themselves. But besides a moral standpoint Kemper always benefits from any free pofiles.


    Commercial sellers are a nice by-product that never was planned or totally needed for the success of the Profiler. Today every u-tube comedian owning a Kemper Profiler for days (!) wants to sell profiles and make money :D


    Nice additional marketing for Kemper, but what more? The market is saturated already! Tbh almost everything you can imagine is already available cheap or legally for free in RE.


    The train has left for amp makers. They can not make biiiig money with selling profiles easy anymore. And I predict, no one really cares if stormhenge ever will release a rig pack. Too much good stuff already there.


    Even if thousands of stolen rigs are shared (just as a thesis) - who does suffer from it? Not Kemper.

    Yes, there is a morality standpoint and image, they have to keep up. But in reality, Kemper itself doesn't have to care much about profile sellers, amp makers, profile thieves.....


    CK is smart. Not going the road of making and/or selling profiles themselves has paid of.


    And I think CK never had the goal to rule the world with the Profiler or make the company bigger, just for the sake of growth. He knows for sure what can happen in the market. I am pretty sure Kemper will have an answer. But maybe not, what some expect.

  • Commercial sellers are a nice by-product that never was planned or totally needed for the success of the Profiler. Today every u-tube comedian owning a Kemper Profiler for days (!) wants to sell profiles and make money :D

    amen ?


    And I think CK never had the goal to rule the world with the Profiler or make the company bigger, just for the sake of growth. He knows for sure what can happen in the market. I am pretty sure Kemper will have an answer. But maybe not, what some expect.

    agreed, I am sure it will be very interesting to see what his next revolutionary idea will be ?

  • If you look at Chris Kemper's history - this is not at all how he and his company will react. You need only to look at the original 'Kemper' - which is the Access Virus line of keyboards. The Profiler is the second time Kemper was well ahead of the industry. He's been here before.

    The industry caught up....and Kemper didn't 'pivot' nor react to try and follow. Think about it. You're suggesting that Kemper will suddenly begin to follow the people that created their product by following him.

    That's not how innovators work.

    Clear evidence can be seen looking at the $3,000 Access Virus TI keyboard. Which uses - physical buttons and (the horror!!) an LCD screen with font eerily similar to the KPA's. Clearly, Kemper and Co dance to the beat of their own drummer.

    I don't discount the idea that someone is working to develop their own version of profiling. They'd be fools not to try. What I disagree with is the idea that Kemper will attempt to 'keep up' and stumble while doing so. That would be completely out of character for a guy that's spent the last 30+ years doing almost the exact opposite.

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

    Edited 2 times, last by Ruefus ().

  • It seems what everyone is really worried about it the prospect of free profiles going away. That's the underlying fear.

    apologies in advance for not reading through all you posts. I just wanted to say that nobody should think that free profiles will go away in the future. there is absolutely no reason to do so.

    Get in touch with Profiler online support team here

  • Off topic: its refreshing and inspiring to read dialogue from someone who can put forth a competent argument against multiple opponents. Its even more inspiring to see that its a woman, holding her own against a bunch of men. (not that any of them crossed any lines, I am not implying that) I don't necessarily agree (or disagree for that matter), with any of the arguments presented, but I do admire style, finesse, and the ability to remain unflappable in the face of multiple points of opposition. Rock on stormhenge 8)

  • Coming from a family of five siblings and being the only male, I don’t believe in the “women are the weaker sex” thing and never have, so Stormhenge doesn’t get any special props from me for her gender. However, she does argue a good point and that’s cool, for sure. She’s wrong, but cool haha 8o

  • So proud to have this European mentality of free sharing. I always shared my profiles for free and love this idea. I love the vision of Kemper for free sharing also. I am also amazed of this idea that commercial profiles are systematically superior to free ones. What fits to me doesn’t to other and it is ok. I would be ashamed to propose commercial profiles knowing they surely won’t fit to a majority of people. C Kemper, I love your policy about this. Respect man

  • You don't have to look to the "next 2 years" or some supposed insider knowledge about a friend's project lol. There's a "profiler" about to be released imminently called the Quad Cortex from Neural DSP. You show yourself to be pretty clueless about this product category and the conversations around it.

  • Off topic: its refreshing and inspiring to read dialogue from someone who can put forth a competent argument against multiple opponents. Its even more inspiring to see that its a woman, holding her own against a bunch of men. (not that any of them crossed any lines, I am not implying that) I don't necessarily agree (or disagree for that matter), with any of the arguments presented, but I do admire style, finesse, and the ability to remain unflappable in the face of multiple points of opposition. Rock on stormhenge 8)

    Apparently she's trans, so that makes your compliment rather complicated.

  • You don't have to look to the "next 2 years" or some supposed insider knowledge about a friend's project lol. There's a "profiler" about to be released imminently called the Quad Cortex from Neural DSP. You show yourself to be pretty clueless about this product category and the conversations around it.

    I know all about the Quad Cortex, I just don't have any faith in it's ability to truly compete, from what I've been seeing.

    Creator of the Stormhenge Superthump and the DSL MAX mod. Amateur tinkerer, and lifelong tone chaser. Magically broken.

    Gabrielle Graves bassist and producer

  • Off topic: its refreshing and inspiring to read dialogue from someone who can put forth a competent argument against multiple opponents.

    This! Very pleasing indeed how this is done here and for sure another sign that the politeness level in the Kemper forum is pleasingly high. That's a cool thing and makes it one of the very few forums which I read or even write in.


    I always shared my profiles for free and love this idea. I love the vision of Kemper for free sharing also.

    Same here. As much as I understand the request and the topic around here. As I see some folks with IT background around here I'd like to remind us of the enormous success of an operating system called Linux. Which is based on a community based development approach and the ideas of open source software which also means sharing for free (incl. clear guidelines and regulations what is allowed and what not). Big companies contributed a lot to Linux and they explored and commercialised output from this development but the system as such is free. And that's a remarkable approach with great success which shows that free sharing is not necessarily the end of your commercial success.


    Finally: Personally I am not a friend of DRM and never will be as much as I want to see that intellectual property, creative output and so on has a fair price and gets paid. I'm not sharing digital content I bought (music, films, Kemper profiles) and I don't like the typical inconvenience of DRM systems for the honest buyers around.

  • This! Very pleasing indeed how this is done here and for sure another sign that the politeness level in the Kemper forum is pleasingly high. That's a cool thing and makes it one of the very few forums which I read or even write in.

    I was convinced this thread would fly off the rails into a poo-flinging mess. It still might with some malcontents around.....but this is good stuff.

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

  • I know all about the Quad Cortex, I just don't have any faith in it's ability to truly compete, from what I've been seeing.

    Interesting, gotcha. What do you see that makes you say it won't be able to compete?


    Also then, why would you list out Roland and Yamaha as companies able to compete in this product market in the next 2 years when they haven't been able to for the last decade? It's not like Roland and Yamaha haven't tried with digital amp modeling products, they don't do nearly as well.

  • Interesting, gotcha. What do you see that makes you say it won't be able to compete?


    Also then, why would you list out Roland and Yamaha as companies able to compete in this product market in the next 2 years when they haven't been able to for the last decade? It's not like Roland and Yamaha haven't tried with digital amp modeling products, they don't do nearly as well.

    They're not implementing anything wildly different from what Kemper hasn't already instituted. To compete it has to be better, faster, cheaper, and more feature rich. Yeah it has a cool interface. yeah it's supposedly both a Kemper and a Fractal... and it has an app. It's just a half measure. It's cool, mind you. But I don't see them grabbing much market share.

    Creator of the Stormhenge Superthump and the DSL MAX mod. Amateur tinkerer, and lifelong tone chaser. Magically broken.

    Gabrielle Graves bassist and producer

  • They're not implementing anything wildly different from what Kemper hasn't already instituted. To compete it has to be better, faster, cheaper, and more feature rich. Yeah it has a cool interface. yeah it's supposedly both a Kemper and a Fractal... and it has an app. It's just a half measure. It's cool, mind you. But I don't see them grabbing much market share.

    It is faster, cheaper, and more feature rich. Whether it's better is and will be subjective to a large extent, we'll have to wait and see what the market says.


    But again, I question the notion you put forth that the likes of Yamaha and Roland will grab market share away from Kemper just because of some DRM features in some future profiling device... like you've said, they actually have to make something better, faster, cheaper, and more feature rich, and that's what sells a device. DRM feature won't be the differentiating factor in allowing a device to compete or not lol.


    (And BTW it's currently unclear whether Quad Cortex will implement DRM features, Neural hasn't specified.)

  • Apparently she's trans, so that makes your compliment rather complicated.

    Whether or not I'm perceived as being a woman, and salient, and/or in need of an asterisks in that regard as I am indeed Trans, is a giant rabbit hole I don't think any of us wants to venture down. I appreciate those with the necessary sense of honor to realize that trying to discredit or devalue someone for whatever attribute they are in possession of whether it be race, gender, etc really does more to discredit the person making the qualification than anyone else. So thank you, your comments are appreciated. :)


    But maybe I can take this opportunity to momentarily express what so many don't understand about people like me.


    Trans is but a tiny aspect of who I am as a human being. It's not the defining characteristic of who I am, what I do, how I think, or what I care about. So to attempt to qualify someone's capabilities whether that be in a positive or negative light because they are Trans, is like trying to say that someone who has a freckles on their skin can't dance. It's utterly irrelevant.


    But I think the point you were trying to make was to say that cisgendered women aren't salient and capable. that my abilities to hold my own must bear the aforementioned exceptions. This, again, is another thorny rabbit hole I don't think any of us wants to tumble too far down. But sufficed to say, you've never met the women in my family, whom I don't feel the need to qualify, except to say; you wouldn't want any of them sitting across from you at a game of strategy, in any kind of legal or business negotiation, or even a political discussion, but you'd most certainly would love having my mom as your investment advisor. They are all my heroes. And intelligent and salient doesn't even begin to cover it. They are goddamn goddesses in their own right. (quite frankly; if I'd been less stubborn in my youth, I'd have set myself up quite nicely by now. But daughters often times need to find their own way. I regret nothing. It's been an adventure. C'est la vie.)

    Creator of the Stormhenge Superthump and the DSL MAX mod. Amateur tinkerer, and lifelong tone chaser. Magically broken.

    Gabrielle Graves bassist and producer

  • But again, I question the notion you put forth that the likes of Yamaha and Roland will grab market share away from Kemper just because of some DRM features in some future profiling device... like you've said, they actually have to make something better, faster, cheaper, and more feature rich, and that's what sells a device.

    Discretion prevents me answering the former part, I think you're astute enough to gather what i mean.



    --------------------------


    I think the aspect being missed here is that DRM invites a different avenue to the table. Dr Z. started making his own because the public ones were not representative of his product. A lot of what is out there lives in this arena. I've only found a handful free public profiles that were worth a damn. Understanding how to pull a profile is as much science as it is art, as most of us have learned since attempting to produce them. Even if just for fun.


    DRM creates an environment where the people who know exactly how these amps are supposed to sound and feel because they designed them, along with modders and hobbyists like me that know how to alter them to make them sound completely different from spec so as to create different tones can be assured that the time and effort they take to deliver something really special retains it's value. And insures that users are delivered an experience that lives up to the quality they've come to expect from those manufacturers as well as the modders.


    I love the sound and feel of a great tube amp. We all do. it's why we invested in a Kemper so we could have the promise, of spending $1700 to own not one tube amp but several... correct? But profiles that accurately deliver the sound and feel of the real article are very hard to find. The market is completely oversaturated. And not to stray too far off topic, but this is a problem with popular music as well. It's hard to find great music out there for the exact same reason. We've democratized the creation and distribution of music ,which I'm very much in favor of. Well done. -- But the byproduct is.... a LOT of mediocrity.

    Creator of the Stormhenge Superthump and the DSL MAX mod. Amateur tinkerer, and lifelong tone chaser. Magically broken.

    Gabrielle Graves bassist and producer

    Edited 2 times, last by stormhenge ().