Peter Weihe KPA review

  • Wow - what a useful test. The way he aproached his comparison sounds fair and correct to me. The results are somehow expected. I listened to the soundfiles only through my notebooks speaker. This already made the differences very obvious. The real amp does sound more "natural" and came out with more attack and a different (less) way of distortion. Though the last exampel sounded most equal to me.


    Does this mean the KPA is not good? By far - no!!!! The typical character of every amp was reproduced quite good. Then - Peter don't know the particular nature of the KPA with it's odd behavior her and there, what we are about to discover. For my taste the KPA tends to give more gain or distortion in the profiles, unless you compensate this fact. And if you work towards the sound you want to copy with the built in parameters, you will get even better results, I think.


    Last but not least you have to ask yourself: Do I really want to reproduce a certain amp a 100% or am I satisfied with the result of having created a profile which sounds and reacts real close to a real tube amp? For me that's the real goal. I don't know exactly how a real TwoRocks sounds (only from records), but it is nice to have a good profile (And44) of such an amp which comes real close to the real deal.


    And I don't want to forget, that there is a lot of space for future improvements of the KPA. With every new firmware we get a free present. We are at 1.1.0 Let's do the test again when we reached 9.9.0. While our tubeamps burning down the tubes and leaking the caps, our KPA gets better and better!! :thumbup:

  • He did the mic placement for Guitar Rig.


    I ran the article through Google Translator, but it still is a little hard to follow due to a poor translation.


    "The possibilities of the KPA, with its additional tone controls, the built-in anti-personnel mines, the additional effects and gain controls beyond, under certain aspects, again, the possibilities of the original."


    Unless, of course, the KPA in fact does include anti-personnel mines which will be activated in a future firmware update. ^^


    Here's the full translated article:


    Peter Weihe review in poor English

  • Yep, google tarnslate does not do a very good job. The land mines ("tretmine" in german) refers to stomp boxes.


    All in all I gather a positive vibe from the review eventhough there are some remarks about latency etc.


    But it seems that Peter feels that eventhough the profiles he managed to create had some audible differencies compared to originals these were not too severe and even insignificant. And in the review he stresses the point that he run the KPA through tests with really expensive equipment and even more importantly his experienced ears and decades of studio work make him especially picky and sensitive to sounds.


    Here's one such positive quote from the conclusions:
    " Es gab aber sogar geliebte Sounds, bei denen mir der Unterschied so klein oder nicht hörbar war, dass er mir offen gestanden egal wäre."


    Disclaimer: I only have a few years of german studies and have hardly been using it in the past 2 decades... I may have understood everything totally wrong, would not be the first time!

  • Very interesting article! That guy really must be a sound freak, reading some of the statements I just could shake my head - I'm really happy that my ears aren't good enough to hear those differences :D

    MJT Strats / PRS Guitars / Many DIY Guitars -- Kemper Profiler Rack / Kemper Remote / InEar

    Edited once, last by mDan ().

  • Very interesting article! That guy really must be a sound freak, reading some of the statements I just could shake my head - I'm really happy that my ears aren't good enough to hear those differences :D

    +1


    I would be hard pressed to hear or feel a latency of 3ms.


    Peter Weihe is of course a superb professional and has quite an impressive vitae. I found the article well written, but I sometimes could not help the feeling that some things are blown out of proportion (latency, influence of the buffer of the KPA).


    It comes down to this IMHO:


    The KPA is a musical instrument in itself. It has a trademark sound and feel even if it is able to capture the essence of the profiled amps to a T.


    It will not replace the physical experience of flipping the Standby-Switch on a 70`s Marshall, nor the fragrance of tubes cooking, nor 100W blasting at you from a 4x12".


    It might not be able to depict the miniscule nuances of a Marshall on the verge of hard clipping in full detail.


    But it is one heck of an instrument that inspires me every day, that makes me want to play guitar everyday, that makes life easy in the studio, that keeps my invertebral discs in healthy shape, that inspires (see Bill's Rhodes sounds). And a lot more.....


    Just my 0.2 EUR Cent.


    Dote

  • Love this bit in one of the comments of the review, in translation "it is a bit much to ask of a person who spends hundreds of thousands of
    dollars to record THE sound to expect that to admit he can demonstrate
    that a mass product, the Cherethites and Pelethites can buy off the
    shelf, as good (and better!) sounds like his "million dollar babies"

    Vintage amp obsessive

  • Very interesting and neutral review.
    Bummer that Karl (you know, the villain from "Die Hard" :D ) did not want to share his profiles and chose to delete them instead...


    LOL! Didn't see it until you mentioned it, but now I can't unsee it.


    [Blocked Image: http://projects.artist-team.com/beatlesplatz/img/bildbereich/05/weihe.jpg][Blocked Image: http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/karl.gif]


    If Peter Weihe can only hear subtle differences, then to me that is a ringing endorsement for the Kemper. From reading his review and googling his background in audio, Mr. Weihe obviously has a gift where recording and studio expertise is concerned. The insanely high quality level of his equipment and his vast experience in recording are as accurate a test of the Kemper as you will find. 99% of people using the Kemper will never hear the things he does.


    If my ears could detect a 3ms latency, then I would join the X-Men and use my super hearing only for good. ^^


  • Bummer that Karl (you know, the villain from "Die Hard" :D ) did not want to share his profiles and chose to delete them instead...

    "If you
    fear that now all others could soon be playing with your profiles and
    your sound, that's actually a sign that the sounds dangerously close
    to the original."


    :)

  • I have listened to his sound files and I can hear the differences between amped track and kempered track. I have heard this on all profiles and I adjust by reducing pick somewhat and maybe throwing in some power sagging. He also makes a good point about the effect of the buffer on the sound of your guitar going into the amp via Kemper as opposed to the sound going straight in from guitar to amp.

    Vintage amp obsessive

  • i think he makes some great points. especially concerning the subtle 'differences' between the kemper and the original. especially since he's comparing the kemper's profile to the amp directly into his preamps/monitors. i've also found that my amps and especially 'feel' different when run through the profiling mode. there seems to be an odd latency with the amp signal in the kemper in contrast to the profile. this makes it difficult to judge differences in the amp vs profile feel and response sometimes, imo. i understand the amp's signal has to go through the kemper's converters to be analyzed, but it would be great to have a 'true' bypass amp signal as well. i find myself ABing profiles to my amp outside the kemper to tweak out the actual differences in response as a solution.

  • I have had the honour to talk to Peter Weihe on the phone for quite some time.
    He confirmed that there is simply no hardware out there that keeps the sound absolutely uncoloured when placed between passive guitar and tube amp.
    Here we talk about any stomp box even true bypass mode, reamping, wireless.
    Even the pure guitar cable has a great impact to the sound, thus we cannot tell there is a reference sound that you can compare to. That's an odd situation.


    Imagine you have a sound that you are used to, but this sound is coloured by your guitar cable. Now when you include a buffer amp (e.g. the Profiler) that will buffer and neutralize the influence of your cable, you will hear a difference and blame the buffer amp. This is a problem that has not been solved in decades.


    Latency in the A/B comparison should not be a problem, as it is kept the same for the profile and the reference amp.

  • Imagine you have a sound that you are used to, but this sound is coloured by your guitar cable. Now when you include a buffer amp (e.g. the Profiler) that will buffer and neutralize the influence of your cable, you will hear a difference and blame the buffer amp. This is a problem that has not been solved in decades.


    Just put this between the KPA and the amp!


    [Blocked Image: http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/Zcable_header1.jpg]

  • A good way to check out the sound files included in the test is as Peter recommends to lay them out on your DAW on separate tracks, loop and solo them. I grouped the solo buttons on my Sonar X1 so I could switch between the KPA and "real thing" tracks with a press of single button.


    Close your eyes, switch randomly between tracks while looping a small section. Yes, there are very small differencies - some are more accurate than others. And remember that you could probably iron those differencies out with few tweaks of bass, presence etc. parameters.


    But to me the most important thing is that while listening to the samples eyes closed and switching between them I really could not tell which was the real amp and which was the KPA - or which one I preferred. They definitely have the very same amp characteristics. And more importantly all of the clips sounded really, REALLY great and musical. After doing this I'm convinced that whatever slight differencies there might be are insignificant to me.


    Ofcourse you can't tell how the feel of the profiles was compared to the amps from listening to clips. But after 5 months with KPA I know it feels great and musical to play, reacts nicely to playing dynamics - so I really don't care if the feel is ever so slightly different. I'm playing more at home and enjoying it more after getting the KPA! KPA truly is a musical piece of equipment - an inspiring instument in itself.


    EDIT: just saw this comment from Reinhold Bogner in an Line6 interview: "Besides, I’m not making tube amps because I love tubes. That’s just the vehicle, combined with the guitar. I want to have good tone. That’s all I want. And if you can give it to me in my iPhone now, hell yeah, I’ll take it. That’s all there is to it." That's my feeling exactly! You can find the interview on L6 site.

    Edited once, last by TMV ().

  • In short Peter Weihe is saying that the A/B comparison within the KPA is not comparing the real thing with the profiled amp. The sound of the real amp is already modified by the buffer inside the KPA and again altered when passing the A/D section in order to route to the monitors.