Where does a profile save speaker breakup?

    Is it in the amplifier or cabinet side of things? Kinda important question when you change cabs or use direct profiles.

    If it’s in the amp section and you change cabs it would plant the original speaker breakup onto a different speaker and bring wrong results (think going from 10” to 12” for example).

    But if it’s in the cab section, how would the cab or IR know how the chosen amp will break up the speakers?


    I definitely read somewhere that the Kemper does profile speaker breakup but regarding my thoughts above it’s a bit of an odd situation. Imagine I would connect a direct profile with a real cabinet, would I place the profile’s speaker breakup onto real speakers?


    It would probably also mean that amps which produce a sound heavily working with speaker breakup will work much better with studio profiles than direct or merged profiles.

    It is part of the Speaker so is in the Cab section in theory. However, the KPA sees a studio profile as a single item and doesn’t know where the amp ends and speaker starts. Cab driver estimates this and generally does a very good job but can’t ever really know the “authentic” split point. Tone Junkie often talks about changing cabs and how this can have a sort of carry over from the Amp that is sometimes nicer to his ears than the authentic profile.


    I would stop trying to think in terms of authenticity when changing cabs and amps and focus on the results.


    The speaker and amp are a system where they interact with each other rather than two individual things. Speaker impedance affects the power amp but the impedance isn’t consistent across the frequency range (4 or 8 ohm is just a nominal value). If you change any part of the system in the analog world it will have some impact on the other parts of the system. The Kemper can’t know what this impact will be. This is part of the reason Kemper advise against making Direct profiles with a load box or attenuator (the loadbox itself affects how the amp and speaker interact).


    Speaker breakup is a function of power so I don’t think the amp used will be that important in reality. As long as it is driving the speaker hard enough for it to go beyond its clean limits it should breakup in a broadly similar manner. However, I would point out that I haven’t tested this and am definitely not an expert on amp and speaker design.

    Thanks for your reply!

    I was afraid all of this was the case. It actually isn't just about authenticity since I was wondering how it would sound to use real speakers if there's already profiles speaker breakup in the profile. But I guess I'd use direct profiles anyway and by the nature of things they shouldn't have any information on speaker breakup saved, correct?