Gig sounded awful

  • Hello gain. Had a gig last night using the Kemper. I managed to get a good live tone in the rehearsal room but at last gig...it was awful. The sound was shrill on the top end and bassy on the low end. But it was waaayyy over. I mean i had the low cut on kemper at about 130 hz in the post eq section, a low cut at 145 before the amp to tighten the profile, and a 145 low cut on the foh mixer, bass on the profile at -2.Also, the high cut was at 6500 on kemper..and on foh at 8500. Also, the gain structure was different, as in from a high gain to a more than a crunch tone... i couldn't get a decent amount of gain/tone out of it. All in all...it sounded bad. Maybe it was the profile, the speakers, the room?

  • Are you using the same FOH or cabinet or both from rehearsal room to the stage? Room acoustics and size of audience can make a difference because they redirect sound waves. A full house of people can muffle the sound.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • it was a different PA on a club. The thing is that it was hard to balance the tone on the new PA. I managed to balance it maybe just 30 40% with the rehearsal PA. The thing that blew me out was the gain. It was too much different from what i have used too...i know that sounds differ from pa to pa..room to room... a lot of people vs a small amount of people.

  • quick edit. I came across some clips of some friends band who giged at the same place as we did a few years ago. I gave a listen to the recorded soundcheck and their tones were good, well balanced. They were using kemper and axe fx

  • I find that my sound(s) transfer great from home studio and monitors to IEM’s, speaker cab with a Kemper Kone, to FOH. They all pretty much sound the same. I output at -24db but my profiles are pretty loud too. I think somewhere along the line you are not hearing something right between creating and auditioning the profiles and FOH. How are you monitoring the profiles when you are creating/setting them up?

  • I find that my sound(s) transfer great from home studio and monitors to IEM’s, speaker cab with a Kemper Kone, to FOH. They all pretty much sound the same. I output at -24db but my profiles are pretty loud too. I think somewhere along the line you are not hearing something right between creating and auditioning the profiles and FOH. How are you monitoring the profiles when you are creating/setting them up?

    Are you saying you are mic'ing your kemper cab or you are going from your monitor out or what?

    I do not think they cut the frequencies they say they do. I think they shelve them , cause you can cut above 80 hz on a graphic , but when you go to the 80 hz band and boost the gain on it you hear it coming back in.

  • i tend to run my profiles straight to foh because i don't have a speaker cab or kemper kone. Live i am playing with iem and also at rehearsals. I tried several profiles live but all of them had the same problem. There was a thin line tweaking wise as in if i cut the presence i would got lost in the mix, but if i boosted it that it would get really harsh. Same went with all the eq

  • My iem sounded maybe better than ever. The cab block was on, used the same outputs. Didn't managed to test it at home or rehearsal yet because my kemper is at a storage house. Maybe i am using profiles that are not for live use? It is becoming somehow of a struggle, a fear that it it will sound bad everytime...

  • If you're using a single output (Main mono) to FOH, and the return IEM sounds good but your guitar sounds bad in the PA then there's something wrong with the board or the operator.

  • the fact that i was using a low pass/high pass on the kemper at 80hz and 6500 hz, and still wasn't enough, scares me. Most of the soundguys don't care about your tone, they are thinking that maybe that is how you want it(note that we don't have our own soundguy and we are relying on the clubs one). So that is why i choose to tweak all my profiles on the pa at the rehearsal room with all the cuts and whatnot so that the foh would do in the bad cases a little eq adjustment. But i somehow lost control over my tone at least at this gig, couldn't get it in shape. And it is anoying that you can't be sure what kind of tone i am getting in front. I know the room, acoustics, pa, soundguy is a big part of the equation and it should have been more simple to tweak it at the spot, not the case. Like i said, maybe profiles are more studio than live?

  • the fact that i was using a low pass/high pass on the kemper at 80hz and 6500 hz, and still wasn't enough, scares me. Most of the soundguys don't care about your tone, they are thinking that maybe that is how you want it(note that we don't have our own soundguy and we are relying on the clubs one). So that is why i choose to tweak all my profiles on the pa at the rehearsal room with all the cuts and whatnot so that the foh would do in the bad cases a little eq adjustment. But i somehow lost control over my tone at least at this gig, couldn't get it in shape. And it is anoying that you can't be sure what kind of tone i am getting in front. I know the room, acoustics, pa, soundguy is a big part of the equation and it should have been more simple to tweak it at the spot, not the case. Like i said, maybe profiles are more studio than live?

    No idea what has happened because the whole point of the KPA is to limit that amount a sound guy needs to do ( and therefore screw it up).


    I would not do anything drastic just yet because:

    1) It might just be a one off and some crazy eq-ing. What did the sound guy think of your sound, did he think it was off

    2) It might also be your perception - did anyone else comment on how bad it was?


    I use most profiles out of the box and don't use any low or high pass filters ( wouldn't know which way to tweak them :) ). Given you had good sound at rehearsal ( assuming that was at volume) and good sound in your IEM's, doesn't sound like anything you did.

  • that is exactly what is supposed to do. Maybe it was a bad PA system. The soundguy didn't give a s+%@ about the tones(and these are the ones you need to avoid and we are the ones that need to give the quality of tones to the foh). Others said that it was kinda fizzy, lack of "body"per general.


    My main tone is a high gain one, typically from STL Mark Lewis and JTM Josh Middletons pack.

  • I'm not clear on what sounded bad - your IEM feed? The stage wash? A recording of the gig? All that said, never underestimate the room's ability to alter your perception of the sound no matter what anyone else hears.

  • Your description sounds like you sent a signal without CAB to the FOH.

    Which outputs did you use, what was their source set to?

    The signal chains was like this: guitar -> kemper front -> main out xlr -> foh desk. From the desk i had the mix for the iem from an auxiliary send and for the main speakers. The cabinet block was enabled because the IEM sounded good and i checked the cab section to be enabled.


    I'm not clear on what sounded bad - your IEM feed? The stage wash? A recording of the gig? All that said, never underestimate the room's ability to alter your perception of the sound no matter what anyone else hears.

    My IEM was sounding great. I managed to get outside of the stage while playing and i tried to listen to the whole mix and every instrument appart.


    Also now that i remember, it had another strange effect. The tone was sounding kind of distant, just like you would hear it from another room, like loss of proximity, don't know if i made myself clear