Creating DI Profiles and What I’ve Learned So Far

    Hello to all!

    I just want to share a little info with everybody, and hopefully get some feedback as well. I’ve been focusing a lot lately on making di profiles of my own and borrowed amps. I monitor solely with guitar cabs. I use a kemper di which does make a huge difference. The refining process is absolutely necessary in my opinion because I hear big differences between profiles with/without. It seems to ‘sweeten’ the profile. The volume at which the amp is profiled is very important and varies with each amp. I have to take multiple profiles to find the proper output level. Some amps at loud volumes will compress and show higher gain than the profiled amp, so I decrease output until I get a good match. Other amps need to be profiled loud to get a good input level, these are mainly clean.
    For some amp specifics, I have successfully profiled a Carvin X100B that is an exact duplicate, in fact sounds better than the amp. Which is my favorite amplifier. One exception though- the B and bottom E. The high frequencies I have not been able to exactly match yet. The top 4 strings anywhere on the guitar neck are a duplicate. I have had some success with adjusting def and decreasing presence (the kemper presence frequencies are a discussion for another day). Anyway, I am confident that a 95-100% match is there, I just haven’t quite found it yet. E A D G are 100%. B E are about 75%

    Let me know what y’all think. Thanks for reading

    I also have a problem with high freqs on my Kemper. I am not convinced it is the Kemper though.


    My feelings, not facts:


    I have played the Kemper thru a few speaker sets. Some very cheap ones and some OK studio monitors.


    All of the cheap speakers make any guitar sound great. They color the sound so much and since they are cheap they accentuate the low mids and have crispy highs. So these are the most rewarding to play thru, but are the least accurate. In fact I can not tell the differences between most profiles.


    My decent studio monitors are somewhat flat. I hear large differences in any profiles I play on them. But the high end is not crispy until the high freqs or levels are set to ridiculous. So it usually sounds sort of dead like it needs a treble boost. I think this also adds to my feeling that the Kemper is too compressed or lifeless. As the low freqs probably do not get louder as you play harder when under heavy amp compression. You normally hear more Hi's. So on my monitors the volume "appears" to flatten out and get dull sounding.


    I imagine if I play the Kemper thru my 4x12 cabs, it will be similar to the cheap speakers. And that is probably why so many players here love the Kemper more than I do. Although many use IEMs/Headphones which to me sound horrible for guitar. So what do I know.


    Sound is a tricky thing. As long as you are not making large edits to a profile, I am pretty confident the Kemper is recreating the sound faithfully 90% of the time. You just may not be able to hear it on your speakers/monitors. The other 10% is like the OP stated above, there was something happening during the profiling that was confusing to the Kemper algorithm.

    You should dial the amp in to it's "sweet spot" before profiling it. Get is sounding like you want to hear it. Then hook it up to profile it. You can adjust the level on the Kemper to bring it up or down so you don't overload the Kemper with signal or not provide enough signal to get a good profile.


    One thing that gets discussed here occasionally that is a big factor is the volume you are playing at when you use the Kemper. You can take a profile and play it at a low volume and it will sound dark and not have much sparkle to it. Turn it up to a gigging volume and it will come alive. This happens with any digital device. I created and dialed profiles of my amp at gigging volume. I know where I run the knobs for a gig. I set everything up that way then profiled it. When I compared them I put a PA speaker on a stand in the same room right next to the amp and turned it up to the same volume. The profile through the PA cabinet sounds just like the amp in the room.

    Quote from JEverly

    You should dial the amp in to it's "sweet spot" before profiling it. Get is sounding like you want to hear it. Then hook it up to profile it.

    From my limited experience and the OPs suggestion: The sweet spot may not always translate as well when profiled. You may get better results at less gain/volume. Or even slightly different EQ. Then adjust the profile in the Kemper to get what you want.

    Quote from RosboneMako

    From my limited experience and the OPs suggestion: The sweet spot may not always translate as well when profiled. You may get better results at less gain/volume. Or even slightly different EQ. Then adjust the profile in the Kemper to get what you want.

    And this is a great point. The volume of the reference amp is very important during the profile. In fact this may be the answer to that last 25%. Also, I have slightly tweaked the bass and presence on the reference amp as well. I left this out of the op by mistake. By tweak I mean reduced. The kemper slightly increases the extreme high and low frequencies in the profile. I have resolved the bass but not the presence/treble.

    Quote from JEverly

    You should dial the amp in to it's "sweet spot" before profiling it. Get is sounding like you want to hear it. Then hook it up to profile it. You can adjust the level on the Kemper to bring it up or down so you don't overload the Kemper with signal or not provide enough signal to get a good profile.


    One thing that gets discussed here occasionally that is a big factor is the volume you are playing at when you use the Kemper. You can take a profile and play it at a low volume and it will sound dark and not have much sparkle to it. Turn it up to a gigging volume and it will come alive. This happens with any digital device. I created and dialed profiles of my amp at gigging volume. I know where I run the knobs for a gig. I set everything up that way then profiled it. When I compared them I put a PA speaker on a stand in the same room right next to the amp and turned it up to the same volume. The profile through the PA cabinet sounds just like the amp in the room.

    You are correct about volume. I am accounting for this during the refining which I have been doing at a reasonably high volume. I have also learned that the kemper leans out at high volume. But is easily rectified by making adjustments in the monitor output eq

    Quote from Wagnon

    And this is a great point. The volume of the reference amp is very important during the profile. In fact this may be the answer to that last 25%. Also, I have slightly tweaked the bass and presence on the reference amp as well. I left this out of the op by mistake. By tweak I mean reduced. The kemper slightly increases the extreme high and low frequencies in the profile. I have resolved the bass but not the presence/treble.

    In what way do you believe the Reference Amp is important? As far as I am aware the reference amp is actually the amp you are profiling.


    The starting amp in the KPA is only used to speed up the creation of meta data tags such as amp name and speaker type etc by prepopulating these fields from the loaded rig.


    I believe that the default Crunch rig created by ckemper is the “reference” for all profiling regardless of what rig you have loaded to prepopulate tags.

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    In what way do you believe the Reference Amp is important? As far as I am aware the reference amp is actually the amp you are profiling.


    The starting amp in the KPA is only used to speed up the creation of meta data tags such as amp name and speaker type etc by prepopulating these fields from the loaded rig.


    I believe that the default Crunch rig created by ckemper is the “reference” for all profiling regardless of what rig you have loaded to prepopulate tags.

    I’m referring to the output volume of the reference amp while it’s being profiled. By varying the volume it affects the profile in several different ways.
    As far as the starting rig I haven’t noticed that it matters what it is