cab profiling feature

Quote from MadH

It would be great to have a cab only profiling feature instead of having to profile the whole amp and then extract the cab from the profile. The process would be much faster and multiple cab profiles at different mic positions could be created in just matter of minutes. In order to do that I guess we would only need a flat power amp to drive the speaker.

I think that right now there is not a lot of people doing this because it is very time consuming. Shortening the process would make it much easier, more accessible and cheaper (in case you need to rent a studio or cabs) for everybody.

I'm not sure I understand what your wanting. The profiling process is pretty darn quick. Not quite as quick as shooting an IR I guess, but the tedious time consuming part is setting up the mic and cabinet, not the profiling. Considering the unit now allows you to choose any cabinet from any profile on the box, what efficiency is to be gained my a secondary profiling process?

Quote from MadH

Besides that another important advantage could be the loudness required for this process, being much lower than the one required to profile the amp. It would basically make it much easier to do it at home.

Wouldn't volume still be key in getting speaker breakup?

While the KPA technology is great - it's no magic.

The KPA can NOT know exactly which part of the response if from the amp and which from the cab.

e.g.
Profile an amp (same cab, mic, mic position) - and many tone stack settings (lets say 5 different settings)
We get 5 nice profiles with the same sounds as the real amp

Now:
Compare the 5 'cab' parts of the 5 profiles
You'll find that all the 5 'cabinets' sound very different.

Now we combine only the 'amp' part of our 5 profiles with any other 'cabinet'
Result: 5 profiles which all sound about the same

This all depends on the real amp.

In case we use a Fender type amp (tone stack before the distorted tubes) and profile the amp with the tone stack set to neutral - all is fine - for this neutral setting.
But the KPA tone stack can not create the sounds we would get when we change the real amp's tone stack settings.

The KPA's EQ block is always AFTER the "distorted tubes" - think of it like changing the sound in your mixer AFTER recording the amp.
All this kinds of amps sound VERY different when the real tone stacks are changed - because not only the tone is changed (in another way) but the amount and character of distortion as well.

For Marshall types of amps (tone stack after the distorted tubes) it works different.
Here we get the influence of the real amps tone stack (at least the high frequency part) mainly covered in the KPA's cab block - so it's not possible to exchange the cabinet later (without loosing the tone stack sound of the real amp).

One way would be to profile this kinds of amps only with the tone stack set to the neutral position - and use the KPA's tone stack to make the changes - then would it be possible to use other cabinets (created with a neutral amp).

The disadvantage of this is:
All the real amp's I have profiled have VERY different tone stacks - so the KPA sounds only identical to the real amp at the neutral position - and this is in most cases not the best sound the amp can produce.

This may change in case we could 'model' the real tone stack as well - or second best, we would get different types of tone stacks (like in the AxeFx).

Currently I see only one way to capture the full sound of any amp - by profiling the amp at many different settings - and then selecting the sounds I like or work best for the different guitars I use.

I use the KPA's tone stack only to fine tune the sound.

Quote from MadH

This is true. The cab part of the profile takes a lot of the EQ you have globally and the amp part EQ remains more neutral even if the settings on the amp were different.

Profiling the cab separately with a flat amp would give a better and more accurate representation of the cab+mic. I think Tills used this method to create his cab profiles.

But, it would only be more accurate when paired with an amp which was profiled without a cabinet since part of the EQ imparted by the cab is included in the amp profile right? It might provide a more accurate independent picture of both the amp and cab at the sacrifice of a much longer process overall (profiling amp and cabs separately). Listen, if you feel there's a bunch of work involved but the result is worth the effort and its something others may find desirable as well, I'd recommend putting in the resources and doing it and then selling your cabs like Andy and Armin. If you did it correctly, you could also sell impulses to Axe and GSP owners. If others really see this as a big benefit to the Kemper, then you'd be saving them the time and effort and of course get compensated for yours. But I gotta say, I don't do very much cab experimentation at all. The Kemper has been a very different experience in that regard than the IR auditioning and experimentation I "suffered though" with the GSP1101...

Regarding tone stacks, I think the Kemper team have this planned for some time.
Read this long informative interview with CK from 2011 aug 15, question nr 3:
http://www.guitar-muse.com/kemper-profiling-amp-2949-2949

"We are building up a library for passive tone stacks so every amp can be
equipped with the corresponding equalizer, even after the profile has
been captured. The tone can be shaped then as on the original. But you
can even choose another passive tone stack for your profile, or even a
studio equalizer, that goes far beyond the boundaries again."

Yes, I read this too .... a long time ago

Maybe they found that this would only work for some amps.

If it aint broke, don't fix it.

Quote from Guitartone

If it aint broke, don't fix it.

+1

Profiling works great today and it sounds much better then normal modeling & IR's

The KPA has two 'Digital Filters' inside, one for the AMP and the second for the CAB.

I tried to profile IR's of speakers and other gear (see my acoustic profiles) and found that the IR's will be stored in both 'Digital Filters' - so it's not possible to profile a CAB only.

The options to exchange the AMP's and CAB's in the KPA is a nice gimmick - but it works not 100% - because some parts of the AMP response will be stored in the CAB's 'DigitalFilter" and some part of the CAB's response will be stored into the AMP's filter.

Maybe the mothership can tell something more about it - but I understand if they don't want to reveal to much information about the unique KPA concept.

Quote from MadH

I was referring to the accuracy of the cab part. If you want accuracy of the amp part at the EQ settings you have on the amp obviously that would require you to capture the amp part alone. I think Kemper mention was working on something to capture only the amp part (Please Mr Kemper, can we have some 'direct' factory profiles).

The best possibility would obviously be able to capture the amp and the cab separately but even having the feature just for cabs would be great. If you have not checked Till cabs yet you should.

I've tried Till's cabs, and you're missing my point. The profiling process can only guess at what is affecting the overall EQ. Is it the amp's tone stack? Perhaps the speaker/mic/mic proximity? As such in order to get the most accurate recreation of plugging an amp head into different cabs, you would have to profile the amp head using the amp's line out ( if it has one, maybe a load box...no speaker/mic) and profile the speaker cabinet separately with a flat power amp. This is the only way to ensure one signal is not coloring the other during the profiling process. Of course, you might end up with 2 different profile which would not be as good as a single pass as the amp's specific power amp/speaker interaction would be missing from the profile. I would not go to such lengths personally. But, If someone had the time and access to numerous rigs and were do offer something like this I might me interested in paying for it just to experiment. But honestly, I really haven't felt the need to experiment with cabs in the profiles I use the most as they deliver the tones I dig.

I can only tell from my own cab profiling experiences. The idea of profiling just the cabs with a flat sounding solid state poweramp is logical, but for me it didn´t work out like i thought. What Armin said before is right: The influence of the amp into the cab profiles is huge. Though you can separate and exchange cabs after profiling, the cab profile sound is determined by the amp settings and especially the channel and gain settings. When i tried to do "flat" cab profiles, those sounded really awful when i later tried them with hi gain rigs.

In fact, i did all my profiles with my Marshall JVM 410H with more or less the same settings. While this helped me to have some sort of consistency, the resulting cab profiles are far from neutral sounding. Though a little more "scientific" approach seems desirable, imo it´s just a matter of trial and error. The only real guideline that i pulled out of my tests is to use a clean amp setting if you want to use the cab profile on clean rigs afterwards and to use a higher gain setting if you want the cab to sound good with distorted rigs.

I once did a profiling session where i wanted to import my favourite red wirez IR files to use them as cab profiles. I wanted those to be as neutral as possible. So i hooked up the KPA direct out directly to my audio interface and profiled those IRs without any amp inbetween. I thought this would give me the best results. But in fact those cab profiles sounded really bad afterwards when i used them on a high gain rig.

My conclusion is that a "flat" cab profiling approach doesn´t work for my own stuff. Perhaps it is great for others though. But the idea to have the cab profiling process a little more efficient though is great. It would be a godsend if you could just take profiles in series, where the cab portion is automatically extracted and only the cab profile is saved and automatically named as a consecutive number.