Posts by endlessnameless


    This makes a lot of sense - the whole rental thing is a good point.

    I listened back to some recordings I did with the 11R and the tones were a bit brittle and plastic sounding. If you want a backup amp modeller that you can throw in your bag then just get a Sansamp character pedal like the Blonde or the Liverpool. Or even the Joyo American which I hear is just as good.

    Great post! I for one hadn't thought about such potential pitfalls regarding profiling pedals. Although I'm quite happy with the drive Stomps (am I the only one?), I can see the advantage of having the option to profile your favourite drive pedal, even though architecturally it isn't possible with the current hardware iteration of the KPA. Maybe it would be something to take in to consideration for anytime that Christoph & co. want to go about designing a Kemper II. Solving the problem of how to profile pedals non-statically could also translate to profiling amps and their controls and tone stacks.


    For now though, I'm just greatly looking forward to the new firmware, whenever it drops, and getting on with playing around with morphing. I hope that the delays don't follow long after...


    You know it just dawned on me. Could morphing technology eventually be used to combine 'static' profiles of an amp or drive pedal profiled at different knob positions to make changes on the Kemper tone/gain more accurate to the original equipment?


    I don't have the data, but my guess is that the majority of those who bough the KPA bought mainly for the amp modeling and weren't focused on effects.


    If you think of it the other way, you might know what I mean. If the KPA had all these slots for effects and had great effects,but didn't have the profiling capability, as much as I hate to say it, I really doubt that it would have been a viable product. Meaning without profiling the KPA, wouldn't even exist. Again, not because the effects aren't good, but because the effect market is so saturated with very many and good enough contenders.


    The last thing that guitarists need are more companies making effects, but no one has good profiling. BIAS are trying and they can catch up soon, so why not focus more on maybe the ability to use Stomp Drives and Distortions profiles at the same time as Amp profile. I know many say it can't be done but I don't believe that. Drive boxes shouldn't require the same horse power as Amp Profiles. How would you like a KPA that let's you play any tube amp, and put any profile of any drive box ever made? I'd like a lot better than getting all the additional reverbs and delays.


    I mentioned that I would like to see this feature a long time ago. I class distortion stomps as FX too (not just reverbs and delays) and I am sure a lot of us do. I think we are probably closer to being in agreement about this stuff than you think.

    Clearly there's not a pressing need as the KPA is still selling very well as a profiler, not as "all in one". It's implied in the name "Kemper profiling Amp" not Kemper "Guitar Workstation"


    Dean with respect I am not sure I see your points. Because it isn't called 'Guitar Workstation' or similar we shouldn't expect particular features related to FX? I don't agree with this. There are many guitar all in one units which don't have highly descriptive names. In fact many names are oblique.


    Ultimately you have to look at the market and the marketing to decide what is expected of a product. There is no doubt this was marketed as an amp profiler and FX unit combined - competing with Axe FX and similar units in that market. So why not make it the best all in one unit it can be?


    You could argue that the people on the forum don't represent most users. But even if that were the case, there isn't anything to say that those outside the forum don't want improvements to the bread and butter features like FX and routing.


    Dean I appreciate you have your own opinion but I think the situation you describe is unlikely.

    I read this I believe in 2012 or 2013 and you can still find it in the FAQ in this forum:
    " We have plans to add models of original passive tone stacks of popular amps; these can be chosen for profiling the corresponding tube amp and will give you the sound of your original tone controls at any position."


    This didn't happen yet! so yes, I see a change of direction driven by perceived market demand as OneEng1 stated. Clearly there are more vocal community asking for "all in one". My guess would be that this could be false market research as the KPA was demonstrated as a profiler. I bought it mainly for the AMP profiling and didn't care about any of the effects but was pleasantly surprised that it had good quality effects.


    My guess is that the majority of the owners who don't even participate or log in the KPA forum.could care less about anything else except for the profiling and profiles of amps. For recording, it's very rare that anyone records reverb and delay and for live, it can be treated exactly like an amp by using external effect from TC , line 6, roland etc.


    A pretty wild guess at that. I think the forum is a pretty good representation of what users want. The idea of this silent majority who don't care about fx (but want estoric features instead) is pretty speculative. I think the opposite of what you have said is more likely.


    I believe most of us want an all in one quality unit that satisfies all our amp AND fx needs, it is the guitarist's idea of utopia for ease of use and sound quality. Heavy pedalboards, noise, spaghetti patch cables and bulky power supplies can take a running jump.

    People have been asking for more flexible placement of delays (before amp/etc ) less opaque parameter editing (delays I'm looking at you) and basics like spring reverb for a while now. Years in fact.


    To some this isn't important. Personally I think it covers some essential basics for most gigging, studio and pro guitarists.


    it is simply taking too long in my opinion.


    Nice pic. What are the pedals you have saved to use with the Kemper? Any mods or delays?


    Yeah it is strange because when I got my first muff I took it for granted that all muffs sounded as good. I got a large black box Russian Muff that sounds amazing. I bought another one - same type but the enclosure was very slightly different (probably a later batch). And it didn't sound as good. Then I realised that even the same Muff can sound different depending on the components available during that production run.


    I have a Muff made by a guy called Mike. madebymike. It is based on the Smashing Punmpkins style muff. It has a mids control and sounds amazing. Really really good.


    I would love to build but I have no idea how to start. I may get a kit. Do you sell pedals too?

    For 90s rock/grunge and alternative I find it very difficult to get the sound I want just using amp distortion.


    Most of the bands I like used Big Muffs and Rats to get those alternative sounds. It seems that only classic rock bands rely on amp distortion to get their sounds.


    So I love stomp distortion. And I find nothing beats an analogue stomp into a profile. The modelled stomps are not 100%. The modelled Rat is very good but the Muff isn't. But as I have the pedals I just use those.

    I bet it does. I've never profiled anything. But I do know that their noise gate thing is fairly unique and simply works without worrying about the threshold and cutting off sustained notes. The only time I might also dial in a noise gate in a stomp block is really high gain, and I'm ridiculously picky in regards to noise. I've forgotten what noise is even with single coils.


    I have to ask though, why profile a FlyRig other than for fun? I owned one and thought it sounded pretty good, not great and was a useful backup to have. However, if you have to profile it to get rid of noise, then you are using the Kemper, and have to lug that with you anyway. And if you're have a Kemper at hand, why bother using a profile of a solid state analogue model a good tube amp when you can get an accurate profile of any actual tube amp on the planet for free? Thus the flyrig's only value is to be used by itself either as a backup if something goes wrong, or for its intended purpose as a extremely portable rig when flying on a plane.


    Problem is airlines make you check guitars. Plus the Kemper head and a remote and cables and stuff will fit in a carry-on case, though you could stuff the flyrig in with the carry on as well and have your backup rig. But again, what would be the point of leaving a compact Kemper at home and taking only the Flyrig, unless you really need all your carryon space for something beyond Kemper gear? I think you could easily fit a Kemper and Remote and a few outfits and gear in a carry on and that's without a book bag they let you keep under your seat.


    I don't think the kemper noise gate is the key here, the profile of the pedal is of the preamp characteristics but it seems to strip out white noise and hiss of the original.


    Why would I profile the flyrig? I said so in the original post, there are some good sounds on it, and profiling kills the hiss for recording.


    The travel thing you mention, not sure the point you are making to be honest, I never said I was doing this so I could take the kemper around with me instead. I would use the flyrig live for a compact rig but my main concern is quiet recording.

    Sort of a tip here. I have a Tech 21 Flyrig which has some good amp sounds but it has this awful high noise floor. Like a white noise hiss. All I need to do is profile it and the hiss is gone. The Kemper just takes the sound. I imagine this works well with noisy hissy old amps. It kind of cleans up the sound!

    Hummm.... I'd say not necessarily so. Gain staging, yes. But I don't think that's a software issue, more of a operator error issue :) And dither is only relevant in the digital realm, so I don't think they have an edge there. Finally, recreating analogue sound in the digital realm is more of a coding issue, so again... I'd say they don't have any kind of leg up on the competition there. Only in workflow with it being built-in.


    I'm not saying that their software doesn't sound great - just saying that their background isn't of much help to them in my view (which is purely speculation, by the way)


    What makes Mixbus sound better? What are the "well known flaws" of other workstations?


    The Mixbus mix engine was crafted by the same engineers who make our ultra-fidelty high-end consoles; both analog and digital. When our company made the transition from analog to digital, we had to guarantee that our digital consoles sounded as good as their analog counterparts. Working with high-end facilities and mixing engineers has allowed us to refine digital mixing techniques for over 2 decades. Most DAW developers spent that period focusing on plugins, file management, editing, and similar tasks. Mixbus uses the Ardour open-source workstation platform for those details, and it allows us to focus our attention on the mixing engine.


    The DAW+Plugin paradigm was invented when computers were far too slow to process an EQ on every track. Plugins were a compromise that solved the problem: users were allowed to add EQ to the tracks where they were deemed most important. Early DAW developers were also unlikely to have in-house DSP engineers, so utilizing 3rd party specialists was a welcome solution. These compromises were only intended to solve the immediate problems that faced early DAW developers, but they became so ingrained that the original intent of "recreating a studio workflow" was lost. They threw out the baby with the bath water!


    From a technical standpoint, it is our opinion that the gross defects in many workstations include internal clipping, lacking dither stages in the DSP processing, insufficent ramping of dsp coefficients, multiple bit-depth/format conversions, out-of-control gain stages causing plugins to work outside their intended range, routing choices that cause latency/timing errors, inability to see meters such as compressor gain reduction without opening the plugin dialog, and poor user-interface integration.


    Of course different workstations will exhibit these problems to different degrees. Our goal was to design a mixer using the "best practices" that we have developed over the course of 40 years. Multiple subtle design decisions, accumulated over a long history, allows Mixbus mixes to sound better than other DAWs.