Posts by boblovler

Yes, you are so right about that. And it's really hard to mix a track well when a small change in listening location makes a big change in perceived bass levels!

While I have known for a long time that what we perceive is going to be a combination of speakers and room, I was surprised by how much coloration the room actually contributed to the sound of the Kemper. Most people listening would have incorrectly assumed that the Profiler, not the room was the source of the problem. I saved screenshots of the before and after RTA curves just as a reminder . And while it may be true that the problem have only been resolved at my listening position, that's what I care about most.

From time to time, I have seen posts from users that have complained about fizziness in the profile sounds. While I don't pretend to know what the source of those complaints were, I have found the cause of my own and it turns out that it had nothing to do with the Kemper or my profiles. I use a pair of Alto TS112a's (on isolation platforms on the floor) to play through and I am also using Maudio BX8a's as studio monitors (on ear level speaker stands with isolation pads). From time to time, I would the route the Kemper signal directly into the BX8a's particularly after noticing some users reporting good results listening through their studio monitors. When I tried that, the results were nearly unlistenable. The first time I tried I thought that the cabs were turned off on the Kemper -- all fizz and extreme high end harshness that I did not hear when listening to music through them. On the other hand, my Alto's in the same room but in a different position sounded completely different -- proper sounding high end, but very boomy, ill defined low end on profiles that had significant low end content. And of course, when I directly recorded anything, what I heard through the monitors on playback, sounded nothing like my guitar sounded through the Alto's.

Now I always knew that my room was going to create sonic problems, lots of hard surfaces and rectangular in shape, but I didn't have the technology to measure and treat the room -- until this weekend. What I found when I did the measurement (using a calibrated measurement mike and 1/3 octave real time analyzer) was that at the listening position, the BX8a's had a rise starting at 2kHz rising to 8db (wow!) at 5kHz and dropping back down to +2db at 12kHz. The Alto's, on the other hand, had a large low end hump starting at +4db at 80Hz, rising to +6db at 125Hz and droping back to +2db at about 200 Hz. So I tried EQing both sets of speakers to flatten out the response (using the 1/3 octave graphic EQs in my Presous 24.4.2 board) , and guess what: Fizziness in the Maudio's was gone, boominess in the Altos's was gone, and the directly recorded guitar sounded much more like the live guitar (taking differences in speaker configuration between the two systems into account).

So I guess the moral of my story is that it is very easy, but not always correct to blame the Kemper for sonic problems in the way the profiles sound. Room acoustics at the listening position can play a huge role. And while I know it is always a better approach to acoustically treat the room than to use an EQ to deal with sonic problems, I can say in my case, the EQ made a world of difference.

Regarding the LED issue, like so many others, quite a few of mine failed as well. Kemper was very prompt in setting me up with shipping to the US repair facility in Texas. My unit was out of service for about 3 weeks, mostly due to shipping times. It would have been longer, but I paid the repair facility an extra US $50 for expedited repair. Now about 9 months later, my LEDs are failing again. So if the problem was fixed, the replacement unit (which I understand is the entire front assembly) was one of the original, problem plagued units. I really don't want to be without it again, and I certainly don't want to spend another US $50 to get it back more quickly so I guess I will live with the defect until so many fail (which I am expecting) that they become unusable as indicators any longer. Any piece of electronics can fail and I accept that. That's what warranties are for. But it is disappointing for to have this be a well known issue and have it happen twice to what is otherwise a very high quality (and expensive) piece of gear.

My understanding was that they do not replace individual LEDs. They replaced the front panel circuit board that probably contained both the LEDs and the driver ICs. That's why I was surprised that my LEDs are failing again after an initial repair which took 3 weeks total -- most of the time was due shipping from FL to TX and back. The repair was done very quickly, next day in fact, because I chose to pay $50 for expedited service to the US repair facility in TX.

I had quite a few leds out and had them fixed a few months back under warranty. A few days ago, two more went out on my volume control. I am waiting to see if more are going to fail shortly. (This is what happened last time they started to fail). I am now out of warranty and am wondering if the repair would be covered under warranty again. I don't know if the circuit board replacement that they did last time simply replaced one failure prone component with another one that had the same underlying problem.

Multiple LEDS went out in my gain and presence controls. Customer service sent me a prepaid shipping label to send it to the service center in the US in Texas. The service center told me it could take 4 - 6 weeks for them just to get to it, but if I was willing to pay $50 US for expedited service, they would look at it the next business day after they received it. I couldn't imagine being without KPA for over a month (and having to go back to my HD500 :-), so I paid the $50. The KPA was repaired the next day after they received it (they replaced the front panel circuit board) and sent back to me shipping prepaid. Totally worth the $50. Total time was 5 days to get it there, 1 day to repair and 5 days to get it back. It still seemed like an eternity But the service was great! Now I am hoping that some changes were made to the circuit board so that it is less likely for the LEDs to go out again.

Your welcome. Happy to contribute.

Yes I did. Before I starting the Lehle, what I found was that with my LP, it was necessary to reduce the distortion sense to -2.5 because with the hot PU's, many rigs were being driven too hard at the default gain settings. So by reducing the distortion sense, I was in effect trimming the gain down across all the rigs which gave me more range using the volume control on the guitar, and enabled a "sweeter" distortion when I wanted it. At the default settings, the taper on the volume pot on my guitar was such that I didn't even hear any change until I reduced it from 10 all the way down to 3 (giving me very little range to work with when I wanted to clean up the sound.) When I use the Lehle with attenuation, I still drive the amps hard enough to get as much gain as I want, but I now can leave the distortion sense at the default 0 (which is absolutely necessary for the Strat) and still have sufficient range of gain using the volume pot on the LP.

I know that there has been lots of discussion about the best way to use or Kemper with multiple guitars having different output levels. One method (and the one I was using is to set up different clean sense presets for each guitar and switch as necessary. The other way was to make multiple copies of your rigs, one for each guitar, each saved with different sense settings and switch as needed. My situation was that I had 3 guitars, a Les Paul Classic which has very high output ceramic pickups, a Strat with N3's which had much lower output and a Variax (old model, no physical pickups) which was somewhere in between. So using the default setup resulted in input clipping with many rigs when I used my Les Paul, and too low an input level with the same rig with my Strat.

My solution was a Lehle 3at1 switcher. This is a very high quality German made, 3 in, 2 out switching pedal. Obviously, this device is great for simply being able to switch between each of my guitars without any re-patching. But the really nice thing about this pedal is that two of the three inputs have output attenuators. So I simply plug my Strat into the input without the attenuator, and my other guitars in to the other two inputs. Then I simply reduced the output level coming out of the switcher to the level that matched the Strat output, using the Kemper input LED as a rough guide. The result is that a single sense level works for all three guitars, and all rigs have about the same apparent loudness regardless of the guitar in use, and I have no input clipping issues. I did not notice any audible artifacts of using the guitars through the switcher with or without attenuation (although I would guess that the output impedance of the guitars with the attenuators in use might have changed). Anyway, this worked for me.