Posts by parlance

  • Trading Axe-FX 2 XL for Kemper

    Hello all,


    First off, my apologies if this is in the wrong place, I won't be offended if it needs to be moved or removed.


    I'm looking to trade an as-new condition Axe-FX 2 XL for a Kemper head (powered or unpowered, doesn't matter to me). If the foot controller was included I think that would be a fair straight-across trade, otherwise I'm open to discussion. I'm in Canada so if anyone interested is in Canada that might make things a bit easier. Please PM me or reply here if you are interested.


    Thanks.

  • Bug Report - Deleting Rigs from my Kemper

    Quote from timo


    It's a pity. Replicating an issue is one small step ahead of fixing the bug. If you encounter it again, please let us know.


    I understand the difficulty in fixing the bug if it cannot be replicated. In this case though it might be tough; deleting the profile that causes it to crash DOES actually successfully delete the profile in question, so you would need to a person to have by chance have a recent backup which included the profile of death; after you encounter the bug it's too late and the bad profile is gone.


    As for the other stuff though, the issues with Rig Manager sync, that just seems like basic design changes; Rig Manager shouldn't assume that rig delete commands issued to the Kemper have executed successfully, and should verify the results.

  • Bug Report - Deleting Rigs from my Kemper

    Running Rig Manager Public Beta 1.0 #3 64-bit version, 2.3.3 public beta firmware on my Kemper.


    I had used previous versions of the Rig Manager without issue. I had / have about 250 profiles on my Kemper, and I had about 40 of them favorited. I opened the profiles on my Kemper, sorted by favorites, and copied all the non-favorites out, which seemed to work fine. Then I selected all the non-favorites and deleted them. They deleted in the Rig Manager interface okay. I looked over at my Kemper and noticed it just had the big "KEMPER PROFILER" text on it like it was booting up, but with no progress bar. So I give it a while to see if anything will happen, nothing does, so I turn it off and then turn it back on. Nothing was deleted from my Kemper, and now when I load Rig Manager it starts "syncing rigs" and it looks like it will take the better part of an hour, which is strange; it never took that long to sync with the same number of rigs when Rig Manager first came out.


    We'll see what happens I guess if this ever finishes, but it looks like there's some issue with deleting a large number of rigs from the Kemper. I'm going to try deleting them again in smaller batches I guess.


    Edit: Even more bizzare. My Kemper itself is still showing ALL the profiles (~250 of them), but in Rig Manager after "sync" it shows 70, which is a very strange number. Help!


    Edit 2: So I selected again, the non-favorites Rig Manager decided weren't deleted (about 20 of them, to bring the total down to just 50, just my favorites). My Kemper was still showing all 250 profiles. I deleted them successfully, but then noticed I only had 43 favorites somehow, so I guess some of my favorites were deleted.


    This is pretty bizzare and buggy. I'm scared to use Rig Manager now, honestly. It isn't worth the convenience if every time I do something innocuous I risk corrupting the profiles on my Kemper or losing favorites somehow.


    Edit 3: I decided to go through on my Kemper and just tediously delete my non-favorites because it was safer. Got about maybe 20 deleted, then it crashed with the same screen as when Rig Manager was trying to delete them (just showing the text "KEMPER PROFILER") as if it was booting, but nothing happening.


    Last Edit: After rebooting the damn thing again and continuing to manually delete the non-favorite profiles from my Kemper, I was able to finish purging them. I did another backup because jesus, you can't trust Rig Manager apparently, and then fired it up. This time no long sync, and finally the Kemper and Rig Manager were showing the correct number of profiles.


    There's a few bugs here:



    Bug 1) The Kemper can apparently crash when deleting certain profiles. The profile that caused it to crash when deleting with Rig Manager is certainly the same one that caused it to crash when I was deleting manually.
    Bug 2) Rig Manager assumes once it was issued the delete commands to the Kemper that everything went smoothly. There does not appear to be any kind of acknowledgement or actual check for success when deleting profiles, causing the out of sync issue.
    Bug 3) After this has happens, when the local database and Kemper are out of sync, it causes extremely long delays when launching Rig Manager, and even after it is finished, they still aren't in sync.

  • Crappy song from a learning guitarist

    Hello all,


    This is probably way worse than most of the stuff that gets posted in this forum because I figure most are serious musicians, but I thought I'd post this anyway because I think it's kinda catchy, even though we all suck. My friends and I just kinda of decided to pick up music later in life and we're still kinda learning our instruments, but it's something fun to do on a Saturday afternoon instead of wasting away playing video games. Feel free to let me know how much we suck. :)
    https://soundcloud.com/parlancex/witchy-jam

  • Appalling fraud and theft

    Quote from fenixdoido

    Actually, they replicates a sound. Thats its objective.
    And you are right. My mistake. Not intelectual proprety formally. But thats still a rip from anothers person work.
    In your country, the absense of law makes impossible to protect the copy of anothers person sound... IMO it doesnt matter the tool. The resulting product is the copy of anothers person work.
    Just in case, If I match eq some famous drums samples avaliable with another snare and sell its ok, right? I`m sharing a "new" bits and bytes product...
    But this is only my opinion. I`m not saying you are wrong, just 2 different view points


    Get out of here with your logic and reason. Don't you know that the US Government already decided what is right and wrong when they wrote the law? </sarcasm>

  • Appalling fraud and theft

    Quote from K3MP3R

    To show I do value ethics though, I will state how profile theft can be thwarted with the Kemper 2. Make it optional to encrypt profiles, where each sale would include a one time unlocking code and each profile sale would have its own unique code. You would also need a PC program to unlock the profile to avoid manually punching in some crazy 32 or 64 character code each time (you would also want to start with a high bit algorithm to prevent easy cracking and need for revisions). Then pair that with a password-protected external storage access to prevent physical theft from the profiler via USB.

    A better system would be to bake an RSA public/private key pair into each Kemper unit, if there isn't already, and allow users to read their public key in base64 text from the info page on the unit itself. Then when buying commercial profiles on the site users submit their public key for their Kemper with the order, and the website encrypts their specific download with their specific Kemper's public key. When their Kemper loads the profile it can decrypt it with the private key, decryption is nice and automatic and no other Kemper units can read the profile.


    There are other problems with this though, like what if I have more than 1 Kemper? Do I have to buy the same profile multiple times? What if my Kemper tanks and is replaced with a different one? etc.


    Anyway, I think what we're seeing here is the same market response we've seen in many other kinds of digital media:


    There are some users, let's call them group A who will pirate content regardless, if piracy were impossible they would not purchase the product. These users don't comprise any lost sales.
    There are also some users, let's call them group B who pirate content because they perceive it as too expensive, or a poor value compared with the effort required for piracy. These users are potential lost sales that could have been achieved through lower price points or simplified delivery or making the legal product less restrictive.


    If a system as proposed above were implemented, no additional sales would be gained through group A, some additional sales might be gained through group B, but sales would also be lost as the perceived value drops when what they are buying becomes tangibly less valuable (restricted to a single Kemper, PITA to manage multiple Kemper's, etc.). As to whether or not that would be a net gain is debatable.

  • Atomic CLR - Not all it's cracked up to be?

    To address a few of the suggestions so far in this thread:


    I have tried using it in different rooms. It sounds pretty consistent it seems no matter the size of room or location in the room, which is a good thing, but it changing the room didn't magically make it amazing.


    I have tried raising the CLR up to ear height rather than just tilting it. It does sound better straight on, but it still doesn't retain as much profile character as other speakers.


    For the suggestions to re-tweak the profiles you should understand that I didn't tweak these profiles even to start with. I was testing with TAF profiles which Andy sets up using very high FRFR studio monitors. Although I could probably tweak a profile to sound better with the CLR, my main point was that a lot of the character of a profile seems to be lost with the CLR.


    This isn't about a certain group of frequencies being too strong or too weak, the distinct formant signature that makes a profile sound distinct and interesting, that gives it all its character, seems to be muddled with CLR, like other PA systems I've played the Kemper through. Those formants aren't something that can be attained through any kind of standard EQ; if you were viewing a graph of the FR of a profile where the character comes from is the many dozens or even hundreds of small peaks and valleys and dips and bumps through the range of the FR. Restoring that detail would require like a 500 point EQ.


    As far as the possibility goes that I may have had a bad unit, I'd say that's just... depressing. I spent $150 in shipping and another $70 in taxes to get it across my border. Who on earth would screw around shipping this thing back and forth for the chance that it might've been a bad unit? I personally don't have that kind of money to burn, and honestly, for $1K don't you think there should be a bit more consistency in build quality?

  • Atomic CLR - Not all it's cracked up to be?

    Up until this point I had been playing using my computer speakers and I was interested in getting something that could potentially be louder and more portable in a form factor that actually makes sense for guitar. After almost 6 months after first sending the email out to get on the waiting list my Atomic CLR (powered cab) is finally here today!


    I set it up how I had planned to use it, flat on the ground, but since I'd be sitting at least 6 feet away on a fairly low stool anyway I figured this wouldn't be a problem, as many reviewers rave about the wide projection the atomic offers. The first thing I noticed is that the sound pretty drastically changes if you're than about 15 off axis. Not a good start! I grabbed some shit I had laying around to propped up the front to angle more towards my head.


    Sound quality wise I was pretty immediately underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it sounds bad, I had a bad FR amp before the CLR and I know what bad sounds like, but I guess with all the hype surrounding it I was just expecting more. My computer speakers (Logitech Z-2300s, the legendary original version) that I've been using for such a long time have completely ruined me. Because of the popularity of the Z-2300s people have done all kinds of graphs and analysis on them, and I knew the frequency response of that system was supposed to be pretty flat with the speaker grills removed, so I was expecting a similar sound out of the CLR, but alas, no dice.


    Before everyone gets their pitchforks and tears me a new asshole with the obvious complaint that the Atomic CLR sounds correct and it's the Z-2300s that are wrong, or colored, or incorrect somehow, let me explain a bit further. Like I said the Atomic CLR doesn't sound bad, but to me the best way to discern how much detail and accuracy and clarity there is in a speaker is to listen to different tones through it and determine how distinct they sound from each other. The flatter the frequency response of the speaker, the less the characteristic formants of that speaker are entangled with the FR of the tone and the more distinct it will sound compared to other tones through the same speaker. If different tones tend to sound similar and less distinct, what you are hearing are the formants of the speaker moreso than the formants of the tone.


    In my testing I was using high quality TAF profiles and I wasn't making any judgements at all was to which speakers I thought sounded "better" whatsoever, I was simply checking for distinctness from each other and the Z-2300s won hands down. If there was a game you could play called Name That Profile! where you listen to listen to a random profile on your Kemper and had to guess which one it was, I would do substantially better on the Z-2300s, and if I WAS making judgements about which sound better, I think the Z-2300s would also win that as well. On the Atomic CLR a Fender Bassman might not be mistaken for a Marshall, but it sounds more similar than it should.


    Has anyone else used Z-2300s with their Kemper? I'm honestly considering trying to find a set on Ebay and building a custom cab for them because god damnit if a $1K speaker can't sound better than I don't know what to even do.


    On an unrelated note: Anyone want to buy an Atomic CLR powered cab? ;)

  • New KPA Owner, First Impressions

    I'd also like to add to my impressions that I was pretty bemused when I hit the undo / redo buttons for the first time, to see that they would be included soon in an upcoming update! Hasn't the KPA been out for like 2 years now?


    Still extremely impressed with the sound quality. My fingers are so very sore these days. I just wish they'd make this thing a little less rough around the edges so my brain doesn't have to be sore.

  • Doubler Stomp Effect

    I would really like more effects available to fatten and widen up the sound. The stereo widener doesn't really do what most people want. We can create a limited doubler using the delay section, but then we have to completely sacrifice our delay since it is not available as a stomp. This would be a fair simple effect I think, or could be built into the stereo widener, just add settings for very small (50 ms and less) delay for seperate left and right voices to go along with the microtuning for each channel.

  • New KPA Owner, First Impressions

    Quote from mdeeRocks

    You can sort profiles by amp, author, name, gain and filter them as well. The key is not to have 1000 of them :)
    I think usb audio would be a highly redundant feature, to be honest.
    AFAIK, pc editor/librarian is in the works.
    Other than that, I'd encourage you and every new owner to spend time playing with one or two factory profiles to avoid ear tiredness (which is very easy to get with kemper) - and many of them are really good. If you like a profile, press rig button and it will add to favourites. After a month or so you can delete all non favorites with one button.

    I'm aware of the sort and filter features, they're just woefully insufficient in some cases, like for example if you have one of the big packs from TheAmpFactory, because they're all the same author and the names aren't always what you'd expect.


    Of course I am favoriting a small number of my chosen profiles, but I'd still like to be able to go through and discover new favorites in a more organized fashion. Why should I compromise the number of profiles I can store on my Kemper just because the browser is terrible? Having thousands of amps in a little box is part of the allure of this unit. Unfortunately it's just tedious at the moment to have that many.


    Explain to me how you think a USB audio feature would be "redundant". I'm going to assume you know what redundant means.