Posts by DigitalBliss

    I bought my son a pair of those JBLs and they are a great value. I tried one next to my reference monitors and they are pretty comparable. Slight differences in bass and the treble is not quite as crisp as mine, but overall quite good. As with all monitors it's all about the room and where they are placed in the room. I keep mine up off the floor and at least a foot(maybe a bit more) from the wall behind it. If they are on the floor or near a wall it's like adding about 6db of boom. More if it's in a corner.

    First off, Pure Cabs sounds like a great invention and I can’t wait to try it out myself. So thank you Team Kemper.


    Now my question… Reading about how different rigs react to Pure Cabs, I wonder why is this is a global setting rather than a setting that can be tweaked for each rig. For those who have already played with Pure Cabs, do you find that it works well as a “set it once and forget it” type of control?

    I'll toss out a hidden gem that I really like. It's called Graveyard Jam and you can find it in the Legacy Factory Rig Packs (revised July 2014). I love many of ones everyone already posted, especially the Morgan AC 20 and LL Nineties Finest, but if you are looking for something awesome that may have fallen off the radar, try the Graveyard Jam. It's really good on a hot rod strat, preferably with noiseless pickups as this profile is set at a pretty high gain.

    Wow that's terrible. Seems like I've been reading this a lot recently where RM can no longer see the profiler. Are you on a PC or a mac? One thing that seems to help a lot of people is trying a different USB port on their computer. Also, I would try a different USB cable as well.

    Just wanted to report back that I found out what the problem was, in case others also had a similar issue. Yes, Paul, I did have the latest Rig Manager software, but it turns out it didn't have anything to do with Rig Manager (other than it would be nice if RM had better diagnostics so we could track down problems faster).


    So here is what happened. Last night I tried to download rigs again, and like always, it got stuck on the message "Retrieving Rig list...". In parallel, I started downloading RM 1.3.5 from the Kemper Downloads section of their site. Estimated download time 2 hrs. WTF??? I thought, something must be wrong with the Kemper site... Well it was almost dinner time, so I plugged in my little Windows tablet so it could last the duration and not rely on it's batteries. As soon as I plugged it in, boom! The estimated download time for RM dropped to a few minutes, and RM stared to download rigs. I pulled up the task manager to look at the wifi performance plot, and sure enough when I plugged it in, is when the data rate shot up. So I'm not exactly sure why, but my guess is something in my little tablet is throttling back either when running on battery, or when battery becomes low. I'll do some more research on this, but I'm pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with the Kemper site, and probably not RM either, but like I say, I'll look into it some more. Funny thing is I play along with Youtube videos that my tablet is downloading as I play, and that seems to work, so there is still a little bit of a mystery as to why my Kemper stuff seems so much more affected. Might just be coincidence due to when the cpu or wifi adapter throttles since I'm still not sure what the trigger is. Will report back when I know more.

    Hi Digbob,
    Did you ever solve your problem? I usually sync with RE every week or two, and haven't been able to connect for over a month. Like you I get the message "Retrieving List of Rigs..." but it doesn't ever download any rigs. I'm stuck at 6333. I tried about 5 times last night. I know the exchange is up because my other computer connects and downloads.

    It could be that you're running out of headroom in your clean profile.


    So taking a step back to basics (I apologize if I'm going on about something you already know), an ideal amp would take a signal and multiply it by the gain and replicate the input perfectly, just at a larger magnitude. We know that guitar amps are not ideal, when you apply a small amount of gain, they are close to ideal (no compression), but as you raise the gain, the signal gets more and more squished, and you hear mild compression, heavy compression, crunch, serious distortion, and finally heavy metal mayhem. Running out of headroom is the phrase everyone uses when they mean you're no longer just raising the clean volume with the gain knob, but you are starting to distort (compression is a form of distortion).


    So now, coming back you your question. Are you running out of headroom? Well you could pump a sine wave in, and look at the output to see if it's still a sine wave, but it's easier to just lower the input signal or gain until it no longer sounds compressed and you get your headroom back. Then raise the volume on the output side (which does act like an ideal amp until it hits the red) to get you up to drummer level. It sounds like you are already doing this last step via the KPA monitor volume. Some people might refer to this whole process as correct gain staging, because you are taking control of how you set the gain before, inside, and after the amp, but I'm still a little fuzzy on exactly what that phrase means, I hear it used in lots of different ways.

    Sam, I think you are correct. I was doing a little more research and stumbled on that thread that Sinmix started regarding how amps sound similar. Near the end of that thread is a video where the Kemper rep says the studio cabinet is updated and overwritten when it is merged with a DA profile. Thanks again.

    Thank you for the responses.
    Sambrox, I appreciate the detail. I had read all this before, but thank you for reminding me that the merging is only done once, that fact had eluded me. I now understand how to make the merged profile, but it’s not really the merged profile that I’m after, it's the improvement in cab+mic isolation or separation from the direct amp that I’m seeking knowledge on. So if I have a merged profile, and I want to replace its cab with one from a different merged profile, the results should be more accurate than when we used to do this with studio profiles. Everybody agree so far? My question is… Is that improved accuracy baked into the new cab (so if I save it to a preset it will be superior to one done just by copying that cab from the studio profile that went into the merge) or is the cab the same as it was in the studio profile, in which case the accuracy improvement is stored somewhere else in the merged profile (my guess would be in the direct amp part). Or maybe both the amp and the cab are changed by the merge.


    Sorry for dwelling on this but my curiosity is insatiable. It helps me understand how to best use the preset elements of this marvelous device.

    I'm still trying to wrap my head around the way the Direct Amp / Merged Profile thing works. I get that the DA profile has no cab, and that the studio profile contains the influence of the cab and mic, but here is where it gets fuzzy for me. It has been said many times that when the cab is copied from a studio profile, it is not as accurate as it could be because the profiler doesn't have enough information to accurately split it apart. I assume the Direct Amp profile has the needed information, since if you added an accurate cab to it you should get the studio profile. You can think of this as A + B = C. Solve for B and you get B = C - A (or cab = studio profile - direct amp). Yet when you create a merged profile, this is not the process. Instead, according to the 3.0 profiling guide, you copy and past the cab from the studio profile into the direct profile and press merge. But we already concluded that the studio cab was inaccurate, so something is not adding up. I'm guessing that there is some reference cab and that the merge process compares the direct amp to that reference in order to correct the inaccuracy in the studio cab. This would result in a change to the studio cab. So my question has to do with where that change (or delta) is stored. If I copy a studio cab and save it as CabPreset1, then I apply that cab to a direct amp, hit merge, and then save that cab to CabPreset2, are CabPreset1 and CabPreset2 the same?


    The reason I ask is because I'm curious about the validity of pulling cabs from studio profiles generated before 2.8 to merge with a 3.0.2 direct amp.

    That’s interesting, I would do it exactly opposite. Instead of making two changes (one in the input for the volume difference, and one in a stomp for the tone difference) I would do it all in a studio eq stomp in slot A. The reason for slot A is that the difference in volume and eq will both affect all distortion or gain stages after it (distortion stomps or amp). Once you have an eq setting that gets your humbucker to the right output level and matches the tone of your p90 (perfect match is likely impossible by the way), save your performance and save your new eq stomp preset. Then go to all your other performances and free up slot A by juggling your chain around, then load your new eq into A.


    In reality though, why not celebrate the differences between your guitars instead of making them sound the same. Why use a screwdriver as a hammer, when a hammer pounds nails better and is not all that great at driving a screw.

    Just curious if anyone else see this same phenomenon.


    When I fire up RM on week days it usually connects to the exchange and downloads the latest rigs pretty quick, less than 2 minutes usually.


    But when I do the same on Saturday or Sunday, many times it never even connects, or it just gets stuck trying to get the list of updated rigs.


    I don't know if the traffic is just really high on the weekends, or maybe the Kemper team takes it down for maintenance, but I tried about 5 or 6 times this last weekend and never could connect.


    What has your experience been? How often is your RM able to connect, and do you see any similar patterns?

    I've had the volume drop to zero while playing before, but never go up. I've had to either reset the kpa, or more recently they put a soft button in the system menu that just resets the global variables, and that fixes it too. However, I've been reading about problems with the linking of the various outputs, so last night when it happened again, I unlinked them and the volume was restored. This is the best solution for me because I don't have to go and fix all my preferences that get reset with the other methods. Still, I don't know how people can trust in the unit live. Im just an amateur and don't play out, but I would be very leary of it if I did.