Posts by Rome

This behavior has been noticed several times before but no one from Kemper bothered to clarify this.

It seems like the cabinet is actually the last sound forming unit in the effect chain. This makes sense as you otherwise would need to process the entire post effect section twice, one time for the dry monitor out and one time for the main out with cab sim.

So the signal is split after the reverb and before the cab to go to the looper. This means that the looped sound has no cab sim applied to it. When it gets back from the looper then it's fed through the current(!) cab sim and copied to both the main and monitor out. This seems to be true for the Monitor Cab Off / Main Cab On configuration. The normal configuration seems to work differently.

At least that's my observation.

This is not as easy as it sounds. To get it right you would need two loopers in parallel. One records the signal with the cab sims of the rigs and sends the result to the main out and the other one records the signal without the cab sim to send it to the monitor out. This requires a lot of precious memory so the the KPA's current behavior is a compromise. But that only affects the monitor sound so it is tolerable.

I hate the NAMM.

Every year I'm at the same location at another trade show either a week before NAMM or a week after NAMM (depending on the schedule of the convention center). So every year I see the ads, announcements and youtube videos from the show but I never have a chance to go there (we have a tight schedule when we visit CA). Sometimes I even see some of the guys from the videos running around in the hotel lobby or super market or I see vans filled with music gear. Aargh.

I don't think that we need a full fledged synth in the KPA as a guitar driven synth will always be a compromise no matter how good it is. I have a Boss SY-300 and I really like it but it will never replace a real (virtual) analog synth or a sampler.

However, it would be great to have some basic synth building blocks in the KPA like assignable LFOs, envelopes and things like that. The KPA already has a lot of pitch and filter capabilities so this would allow us to create a lot of the usual synth like guitar sounds directly in the device (strings pads, wobbles, filter sweeps, arpeggios and so on).

A slow gear effect like the ones found in even the cheapest effects units out there would be a good start. It should be very easy to implement as this is just a compressor setting after all. And if you're feeling really sophisticated then you'll add a gate parameter as well for reversed cymbal like effects.

Add some more simple waveforms to the tremolo, filter and vibrato blocks (saw, square, S&H). This shouldn't be too difficult for a synth manufacturer to create and will add great VCA, VCF and VCO modulation capabilities to the KPA (especially if the parameters are morphable).

Add a voice delay parameter to the pitch shift block and you'll have simple arpeggios. Very basic but covers a lot of ground.

Along with the upcoming delay and reverb upgrades (reverse, shimmer etc) this should give us a lot of stuff to play with and it shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Yes I did. I wanted to try this function but it seems like the forum software had other plans. I've edited the entry and the links were still in the post but the attachments were gone.

I've added the pictures again and it should work now.

Ah, night shift.

Quote from chizzy

got rm connected but where is firmware update??

Does that mean that the KPA can only be updated via RM in the future?

That would be really annoying.

Quote from digbob

its so easy
plug KPA to Computer
start RM
then it will automatically update the Profiler
couldn't be easier
Try !!

Display More

it's not
turn off PC
carry computer to KPA
start PC
physically connect USB
boot virtual machine
virtually connect physical USB to virtual machine
start RM
update KPA

Sorry, but that's all but 'so easy'. Save file from browser directly to stick, carry stick to profiler, update profiler is much easier for me.

Quote from SpinnerDeluxe

Thats a show-stopper then.

My idea back then was to write a kernel driver and a small MIDI based librarian for the KPA as I really hate to boot up a virtual machine just to use the Rig Manager (it's the only program in the VM). But I think that a simple user space program would be enough and actually doable. It just needs a lot more time. So it doesn't look that bad at all.

Quote from SpinnerDeluxe

Is there an API for USB and the Kemper? Documented?

No, not anything that I'm aware of. I've analyzed the USB protocol and there seems to be a simple MIDI-over-serial thing going on. It shouldn't be too difficult to write a user space program that communicates directly with the Kemper on all platforms. However, the messages on the bus themselves are not documented in any way and they can change at any time with a profiler, rig manager or driver update.

Quote from fredrikn

Any competent programmer will find a way to work around these "problems".

Sure, but a really competent programmer would not even start to develop an editor if he is not sure that he can succeed in the end. There is nothing more frustrating than working half a year on a community based software and then the manufacturer rolls his own thing (I been through that with editors I created).

This uncertainty is the main complaint. Either Kemper should tell us that there never will be an official editor so the community can put all effort into this project or tell us hat it's on the to do list. Then we all can patiently wait.

There have been several community attempts to create an editor but it seems like they are all stalled or stopped all together. Maybe it would be a good idea to find the reason for this (and stop banning the main contributors because they exceeded the thread title character limit).

It is a known issue but most people don't seem to care. So I guess we have to live with it.

Quote from wrbi

Hi Ingolf,

i would be interested what it will sound like, if you profile the SY-300. Did you try this?

Joachim

Display More

Great idea, I think I'll have to try that.

Quote from londonjeepster

only a half ! gotta be worth more than that ! to be honest i was very tempted to buy but just havent heard anything too exciting so far, probably the Gundy Keller demos are the best, and there is one metal demo on youtube which seems to work quite well. i think the creative possibilities are very interesting and the tech is excellent but will probably wait for a possible next version to appear, but glad you are enjoying it, and to be fair fun is always a good thing !

Apart from the special effect sounds the device works best when it's supplementing the guitar tone. Think of clean picking with added strings or distorted tones backed up with a nasty synth or things like that. That works great. Most demos are focusing on the pure synth sound and this is, well, a pure synth sound. Nothing new or fancy there.

I don't think that you can replace a synth player with just a guitar and the SY-300. And that's ok as that not the purpose of the device.

Maybe I should explain the signal chain a bit more.

The part before the KPA input is only needed by the SY-300 to analyse the signal and calculate the notes to play. It needs a pure guitar signal for this. The signal itself is passed absolutely unaltered to the input of the KPA. You can even turn the SY-300 off and it will make no difference for the KPA.

The main out of the SY-300 is fed to the return of the KPA. This way the synth is always available whenever you insert an effect loop block in the KPA. The SY-300 is still playing in the background even if the loop is not used but this doesn't matter at all for the KPA. I used the 'loop distortion' because it always has 100% mix and no parameters. You can also use the other loop types but this one is the most simple one to use.

The KPA send is fed to the return of the SY-300 because the SY-300 can internally mix the signal at the return jack with it's synth signal. Technically this path is not needed at all if you want to do the mixing inside the KPA (eg with a mono loop). But I like to mix inside the SY-300 because it has several effect blocks with nice effects (ME-70 quality). These can be used for the guitar signal as well and if you turn off the synth voices then you can use the SY-300 like every other external effects unit.

Quote from Ingolf

Care to share your signal chain, @Rome ?

There are actually two signal chains in my setup:

Guitar -> SY Input -> SY Thru -> KPA input
KPA send -> SY return -> SY main out R -> KPA return

This way the KPA works as usual when the SY is not in use. When I want to play the sounds from the SY-300 then I just add a 'loop distortion' to a rig in the X slot of the KPA. Now the synth and guitar sounds are mixed inside the SY.

Welcome to the world of sonic madness. I use the SY-300 together with the KPA for several months now and I really love it.

Quote from paults

Yes, it can

It works great with the SY-300 too.

Too bad that the expression pedals and control switches of the KPA remote can't be routed to external gear like the SY-300. This would be the last step to sonic heaven to me.

I don't think that anyone expects the extreme quality of expensive stand alone effects.

Quote from SpinnerDeluxe

Now for the funny part: as long as YOU will switch between those tracks and KNOWING which is which, you will clearly hear that BIG difference. If somebody else will randomly switch between A and B (blind A/B-ing) you will get lost more often than you liked to. Things are getting even worse when some decent audio engineer will do some EQ-ing on both tracks to fit a song better or to match them better.

That is not the point. The point is that many of the effects are just very limited. Take the tremolo. It sounds good for what is does but it's editing abilities are almost non existent. Due to it's very soft wave form it is only usable for some subtle vintage stuff and fails utterly when trying to create (modern) rhythmic stuff (think Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"). Same goes for the other modulation effects, reverbs and delays. They sound great for what they do but if you want something special then you are going to hit a brick wall very soon and have to use external gear of some kind.

The problem is that many effects are still on a level that work very well in an analog synth emulation and that is ok as this is where Kemper is coming from. It was a wise decision to focus on the profiling side first and just reuse the effects they've already got.

But Kemper is already addressing this. The guitar specific effects like distortions, pitch and wah are already very good and at a state where most issues just boil down to a matter of taste, not overall quality. The reverbs and delays are in the works and what we've heard so far sounds very promising. I'm pretty sure that on the long run the modulation effects will get an overhaul as well (hopefully before V6.0).

Quote from G String

enlighten me: how can a delay sound flat and in which way do you expect a room? for sure, a delay can sound colored and have more or less character but that's certainly not what you describe

Just try to hook up your guitar in a modern Boss digital delay and then hook it up to a Strymon Dig afterwards. You'll clearly hear the difference even with identical settings. Both are simple digital delays but the Strymon sounds richer, way more expensive for a lack of a better word. It's really hard to tell what the Strymon does differently.

Maybe this could be addressed with the modulation functionality in the KPA's delay. But currently the modulation is just a on/off settings that misses all the important parameters for me (depth, mix, speed, waveform, envelopes, filter etc) . I turn the modulation off every time because it sounds really cheap to me in it's current state.

Soo schlimm finde ich das in der Praxis aber auch nicht. Bei den meisten Rigs fällt der Klangunterschied gar nicht auf und über eine Gitarrenbox erst recht nicht. Zum Jammen und Üben reicht das wirklich dicke.

Zum Loopen auf der Bühne würde ich mir eh einen "richtigen" Looper kaufen, alleine schon weil man da immer direkten Zugriff auf alle wichtigen Funktionen hat. Das Problem dabei ist, dass man ihn entweder in den Loop packen muss, wobei dann wieder die angesprochenen Probleme entstehen, oder man muss ihn hinter den Kemper in den Signalweg packen. Dann wird es aber kompliziert, wenn man zum Beispiel eine Gitarrenbox am Monitor-Out hat und den Main-Out zur PA schicken möchte.

Bei mir ändert sich definitiv der Sound, wenn ich während des Loopens das Rig umschalte obwohl der Looper auf Post steht.

Ganz einfacher Test bei mir: Loop mit hellem Gitarrensound einspielen, zu einem dumpfen Sound wechseln und dort Cabinet an/aus schalten während der Looper läuft. Das ergibt hier einen drastischen Soundunterschied. Schalte ich den Cabinet-Block aus und locke diese Einstellung dann ändert sich auch der Looper-Sound beim Rigwechsel nicht mehr.

Vielleicht hat das etwas mit unterschiedlichen Konfigurationen zu tun. Ich nutze als Monitor einen Gitarrenspeaker und habe deshalb 'Monitor Cab Off' eingestellt während die Cabs in den Rigs an sind. In dieser Konfiguration scheint der Looper direkt vor dem Speaker-Simulator zu liegen.