Posts by jpoelmans

1) well, as you probably know, your guitar speaker acts as a sort of low-pass filter for the sound your amp produces. Most modelers emulate the speakers frequency response already. So if you amplify your modelers output, and use a guitar cab, you would "filter" the sound twice, which may sound cool, but does not reproduce the originally intended sound. using a normal PA speaker (or in guitar terms FRFR) your sound is only filtered once through the modelers cab emulation, and the PA speaker is flat. Or you would use a real guitar cab and disable your modelers cab emulation. That may be a valid choice but omits some advantages of modeling (more on that later)

2) didn't read that, but a thing to be aware of is that in cheap-ass speakers the crossover point at 1kHz or so between mid-low driver and horn is very critical. If your speaker is designed badly that frequency range is very harsh. Maybe they meant this?

3) brrrrrrrr, stay away from this. if you would take an impulse response from the DEQ + cab (hmmm work intensive...), Kemper would probably be able to pull this, BUT you are misusing your gear, trying to let a guitar cab reproduce things it isn't designed for, using extreme EQ settings, and therefore extreme phase anomalies. Correcting in the frequency domain leads to problems in the time domain and vice versa, and can mess with your available amp power.

To get back that 'more on that later' thing: In my experience as FOH tech, the big advantage of a modeler is that you can go straight into FOH with your line-outs, which gives you less stage noise from loud amps, and a clearer sound (no bleed from the drums into the guitar cab mic). Both make it easier to get a good FOH sound without ear-bleeding noise levels (and thats what we get paid for). In an ideal situation the only one allowed to make noise on stage is the drummer, there are only in-ears and no amps or speakers on stage. You can ask yourself why you would bother with a cab? FOH can deliver my guitar through the monitor mix? But there are many people who want to let their guitar feedback, or don't use a PA (some bands just put vocals through PA). Then a cab may prove handy. That just leaves the question: FRFR or guitar? Depends on what you'll like, but with FRFR you can choose the guitar cab your modeler emulates on the spot, with a physical guitar cab, you're stuck with that cab, but you have the sound of a real cab instead of a miced cab...

Hmm, been jacking of at this gear-p0rn thread for too long, here are my girls

Hey Robrecht, exactly my problem: powered Kemper, and between the power amp and the Kemper's brains there is no method of attenuating the signal. My power amp boost is set to 0dB. If I would use an active speaker I could turn down the gain on the active amp, but it's passive and passive pads are a pain in the ass, emit loads of heat and are expensive...

Today I was thinking, a simple padding option for monitor out could be a solution, but then again, the headphones out has the same problem: right now, with my Sennheiser HD-25 connected it's at -25dB, and that's already on the loud side for everyday practice (I'm concerned about my hearing).Usualy I'm just below -30dB. And as you noted, in that range and below the volume controls become more and more sensitive. But the headphone didn't really bother me, it always felt like 'set and forget', as I have not to adapt to people walking in and out of the house...

So, like there's a -12 pad option for master out, there could be just an extra page, setting variable padding for each output, at least power amp and headphones out. That, or they'll have to find a solution for the sensitivity of the volume encoders, both master volume and separate channels. Maybe I'll lose some bit depth, and an analog gain is not available in the hardware, but I don't care, I'm losing those bits right now at -30dB too...

It is nice indeed.

Bit still, I'm a little disappointed with the master's volume sensitivity: Try to adjust your monitor volume at -40dB with 1-2 dB increments or so, preferably between 2 licks in a song (common home practicing situation, for me at least). That was already nearly impossible, with the new firmware it's worse. Hint: my master volume at 0.3 (!!) equals -40dB. I'm using a 1x12" coaxial DIY cab (I believe it was a Beyma 12XA30Nd in there), so nothing really exotic.

When I play through my cab I feel like I have a full Marshall stack in my living room, and have to put my amps master between 0 and 0.3 (out of 10.0) as not to annoy my wife and daughter. Kind of voids that advantage of modeling... Lucky there's a headphone out...

Is it so darn difficult to have a padding function or something else, so I can adjust 10.0 at the master at something reasonable like -30dB-my-wife-is-happy instead of 0dB-I-will-rip-your-frigging-head-of-and-destroy-your-marriage, and have some useful range on my master volume? Or are you telling me I have to put dummy loads in my cab, really, on a modeler, with FRFR?!!

Quote from Da Vinci

BTW; is it possible to use the XLR and jack outputs on the master output section at the same time? For example to go stereo to FOH with XLR and go sterio to my own mixer for IEM?

Don't know for sure, but you can always make a Y split. Just be sure to keep things balanced, ans that your IEM input can handle phantom at its input. Or always use a DI going to FOH. Why bother with Phantom power: a simple mistake of the FOH engineer can put 48V on your kempers output. It should be able to handle it, but nog when you compromised the balancing in your cabling....

Quote from Hurricane

You're right that's a lack (however a "luxary problem"). I posted a thread in the "feature request". Maybe you can support it

I suspect that would be impossible, because, well, only one DA converter is driving the monitor out. But you could set the direct out to output "Master mono" too. That way you direct out will give you a IEM signal, and the monitor out (on your powered Kemper?) can drive a cab, with "Monitor cab off" checked.

Never mind, you already suggested that in your OP

Hmmm, Is it me or...

Before the 5.2 firmware your master volumes links would retain it's relative volumes: if you would set your master at 10, and monitor out (linked off course) to -30dB, and then sweet your master pot to 0 and back to 10, it would come out higher on the monitor out volume: lets say -20dB. That was fixed in 5.2: if 10 would equal -30, it would keep being -30...

Right now in 5.3, after a sweep of the master knob my monitor out will be 0dB!!! so -30 is somewhere at 0.7 on the master pot!

I'm using my monitor out of my powered Kemper for playing through an FRFR cab at home, with a 4,5 year old kid who loves to fiddle knobs when she doesn't get her ways, so this will eventually result in very loud mishaps

On top of that: something that always annoyed me with the master volume: it's pretty sensitive: if you want to make a 3dB adjustment you have to be darn careful not to overdo it... Offcourse, if you want -infinite to 0dB adjustment in the usual potmeter travel, that's natural, but that's why I would set my master at 10, monitor output at -30dB: that would theoretically allow for finer adjustments within the -50 to -30 range (home volumes in my situation), but somehow that doesn't work.

Coming from a soundtechs perspective: If I was your tech, and you would be using IEM + a cab onstage, i would probably be nagging during the whole setup and teardown about you leaving your cab home

Reason for that is that any on-stage-soundsource blurs the FOH mix. So if you are not listening to the cab (using IEM instead), then the cab has to go. Offcourse, during another, smaller show you could wire it all diferently and use the cab, in the absence of a FOH tech, and have the whole band playing in perfect balance on the backline... Or are you switching IEM/cab within one show?

On top of that, one thing to consider with a FOH mix is that it is very venue-dependant. That mix is there to amplify wat is to be amplified, and if your bass player puts his amp to 11, and your drummer goes all gonzo, I won't have any of those 2 in my FOH mix: they are loud enough as they are... In a bar for sure. In a large venue, offcourse that will matter a little less and your mental drummer will be going through FOH nonetheless. And yes, I'm exgagerating the 11 and gonzo part, I mean, in small venues I wont be amping soundsources which are allready loud enough on the backline. Your FOH can offcourse deliver you a seperate FOH mix, which is constant, but thats called a monitor mix .

But hey, you can still leave the guitar out of that monitor mix: I knew a keyboard player who looped his keyboards through the DI's (leading to FOH) to his own personal mixer, were he mixed his keys together with a monitor mix without keys (coming from FOH), so he had exactly what you're after, but in stereo...

Doe the profiler show up in rig manager? I experienced this too, from the moment I own a USB-C MacBook Pro, it sometimes refused to talk to my Kemper: There profiler just won't show up in Rig Manager. A reboot of both devices later and all is well again...

I'm riding an Opel Vivaro, so waaaay more space for cabs than that Buick

Quote from Sunshine

You are painting with a wide brush here.
It should go without saying that noise pollution coming off the stage at high volumes is going to make the room sound like crap. On the flip side, having a well thought out and balanced mix before a mic ever approaches your cabinet is also a good idea.

Venues come in all shapes and sizes with different levels of PA support and quality. Even some bigger venues that have arrays of mains mounted above the stage have a dead area if you are standing right up against the stage. I have also played bars that have holes in the main's speaker cones. We never leave that much creativity up to FOH. We also play clubs that have in-house FOH guys, so they don't really give a crap in the end, anyways.

About that well balanced mix before a mic ever approaches your cab being a good idea, off course it is, and if that's the case all the PA needs to do is 'support' things. Even your monitors will be there to "support" things, and your stage volume will eventually be lower. But I've mixed more bands who suffer the 'more me syndrome' than those who successfully balance their mix on their amps, so you could get away with only have the singer on the PA. And offcourse, when there are holes in the cones, that's end of story

But then you have to think: how am I the most flexible? And that could mean you ditch the cab sometimes to go DI out to reduce stage volume, sometimes you'll use a cab to commit the crappy FOH situation. But If that cab is FRFR it'll be more consistent with your DI out sound.

[GAS-mode]Offcourse, that's theory I bring from being a sound tech. I'm a piano player too, and I feel that a grand resonates at you in a way a digital piano will never do. I sometimes tell people my Nord Stage sounds like a music box instead of a piano (but that's a difference a live audience will not hear due to microphone issues). But then sometimes, as a beginning guitar player I start wondering: will a real 4x12 inch cab make the same difference? Honestly, never tried it, but I'm tempted. But there are 2 things holding me back, first of all being the volume wars I've witnessed as a sound tech, but on the other hand: If I play for example Sultans of swing, I'll do that on a profile from a Twin Reverb, while surely for AC/DC I want a super lead profile. I can't have both a 4x12 closed back cab and a 1x12 open back cab connected to the Kemper (or I'll need to switch the cables), but I can have both studio profiles loaded into the Kemper and use FRFR. That's like: do I bring a real hammond+leslie and a grand piano, or do I just bring my Nord Stage? Or do I ditch the hammond in favor of the grand? Off course the difference between a hammond and a grand is bigger than the difference between a grand piano and a Nord stage, not to say a hammond an a grand don't fit my car (and are heavy), so I bring the Nord Stage :D. BUT: 2 guitar amps DO fit in my car! The question here is: is the difference between FRFR and a real cab bigger than the difference between a profile from a clean open back 1x12 and that of a profile of a clean 4x12 cab.

So much gear to buy... must... resist... :D[/GAS-mode]

Quote from timowens

I guess I'm old school, to me guitars into a FRFR monitor are like digital drums, they can sound fantastic in a recording but in a live situation they simply don't sound like real drums, they sound like a recording. I learned this lesson in my last classic rock band where I was running the KPA and a CLR while the other guitar player was running a real amp. After I switched to merged profiles and a real guitar cab our sounds out front were much more equal (before that he was kicking my butt).

The you have to wonder if your live situation is becoming a recording or not. If you manage to play live, without extra amplification from the FoH system, you might be right.

But from the moment you need a mic in front of a cab, going through the PA to be heard, all of the ear-candy from using a cab on stage is lost to your audience. stage noise and mic bleed aren't a FoH engineer's best friends, and those effects are bigger as opposed to the 'amp in the room sound'...

In the end it's a sin to have a 4x12 cab causing havoc on stage and blurring the FOH sound, and it's mike being placed in the wrong place or picking up the drums. At one point or another in your career your sound tech will be nagging about using in ear and some sort of Kemper/Axe/Helix, just because he wants the best sound for the crowd. Believe me, even an Axe FX sounds more direct than a real Diesel VH4 with mike, from an audience point of view.

If you give in to this nagging, it won't matter how the profile is made or how cab and amp are separated, as long as the end result sounds good.

The only exception is with bands who play smaller clubs, and are very disciplined in their relative volumes, so they can perform with only the singer through the PA. I mean, a drummer that adapts to the acoustic piano's volume, and the rest refraining from the "more me syndrome"... They exist, have seen one only once in my life Their guitar player could be choosing a real cab without a mike over a merged profile.

Well, ideally you would not use a cab (FRFR or guitar) and run your Kemper straight into the desk and use in-ears: your FOH soundguy will smile ear-to-ear

If you should choose a powered Kemper for flexibility reasons (which I did because I had a coaxial 12 inch driver lying around which I put into a diy FRFR cab beneath the Kemper, just for practicing at home), I would not worry too much about amp quality: most solid state amps are not much different in the end. You get a high powered, lightweight and small integrated amp for only 500 euro. Only Behringer and the likes can compete

Quote from db9091

Most of the new music will be done from loops, editors, plugin transpositions, crafted synths, etc. And when they need a "live" musician with actual "skill", robots will take those jobs. And it will only take 1 robot to do the orchestra because it will all be midi -> triggered wav files. Maybe they'll have holograms of seeming live players. And we won't be going out to see it. Just like I get my shit off Amazon now, rather than drive to an actual store, this will be wirelessly transmitted to your living room.

Will be done? No, I'm afraid we are already there for a large part. Look at the now-so-popular dance scene, today we have things like Tomorrowland were all the bigger producers (David Guetta, Steve Aoki, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, to name a few) perform, just by playing a DJ set, which is often pre-recorded. Also, many of the top-40 radio hits are spinoffs of the electronic genre and are produced entirely on a computer.

Not that there is anything wrong with EDM or other dance music (in the end there is no such thing as bad music, only misunderstood music). But I started wondering, if there is such a thing as bass, rhythm and lead guitar in a rockband, why don't you do bass, rhythm and lead keys, and perform electronic music live? It's possible, look at Netsky... But I'm afraid that I know the answer: most of the audience doesn't bother, let alone that they would apreciate the hard work involved with being a good musician. They just want fancy light shows and decoration (compare woodstock's stage in 69 to that of tomorrowland today)

And in the end, it's not just electronic music which is to blame. Through the decades of pop culture, tape-acts, singers playbacking, unconnected keyboards on stage, where always amongst mainstream music acts. They just didn't make it to the music festivals until recent years.

But does that mean guitar is dead? Meh, actually I don't care, every kind of music has it's place, most important thing is you are enjoying yourself. I'm a DJ myself, and had the luck to have stood in front of 3000 people once in a while, tons of 500+ gigs, blah blah blah. But few years ago, I had the urge to buy a guitar: By the time I really master this guitar-playing thing I will probably play in an old-people blues band in a small bar of 50 people or so. Guess what: I'm looking forward to this. If this was a popularity contest I would have stayed with my turntables. It's about the fun of learning something new and the ability to express yourself with improvising, and bends, slides, hammers, pulloffs, and god knows what you can do with a guitar.

The only real advantage you'll get is that the tone you get from the kemper will be more "constant" in Live situations where you feed the outputs directly to FOH. I always found live miced cabs sound kind of dull between all the other noise which is acoustically made and leaking into the cabs mic. When your ever get the chance to mix a band which has 2 guitars, one on a real amp with a miced cab, and another on some kind of modeler, you will discover that there is no way the miced real cab will sonically compete with the modeller, the last one will sound much brighter and lively.

So in short, yes, definitely try your kemper in rehearsal. Paired with the right cases you'll even be able to cary all your gear in one walk from the car to the rehearsal room But don't bother too much for CLR's or other kinds of expensive FRFR stuff, which is an expensive term invented by guitarists to say they have bought a fullrange PA speaker or wedge to use under their modeler :D. You probably already have some kind of full range speakers and a mixer at hand in your rehearsal room to amplify the singer, maybe even keyboards? use that one. When playing live you'll get foldback from the monitor mix, or just drag one of those fullrange speakers from rehearsal to the stage

But off course, all starts with a good tone in the rehearsal room, and even with your kemper, you must find out why your tone sucks and work on this. That knowledge will serve you both with the real amp and with the kemper. There's na magic pill with buying gear, as you've said, your fellow guitar player manages to get good tone out of cheap gear...

Very technical explanation: A solid state amp is always advertised in sine RMS ratings, with a relatively low "crest factor" (3dB), meaning the amp can't produce more voltage before it clips. Given that you're playing music through an amp, the crest factor of that music will be 6dB to 12dB (6dB tends to the heavy metal side of music, classical music goes even beyond 12dB). That 3dB extra will mean twice the power. So, when a speaker is rated 300W RMS (meaning the voice coil will melt), an amp rated 600W, playing music, will not be melting the voice coil. That's why everyone recommends to use an amp rated twice the power rating of your speaker, to get the most out of your speaker.

Offcourse you have to be careful not to clip the amp, as your sine waves will slowly transform to PWM, and your crest factor will creep to 0 dB (offcoure, 0dB will never be reached unless you are deaf ;)) Also, when using a passive crossover, all the high frequency harmonics introduced through this clipping will flow to the lower powered tweeter. Some speakers have a light bulb in series with the tweeter to act as a sort of passive power limiter (this works quite well!), if you don't: POP, goes my heart tweeter... Thats why, in larger PA systems, properly set limiters are crucial, and when that criterium is met, some audio engineers even go 4x the speaker power on the amp...

Also, this story is not true for tube amps. Why? dunno, no technical experience with it, but I think hangs together with the beautiful way they distort: that beauty comes with harmonics and extra power output (all tough with harmonic distortion). A solid state amp is just limited by it's voltage rails in terms of what it is able to output.

More musical explanation of all this: a solid state amps rating is for when you are playing fffff, without any rests, without decay. But in reality you will not always be playing fffff, there will be rests, and a guitar sound decays... With some genres (metal) thats a minimal effect, with other a very large effect (classical). But 3dB difference will allways be there...

Offcourse you can. I did exactly that with mine. If I remember correctly I used Rig Manager to delete em all at once...

Quote from paults

The band that played before us last nght played Johnny Be Goode, and I duckwalked the solo in Hands To Yourself.

When I was in High School (or shortly after that), I subbed with a band for a few weeks while their regular guitarist was recuperating from an illness (they were all much older). It was the kind of band where everyone had a big, fat book of lead sheets, and the band leader would call out the song number, and you would quickly turn to that page, and play the song. Standards, Country, Ballads, Pop songs, etc. We went "off book" once. The leader turned to me on stage one night, and said " We've had a request for Johnny Be Goode. You will be singing it. Select a key." Unlike all the other songs, it was expected that any guitarist would know how to play it, as well as sing it.

Thanks Chuck - we would all have learned to play some other instrument, if not for you.

strange thing about this is that Johny B Goode is one of the first songs i really wanted to be able to play on a guitar. Now, after 2 years and a half after picking up a guitar and starting to play, yesterday i finally nailed "Johny B Goode" at the orginal tempo. Only to learn today that at exactly that day the master himself died... That feels strange, thats for sure...

RIP Chuck, and I hope your legacy will continue to inspire a lot of new talent to come...

Hmm, intereting read, but I have some thoughts:
* you are looking at the peak level reading, but its my understanding the RMS value is more important when it comes to loudness
* surely, playing a big open E major chord isnt the best way to compare a clean and a heavy distorted signal in terms of loudness. Be aware that a distorted amp acts as a compressor, and the more distorted you play the more you lean toward monophonic playing (=less input volume). So not sure what you would be achieving in a real world scenario, when you would for example play a solo on a clean patch...
* Also, sending the soundtech the loudest patch you have for setting trims has a pitfall: If the sound engineer tends to trim that patch to "0dB", he will find himself pushing your average "playing rythm in the carpet" patch to +6dB or more, finding himself to be unable to lift your volume when you would solo using that same rythm patch (been there, done that). Better to set 0dB on an average patch, and then double check you digital console's input isn't clipping at +18dB on that very loud patch.
* Also, sometimes you have lead, sometimes you have not. Offcourse you can control this volume difference with a pure booster or something else
* you're talking abot EQ as if it were part of your tone, and it sure is, but it's also a way to balance the mix: you would cut the guitar in de 1-2k region to make place for the vocals, and so on. So your ideal tone as a solo instrument isn't necesarily your ideal tone in a band.

In the end there are too many variables. What counts is that as a band, you are able to play in balance. The sound engineer should, in theory, be able to go home after soundcheck. So, set your patches that during rehearsal everything sounds as it should on the master. Be not afraid to judge the volume of a different bandmember. Ask someone else to listen in. Record the whole thing and listen to it without changing the mixdown volumes: where do you need more volume, where do you need less? My opinion is that thats the only real foolproof method to take into account all of the above?