Another thing that drew me to Kemper initially is - I'm old fashioned - I like twisting knobs - and the studio is nearest to a conventional amp ergonomically. I did twist a mouse once but it broke.
Posts by paddyc
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Display MoreI just returned the QC after three weeks. I SO wanted to love!. The KPA generation 1 in my opinion is a superior product and has more power and versatility where it counts.
Pros: the captures and such sounded great, not better than kpa profiles. I like the touch screen for naming things. I like how it took so little room on my desk and could fit in my computer book bag. That's about it. Can function as an interface. But, I already own an interface that I leave on in my office while working, would never want to leave my kpa or QC left on all day so I can use it to listen to music through my studio monitors.
Cons:
1) Dual amps is cool, but I couldn't find a combo I'd prefer to any single amp, so what's the point of adding the complexity for editing sake?
2) No volume compensation. The supposed time saved with a touch screen? I forgot how much I hated compensating volume after making minor gain adjustments; wasted so much time. Set up some scenes with different gain stages, then realize that overall it's too loud compared to other presets. back and forth, back and forth adjust, adjust, compare, hit save, repeat...... Oh wait, I could just adjust the overall volume by adding a EQ effect at end of chain, darn not enough DSP.
3) No dual delays. You NEED to set up a parallel path to merely have a 1/4 and 1/8 dotted delay. Delays in general were quite limited compared to KPA. The kpa delays come with so much complexity that I personally never need two at the same moment in time anyway; with spillover in the delay slot, there's no need to cram additional delays in the same Rig for other songs or parts of songs; just copy paste the rig and add a different delay.
4) No effect presets. You can only set the default for an effect type. Huge waste of time.
5) No ducking anything. I use ducking delays and even a little ducking on more ambient reverb all the time, cuts down on tap dancing. KPA has ducking on all delays, reverbs, mods, pitch, etc.
6) No editor: the touch screen speeds some things up, but then it's on the floor, whereas the iPad/iphone app for the kpa takes a moment to turn on.
7) Not enough foot switches, which are too close together btw. You have to use Scenes since there's an audio gap and no spillover between presets. But it's cumbersome to get to another preset; getting back to preset mode requires stepping on two switches, and then hit them together again to get back to Scene mode. BTW the footswitches make this irritating scratchy sound when pressed. The KPA's front row of switches are closer to the ground requiring less foot raising and easier access to the second row as well. No dedicated tuner button on the QC, I kept screwing up the bpm trying to access the tuner.
7) a vulgar exaggeration of power. I ran out of DSP using a compressor, 1 OD, two captures, an EQ, two delays (necessary because they don't have a dual delay model) and a reverb! I had to turn off the global EQ! And yes I correctly spread everything out among two sections to utilize all of its DSP. Though the kpa only does one profile at time, I could do all of these other things on the kpa, only needing 1 delay module to do what QC needs two to do, add an extra OD model, add a couple mod effects, utilize the looper, transpose, a 2nd compressor via the amp block compression, no need to turn off the global eq! Even better I can do all this on the kpa and go to another rig without an audio gap and maintain spillover, unlike the QC.
The capture menu on the QC is an absolute mess. Even though I downloaded less than 100 amps+cabs, presets, and OD captures it was a total pain to find what I was looking for. Totally disorganized, unsearchable, stupid categories. Suppose you capture the amp and speaker of a Fender twin? This would go in one category. Then capture the Fender twin plugged into a physical separate guitar cabinet. This is supposed to go in another category! Even though they're both capturing an amplifier and a speaker! Create or worse download a bunch of captures and try and remember which ones are in which category! and then scroll down the whole list of each trying to find the one you are looking for.Holy cow.
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Display MoreI'm not struggling with anything. I don't care what is or isn't a 'game changer'. Especially when the people saying these things get paid by the number of views or units sold. It's marketing, and its pretty transparent.
What I'm struggling with is why anyone cares.
The reality is that Fractal existed in one form or another for 5 or 6 years before the Profiler. You can argue either side of that particular fence if you like. As far as game-changers go.....products like the AxSys in 1996, the FlexTones that followed and the Pods that followed created digital amps. Tom Scholz' Rockman was analog - but inarguably the first successful modeler and goes back to 1982. Most of Def Leppard's Hysteria album was recorded with one.
All that....and Kemper, as good as it still is came along in 2011 and remains unique in digital amps.
All this argument is about is what flavor is better. In other words - it's all preference. Just like music.
Equally I don't care whether you care or not. My original post wasn't personally directed to you or at you . Tonex is being marketed by shills on YT as a game changer. I tried it and was disappointed. That was my point. Take it or leave it.
If you think Tonex or QC works for you then happy days.
Perhaps we should leave it there.
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I see. Does everything that even potentially competes with the Profiler need to be a game changer?
Sorry you are struggling with this.
When the QC was released it was hailed as a "game changer" by the Youtube shills.
The Tonex is now the new "gamechanger" according to the shills on youtube.
These offer alternative form and perhaps differences in functionality, but they do not change the game.
The only gamechanger was actually the Kemper, as nothing like it existed before it's release.
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It isn't a game changer for me, and the fact that it has taken several companies 11 years to catch up to Kemper speaks volumes.
Thank you! You get it. lol
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*shrug*
They don't need to be.
Jeez. Ok dude.
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I ignored the 'promises' - delivered on or not. If someone spent two-grand on a promise, that's their problem. It's their first hardware product, ever.
It happens. It's not like Neural DSP promised and then said "Oh.....we're never doing that." It's taking longer than anyone thought. Like.....uhm.....RIg Manager. We got a sneak peak of a working application at NAMM....and then it was a year before anyone saw it for real.Of course there will be problems. Remember the release of the Stage? Kemper had all kinds of quality-control issues and pissed a fair number of people off.
Let's not pretend Kemper has never had a misfire.
lol, ok. But neither of these boxes are a game changer.
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This is off-topic, but still relevant to this discussion. Saying "what happened there" implies that the QC is a failure of some sort. It isn't. Not even close.
Reading elsewhere it's clear to me QC over promised and under delivered.
Kemper under promised and has overdelivered - compare the constant free updates since inception.
I just think this "game changer" expression is flogged to death by the YT shills. YMMV
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I tried the freeby version of Tonex. Of the 20 amps, only found 1 amp I think I'd use, then dialled in a better equivalent on my Kemper in about 1 minute.
QC was hailed as a game changer, look what happened there.
Tonex is the new "game changer". It beats pedals like the iridium I would think, but it's limitations mean it's nowhere near a game changer for pro use imo.
6 months time a new "game changer" will be out
Kemper will keep doing it's thing.
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We drive on the left as most of the pubs are built that side.
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Thanks donlp1. I did like the Tonex here, but they are both different, both usable. You might have saved me some money here
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I will qualify to say I am a hobbyist and not pro musician.
I've tried the Tonex software quite a bit in the last few days. To be honest I am less than impressed. The UI to me is frustrating and fiddly. 90% of the sounds on the free tone net are to me harsh and not fun to play, perhaps a greater percentage of the factory presets seem to me to be the same.
My favourite sounds are driven Plexi Marshall ala ACDC and clean but not sparkly Fender sounds for clean rhythm with a bit of spring reverb.
I do think Kemper is a champion at both these sorts of sounds.
Tonight I tried using the Kemper with some favourite Marshall sounds sending out to my DAW whilst I also got the Kemper to output a DI signal at the same time. Of course my Kemper stage sounded great with the addition of a bit of the inbuilt natural reverb provided by Kemper,
I then applied Tonex software to the DI track which of course was exactly as played by the Kemper track as they had been simultaneously recorded and tried some of the best Tonex Marshall captures I had collected over the last few days.
Nope could not get the software to sound as good as the processed Kemper track. To me in comparison Tonex lacked body, harmonic complexity and sounded harsher and for want of a better word less amplike and saggy. The Kemper track was a bit more low passed but I think that's realistic given the frequency response of a guitar cab. The Tonex software seems to me to tend to have harsher high frequency content, less bass and sound and feel stiffer to play.
I would rate the particular experiment I did 2/10 to Tonex and 9/10 to Kemper re sound quality in my opinion and how it sounded to me.
I paid for the software Tonex SE, but I don't think in retrospect it was a terribly useful purchase, sure there are some decent sounding clean and very gain captures (IMHO people might like them for the fizziness ). I don't think the Tonex stomps are all that much better than the existing modelled AT5 stomps eg the stellar Mudhoney stomp in Amplitube 5. Some of the free Tonex Klon stomps with high downloads are not not too bad though.
I found it was very difficult to do a Tonex capture of my Kemper, routing my Steinberg UR 44 was a nightmare, I did not succeed as I wanted to try some Tonex captures of one or two of my Kemper profiles. Just trying to figure out the routing of my UR44 and Kemper ins and outs was testing to say the least.
I was going to buy a Radial reamp box to capture some of my few amps in Tonex, but now I don't think I'll bother, I'll let others tear their hair out and the few good captures I can find I will gratefully import into my Tonex software and use when I am too lazy to break out my Kemper.
I took great pleasure in deleting all the IK presets in my TONex software that I don't own captures for, as I cannot stand the obnoxious hissing reminder IK kindly attached to all those presets. That was a relief and made browsing the presets section of the Tonex software not jarring as it was to me before.
There is a reason I have seen Kempers in many studios on Youtube, I think its place is secure. It is claimed by some on the internet that Kemper is not as accurate as QC and Tonex, however I think in terms of accuracy of the Kemper if that is even a problem then that is completely outweighed by the great tone and feel of the Kemper unit, and noting also the great build quality of the Kemper and the great support and updates and user community.
Thanks for the well thought out post. As with the QC, will be interesting to see how it pans out once the hype train slows.
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YouTube paid for mafia are salivating, this is better 😂
yep, they're gonna get a bit off mileage out of this. The QC kinda fizzled out.A lot of people were asking for similar, it is kinda basic as a box, but good to throw in a bag. I'd see it more for quick rehearsals than anything else.
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One other thought - is there another Kemper owner in your location you could perhaps get in touch with on social media? Might be a quick way to see if it is your unit at fault, if so find a workaround.
Best of luck either way
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Thanks bud, I'm still crying over having to sell my purple baby years ago. Can't wait to gives these a spin.
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Well, there is one more solution that could be taken from the world of chess ...
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bit old fashioned here - but as Hoki Toki mentioned above our drummer would tap us in with the sticks.
ps I
at giving the drummer a cheap metronome - careful they don't respond with a cheap tuner 
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Thanks! Can't wait to check these out
