Posts by soundtheory

Same here just for the record. I also had it freeze on me switching back and forth between favorites and non-favorites trying to fix it, though that only happened once

***SOLVED***

Hey everyone, just wanted to share an update, got the problem solved. First off, thanks to everyone for your help and advice, it's very much appreciated!

After a couple weeks of dealing with the Kemper and having so much trouble getting good tones that weren't extremely low end and boxy sounding I finally decided to send it back for a replacement. Since I've never played a Kemper before I had no point of comparison, but something just didnt seem right.

Sure enough the replacement arrived and it sounds totally different, exactly what I thought it should be! Basically on the damaged unit I had to do massive low end cuts to the EQ for it to even sound somewhat normal, and even then it didnt seem that great. Plugged this one in and a night and day difference. Sure glad I decided to send it back for a replacement! Now everything sounds amazing and I finally understand why everyone loves this unit so much!
I can only guess what was wrong with the other one, but clearly the powered speaker out had something wrong with it. Anyway, alls well that ends well, thanks everyone for your help along the way. It's funny to play this thing now that I have one that works correctly, holy crap does this sound good! I finally understand all the great things I've heard for all those years!

Hey everyone thanks so much for the advice! Let me see if I can answer some of these questions:

1. Pure Cab shouldnt make a difference if I have the cabinet block turned off, so am I sure I have the monitor cab off?

So I just powered it on to be doubly sure. What I have done is "locked" the "Cabinet" button to the off position for every profile, in addition in the Output menu I have "Monitor Cab Off" checkmarked. I assume that's all I would need to do? Even with all this off, turning on "pure cab" and setting it between 10 and 0 I hear tonal differences and it sounds best at zero. Should this not be the case?

2. I have tried the real amp side by side? Great question, so I do have a real Mesa Dual Recto and through the cab it sounds great, no booming muddy low end and no blanket over the cab type feel, sounds just like what you would expect. When I load a Dual Recto profile I get the muffled sound right away. To further test this I went ahead and profiled my actual amp, and this is where I got even more confused. By the time the profile was finished, the reference amp and the kemper amp sounded indistinguishable, so I went to save the finished profile. Once saved I loaded the profile, and boom, tons of low end and muffled as hell just like every other profile I load. So so weird.

3. Have I checked monitor output EQ for any weird bass boosts, etc? Monitor output EQ is set at all zeros

4. From Nordan's post you were just wondering if maybe I like my tones pretty bright and harsh compared to others. It's true that I like tight and focused low end and I've always liked a little more treble / presence than the average guitarist, however this is definitely beyond that. The profile tones I'm getting really sound like crap by anyone's standard, I've never heard anyone want to play with so much muddy low end and a really muffled kind of sound. Good question though.

I'm almost at the point where I'm convinced there's something wrong with it and it needs to be sent back, however I'll wait to hear your responses before I do. Thanks so much! Also just for the record I have done a factory reset of the settings, and even reloaded the OS to try to rule that out as a possibility. When I run the Kemper direct to my computer and listen through monitors it sounds fine, it's only when I send it to my cab that it sounds like this. Considering my cab sounds perfectly normal with a "real" amp, and the Kemper seems to record ok, I'm either missing something in the settings when it comes to the powered out line, or it's a defective unit. Thanks for any feedback!!

Hello everyone. I have posted on this before but wanted to follow up and get some advice. I bought a powered Kemper in the hopes of connecting it to an Orange 2x12 cab and get a close approximation to basically owning a bunch of amps I don't actually have. My hope was that I could get a Engl profile for example, either a direct version or one where I can disable the cab setting, and have my setup sound like I now own the real Engl. Now I knew it wouldnt be EXACTLY like having the real Engl amp, but everything I heard about the Kemper led me to believe that it would be pretty darn close, nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. So far that has not really been the case, and I'm wondering if my hopes were too high or maybe I'm just missing something. Here are my steps so far:

1. Upon my first powerup of the Kemper and getting the latest OS patch and the latest Rig Manager patch, I was highly underwhelmed with the sound of the profiles it came with. Clean profiles generally sound pretty good, high gain profiles however sounded very bassy, muddy, etc. The best way to describe it is it sounds like someone through a blanket over my cabinet. (and yes, I have all cabinet emulation turned off, even locked, for all profiles)

2. After much research and advice from the forums (thank you!) I started to make some progress. First I bought some high quality profiles from Michael Britt (Dual Recto), Andy James, Reamp Zone, etc. Now I have a nice selection of high gain amps from reputable sources. Next, I put a Graphic EQ in the "X" position of the chain and adding a low cut filter helped considerably with the out of control low end that every profile seems to have through my cabinet. From there I adjust the clarity and definition settings in the amp section, then finally adjust the EQs and Presence on the main amp screen. This improved the situation pretty dramatically and the difference of before and after is pretty night and day. However, the "blanket" over my cabinet sound has turned more into a "sheet". Progress, but not what I'm looking for.

3. Over the last few days I have found more options that have helped a bit. Turning off "Pure Cabinet" also helped make the sound a little more "alive" as opposed to stuck behind that sheet. Nevertheless, it's still there and just annoying enough to make me want to stick to my real amps instead of the Kemper.

With all that said here are my questions:

Is there anything else I can try or may have missed?

Is this all due to running this through an Orange Cab and not an FRFR? If so, what is the point of a powered Kemper if not to power "regular" guitar cabs?

I prefer the Axe Fx for recording, though I may give the Kemper a shot at recording and see if it's worth keeping based on that alone. However my goal was to have the Axe for recording and the Kemper for playing live in the room. So far, it's falling a little short in that area, and I'm wondering if it's just not ideal for what I'm trying to use it for? Again, clean profiles sound quite good, none of that muffled behind a blanket sound, it's all in the high gain profiles, which is sadly my main interest.

Thanks so much everyone for your help and feedback! It's much appreciated!

This tip may be kind of obvious but I should throw it in there:

Not all profiles are equal quality. If you are new to the kemper understand the profiling process has a lot to do with knowledge of the person doing it. Profile an amp with bad settings in a echo-y room and the results are going to be pretty sub par. Get a profile from a respected studio and it's likely to sound awesome. There are lots of great studios out there releasing profiles, just google "best metal kemper profiles" or blues or whatever you're into. After a short amount of research you'll find a lot of consensus on who out there is making great profiles.

Hey everyone, new here and still learning the Kemper. Long story short, when I first plugged it in I went through all the settings, turned off cab emulation since Im using a Mesa 2x12, and started playing. I was pretty underwhelmed. Everything sounded kind of muffled and distant for lack of better words. I wouldn't say it sounded "digital", but it didn't sound like a real amp to me either. I figured I had to be doing something wrong so I did some searching and found a post or two on this forum with similar concerns but no definitive solutions. In some cases people would just say "The Kemper is for recording, or to be played through FRFR speakers, it will never sound right through a regular guitar cab". Since I bought a powered Kemper specifically to play through my Mesa 2x12 this came as disappointing news, but I wasnt ready to give up. With all that said, I found what I was missing and what helped me get really great tone through my cab! For anyone with this issue now, or in the future, I hope this post will help!

1. First things first, be sure to disable the Cabinet emulation on the Kemper. There's probably two or three different ways to do this but for me I just turned off the cabinet on one profile and then used the lock function to make sure it stays off. That way any time you load new profiles you wont have to mess with it.

2. You need to get a sense of your cabinet's characteristics. For instance to my ears the Mesa 2x12 is low end heavy with more than the average mid range. So anytime I download a new profile I pretty much just expect to have to lower bass and mids a little bit before I start judging whether or not I like the profile. Of course this is subjective, but just use your ears. This made a HUGE difference in how I felt about the sound of the kemper through my cabinet, and those adjustments can be routine for you as you bring in new profiles to save some time getting a desired tone.

3. This one is also a big one, especially if you are into high gain profiles: In the "Input" menu there is a setting for "Distortion Sensitivity". This seems to go a long way toward adjusting the profile to meet your specific guitar. I was using an 8 string with Nazgul pickups which are pretty low output by modern metal standards. An increase to the Distortion Sens of 5.7db made the Kemper completely come to life. No more boxy, distant sound, that adjustment really changed everything.

4. Be aware that since you are using your own cabinet, the only tonal difference you can expect to hear from profile to profile is the characteristics of the amp! What I mean by that is the cabinet is at least 50% of the tone of an amp/cab stack, maybe more. So if I put on a Randall Satan profile, and then switch to a Bogner Uberschall, Im hearing both through the same cabinet and therefore there isn't going to be this massive tonal difference. You will hear the difference for sure, but it may not be as much as you expect! I think this is an important distinction because if you listen to sound samples of a Satan on Youtube and then an Uberschall you'll think there's a pretty huge difference between the tonal characteristics of the two, but you have to remember that those two youtube clips almost certainly were using difference cabs, and that makes a huge difference. Just something to keep in mind if you feel like many of the high gain profiles sound pretty similar.

5. Speaking of cabinets. One thing that can really help finding a profile you like will be to find a profile that was made using the same cab you are using. I have tons of profiles so far I really like that did not use a Mesa 2x12 when profiled, but the ones that did typically sound really good with me making very few adjustments because they profiled it with the same cab Im using.

6. If you download a profile, especially one you paid for, and dont like the sound of it, don't give up on it easily! I have found some profiles I really hoped I would like but didnt at all until I did the proper adjustments to EQ, Clarity, Definition, etc. in the amp menu. Once I was done and shaped the tone around my Mesa cab they sounded awesome.

Anyway, I hope that helps anyone that finds this post and is having similar problems. If anyone else has any other ideas to add please do! And if I find more tips as I learn the Kemper I'll add them here

Thanks for the reply, very informative! So I did talk to Mesa and they said unfortuantely it's a better question for Kemper since they can give me a better idea about the kemper's output wattage and all that. I have not heard back from Kemper yet. I did notice however that in the output menu you can see what appears to be a bar measurement that shows wattage and it increases as you raise the volume? Looks like it's pretty loud before it gets to 150watts, so I'm assuming for the time being that so long as I keep it at or under 150 I should be fine. Also BTW it's running at 8 ohms into a Mesa 2x12 cab. Thanks!

Just emailed them, I'll let you know if I get an answer. Thanks!

Second that, just know that a "regular" unpowered cabinet is the only thing you would need the powered kemper for. So if you have a 2x12 mesa cab sitting around for instance that you want to use, the powered kemper would be needed. Otherwise the unpowered kemper would do everything you talked about

I saw a post from a couple years back asking this question but there were no responses. Do you all think it's safe to run the powered kemper into a amp/cab switcher? The reason I ask is because the switcher (Mesa Head-Track) says "150 watt maximum" and the Kemper is like 600 watts. I think the switcher might be referring to a powered tube amp and the kemper doesnt quite count, but when it comes to this stuff I am not knowledgable at all. I have tried it, seems to work just fine, but for all I know I'm slowly burning some circuitry somewhere. Any feedback is appreciated, thanks!

Nevermind I think I got it, but for future reference in case anyone wants to try this:

Run a cable from the Kemper monitor out to the Axe FX Return. Make an Axe patch that is blank other than an FX Loop Block. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Hello all, sorry if this has been covered already, I did a search and didnt find anything that really answered my question. With that said, can someone help me figure out the simplest/best way to record my Kemper when I'm using an Axe II as an interface? I assume I can just run a cable from the Kemper Out into the back of the Axe. However I could use some advice on how to set that up. Also I assume I'd need an Axe patch set up that is just a straight line with no effects going through? That's where I start to get a little fuzzy on the whole thing. I do have a focusrite which would probably be simpler, but don't especially want two interfaces unless it's necessary. Thanks so much!