Room effects on profiles

The KPA doesn´t capture any reverb tails which is the same story as with other short IRs. The only effect will be how the EQ curve of the miking will change the sound when increasing the distance from the mic to the speaker. The proximity effect will be reduced and you will loose bass and treble. According to the structure and sonic fingerprint of the room you will change the sound of the KPA profile tonally. Imo it is important to be precise about what room sound means, Reverb or tonal impact.

During a profile I accidently bumped and made a loud <kerrang> sound with a metal object. That sound was played back as if it was in a loop embedded into the profile. But I don't need that example to know...room is a HUGE factor in sound quality

Yes the room can have a effect on a profile

but not of any real significance just like temperature and humidity might have on a profile.

Even if the room is not captured by its length, all room reflections - and their typical overlaps and cancelations, that create a characteristic frequency responce - are captured in the profile.
When mic's are close to the speaker (< 30cm), the room can be neglegted, IMO.

There might be a misunderstanding about the term "amp in the room".
Created by the web community of digital amps, it's the term for listening to a cabinet by ears without microphones.

To get close to that "in the room" sound you need reverb with it's own frequency response, ideally something like a convolution reverb. I'd love to have such a thing in the Kemper, right now there's just the "room" effect and the normal reverb which is just attenuated/filtered, plus you may need it for spring verb so it's out of the question. So right now I use my DAW's reverbs to bring that sense of natural space/air back in to the mix. If you listen to older recordings there's a hell of a lot of room sound on record even if they aren't awash with long tail reverb, and that's the tone I tend to like.

Also you can record with a mic in the control room so you can add a track with a little bit of guitar strings being hit/human sounds in there, just be prepared to do a little massaging on track timing and phase for that trick to work decently.

Quote from Per

To get close to that "in the room" sound you need reverb with it's own frequency response, ideally something like a convolution reverb. I'd love to have such a thing in the Kemper, right now there's just the "room" effect and the normal reverb which is just attenuated/filtered, plus you may need it for spring verb so it's out of the question. So right now I use my DAW's reverbs to bring that sense of natural space/air back in to the mix. If you listen to older recordings there's a hell of a lot of room sound on record even if they aren't awash with long tail reverb, and that's the tone I tend to like.

The reverbs that you hear on recordings are rarely from the original real room, where the amp was mic'ed.
They come from regular reverbs. Our reverb can be set to very nice short rooms, just like the ones in your DAW.

There is also a very important difference between having an amp recorded in the room and additional reverb: the latter is stereo.

Quote from ckemper

The reverbs that you hear on recordings are rarely from the original real room, where the amp was mic'ed.
They come from regular reverbs. Our reverb can be set to very nice short rooms, just like the ones in your DAW.

There is also a very important difference between having an amp recorded in the room and additional reverb: the latter is stereo.

It's true that the reverb wash is always a synthetic reverb or echo chamber on those older recordings, but there's still some of the room's own sound, close micing is a more modern technique and the Kemper excels at that sound.

The problem is that in the real world you have basically two reverberations, the room sound, which is there and does affect things audibly when recording a real amp, and the faked studio reverb (and sometimes even a third reverb from the amp itself if it offers that).

The spring/amp reverb and Kemper can do (although some people seem to find that reverb wanting, personally I'm fine with it), the room sound, not so much, I've never been able to get it close to the sound of a distant mic'd amp in a real room, and anyway then I've used up my one reverb slot. I have much better luck using a convolution reverb in my DAW for that purpose. Then for lush reverb I have to admit I do love your reverb algorithm Christoph in combination with the delay, it's so easy to build really nice rich warm sounds on the Kemper, but unfortunately I actually need to do that last of all in DAW, same as they had to in the past.

Basically I find it very hard to match a distant mic'd sound with the Kemper all in the one box, not in terms of frequency response, but in terms of reverb/air. If we could have a reverb as an effect as well as at the end slot to put in MOD and X, or had a multistage reverb then I think I could get a lot closer to that sound. Or if perhaps the "room" effect could have a few more options like maybe being able to assign a different cab (it is just a frequency response curve after all right?) to the room reverb effect.

Right now I'm mostly happy with the distant airy sound i can get using plugins + kemper, it's just not so easy in the Kemper box, and to be fair this is purely for recording, you'd obviously disable your reverbs when playing live and many other guitarists may not want that vintage "room" sound as it does tend to get muddy compared to modern production standards.

Well - this is defnitely an issue for me. When I record, I always turn off the Reverb, because I want to be able to finetune the reverb later on when I mix a song. Yet, I guess I don't really have an idea of how to create a suitable room sound with the plugins in my DAW. The KPA without the reverb sounds very direct (which is okay) - but adding a reverb on an aux channel adds a reverb tail, but doesn't take away the directness of the KPA. I guess, I could do with a hint towards a plugin that simulates an amp room.
And I agree: When playing live, the reverb (at least for me) is turned off or dropped to a barely audible amount of the reverb. The room you're playing in is all it needs in most situations.

Quote from joerch

but adding a reverb on an aux channel adds a reverb tail, but doesn't take away the directness of the KPA. I guess, I could do with a hint towards a plugin that simulates an amp room.

Picture yourself and the amp. If you put your ear close to the amp you will hear the amp first, and after a while reflections from surfaces will reach you. If you walk away from the amp, the direct sound from the amp and early surface reflections will reach you almost at the same time.

Meaning, if you want the amp to appear being further away from you - "in the room", you should make shure there are early reflections and no pre delay.

I'm not sure what reverb plugins you use, but there may be a slider for both ER (early reflections) and tail level. Push the ER's and reduce the tail level. You can even try removing the tail alltogether just to check how that works. If you want some tail in there you only need a very short decay for that "amp room". And be sure to remove any pre delay.

For something close to "in the room sound" I find it's best to use a reverb that allows you to have a fully wet reverb, but control the tail and so on to create a closer mic'd effect (the proximity effect is somethign you'll need to sort out yourself some other way, eq etc),

Now as an example that we all have access to you can do this with the Kemper Reverb right now, just set it to be fully wet, but then adjust the Del+Rev Balance, bring it all the way fully to the right and then dial it down every so slightly, this will give you a much more realistic room style reverb effect than using a wet/dry mix. In real life there's no a proportion of reverb to dry signal hitting your ears, there's always reverb/diffusion just varying lengths and frequencies.

Personally I use Reason and Logic as well as a UAD Apollo. I prefer to let the Kemper reverb do it's thing in a similar way to a spring or valve reverb unit on an amp, and then apply a subtle but fully wet reverb via the UAD plugins on the Apollo itself, though sometimes I'll use the RV7000 Advanced Reverb or Space Designer instead for this in DAW (I have absolutely no problem tracking with FX but you may prefer to track dry and do all reverb ITB), finally I'll add a parallel channel with a more shimmery echo chamber style reverb.

On top of all of that I find nothing beats an actual room sound, and so sometimes I'll add a mic recording the room at the same time, this also captures a little bit of the guitars acoustic sound which can sell the illusion (so far no reverb I've encountered can quite sound like a real room's reverberations, even convolution verb somehow lacks the complexity... maybe Christoph would like to make a super duper reverb profiling unit next that can beat out standard convolution verbs, I'd definitely be interested in such a product).

Bear in mind on all of these verbs they're not going to be strong or long tail effects outside of the echo chamber style reverb. Reverb is extremely tricky to get right and easy to turn into a wash, if you're not comfortable with your reverb then you may prefer to simply dial up the Kemper's on-board "Room" effect or use a mic in the room as I do, and leave it at that. And if all you want is some space rather than situating the guitars to sound more as if they're in the same room as the rest of the band then I'd nearly always use a delay over reverb.

Quote from Per

Now as an example that we all have access to you can do this with the Kemper Reverb right now, just set it to be fully wet, but then adjust the Del+Rev Balance, bring it all the way fully to the right and then dial it down every so slightly, this will give you a much more realistic room style reverb effect than using a wet/dry mix. In real life there's no a proportion of reverb to dry signal hitting your ears, there's always reverb/diffusion just varying lengths and frequencies.

That doesn't make sense, Per. You're not altering anything, just using another parameter to balance wet/dry

For adding an 'amp in a room' sound I simply create a pre fader send from the KPA track. This send carries a reverb plugin with a fully wet and reverberant room setting.
So I can perfectly balance direct Kemper sound and direct sound

Quote from Per

It's true that the reverb wash is always a synthetic reverb or echo chamber on those older recordings, but there's still some of the room's own sound, close micing is a more modern technique and the Kemper excels at that sound.

The problem is that in the real world you have basically two reverberations, the room sound, which is there and does affect things audibly when recording a real amp, and the faked studio reverb (and sometimes even a third reverb from the amp itself if it offers that).

The spring/amp reverb and Kemper can do (although some people seem to find that reverb wanting, personally I'm fine with it), the room sound, not so much, I've never been able to get it close to the sound of a distant mic'd amp in a real room, and anyway then I've used up my one reverb slot. I have much better luck using a convolution reverb in my DAW for that purpose. Then for lush reverb I have to admit I do love your reverb algorithm Christoph in combination with the delay, it's so easy to build really nice rich warm sounds on the Kemper, but unfortunately I actually need to do that last of all in DAW, same as they had to in the past.

Basically I find it very hard to match a distant mic'd sound with the Kemper all in the one box, not in terms of frequency response, but in terms of reverb/air. If we could have a reverb as an effect as well as at the end slot to put in MOD and X, or had a multistage reverb then I think I could get a lot closer to that sound. Or if perhaps the "room" effect could have a few more options like maybe being able to assign a different cab (it is just a frequency response curve after all right?) to the room reverb effect.

Right now I'm mostly happy with the distant airy sound i can get using plugins + kemper, it's just not so easy in the Kemper box, and to be fair this is purely for recording, you'd obviously disable your reverbs when playing live and many other guitarists may not want that vintage "room" sound as it does tend to get muddy compared to modern production standards.

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Funny, I think the spring sounds aren't very accurate but emulation of a room extremely convincing. That said, the majority of recorded guitar tones you've heard have been recorded dry in isolated studios built to eliminate room sound with all reverb added in post. And the aural effect of masking ensures that any reverb added in post will hide any room sound captured during the initial recording. Honestly, a good amount of what you hear on the radio today wasn't recorded with a mic anyway as modeling use in studios is much more prevalent than most people think. What is the goal in trying to absolutely simulate real world environments in the KPA? I get the use of a little verb live on a dead stage or real wet verb for effect, but in a recording environment I always create a send with a reverb used across all instruments in the mix in order to create a cohesive aural image and the illusion of everything tracked in the same environment. In that case simulation of real world verb is dead easy with any number of convolution plugins.

Quote from Trazan

Funny, I think the spring sounds aren't very accurate but emulation of a room extremely convincing. That said, the majority of recorded guitar tones you've heard have been recorded dry in isolated studios built to eliminate room sound with all reverb added in post. And the aural effect of masking ensures that any reverb added in post will hide any room sound captured during the initial recording. Honestly, a good amount of what you hear on the radio today wasn't recorded with a mic anyway as modeling use in studios is much more prevalent than most people think. What is the goal in trying to absolutely simulate real world environments in the KPA? I get the use of a little verb live on a dead stage or real wet verb for effect, but in a recording environment I always create a send with a reverb used across all instruments in the mix in order to create a cohesive aural image and the illusion of everything tracked in the same environment. In that case simulation of real world verb is dead easy with any number of convolution plugins.

The goal is twofold. Firstly to get away from modern production, and secondly it's just not true that all guitars are totally dry even with modern production. You pick to a specific room to use because it's a good sounding space rather than dead one, at least if you've picked a good studio.

Natural room sound is a good thing and its the "air" that people find lacking when playing an amp sim. It's also what makes a record sound like a bunch of musicians in a room working together and the music sounding alive, rather than another Simon Cowell dead synth pop/faux rock karaoke backing track. But it's not for everyone.

Not sure why my last post says quote from Trazan, it should say Will_Chen, but when I try to edit it only the first few lines appear... something screwy going on with the forum software.

Quote from Per

The goal is twofold. Firstly to get away from modern production, and secondly it's just not true that all guitars are totally dry even with modern production. You pick to a specific room to use because it's a good sounding space rather than dead one, at least if you've picked a good studio.

Natural room sound is a good thing and its the "air" that people find lacking when playing an amp sim. It's also what makes a record sound like a bunch of musicians in a room working together and the music sounding alive, rather than another Simon Cowell dead synth pop/faux rock karaoke backing track. But it's not for everyone.

Well that would depend on the end goal wouldn't it? The entire idea of emulating a live environment inside the Kemper runs completely contradictory to sound like "a bunch of musicians in a room" unless you're running all those musicians through the Kemper's reverb. One the one hand you're arguing for the need to go back to the old ways and championing natural room sound, and on the other you are a user of one of the most powerful direct recording devices on the market and asking for for more emulated reverb options. Interesting conundrum...

Quote from Will_Chen

Well that would depend on the end goal wouldn't it? The entire idea of emulating a live environment inside the Kemper runs completely contradictory to sound like "a bunch of musicians in a room" unless you're running all those musicians through the Kemper's reverb. One the one hand you're arguing for the need to go back to the old ways and championing natural room sound, and on the other you are a user of one of the most powerful direct recording devices on the market and asking for for more emulated reverb options. Interesting conundrum...

I'm arguing for the need to achieve a specific sound and a better emulation of the sound heard when recording a real amp in a real room with the mic further than 0 inches from the grill and the amp at ear splitting volumes in a deadened space.

The Kemper is very good, but it's not perfect. You have to add reverb if you want the result to sound close to the real deal. My goal may not be your goal with the Kemper.

Quote from Trazan

That doesn't make sense, Per. You're not altering anything, just using another parameter to balance wet/dry

You're right that is what the doc's say, but for some reason they appear to give a different result here at least del+rev results in a drop in volume that mix does not towards the end of the throw and the result seems to just be better for this cause. Try it. It could be purely psychoacoustic, but to me it sounds more like you were adjusting the pattern on a mic, while I can never get a sound that seems natural with the mix parameter which seems to result in more of a parallel effect, which is great for keeping clarity and studio reverb sounds but not very natural sounding to me. It's quite possible that I'm wrong and they're identical mix algorithms when the delay is disabled but I am hearing a difference and more importantly for whatever reason I find it easier to dial in to something that sounds closer to reality.