Help cleanup digital "hair" on profiles?

    Hey guys,


    Thanks for all the responses so far! So yes I do own Mbritt profiles, and they do sound much better than most. I also own his stuff for the Atomic Amplifire. I think one of his "tricks" is that in his cabinet IR's he really lops off the top end pretty low, probably around 6k Hz , maybe lower. That doesn't leave room for high pitch noise , well because there is no top end ! And yeah his tones are great for cleans and mid gain stuff, but not really a fan of his high gain pack.


    So I plugged my DT 770's into the Kemper headphone jack and I do hear the harshness.


    Here's a quickie clip from a ChopTones profile of a TSL Marshall. It's not the worst sounding one, but while I had a spare 10 minutes did a quick clip. But when you play for say 30 minutes your ears get really fatigued listening to a top end like this.


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    Maybe it's just a profiling thing that you need to take care of the high end, or decapitate it like MBritt does ? ;)

    IMHO, it's not so much whether or not he decapitates them, Jay. Read on...


    Quote from Tonechaser1

    I used to get some of that fizziness within my decaying signal on some of the stock KPA profiles. That all changed when I started using the MBritt profiles. He somehow dials all that stuff out.

    Michael told me in a personal email that he, like I, is allergic to phase cancellation on mic'd guitar amps, so yeah, he does dial it out. This is achieved, AFAIK, through being an experienced hand at mic'ing amps. He's known for a very-long time what he doesn't like (phase issues!), and has become expert at avoiding them.


    Quote from Tonechaser1

    Understood. I should have elaborated that I experienced the fizziness on low and medium gain profiles as well.

    As gain increases, comb filtering becomes more-obvious, especially in the high end, 'cause the waveform shapes of the source material become increasingly-squared (lopped off) by the amp. We call it distortion, and it's a great thing, as long as there's a cab to tame the harshness and this isn't undone by a monkey mic operator.


    Jay, I've banged on about this "harshening" of high frequencies on certain Profiles ad-nauseum here on the forum, so I'll leave it at that, but with the parting thought that the Pure Cabinet™ parameter might well be your best friend for those Profiles you find yourself stuck with.


    I feel it fair to point out also, seeing as it's been said on page 1 that Michael Britt "isn't known" for high-gain Profiles, that he has many such packs now. High-gain and phase-issue / fizz-free.

    Thanks Monkey. That's what I was thinking. My Kemper came with 1,000's of profiles, many , many of them have this issue. So it seems that there's lots of "operator error" out there regarding making profiles. Too bad.


    If you or others can point me to some high quality / fizz free high-gain stuff to check out it would be appreciated.

    Try the pure cab for this. This harshness can be part of the close mic phasing thing that exists in close micing that pure cab addresses. I would also say choosing different profiles might help in this situation as has been mentioned previously as it wouldn't surprise me that these profiles sound identical the amp the was miced and it might work for some depending on the mix.


    For High gain, Guido's profiles are my favorite and I have to say that his XTC profiles are a must have for anyone who likes high gain, they have just the perfect hair and include the full spectrum of mid range and bass for a real tight feel, for under $5 it's a crime not to get them.

    Edited once, last by Dean_R ().

    The top end on high gain profiles is a difficult balance sometimes. A profile that sounds appealing on its own, will often be way too dull in a busy mix when other instruments are in. Then I find my tone on an album is too bright for live and the presence needs dealing back when played at volume.


    It is a fine balance between enough brightness and a profile that is too razor sharp. For me, Reamp Zone gets this about right, but it will different for everyone.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7

    Like 3
    Quote from SpinnerDeluxe

    Here it is again: the bigger part of the total amp sound is the cabinet.

    I agree, but with the abundance of profiles I find it much easier to scroll through profiles in Rig manager by filtering for the amp type or tone. In this specific example if you put "TSL" in the search field. you will get at least 24 marshalls TSL that reside in Rig Exchange, plus if you have imported many profiles packs in rig manager, you will get more, another click on the gain level filter and you have them sorted by the level of gain from high to low. It takes minutes and you might find the exact tone your'e looking for.


    Going through cabinets, I find to be a bit time consuming that's somewhat not inline with the original purpose that I got the Kemper for and in addition to that I get a bit OCD about changing cabinets because the resulting sound will not be the most authentic due to speaker impedance interaction that's captured most accurately and most authentically in the studio profile I'm not saying you won't get good sounds changing cabinets, they just won't be more authentic, unless you're using merged profiles with other cabinets from other merged profiles.


    From prior experiences , prior to Kemper, and due to ear fatigue while playing at loud volumes and changing impulse responses, I would end up with, what I thought then, is an amazingly satisfying sound, to come back the next day, with fresh ears, to find that it was actually horrid. Even though I no longer tweak hardly, I have limited my parameters to going though Studio profiles. Aside from little EQ to match to the guitar type I'm playing, It's much less time consuming and the results will always be closest to real world amps.

    Edited once, last by Dean_R ().

    Like 3
    Quote from karlic

    The top end on high gain profiles is a difficult balance sometimes. A profile that sounds appealing on its own, will often be way too dull in a busy mix when other instruments are in. Then I find my tone on an album is too bright for live and the presence needs dealing back when played at volume.


    It is a fine balance between enough brightness and a profile that is too razor sharp. For me, Reamp Zone gets this about right, but it will different for everyone.

    Awwwww thanks!

    Quote from Dean_R

    Try the pure cab for this. This harshness can be part of the close mic phasing thing that exists in close micing that pure cab addresses. I would also say choosing different profiles might help in this situation as has been mentioned previously as it wouldn't surprise me that these profiles sound identical the amp the was miced and it might work for some depending on the mix.
    For High gain, Guido's profiles are my favorite and I have to say that his XTC profiles are a must have for anyone who likes high gain, they have just the perfect hair and include the full spectrum of mid range and bass for a real tight feel, for under $5 it's a crime not to get them.

    I have Guido's XTC profiles , and they are my favorites at the moment so I agree!


    As far as the pure cab goes, I said that I have added it and played with it a bunch. It does help but doesn't eliminate the problem entirely.

    Quote from Dean_R

    I agree, but with the abundance of profiles I find it much easier to scroll through profiles in Rig manager by filtering for the amp type or tone. In this specific example if you put "TSL" in the search field. you will get at least 24 marshalls TSL that reside in Rig Exchange, plus if you have imported many profiles packs in rig manager, you will get more, another click on the gain level filter and you have them sorted by the level of gain from high to low. It takes minutes and you might find the exact tone your'e looking for.
    Going through cabinets, I find to be a bit time consuming that's somewhat not inline with the original purpose that I got the Kemper for and in addition to that I get a bit OCD about changing cabinets because the resulting sound will not be the most authentic due to speaker impedance interaction that's captured most accurately and most authentically in the studio profile I'm not saying you won't get good sounds changing cabinets, they just won't be more authentic, unless you're using merged profiles with other cabinets from other merged profiles.


    From prior experiences , prior to Kemper, and due to ear fatigue while playing at loud volumes and changing impulse responses, I would end up with, what I thought then, is an amazingly satisfying sound, to come back the next day, with fresh ears, to find that it was actually horrid. Even though I no longer tweak hardly, I have limited my parameters to going though Studio profiles. Aside from little EQ to match to the guitar type I'm playing, It's much less time consuming and the results will always be closest to real world amps.

    So this hits on an important point for me. One of the reasons I bought the Kemper was to try and reduce "fiddling" time. I tend to get sucked into this, and spend more time tweaking parameters than actually playing my guitar which is a problem for me anyways. I was hoping to not get into changing cab's , 3rd party IR's , adding eq's , etc to get what I'm looking for. I will admit I'm really anal when it comes to tone though, so maybe the technology available just isn't there yet for what I was hoping for.


    I don't want to spend countless hours on tone questing. But I wasn't going to find out unless I took the plunge and bought a unit to try for myself. Not giving up yet, but I will say I'm a bit surprised at out of the 14,000+ profiles my Kemper came with that only a handful really impress me. To me that say that there is a fair amount of studio skill required to do a great profile , and most "lay" users don't have much of a chance of making "golden profiles".


    This is just the opinion of a new user who didn't spend much time lurking the forums prior to purchase and didn't know what to expect out of this thing really.


    Question - what's a studio profile? Just a "professional" one?

    Maybe studio monitors aren't the way to listen / play this thing for satisfying results? Guitar cab? I would assume that a FRFR speaker would sound similar to studio monitors, but maybe not?

    Quote from jaybird666

    I don't want to spend countless hours on tone questing. But I wasn't going to find out unless I took the plunge and bought a unit to try for myself. Not giving up yet, but I will say I'm a bit surprised at out of the 14,000+ profiles my Kemper came with that only a handful really impress me.

    Sounds like my story!


    With the first L6 POD - the bean - I got instantly good sounds. Within the limits of that technology, of course. Later I upgraded to the HD-500 and based on the factory sounds it took many nights to just come close to the old POD! And endless more hours to make me feel that investment was justified.


    Back to the Kemper: for me also most of the rig exchange profiles just do not work. But: from the factory profiles (3.x) I got instant sucsess. I.e. a VOX AC-30 and Gundy Kellers stuff. Good right out of the box and excellent after minor EQ adaption to my guitars. ANd only lately I baught my first commercial profile, Top Jimis BE Friedman. Awsome, middy, vintage, raw sound. And again - practically right out of the box.


    So for me the "stop endless tweaking" dream finally came true. And I grew up with real tube amps. And my sound now is consistently better than in the old and real times.


    Sidenote: my biggest investment has always been monitors and room treatment. Add I do own a dozend of headphones to pick from. Thats is where any good sound really starts from.


    " I would assume that a FRFR speaker would sound similar to studio monitors, but maybe not?"


    Flat Response and Full Range - thats the definition of good studio monitors ;) But for PA or guitar purpose they have to be so load that some (minor) comprimises in flatness have to be taken. But practically: yes, they will sound the same.