Direct/Merged Profiles - what am I doing wrong?

Situation: I have a nice reactive load box that does a great job. I use it with the amp and send the line-out to Kemper to create a direct profile. I take great pains to make the direct sound as close as possible to the real thing. I then send the direct out through an Impulse Response for a particular cabinet to create a studio profile. Again, I take great pains to make them sound as close as possible in every playing situation I can think of. Then I create a merged profile of the two.

Problem: the merged profile sounds good. But when I compare it to the Studio profile from the prior step, the studio profile is much more better.

I love the idea of merged profiles and their flexibility with more accurately capturing the direct amp so that other IRs or real cabinets can be substituted in the cabinet block more accurately than with a studio profile. But with the "real" studio profile sounding so much better and different than the merged profile that it contributed to, I'm thinking about abandoning this approach and just making Studio profiles - since they sound a lot closer, even identical, to the real amp and cabinet.

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong that would contribute to this discrepancy?

Thanks for any insight!

Yes - I have my amp feeding a Suhr Reactive Load box. I think I do what you do, just in reverse, first I do a direct profile, then without changing anything, I turn on the IR and do a Studio, then merge them by copying the cab from the studio profile into the direct profile and select the merge feature, then save to a new profile name.

Specifically to your question on my setup above - Guitar to front of Kemper, Kemper direct out to the front of the amp. The amp speaker out feeds a Suhr Reactive Load. Then I have the direct/line-out of the Suhr feeding an FX return of my Helix. Inside the Helix, that feeds an impulse response to simulate a real cabinet for the Studio profile. And I turn the IR off to capture the amp Direct profile (no IR = no cabinet). The output of the Helix feeds back into the Kemper reference input.

Note that I'm not unhappy at all with either the Merged profile or the Studio profiles that I capture this way. In fact, this method gives great control over things like cutting out some high-end fizz from the studio profile by using a little hi-cut in the Helix IR block, so I'm liking these results a lot vs using a real mic and cabinet. But the main reason I do it is that I'm not in a sound isolated environment and doing it with a real mic and cabinet would be too loud.

But I was surprised that the Merged profile sounded different than the Studio profile when I A/B them back to back. Neither is bad or anything, they are just different, though I prefer the Studio profile and I know I dialed it in as closely as I could to make it sound like what I was hearing when I made it with a lot of A/B'ing back and forth to get them to match as closely as I could. So while the Merged doesn't sound bad, it's different enough from the Studio to make me think it's not as accurate as the Studio. I was expecting them to be nearly indistinguishable.

As far as profiling itself, I'm doing that as best I know how. After adjusting the amp to taste, I let the Kemper do it's thing with the automated process. Then I refine it by playing as described in the Kemper manual. I do that both for the Direct and the Studio, and do my best to adjust the adjustable parameters (pick, sag, definition, EQ, etc) to match the reference amp as closely as my ears will allow in a variety of playing situations.

Side note - it seems a lot easier to match a high gain tone than one with light crunch and get the break-up to match closely. Chords are ok, but single notes especially those played lightly without a lot of force don't seem to have the same edge that they do through the reference amp - all else being equal in the signal chain, i.e., reference amp is still going through the Suhr RL->Helix->IR->Kemper ref input. It makes me wonder if I'm not playing a good "refining sequence" when refining or something.

That is what led me to suggest an "automated refining" process using a built-in "Kemper approved" pre-recorded dry signal in order to eliminate this variable or at least provide that as an option. Clearly it's not a very popular idea, though.

Addition to Profiling Process - Automated Refining

Thanks and any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I have made traditional mic'd cab based profiles instead of the above IR method. I'll revisit that and while I don't think they sound as good as the IR based profiles, I'll at least verify whether the Studio matches the Merged more closely.

Thanks!

EDIT - sorry, I didn't answer your first question. I've profiled a Marshall DSL40C combo w/mic and IR. A custom "VodkaSonic" using a mic and IR. And also a Laney L20H using IR-only. The Laney profiles are here - these are the studio versions:

Laney LionHeart L20H uploaded ...

I don't have permission yet to upload the custom VodkaSonic profile(s) to share - it's a unique amp and I didn't feel right about uploading it for sharing without permission from the owner. I just need to ask, he'll probably be fine with it.

I have a few decent mics, some I own, and some I've borrowed. But I do not have so great of a pre and analog eq - hence feeding the Helix which does have those. And I don't have a particularly good room.

What I notice most that I don't care for with my mic'd profiles vs using IRs through Helix is the high end harsh fizz - I can get that with the Helix, but it's easy to dial out using a simple hi-cut in the IR block. I have experimented a good bit with mic and placement to find what I feel is the best mic location for the cabinet. That helps but it's still pretty harsh. Beyond that, I have worked around that somewhat by putting a studio eq in the X block with a high cut and that sounded much better. But I'd like to get a better profile out-of-the-box without having to put another block after the tone stack to shape it how I think it should sound from the tone stack (and take up a valuable FX block).

This is still a learning process for me, though. I do plan to experiment more with mic'ing the cab directly. The Helix does have a very nice clean mic input and plenty of eq's and a studio pre that can be added to the chain. The main problem I run into there is that the reference amp is so loud when dialing in a tone that it tends to overwhelm even good closed back isolating headphones when listening to the mic'd tone with the amp blaring 20 feet away which makes it very hard to hear just the mic'd tone without the amp shaking the floor and rattling the windows.

A good amp isolation box would fix that, but that's not only expensive or very time consuming to build, but also takes up a lot of space which I don't have in abundance.

Running through the Suhr RL and Helix seemed like the perfect solution. But I really need to rule out that it may be affecting the profile quality by doing that. The profiles I do that way are super super close - I really cannot tell the difference except in edge cases. So it's really just the edge cases that I notice the differences. Like somewhat lightly playing a simple single-note scale. The reference amp has more edge and gain while the profile sounds almost clean with a slight edge. If I adjust the gain on the profile to match more closely the reference amp in that case, then the gain is too high when playing chords. It's like I can fix it for one aspect, but then that throws off the accuracy in another.

High gain tones are less of an issue than low-gain and light crunch.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here and my expectations are unrealistic.

BTW - I want to say thanks, MaximeLajoie. You've given me some things to think about and try. Additional suggestions are welcome of course, but I probably have at least several hours of experimentation to do from your above suggestions.

Thanks!!

Another great tip! Thanks!

I'll definitely check out your profiles. Thanks again.

Quote from MaximeLajoie

By the way, you can get my free profiles here.

Let me know if you like any of them.

Ha - I see you have a SovTek amp up there. The "VodkaSonic" I mentioned above is a customized SovTek Bassov Blues Boy modified by Steve Carr of Carr Amplification who is local to my area. It's my guitar teacher's amp and is a unique one-off. It's sounds pretty incredible. My guitar teach knows Steve Carr and they are friends. And that's the one I'm reluctant to upload to RE without his permission.

Incidentally, we first profiled it with a 421 mic. I didn't know anything about the amp but Steve basically turned it into a guitar amp with a clean and drive channel, and did a bunch of rewiring, changed out tubes, and who know what else. So I suggested he set it up and mic it like he would at a gig and we profiled it that way - feeding the mic directly into the Kemper. It was pretty fizzy, so that's one that got the studio EQ in the X block after the tone stack to reduce the harshness. Sounded good!

I later borrowed the amp and profiled it using my Suhr RL and Helix/IR setup with some hi-cuts. I then took my Kemper over to his studio and played him both the mic'd profile and the Suhr/Helix based profiles through my Line 6 L2t powered FRFR PA and he said "That's just crazy! That's *exactly* my amp." And then proceeded to crank it up and play and couldn't put it down. He did say he thought the load box method sounded better than our mic'd method. That's not a definitive opinion because we really didn't spend a lot of time on the mic setup and we just did one profile. With the Suhr, I did about a dozen profiles with varying levels of gain from both the clean and drive channels through an IR of his cabinet which was a Marshall 1960B with Greenbacks. He was VERY impressed, though, at just how exactly it reproduced the unique sound of that amp.

I'm looking forward to trying out your SovTek and the rest of the amps you have samples for. I'll probably buy a few, too. Thanks!!