The volume on your posted soundbites seems very low. Did you "normalize" the track in your DAW after recording? I know nothing about Studio One, I use Reaper.
Harsh recording tone while sounding great over Kemper Kabinet
- TheMatthias
- Thread is marked as Resolved.
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How are you plugging into your audio interface? What are the Output settings on what's connected to it on the Kemper?
Some DAW software lets you route signals such that your headphones or monitors play back your signal twice, but with a tiny delay that sounds phasey. One is the input signal and the other is the output of the armed recording track with your guitar. You need to mute playback on the input and only listen to the track.
This only affects when you're playing though - so the recorded guitar still sounds great.
That's a good comment about the DAW, and as far as I know my DAW does not do that by default. And as you pointed out, it should not affect the recorded track.
My output settings and connections are all described in my original post (Main Out, -12 db engaged, volume set to c. -20 db). You can see literally all my settings in the screenshots I attached there as well.
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It shouldn't sound horrible ... with "Monitor Cab Off," disabled, Kabinet is acting as FRFR which is being fed with the same signal (including profiled cabinet) as the main recording outputs. So in this scenario, sound from Kabinet and recorded signal should sound very similar at least.
Ok, well if that is the case then I should be happy with the recorded track, since it sounds better than what I hear from the Kemper Kabinet...I used a powered FRFR before I got the Kabinet, and it sounded a lot better than the Kabinet with Monitor Cab Off disabled...
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The main point here I think is to ensure that your sound is consistent from your KPA to your DAW. Best way to check that is use headphone output from the KPA and check it sounds similar to headphones via your interface. If they sound similar, then it's your profiles. If not, you may need to optimize your set up.
Personally I would check this first...
Yes, very good point - and I did check. Sounds equally bad on headphones plugged into Kemper and interface
However, now I started rolling back treble and presence a bit, and I feel I am getting closer, although not there yet. -
The volume on your posted soundbites seems very low. Did you "normalize" the track in your DAW after recording? I know nothing about Studio One, I use Reaper.
No I did not do that yet. I turned all down on purpose to make sure there is no clipping, but I guess I can turn it up again by a bit without risking any issues.
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Do you have Monitor Cab Off AND disabled Cab in the Rig?
No, the Cab is on in the Rig, just Monitor Cab Off is enabled.
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Yes, very good point - and I did check. Sounds equally bad on headphones plugged into Kemper and interface
However, now I started rolling back treble and presence a bit, and I feel I am getting closer, although not there yet.In that case then I would try other profiles as your base sound isn't how you want it.
BTW I thought your sound wasn't too bad but I see your point...
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Just my two cents: From the 1st recording it sounds like you have too much Dry Mix. Since you have too much you are using too much gain to make up for it. So you then have a fizzy over saturated sound mixed with the dry sound.
The picture you posted for your amp settings seem like they would not create the sound you recorded. For the type of sound you are going for, the DEF is usually closer to 5.5 - 7.5. Your pic shows 4.0 which is only used for clean Fender tones. The only thing 4.0 would work for is if you were using single coil pickups.
The gain in the pic shows 5.8 which should not be this fizzy and saturated sounding.
MY STEPS START TO FINISH IN THE CHAIN
1 ) First stomp could be GEQ. Lo Cut around 80Hz. Hi Cut around 2.5 kHz. Boost the mids, 640+1.25K.
2 ) Add comp at position right before the Amp set 4.0,2.3,0,85%. Adjust 4.0 to get more drive. Range 3.5-5.5.
3 ) Dry mix between .5-1.5. Usually .5 or .8 is enough to get some dynamics back.
4 ) Tweaking Amp Clarity helps if it is too fizzy. I usually land in the 2-4 range.
5 ) Def around 6 to start if you have Humbuckers.
6 ) Since you will have less Dry Amp Mix you will need to drop the Amp gain. Normally 5.5-6.5 is correct. Not sure why yours is so saturated at 5.8.
7 ) Treble Boost after amp set to 1.5, 10%,X,X. Mix set low cleans up the fizz while making it brighter.
8 ) Studio EQ after the Treble boost. How you tweak this will depend on what you are going for.
Other options:
1) Skip the GEQ first. Switch the Amp EQ to PRE and boost the mids. Heavily tweak step 8 Studio EQ to get your sound.
2) Amp SAG can help clean up an over saturated sound. Works very well for driven Fender type tones. Usually makes a Metal sound get mushy. But it sounds like you are trying to get more meat/thickness and less fizz, so it is an option to try 2.5-6.0 range.
3) Run the RIG in parallel mode. This makes the stomps 1-2 run as a Dry path. This will give you more control over the Dry sound. You can EQ it or even add a little overdrive/dist. Chorus works well here also to give it a more room sound. I usually cut the mids on the EQ so the dry guitar is not so thuddy sounding.
The sound you have now sounds like you are using the Dry Amp mix to get a more clean and dynamic guitar sound. But the dry is so mid heavy that you are over doing the saturation and high freqs to make up for it. The parallel path would let you thin out the dry tone so you can dial in a better focused distortion tone.
The high amount of Dry signal would also explain why it sounds different from DAW to Kab. The Kab will get amplified and your speaker will compress a little. Meaning the Dry and Wet mix will smear out more. When you record in the DAW they do net get "re-amped" and do not smear together more. So the fizz stands out more. As you can clearly hear the two different tones.
No magic bullets here. Just some thoughts to get you in the right direction.
It is also tricky dialing in a sound. You need to do it on the device you plan to use it on. It needs to be loud enough you dont hear your acoustic strings at all, get in the Fletcher Munson curve, but dont over-drive your listening device. Because over-driving your listening device will drastically change your tone. So you will be dialing that in or out, not your actual sound.
