Alternate modes for Player

Grooguit · Dec 24th 2023

Maybe this is a stupid request. Take with a grain of salt for a guy that probably won’t buy one because he owns a stage anyway. The biggest complaints seem to be that not all the effects and morph are available in the new Player. Though most seem to accept that certain dsp trade offs are neccesary for a particular price point.

One of the things I like about my Stage is the smooth transition between Rigs and spillover of wet effects and the Player does this too. Yet this MUST require a significant dedication of DSP. ( line 6 recently updated the Helix to give this feature, but it requires you to give up HALF of its Dsp!!!).

Point being, if the Player had mode with no spillover, this would provide significantly more dsp to allocate having all the effects including the advanced delays and reverbs. so if you turn this mode off, and any of the advanced effects in rigs would be grayed out and bypassed. But if you turn this mode on, then you could use the greater library of effects.

Or maybe just have the caveat that the advanced reverbs delays don’t spill over when you change rigs, and only the shortlist of simpler effects that are currently in the player do spill over?!

Perhaps this wouldn’t even be possible whether or not, it’s feasible to implement?

Wheresthedug · Dec 24th 2023

CK seems to have just confirmed in another post that the Player uses the same processor as its big brothers so I don’t think DSP power is the issue but rather a conscious decision to limit the capabilities. He has also stated in other posts that there may be paid upgrades available in future so I would expect the full range of FX to be part of any such upgrade.

Quote from ckemper

Yes, this is pretty much the story.

But there is another circumstance that brought us into this direction.
When you downsize a product, often downsizing the core does not save much cost, e.g. by finding a smaller processor.
If available at all, it would save a few bugs, but the additional efforts to run and maintain an established software and operating system on a smaller processor easily eat up the marginal cost savings, without creating any advantages for us or the user. No one wins.

You can see similar situations in the car industy, where three models with different power ratings use the same engine block and sometimes same displacement.
Electric cars will usually take the same electric motor for different power offerings, because total costs will increase by developing, certifying and manufacturing three different engine sizes, and gaining the opportunity for later over-the-air updates, so users can make a qualified decision about upgrading or not, while they are in the possession of the car already.

When we released the Profiler Head in the beginning, we had planned to have the power amp be a module that can be purchased later and seamlessly be inserted into the back of the Head, as we had anticipated that it is hard to decide on day one if you will ever make use extensive of the power amp.
Laws and certification rules prevented us from doing so, unfortunately.
It is more satisfying and a sustainable business to simply have a happy customer, rather than having to recommend: "Better take the powered version now, you never know what your needs are in the future".

The possibility for said upgrades came in a natural way to us, as described above,
And while it wasn't planned at first place, it might create a win-win situation.
We have the opportunity to offer the same enclosure with different power and different price, and our users have the freedom to decide for more power anytime after the purchase, when they have got familiar with the product.

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Grooguit · Dec 24th 2023

Quote from Wheresthedug

CK seems to have just confirmed in another post that the Player uses the same processor as its big brothers so I don’t think DSP power is the issue but rather a conscious decision to limit the capabilities. He has also stated in other posts that there may be paid upgrades available in future so I would expect the full range of FX to be part of any such upgrade.

Wow, that’s quite revealing I hadn’t seen that. That’s certainly good news for those who really want those features.

I’ll be curious to see how this unfolds overtime. I doubt it would cost as much as the stage because with the stage you’re not just paying for all the features you’re also paying for the fact that it has a screen and 14 foot switches as well as an effect loop and jacks for many expression pedals.

What’s also interesting is that if it is in fact, the same processing then there’s no reason that future updates couldn’t expand to allow four effects before, and four effects afterwards.

Like a number of others on here I had my own proposals for a mini Kemper. My thought was make it identical to the bigger kempers, minus some of the buttons, and of course the number of foot switches. I would’ve also included the ability to profile because in my opinion, how much money would you save not giving it that capability if you weren’t otherwise, cutting costs on dsp anyway?

From a business standpoint, it comes down to whether you’ll make more money charging for upgrades, or more people buying your unit because it’s more of a bargain with more features included for free.

But that’s not the only math. Decisions like this also affect the used market. If lots of stages, heads and racks hit the used market because current owners can get the same functionality minus the foot switches in a $700 unit, that directly affects the number of sales of new heads, racks, and stages. And the availability of those also may even affect player sales, as people who care less about the size, might opt to buy a used head or stage over the smaller player.

But if the player can’t do everything, the big boys can do current owners of those bigger units have more reason to not sell them and keep both

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