Posts by lightbox

  • Handwired 1959 Plexi from Soundside.de: best Marshall-profile I heard and used so far !!!

    Sorry to mention Armin's price comparison between Soundside and TAF products again, which we discussed a month ago. But there's something that hasn't been mentioned before and I think it's important to know.


    I just bought the Marshall JTM45 from TAF, which is advertised as 13 profiles. But in fact you get 55 rigs. 13 rigs each for Les Paul, Strat & Tele plus 16 bonus rigs. All for 5.90 Euro, not counting the current -20% special deal. That reminded me of this unfortunate comparison.


    We can talk months about quality, taste, you name it. But the price comparison by Armin really failed big time. His packs are way more expensive, that's just a fact. If you like his profiles, buy them, they are great indeed. I bought many. And they are still a great deal compared to the actual amp price tags.

  • TheAmpFactory Pack5 Out NOW!

    Hi and44 once again :)


    As I told you before, imho it's very helpful to have one large alphabetical list of all "Singles" to quickly browse your products. I know you told me to use the search box, but this has two downsides:


    1. Keywords used in your new "Info" popups can't be found by the search engine. Try to search "Vibrolux" for example. Nothing found, although you mention it in the Vintage & Rare Info box. You probably use a WordPress custom field for this ... which is excluded from the search index.


    2. It's just a usability problem for your customers if the select the Singles from pack 1, scroll down the list ... and then have to scroll up again, open the popdown submenu, select the next pack. Maybe it would help to some degree if you had "Next Pack" and "Previous Pack" buttons at the end of the lists? Just trying to find a way to make it easier to browse. :)


    Cheers,
    Martin

  • Latency - will it getting better?

    If you like to have true latency measurement, then you'll need some reference signal like a PING in networking or timecode in broadcast video: Problem here is, that these run through a given system unaltered, so they are easy to detect and measure.


    One possible way to measure would be to load a rig of your choice, mute input and output of the KPA, reset the whole signal chain to 0, generate a max gain spike right behind the AD section and then measure the time difference right before the DA section.


    Since you don't know how much these spikes would be altered by the signal chain, you'd just measure the first occurance of signal <> 0. Since you don't know how much reverb and delay (time based effects) are introduced to the signal, you'll have to reset the whole signal chain to zero before repeated measurements.


    Not sure how to do precise measurement in an unmuted system though.

  • TheAmpFactory Pack5 Out NOW!

    Hi Andy,


    congrats to your new website. :)
    Imho, it's going in the right direction, but I have a few remarks or requests.


    The text color in the navigation is to dark when you browse the site on a tablet or notebook in daylight.
    Info for your webdesigner: The CSS color tag in '.af_nav a' should be #ccc instead of #666 in line 33 of http://www.theampfactory.com/w…amp-factory_2.0/style.css


    It's certainly nice to have the single profiles by packs (popdown menu when hovering Singles). But I suggest that you also maintain a complete list of all single amps sorted alphabetically. If I'm looking for an amp, most of the time I know what I'm looking for and I don't like to browse 5 different pages where some aren't even sorted alphabetically. Keep th popdown menu but add a complete alphabetical list when I click on "Singles" instead of one of the 5 submenu items.


    On the starting page, the images "Mixing Service" and "Art & Design" should be 476px wide instead of 480px, the main image above (hero_banner.jpg) should be 956px wide ... all this applies only if you plan to keep the (not so nice) border around these images. Currently in IE10 there is an image overflow and a line break caused by the inconsistency with the page width of 960px.


    Hope this helps. :)


    Cheers,
    Martin

  • Warren Haynes - Cesar Diaz CD-100 anyone?

    I'm currently after this Warren Haynes - Gov't Mule Les Paul sound and had great success so far with and44's Soldano SLO-100 profiles. But I know that Warren likes the Cesar Diaz CD-100 as well and I'm really curious to try this one. I'm posting this here because I'm willing to pay for a nice profile pack if someone's interested and able to get his hands on this amp. :)


    Cheers,
    Martin

  • Forum formatting corrupted?

    Quote

    why in the world did they have to fix something that wasn't broke? because WoltLab wanted to introduce a new version?


    The 'new' version of Woltlab Burning Board had been released almost exactly 1 year ago (version 3.1.7).
    Sometimes you just have to update software due to security vulnerabilities and incompatibilities on a server.

  • Latency - will it getting better?

    ... and just to remember you guys, that the OP was talking about a 1.5ms difference between 2 devices.


    @OP: I wouldn't bet a single cent on any latency improvements in the current KPA. It's simply not possible without a hardware upgrade. Limited processing power, high internal sample rate, pretty complex DSP ... no room for the improvements you're asking for. ;)

  • Power consumption specs for KPA?

    Quote from whippinpost91850

    FYI: It's allways aa cable :rolleyes:


    So true. And there's an important chinese saying as well:
    "The fact that you bought and paid for a Fender cable doesn't necessarily mean that you end up with a Fender cable."
    Something to really keep in mind if you go shopping here in Nepal, the country where you get all kinds of "superb guitars" from Givson & Epephon (no typo). :D

  • Power consumption specs for KPA?

    Problem with the horrible buzz and noise solved! It was the stupid instrument cable. *sigh* I should have checked this first.
    Got a new one, pretty expensive in nepali terms, but now we're enjoying the KPA a lot!
    CK, thanks a lot for this great "Magic Box" in the name of some talented guitar players here in Kathmandu.
    "Gadget" or "Magic Box" are their favourite KPA nicknames so far. :)


    Quote from nakedzen

    How's the weather there now? I've always gone around mid-Sep since that's usually the only time of year I have time for traveling.


    Pretty hot right now, mostly sunny with some clouds showing up in late afternoon. Cooling down at night but far from being real cold. It's still high season for trekking tourists until mid/end of May. After that, rainy season starts to take control and Kathmandu becomes much more quiet until mid/end of September, regarding the flow of tourists.


    Cheers & Namaste,
    Martin

  • Power consumption specs for KPA?

    Quote from nakedzen

    If you ever get to Pokhara ... A lot more peaceful and clean than Kathmandu as well, and the view to the Himalayas is spectacular.


    That's true, Pokhara is a nice place to go, although it's to packed with tourists right now. They do have a small but active music scene there. But I actually like the noise, dirt, chaos of Kathmandu Valley a lot. :) If I need some retreat I would go and visit some small villages far from any common tourist trail. But that's just my personal preference and maybe the fact that I've been travelling Nepal since 17 years.

  • Power consumption specs for KPA?

    Hey gang,


    first report from Freak Street, Kathmandu, Nepal. :)


    So far I don't have good news regarding the KPA. No matter if I'm running it from the power plug in the wall or from the UPS I bought ... I have massive hum and noise. Must be some ground issue that I couldn't fix so far. :( Will try again with an additional ground cable but I'm not sure this will fix the problem since the KPA is dead silent as soon as I disconnect the guitar cable. My concern is that guitar and cable catch massive RF from surrounding cell phone antennas or something similar.


    When I realized that I can't immediately fix the problem, I got a Zoom G3X so the guys here can practice while I'm looking for a solution. Hope it won't turn out bad.


    By the way, the old Bob Seger song "Kathmandu" is a great song, really love it. Much better than the Cat Stevens song. :)


    The nepalese rock music scene is pretty active and there's a constantly growing interest in the different flavors of rock music. The still rare occasions of live concerts in medium or big venues are often packed with youngsters hungry for live rock music. There was a Deep Purple concert planned in late March which would have seen a sell out crowd in Nepal's national stadium here in Kathmandu. Sadly it had to be postponed and later cancelled due to contract issues with the local promoter. Difficult to understand but this was almost national tragedy because so many people were looking forward to this rare international top act appearance in Nepal.


    Musicians have to struggle with lots of problems here in Nepal, it's almost impossible to earn a living or just cover the expenses with their music. But you can easily experience the general hunger for music here. As soon as someone starts to play an instrument (even if it's just praticing) there will gather a crowd to watch and listen. And many are pretty open minded and curious. So it's real fun to be here and try to help to some limited degree. :)


    Cheers and Namaste from Nepal,
    Martin

  • Power consumption specs for KPA?

    Finally the day of departure to Kathmandu has arrived. :)
    Really looking forward to the tasty cakes in Jimi Hendrix' "Snowman Cafe" and guitar playing in one of the most colorful cities on earth. If time (and Internet) allows, I will report how things are going with the first Kemper lunchbox that has ever seen Nepal so far. These frequent power cuts still worry me a bit. :D


    Cheers,
    Martin

  • SPDIF Higher bitrate.

    Quote from kneelie

    II prefer 192k/24bit, 176.4k/24bit, or 96k/24bit.


    Hi kneelie,


    while these sample rates would certainly be nice to have, I think in many cases this would introduce much higher latencies, which we really don't like. If it's possible as an option, fine. But I doubt that many would use these high rates in everyday work, while 48kHz would immediately help many (if combined with S/PDIF slave mode). :)


    Cheers,
    Martin

  • Handwired 1959 Plexi from Soundside.de: best Marshall-profile I heard and used so far !!!


    Comparing prices in the EU (you're an EU citizen just as many of your clients probably are) requires to include VAT, we had been discussing that before.
    So this comes down to:


    AmpFactory: 5.83 Euro / 7 profiles = 0.83 Euro per profile
    Soundside: 19.88 Euro / 27 profiles = 0.74 Euro per profile


    The difference looks much less this way.
    When I consider the added number of profiles is very little additional work compared to the initial Amp and mic setup work, then the remaining difference in price per profile simply doesn't matter at all. Sorry to say so, but your comparison = fail ... imho.

  • Handwired 1959 Plexi from Soundside.de: best Marshall-profile I heard and used so far !!!

    Quote from DaveVST

    Armin, there are people always complaining about your huge rig packs and on the other side people always complaining about the 1000 rigs limit of the KPA...can't make everyone happy, you make super detailed amps profiles someone else does small packs, that's ok...


    As I mentioned all the time, I'm happy with Armin's work and the chance to select from a large list of profiles.
    But I'm not happy that I didn't get a separate folder with Armin's "best of selection" when I bought bundles I - IV. I just wish I had this "WOW" moment immediately after upload to my KPA. Instead I was just overwhelmed by the massive list of rigs. Might be better for those who get individual amp packs, I don't know. But the bundles are a huge pile of profiles you have to struggle with before you eventually find something you really like to keep. This should be the other way round, imho.