Posts by Laimon

Quote from Der_JD

I'm not crazy about playing with headphones, but sometimes late at night it's a necessity. I find playing through the Kemper with cans more enjoyable than any other digital guitar solution I've tried, including the Axe II. As mentioned, using the "space" control is a must.

A person's perception of their tone through headphones is extremely dependent on the headphones themselves. They have different frequency responses or "sonic signatures" and different models sound massively different from one another.

Generally, it's best to choose as "flat" of a frequency response as possible, yet no pair of headphones is perfectly flat. Also, take into consideration the design of the headphones (closed back, open, semi-open). This makes a huge difference. Open-back designs leak sound both in and out of the headphones but a lot of people (including myself) find them much more enjoyable to play guitar through. They don't sound so boxed in or isolated.

ATH M50s (mentioned previously) are a popular set of headphones and may be "flatter" than say, Dr. Dre Beats, but really are still far from flat. Anyone who doesn't believe me can just check out the response graph at headphone.com. Also, not a fan of the closed back desing of the M50s.

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Well, that may be, but out of the affordable options they were by far the most neutral sounding that I tried.
In any case, when I want to play at night I normally just play my electric unplugged, I like it better this way than with headphones.

BTW, can anyone tell me how you do FFT analysis of wave files? Sure, I could google that, but I want to hear how you do
Or, also, if you use other tools for spectrum analysis

Updates from Kemper team:

I just received the information from our developers that the Aliasing problem will be fixed in the next firmware version.
Please let me know if it works or you once it becomes available.

needless to say, I was already falling in love big time with this company, now I think I wanna get married and have kids with them

Quote from denishermans

Wat is the brand/type of your headphones

Audio Technica ATH M50, they're really good and have a very neutral eq signature.

Quote from Ingolf

Hmm and I can't understand how you could hate this.
Since the arrival of the space parameter it even got better.

Ahah, fair enough
Well, what can I say? I wondered myself the same, expecially since I should probably hear the same that I do after recording, but instead when I am listening to it real time I hate it. But again, I never ever liked monitoring guitars with headphones, so I am biased

Quote from Ingolf

It can sound extraordinarily good via headphones.

I don't understand this. When I play with headphones I hate it.

Quote from denishermans

How good can it sound with headphones (with the "space" thing)
I have high quality studio AKG headphones.

I wish did not have to say this, but it sucks. It's not a prerogative or Kemper amps, actually: I find that monitoring guitar with headphones always sucks.
Regarding your other question: the Kemper has - IMO - one of the best interfaces that one could think of. The surface is superintuitive, you can tweak your amp as you would with a real one, and you can delve deeper, but you don't need to, really. Similarly, you can bypass/activate stomps with a click on a button, as easy as pressing the stomp on the ground; also, the colored leds tell you what kind of stomp is on in which slot. Really, amazingly well designed.
Soundwise, the Kemper sounds, in my short experience - great at each level, but beware: our ears enjoy decently loud volumes, and it has nothing to do with Fletcher-Munson changes in eq (that you can clearly fix to a certain extent); I found out that, for me, is just best to allocate some time in the late afternoon to play with a cranked up (still at apartment level, though) volume.

True, it's not the easiest to set up, and that can be a bit intimidating.
But coding is not so hard, it is a bit like explaining what you have in mind, in words that a machine can understand. As long as you know what you want to obtain, you should be fine (but ok, I am a computer scientist, I am biased)

Quote from newsound

I'm using gordius LG, fantastic!

I agree with that statement so much that I wrote a separate thread to support this thesis!

I was replying to another thread, but I realized I like this product so much that I own Xavier (the inventor) some free publicity
Some guy said, in the "best midi board" thread:

Quote from newsound

I'm using gordius LG, fantastic!

So am I, and I am extremely happy with it!
In fact, I understand only partially the requests for a KPA specific midi board: sure, integration would be immediate and brainless, but the Gordius Little Giant is the ultimate midi controller, should you add more devices or change rig, you can always make the Gordius work with everything exactly the way you want.
I'll give you a for instance that I find remarkable: I use Ableton Live for looping, so I set a bank in my Gordius that works as follows.

Switches 1 to 4 (lower row) are, respectively, Record, Play, Stop and Tempo.
If I push record while nothing is playing, it counts to 4 and then starts recording.

If I push record while playing back, it starts at the next bar.
If I push record while recording, it jumps to the next free track at the beginning of the next bar.
Play works as expected (while recording stops recording and starts playback, in other modes it just starts or continues playing back).
Stop works normally, but if I keep it pushed for a second it undoes my last track.
Tempo can be used to tap tempo, or - if kept pressed for a second or so - to mute/unmute click.
Switches 5 to 8 (upper row) represent tracks 1 to 4.
Their leds are lit up if the track has been recorded already, and the currently selected one blinks slowly. I can select the track by pressing the corresponding switch, and if I keep it pushed for a second I can put that track in solo mode. When Ableton is recording, the selected track's led blinks faster.
Finally, the expression pedal allows me to control some parameters depending on the last pressed button: if I just selected a track, I can use it to adjust its volume, if I just pushed the tempo switch I can adjust the click's volume, if I just pushed record/play/stop I can adjust the master volume.

I don't know about you, but I find this awesome
PS: due to some limitations of Ableton, I do need to map some midi messages to key presses in my pc, but seriously 95% of the above I could implement myself with the LG alone.

Quote from Jaymz

Fantastic stuff guys thanks so much!

Good news is yes I have another pack on the way and the amp in question will be arriving tomorrow.

It's a 1992 2 channel Dual Rectifier (Rev E/Early F)....so I hope to get some stellar tones out of such a beast!

WOA! I normally hate rectifiers, but if you get on to it I might end up liking it! Keep us posted!

Quote from SanctumSolaris

I believe a major hardware improvement would be to upgrade the Kemper with a USB/Firewire audio interface.

Well, the Kemper already has two USB connections, and it has already (quite a lot, actually) been asked to make it send audio (and MIDI) through USB, which would be awesome.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be more than happy if my KPA would last many many years to come while still being able to support further features!

This is a bit of a silly question, mostly because the only one that can answer that is Christoph Kemper himself, and he clearly wouldn't, but I was wondering: the Kemper has been out now for...how long? Some 3/4 years? It is far from obsolete, but the intention is to keep on upgrading the firmware with new features, bug fixes and so on and so forth. This is all magnificent, of course, but it's going to take more and more computing power. So the question(s) would be: how much of the computing power is already in use? Should we expect the need for more soon? (read as: do you see imminent new features that would require more resources? For instance, a looper - as easy as it probably is to implement - requires RAM, and that might not be available at the moment) And, should the time come, will we have a whole new product, or maybe the units will be upgradable with a new processor board, such as this: http://i412.photobucket.com/al…c/KPA_CPU_zpsd88e17be.png ?
I know this is speculation and noone can answer this questions (except - again - CK), but what's your take on these?

BTW, if anyone is desperately trying to get rid of their powered KPA toaster, I'll be glad to lend a helping hand

Quote from MacOSatch

Sorry but this rule is useless. I do not think that anybody play at max volume (power boost at +12, master at 10) with 1x12 cab.

Question is what is the safe ratio at practical volumes.

I would say at home with 1x12 cab is for sure OK.
But at rehearsal with acoustic drummer is other thing.
My experience is that a 60W speaker at 16 Ohm (Powerhead at 300W, power boost at +3, master at 5.5) works – still.
My band mate use 2x12 box (120W) at 8 Ohm (Powerhead at 600W, power boost at +6, master <5).
But I want to know if it safe and can I use it without the risk for the speaker.

If the safe rule is: you must use 4x12 cab (300W) with the powerhead, fine.
But in this case the advantage of Kemper Powerhead + Matrix Cabs (or any lighter and smaller cab) is diminished.

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Agreed - of course if you wanna stay on the safe side you have to do how Armin suggests, but poweramps do have a volume knob, it must be useful for something

Quote from nightlight

I think a "limiter of sorts" for the Power Amp output is a definite requirement for the Kemper. Great idea + 1.

Exactly what I suggested some posts above: one setting in the system menu where to specify the wattage of your speaker, so that the kemper won't let you turn the volume beyond a computed safety threshold.

Quote from snakefuture

Having the Axe Fx Ultra and the Kemper hooked up, the profiles lost much of its sparkle, It sounded noticable darker,
The Boss gt 001 had very little and the Strymon Mobius zero influence on the Kempers core sound when I bypassed its effects and a/b-ed the Kemper loop in on and off settings,

That is also my experience - though with real amps rather than the kemper, haven't tried with the latter yet: Axe FX ultra made everything darker and flatter (by just passing through it, actually), Mobius (strymon stuff in general, being analog through) does not affect the tone, only adds the desired effects.

Quote from Ingolf

Hi Marcio,
don't worry, this has been requested numerous times already and is said to be on the to do list.
No given date tho'.

All three of those things? *drools*

Quote from viabcroce

The tricky part is that there are so large error margins that you have to be really conservative for an effective prevention.

Loudspeakers have a continuous power load, and an impulsive power load. Manufacturers declare them in the technical sheets. But this is not enough to foresee their behaviour.

Different power amps with the same nominal power output may have different impulsive powers. This is easily verified in the Hi-Fi realm. This means that if a very impulsive sound is reproduced, a "harder" power amp (as we say in Italy) will output a lower voltage than a "softer" one.

To clarify, a hard power amp has a good nominal output voltage but its impulsive voltage is not much higher in comparison. A "softer" power amp, OTOH, could exhibit a lower nominal maximum voltage
but is able to generate extremely higher impulsive voltages (that is, for a very short time).

A loudspeaker's cone, given the finite speed of motion propagation through its surface and its "weak" material nature, is more prone to get damaged by an impulsive signal, which creates stronger pressure (and motion) differences in different parts of the cone.

Add to the picture that, by international agreement, an amp's nominal power given a certain load impedance (say 8 ohm) is measured @ 1 kHz: actually, you don't know the real power at other frequencies. It might be lower or higher than the nominal power, depending on the amp design. So maybe two "100 W/8 ohm" amps can produce very different outputs at 100 or 3000 Hz, not to speak of their contingent different impulsive powers.

Last but not least, volume has little to do with a loudspeaker's overload: it depends on the cone's efficiency, which is another parameter manufactures declare. The higher the efficiency, the louder the sound at the same amp signal and loudspeaker's impedance.

Hope this clarifies things a bit, even tho I can't supply any concrete help.

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Thanks Gianfranco! You're superkind
Well, I did learn something...not entirely sure what do with it though
For instance: how do I know if the Kemper's poweramp is hard or soft?
And even without considering the impulsive power (though it seems to be the most dangerous factor), how do I know how far I can push my poweramp's volume, based on the nominal power? Say, using the powered Kemper (600W@8Ohms) with my Mesa 1x12 (60W@8Ohms) should I keep the Kemper's volume at less than 10%? And would such a reasoning apply also to 4x12 cabinets?
(sorry for the thousand questions )

Quote from viabcroce

[old man's mode on]

Is it just my impression or this forum is slowly going to loose the friendly atmosphere it used to have?

Sorry, I don't want to teach anyone how to lead their life, but it seems to me that some people have started to take their grudges and/or belligerency when they log in.

Probably an unavoidable effect of the (numeric) growth of this community

[old man's mode off]

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This makes a lot of sense to me.
Danniee has just asked for some advice. He might have not provided a lot of information, but maybe he wanted to keep it general, I don't know. In any case, I hardly see the need to get harsh and bash him.

Sorry to bring up this post, but while I was trying profiles in my new Kemper, bought secondhand barely a week ago, I bumped into these EVH 5150III (red 1 and red 2) profiles and they're absolutely stellar! I haven't played any other profiles since yesterday, absolute killers
Are you planning on profiling any other amps soon?