Posts by OneEng1

I have frequently thought that the people who miss the "amp in the room" sound are really missing "the VOLUME in the room" sound.

I have my basement setup with a full PA (DSR112's over PRX618XLF's). This is a very powerful system to play a Kemper through; however, what I find is that even through this system, the volume I play "just guitar" at is MUCH MUCH higher than what I play it at when I put the other band members back through the PA (multi-track recordings).

The volume that works well in the mix is not what "sounds good" to our ears when auditioning a guitar on its own.

Having said that, I have a friend that had 2 tube amps with two 4x12 cabs (JCM2000 and Randal). We recently played together for a gig and while practicing, his entire band preferred my Kemper and a single DSR112. He sold both tube amps and now has a Kemper with a pair of DSR112's

There is a visceral emotion we get as guitar players when the "amp in the room" volume is pumping around us. I don't disagree that this has an effect on how some people play. It also provides a butt ton of string action .... which also contributes to some tones (lead especially).

To have a good mix as a BAND though, it is a rare venue where you could unleash a Friedman (or any other tube amp) on 10 and have the mix sound good

While you wait for the Kemper Editor, be sure to check out the "Toast ME" MIDI editor. It does a really good job and covers almost everything.

The real allure of the Kemper editor is its tight integration to the Rig Manager. There are some really cool possibilities there!

It is an interesting accusation.

So the real question in a court of law would be, does Kemper or Axe violate any laws?

Apple sued MS over imitating their "look and feel". The courts ruled that "look and feel" can't be protected.

In the same vane of thought, I seriously doubt that a "tone" can be protected either. The method that is used to create a tone can be protected (circuits, components, etc), but I seriously doubt that any court anywhere in the world would uphold protection of a "tone".

It seems to me that Mr. Friedman doesn't object to poor reproductions, only to good ones. Making a good reproduction of a tone is ..... not stealing according to any law I am familiar with.

I also agree that the likelyhood of Kemper/Axe increasing sales of a boutique amp is much better than decreasing the sales.

Quote from Chris Duncan

That's a phrase that's definitely going to make an appearance at my next design meeting at work!

Lol! Me too Chris ?

[/speculation]

For we "live use" guys .....

It would be SOOOO nice to have a feature where we could manage an entire show .... as follows:

1) Allow a set list to be created by song name

Position ----- Song

1 --------- "Wonderful Tonight"

2 --------- "Enter Sandman"

etc etc.

2) Provide a method of assigning a performance number (or name ... or both) to a song

Song ---------------------- Performance number/Name

Wonderful Tonight ----- 1 "Strat Soft"

Enter Sandman ---------- 2 "Metalica"

3) Allow an entire performance to be downloaded to the kemper so that the first song lines up with the first performance. Simply hitting the "up performance" button gets you to the next song setup.

This would really make a huge difference for people that gig live alot.

[speculation]

If you model the specific speaker and cab (using an IR of course), you also need to capture the way the cab breaks up and distorts different frequencies at different volumes ..... like a real cab does.

For those of you that have commented that when playing through a real cab, all of your profiles sound the same ...... well, my guess is that you are getting a majority of your tone from the cab so that different rigs have little effect.

If done well (and I have no reason to believe that Kemper would do anything less that outstanding based on empirical data), the Kemper Kone functionality would behave the same way.

My guess is that this feature is to allow a single cab to be used by someone to REALLY sound like the amp/cab combinations the Kemper is attempting to recreate, and instead of the mic'ed sound, what you end up with is the "amp in the room" reproduction .... only you can get any amp and any cab to do it with.

For "amp in the room" people, this will be a God-send .... and should put Kemper ALONE in a new market for digital guitar amps. It is truly Unique.

Now having said that, I am not an "amp in the room" guy. I prefer in-ears and direct into the PA. In-ears are WAY smaller and lighter than any cab I have ever owned

It is also nice to have the same FRFR speaker as that used in the tops for the PA for redundancy .... just in case of a failure.

The preset management will be a huge improvement to the workflow on the KPA ...... and will of course allow editors to help with preset management easily as well.

This was my #2 on the wish list ..... behind the new reverbs

Just another example of Kemper listening to its customers.

No speaker combination (HF and LF driver together) can ever really be "flat". The problem exists at the cross-over point.

In traditional FRFR speakers an HF "horn" is loaded above a "woofer". The spatial difference between the two drivers, and the difference in technology (one is usually a compression driver while the other is a coil wound cone speaker) creates time delay difference between signal input and sound output between the speakers. This can be made better by a delay.

The 2nd issue is that some frequencies are being amplified by both speakers. When the sound comes out of both speakers, the waves get distorted by each other and cause "comb filtering" of frequencies.

The coaxial design hopes to fix this ..... but runs up into another issue. Yea, there was a reason for the "horn" on the HF driver after all. The horn prevents distortion in the signal as the waves exit the driver. Without the horn, well, you get distortion.

Companies have been working with DSP for years in an attempt to make a good powered FRFR that doesn't exhibit these problems. I have to admit, they have come a long way and the latest powered speakers do a surprisingly good job using their FIR tuning algorithms.

Finally, there is the problem of our ears As it turns out, people don't hear all frequencies equally. Our own "hearing response" curve is FAR from flat. This is why most people prefer to hear more bass in the mix, or want a bit of boost in the HF top end to get the sound "clear" and "airy" (or any number of other non-sonic terms used). Most really "flat" speakers don't "sound good" to us because of this.

Guitar speakers .... now there is a real enigma. We love the sound of a guitar cab with speakers that are very non-linear, and distort on purpose!

It will be interesting to see how Kemper deals with all of these issues and gets a pleasing sound out of the speaker.

As for speculation, I believe that this improvement is an effort to address the "amp in the room" feeling some guitar players are missing. I can't fathom Kemper missing the mark here. They have been legendary in their ability to assess tone, and give it to their users in spades.

Quote from Tritium

Hello OneEng1,

While I haven't used Damien's ToastME editor...I think it will be safe to assume that the official Kemper editor will be amazing , innovative and comprehensive. Not sure if you had a chance to watch the Anderton video -- because the care and thought that went into how the Editor/GUI simplifies the Morphing assignments is hopefully a great example and preview of just how brilliant this Editor will be in terms of ease of use and facilitating work-flow.

Hi Tritium,

I did watch the video (Anderton did a good job I thought).

With respect to morphing, I completely agree. The new editor brings the KPA to a new level with respect to how easy it is to setup complex morphs. Sadly, I haven't found a good use for morphing and haven't put it into my show .... so the feature (while very impressive I might say) doesn't do much for me in specific (The new verbs certainly do though).

What would make a difference for me would be a feature where an entire show could be setup and saved as a file. The show feature would let you assign songs to a performance, and then you could simply put a set list together by song and have performances that are custom setup for your every gig.

I love the new preset management for sure. Toast ME doesn't do everything that the Kemper Editor demo can do, but then, the firmware that allows it to do so hasn't been released yet

I write code myself and had privately asked the folks at Kemper if there was any possibility of getting a few more back door commands to get to some features that were not currently there. They replied and let me know that those features would be in a future version of Rig Manager .... which we know see is true I quit my efforts at that time knowing that an editor and new back-end changes needed to support these features were on the way from Kemper.

I am a little concerned about the relatively small amount of screen real-estate being dedicated to the editor, but it looks like they have been able to get everything they need on the screen so far. In general, the less screen you have, the more "menu diving" is needed to reach all features (or to even know that the feature exists).

I think the potential for the enhanced Rig Manager is huge. Toast is limited to polling the MIDI SYSEX messages to get the job done ..... which is really kind of a "cave-man" approach. I am certain that the USB interface and Kemper's proprietary interface will give them much better response time and fewer bugs.

What I really would like is what Behringer did with their X32 mixers. They published the OSC interface specification for the mixer so that anyone could use the interface and create their own tools (which they have).

Despite all that, having a Kemper editor with a graphical signal chain is a very cool thing! I am eagerly awaiting the release.

FWIW, FRFR speakers are not flat either. Each one has different frequency responses or "voicings". It is possible that the new Kemper feature will give FRFR more accurate sound on stage through any speaker.

Wow. Big year for CK.

Just one man's view .......

1) The verb update is by far the biggest improvement since it actually raises the tonal bar across the board.

2) The preset management is a huge blessing and was the weakest part of the work-flow of the KPA. It is great they will fix this.

3) The new editor is very welcome; however, the current 3rd party solution is pretty darned good. I will be interested to see if the Kemper Editor manages to cover all the bases that the Toast ME editor does (which is quite a lot)

4) I will hold judgement on the Kemper Cab and cab DSP idea until I can play one side by side with my DSR112 FRFR. Price point will also be a huge factor.

The KPA is such a good piece of gear already that it is really hard to improve on it IMO. I have been simply loving all over the latest beta as the reverbs are sooooo good now.

Lovin my PRS SE Custom 24 .... especially after putting a pair of "Rebel Yell" Bareknuckles pickups in it and replacing the nut. It is my favorite axe.

Ahhh. I see.

Thank you very much! I looked around at the documentation, and on-line videos but never found this little tidbit of information

Digitech Trio plus and KPA new reverbs!!!!

Hi All,

I have a quick question on the KPA remote.

If you have the KPA hooked up to your Kemper Remote, I noticed that there are 2 LED's above EACH slot button (1-5). One LED is closer to the button, and the 2nd LED is above the first.

All 5 LED's are lit dimly, and one of them (the selected one) is lit brightly.

If you hit the currently selected button again, the bottom LED becomes lit dimly, and the top LED becomes lit brightly.

Is there some feature associated with this that I am not aware of?

Thanks in advance for your attention.

Me too.

These are truly fantastic.

This really brings the KPA to a new level. Amazing.

While I would agree that having old verbs change is a PITA for the current firmware beta, I am finding that many of my old rigs find new life with these new reverbs.

Changing from the verb that came with one of my favorite MBRIT marshals to the new ambient preset really brings the rig to life!

I never dreamed that a reverb could bring life to a marshal sound. I am really loving on these new verbs. What a fantastic upgrade these will be when released for production use.

Personally, I didn't have anything special going on with any verbs on my rigs, so changing them would be tough to notice (not too high in the mix anyway).

I can say that it is well worth the work to re-do your rigs with one of the new reverbs though. The new verbs are simply a way better sounding efx than the old ones were.

Simply astonishing.

Wow! Talk about taking your job and your customers seriously!

Thanks to the KPA team for working overtime this weekend to iron out a few bugs for us prior to the start of the new week.

Now that I have had more time to work with the new verb engine, here are my thoughts......

1. The new verb engine is much more powerful and flexible than the original. I don't know if it has all the bells and whistles as some of the more powerful verb stomps out there, but it is pretty comprehensive. I would be surprised if there were many verbs you can't obtain with this set of algorithms.
2. Sure, sure sure.... flexible, powerful, but how does it sound? First let me say that I am a fan of natural reverb for most things. The new natural verb engine gives an immersive sound while retaining clarity. The verbs are open, and honest ..... in other words, the new verbs are world class to my ears. I would say they are easily comparable to Strymon, Eventide, and TC Electronics. I would rate the old verbs as "good", but not "great".

The new verbs are everything I had hoped they would be. I am loving every minute of the tone I am getting from my Kemper. Just ...... wow.

It is my understanding that preset management improvements are also on the way. With that improvement, I think I can comfortably state that the KPA is the single best guitar tool ever made and that I have no needs beyond this release

FWIW, I feel that the 3rd party editor "Toast ME" is a fantastic editor and I have no need for anything more in that department either.

Seriously ..... just so damn good sounding guys.

Quote from Chris Duncan

This was the question I asked yesterday. The folks who replied basically said, "the old reverbs have been moved to a single legacy algorithm, " and while that's true, it didn't address my concern.

My question was whether or not I'd have to go through all the profiles I own and tweak the reverb on each (a not inconsiderable task) because now they're all pointing to the legacy module and the sound might be different. Your experience indicates that this is in fact the case.

If the new version truly does change how all your pre-existing profiles sound, that's a destructive side effect and I would consider this a bug worth reporting for the beta.

"First, do no harm."

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Check it out on your own setup. I didn't notice it myself. Seemed like everything was still working as it did before the beta was installed.

Ok. Here are my 2 cents......

First ... very excited for this release. The new reverb engines are fantastic. Not all of them are to my taste, but then again, that is likely true for everyone here.

I really like the natural verb engine. It is way better to my ear than the previous verbs.

As for operations, I did not notice that the tones of my old vintage verb settings were changed on the few rigs I checked, but I did not do an exhaustive A/B check.

I went through the release notes and didn't see (or later find) any new preset management in this beta. I suspect this is being held until other bugs can be cleaned up.

I did notice the bugs already noted. To turn the reverb module off, I had to hold it and put it into edit mode, then I could toggle it on and off. I also noticed the reverb knobs did not work as already stated.

I have only done a quick once-through of the presets given and played around a bit with the settings in the natural reverb. I think we will get some really nice sounds from this engine.

I don't own a big sky or other high end verb to compare it to, but the new engine is definitely a big step up from the previous verb.

Thanks Kemper team.