Seems to me that Mr. Friedman is only against Kemper because he does not make any money from it. That is his pure motivation and objection ... period.
Well, he's not against Gibson selling Gibsons and making momey doing so.
Surely there's some more reason here, however wrong he may be in his assessment.
It’s more of a general feeling of the units response rather than sound. It’s hard to explain, it’s like the difference between a tube rectified vs ss rectified amps. It’s a difference in how the notes bounce under your finger. With Kemper I feel the response is dampened a little. Like having sex with a condom lol.
Still, without profiling a set up and then comparing via the same monitoring it's probably difficult to come to safe conclusions. And from my perspective, if there's a feel difference indeed (aside from latency perhaps) there's also a sound difference too -- even if hard to hear when just listening back.
I'm really not sure why so many rigs are profiled with the gain knob so cranked! Shouldn't the gain be coming from the amp????
Increasing gain on kemper vs increasing gain on amp usually has quite a different effect tonally speaking. You can profile an amp at say 4/10 preamp gain, then dial the profile's gain to 9 and compare with the amp set at 9, keeping all else equal. Most amps I've profiled have sounded very different by that point and not just in terms of how distorted the tone was.
That said, decreasing the gain on the profile tends to "maintain" the amp source tone more so at the original preamp gain level, say in terms of EQ (but not only), with the most notable difference being "less gain". That can even be an advantage for kemper assuming we are after certain tonal characteristics of the amp at a particular gain level, but with less gain, characteristics which may not be there when lowering the preamp gain of the amp.
Considering this, if you are going to sell or share profiles that people may use with a variety of pickups, having them decrease the profile's gain instead of increasing it can allow for a more faithful reproduction in terms of what the amp may give you (increasing kemper gain = bigger "non-gain" differences compares to source at higher gain level ). Then again, sellers usually profile at a variety of gainlevels. But I have known some who did think in the above manner.
And considering what I mentioned that as a possible advantage: I don't know how much experience you have profiling amps, but you could take a friedman.. and say it sounds ideal for you at 9/10 of the preamp gain in terms of characteristics meaningfully independent from so-called "gain", but you seek less distortion. I've had cases where I intentionally profiled at levels like these just so I can lower the gain from kemper, getting closer in some ways to the "tone in my head" at that time.
That way, I could imagine you getting a tone from a Friedman that isn't possible -- or perhaps easy to get, close enough -- from the real amp itself.
For sure. I guess some people would hate his Splawn Nitro profile, but if you love 80s hair metal shred then it's superb. One point about it - he has a YouTube video demoing it and, I'll be honest, he doesn't really do it justice. If I'd watched that I wouldn't have bothered trying it, but I'm SO glad that I did! You know when your guitar tone is just so good that it inspires you to play more and better? It's one of those!
Yea, I had the same feeling when I first played that profile. Just playing for a while without thinking of much else. That "inspired bonanza" bonanza 
nightlight I'm glad that you being an old member (not reffering to age) commented on the "shill accusation bonanza" above, because to my perception that's important on a forum. We can disagree about all sorts of things -- even passionately, at times -- without starting up these kinds of personal attacks. And it's not really a situation of "fifty fifty" in this case in terms of rhetoric.
Were you using external impulses? I really liked the headrush during the short time I tested it.
You're full shit. A shill troll.
Well, this argument was definitely convincing. I will dismiss the obvious nuance in Mementomori's posts from now on. He's "one of them" and not "one of us", I guess -- such radical points he's making.
Vinny no I don’t hear it but then I don’t hear much above 10k other than the constant ringing in my head from 20+ years standing in front of a Dual Rectifier right next to a crash cymbal!
If the KPA or Axe or Helix and IEM had been available when I was younger I might be able to hear more now ?
I don't know for sure what exactly, for 100%, Pierce is reffering to, but people may at times use different vocabulary to describe something similar. Or maybe he's hearing something I do not.
Dismissing him as "just an amp protectionist" (not that you did so) seems a step too far.
Personally, I can't say kemper is as far off the source to make me not want to use it, at least in the manner Pierce describes, even if I prefer real amps a sizable Chunk of the time.
Profiling the THR is a bit of a special case as 1) the speakers aren't guitar cab speakers, and not "full FRFR" either, as far as I remember. It's the cab simulation giving you the cab sound. You'd be micing that up with an extra mic. That's one consideration. Then 2) The headphone out (only output unless used as USB interface) is relatively weak. Profiling through that directly in order to avoid micing can give out too much noise and/or not enough volume for kemper to resume profiling. I've gotten it to work after some experimenting and boosting the signal.
Then again it's possible to mod this amp for an extra line out that can even be run to guitar cabs, as it includes the solid state power amp. One could do this in conjunction with turning the cab sim off via a special android app, all to the best of my memory. If my aim was to profile the THR as well as I could there's a chance that's what I'd try to do -- try to get the best possible profile of the direct, non-cab sim tone. The cab sim of THR, while feeling guitar to play through with the specific THR speakers, is pretty underwhelming for recording in my case.
Then again when I profiled THR miced up I wasn't so happy with the results either. That could be due to me dialing in a lot of "master vol" (essentially power amp distortion) with the THR, which maybe confused kemper. Settings themselves could come into play.
Provided all that above, I've just kept the THR as a practice amp and record with kemper or axe fx, if not with real amps.
How could Freidman license his sound, when he copied Marshall? Everybody copies somebody. It's how evolution works. He's not making a "better" product than Kemper. He's making a different product. At least Kemper came up with a radically new method. Friedman Amps copied circuits. and cabinet design. Geesh.
Everybody copies somebody, but yet kemper came up with a radically new method?
Ok, I get a charitable interpretation of the point: what kemper did was a bigger leap in innovation than Friedman amps. Perhaps considering the grand scheme of things I would agree.
That said, Friedman is not completely bereft of innovation -- and this innovation tends to target something different than what kemper does. Creating possible tones by hardware, however Marshall-flavored, and then "profiling" are 2 meaningfully different things/domains.
I guess what could be argued is that kemper profiles have differences compared to source tones, however small, or perhaps that kemper editing (definition, tube bias, pla pla) allow for a "kemper style" of customization as well.
I just think it's easy to dismiss what people like Friedman do as just "copying", where as there's obviously more going on than that. Not that I agree with his idea of "piracy".
Uhm. I've personally never seen Cliff say that axe fx does profiling, so that comes as a surprise, as I've followed the forum for a long time.
He has surely made claims about what profiling consists of, a big part (he claimed) being eq matching, giving a percentage point as to "how much of profiling is eq matching".
I find these claims dubious unless the person breaks down just what the evaluative framework is in terms to arriving to a percentage. A bit like with kemper vs amp, that topic often lacks clarity.
But that's pretty different from saying that axe fx does profiling, per se -- in fact some users had been requesting axe fx to do profiling, which he openly turned down, to the best of my memory.
About how close the units get.. I use both axe fx tone matches of my amps and kemper profiles. At least with my amps, I wouldn't say that either device has a big advantage over the other in terms of emulating these amps (at least in terms of what I can coax out of the 2 digital devices, however differently they work) unless we are talking about multiple distorting stages. But there's so much nuance on that end to go into anyway.
Still, the concept of profiling is something I like a lot, maybe even for many of the same reasons that have some amp builders concerned (and imo they aren't simply tonal ones).
There are other machines like the Bias, which do EQ matching, but are not like the profiler. The Axe FX also claims to be profiling, using an EQ match.
Bias 2 introduced automatically matching other variables as well (like setting gain, picking out a proper amp for the EQ match). It's not as consistent as kemper, but can do pretty well, at times requiring some tweaking. Not that this is "profiling". Then axe fx doesn't claim to do profiling per se, but only EQ matching via "tone matching", even if they think EQ matching is a big part of profiling. At times, views of "EQ matching" have been quite negative on the forum, but I don't doubt people who consider such a thing "so much inferiorer" haven't spend too much time testing.
Personally, I enjoy how automated profiling is and whatever matching functions profiling consists of.
Other than that, playing with kemper parameters could possibly offer some help, depending on just what the issue is to begin with (which isn't clear to me). For example bias parameters alters tonal nuances. These can definitely change the "feel" of a profile. Power sag even, I believe, could possibly offer some help in altering this feel.
And that's something that comes up all the time in fractal forum btw. It's one of the most common complaints. These digital units "suffer" just as much as kemper does when it comes to cab interaction thingy. It's not surprising considering what the issue is about - - run a real amp without the monitoring of a cab (and arguably a tube power amp, some include good solid state amps) and the issue appears there too.
That said... IF axe fx - helix don't suffer from perceived issue through the same monitoring as kemper, maybe the problem is different. But then why not profile these units, if at reach, and see what happens?.. Or ideally a real amp that does what you'd like while run through the monitoring you'd use kemper with?
I myself used axe fx 3 quite extensively recently as well as kemper and tube amps. There's differently differences in "feel" between the units even if I set out to match a real amp with both. How much of this transfers from one tone or another, if at all, is a big topic.
But at least profiling a source tone that sounds and feels how you want it to through a particular monitoring set up seems elemental in such testing. Difficult to go around it provided you have already tried a variety of profiles.
And monitoring needs to remain consistent.
Yes, maybe you are right. But either way it is a disturbing and negative thing that must be eliminated. As I said: my modellers (I had an AX8 and now I own a Helix) don't do this and this is also how their sound is described: as a miced up amp in another room. Isn't this the benefit of algorhythms? To eliminate the negative stuff and keep all the amp's glory? It makes no sense to justify what is described here by pointing at the negatives from the real world.
Kemper is meant to replicate miced or direct amp tones.
If the issue here would indeed be cab interaction, you could run kemper through a tube or solid state amp (easier if powered version) and use direct profiles with a real guitar cab.
Watched the shared video, the section mentioned. Seems that he's just comparing playing through the amp and cab at loud volume vs kemper through (I assume) some monitor?
If so, that's not the kemper's fault, really. And I'd expect helix to "suffer" quite similarly.
He then mentions that kemper "does not clean up like the amp". But is he comparing profile of his set up vs the amp? Or some random profile? Because you can definitely profile a tone that doesn't clean up well --- and it's not like the profile suddenly will.
If you have a helix around you could try profiling it and see if that solves your issue, in case it does profile well (modelling units at times don't). If not, and you have a real amp tone you like, you may profile that.
But then compare using similar monitoring - volume, without the guitar Cab influencing the interaction. If you still feel something's not there that you desire, at that point, Ok, maybe on to something I've not noticed.
It's just that the above seems needed, imo, to narrow down the issue - - just what it's about - - and what's causing it.
Are you comparing the real rig to its profile that you made, using the same monitoring? If not, hard to say much.
That is a ridiculous notion. No offense. Once you purchase something you are free to share it. Just like music. Or anything else. It’s mine and I can do what I want with it. And I have thousands of profiles that I share with people all the time. I have no problem with it. Unless someone tries to sell other people’s profiles then that is just unethical.
You are typically purchasing the "license" to use the profiles, not the right to redistribute them. Maybe someone openly states that by buying their profiles you are free to share them with entire planet -- but that's not the agreement in pretty much any case I've seen when it comes to commercial profiles.
Also yes, it became super common pretty fast to use other people's profiles. It was part of kemper's plan to have a rig exchange. That said, kemper is still a device many use to profile their own gear, even using kemper exclusively or near exclusively for such a purpose. It then serves as a replacement for amps we already own, when so convenient, while profiles are tailored to particular uses.
I'm just not experienced enough with stacking pedals to know what's to blame in this case. Usually my own profiles respond quite similarly to pedals compared to the source amp tones. But I'm not stacking pedals in the described fashion, and it wouldn't be too surprising if this affects the profiles in ways I haven't experienced. Some audio A/B illustration could possibly help users offer more advice.
I'd echo the above. If all you're using it for is as an amp you already own, you've basically bought a fleet of new Ferraris, but will only use one you already had.
The profile is *everything*. I've found largely the exact opposite to your experience. I chose a blackface-style amp and it loves my pedals. My delay, reverb and modulation pedals are on the block. Leaving only my beloved dirt pedals.
Well, he's apparently comparing the source tone directly to the profile he made, how both respond to these pedals. Or do you mean that you profiled a blackface style amp and then compared to the profile as well in similar fashion?
