Hello, new user here renting the unit... its nice to have a real sounding modeler finally... but the issue is even on pro tools HD, lowest buffer size at 32 ms buffer which is like 0.7 ms round trip in and out on my avid omni, i STILL hear the latency when I tap my pick on the pickup. this must be at least 7-8ms. and it is just a bit annoying to me,... does anyone know why this unit does not have a wordclock with AES output capability? or why this unit cannot slave in spdif mode?
Too sensitive toLatency Delay
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ArsenalGuitars -
October 14, 2014 at 6:45 AM -
Closed -
Thread is marked as Resolved.
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Don't tap on the pickup - just play, and tell yourself you are onstage. .7ms is like a speaker cabinet placed 7 to 8 feet from your ears.
Here are a couple of other things to check:
Do you have "Low Latency Monitoring" switched on in ProTools?
How far away are your recording monitors from your ears? Each foot adds one millisecond of delay.
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Hi and welcome are you sure you have not got you recording tracked routed to an aux before it goes to main out, this has caused me issues before in Pro Tools HD, as for the buffer I track at 512 all the time in pro tools HD and never have any latency issues, what version of pro tools are you running and do you have any native plugins running on the track aswell. When I use the KPA I track through 4-5 plugs aswell and don't have any issues, I would say it's an issue with Pro Tools ADC
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The issue the OP is pointing out could maybe be solved by members' suggestions as per above, but as I've written some time ago I believe you can't just apply the "it's like being x feet away from the speaker" rule of thumb, because in fact you're not thus far.
Here's what I wrote:
QuoteI did not know how to think about latency. It has never been a problem for me, so I just disregarded it. The only latency that bothered me was the one related to DAW monitoring when overlying new tracks. But I disgress.
What changed my mind about the whole "digital devices' latency" issue has been my experience with my friend Umberto Fiorentino, guitar player in the Lingomania fusion band, I wrote about some days ago.
When we connected the Profiler to the active CLR he immediately said "I hear a latency here", while he felt ok using his Fender amp. Needless to say, I did not perceive any difference.
So I thought it over, with the premise that I completely trust Umberto, his ears, his skills and him lacking any bkas or agenda.
My conclusions are that some people are more sensitive to latency than others. This might sound obvious, but a more meaningful idea I came to is that the classical comment that x ms of digital latency equal y meters distance from the cab is somehow misleading.
The fact is that when we hear ourselves through a cab 5 meters far, all our perception adjusts to that. Depending on the room, the interaction between early and late reflections Vs. the direct sound creates a set of signals we are perfectly able and accustomed to decypher. The same is true, if you think of it, when we listen to an acoustic musician, a singer, or for what it matters any source of noise at a certain distance: we see the person acting, but the sound arrives later than the light (think for example of classic situations such as a sprint race starter, or fireworks).
We are perfectly accustomed to interpret these situations, and put together image and sounds in a realistic scenario we've been accustomed to since million years. In fact, latency (and the relationship between the direct sound and the reflections) help us estimate where and how far the source is from us.But when we have a cab in front of us and there's an artificial delay which sums to the natural one, somehow our perception of time/space is misled.
I've come to the conclusion that this is what we call "latency" when we refer to the one which bothers some of us: that sound, from that distance, just shouldn't come "so" late. -
'paults' How far away are your recording monitors from your ears? Each foot adds one millisecond of delay.
Now to figure out how to get myself 6 feet of separation from the gain section, no need for a pre-amp delay then?
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There is a theatre term , "suspension of disbelief", that describes why the audience can emotionally connect to live theatre, television, and movies.
Although we KNOW they are all actors, we get involved in the story.
People who grew up with television and movies, but have never seen live theatre before have a harder time watching real people onstage than they do watching TV or a movie.
Maybe some of us have more "suspension of latency" than other people
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How bad does the latency sound when you directly use some good can's from the front of the Kemper itself?
Don't monitor via software, at all, ever. i.e. only use your soundcards monitoring., never use ProTools own monitoring for anything, it's only there for when you're stuck in a situation that doesn't offer you a soundcard with zero latency monitoring (which almost all do). It will give you a huge latency gap between you and your instrument, doesn't matter what the buffer size says, that's not the full roundtrip.
As others have mentioned, make sure you disable "Constant Latency" under the "Master" output settings.
After this if through headphones you still feel the latency you need to start working with teh things that control the perception of latency. These are psycoacoustic effects for the most part, but they contribute greatly. Turn up the compression in the amp block a little, this will enhance the transients and sustain while will give you a more liquid and instant feeling, making an amp "easier" to play, you might also slightly raise your pick setting while youre' there for the same reason. The louder the start of the note (the transient) the more instant it will feel.
Next consider adding a green scream or other treble booster in front of your amp block. This brings things to the front simply due to the effect that we perceive sounds with a lot of treble to be closer than those with less and more bass. This is because of hte propogation of frequencies over distance and diffusion, in the real world distant sounds tend to become muffled or proportionally shift towards their subharmonics over distance due to these effects, therefore in our heads a sound that's got a bit more upper mids and treble will sound and feel closer and more immediate than one that's further away.
After this, make sure to disable your noise gate on the input section, you can lock this tot he off position. Also make sure that your Clean Sens setting in the input section is suitably dialed in, too high or low and things will feel funky, either not sensitive enough or washed out and like you have to work too hard (which will amke thigns feel like they've more latency too).
Good luck!
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maybe it's just a "suspicion" of latency lol
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Another thing I'd check is the "Fixed Latency" setting in the Pofiler: just check it's disabled, unless you plan to reamp a track several times with different profiles.
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So did any of the suggestions help?
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Hi... thanks for the suggestions..... as a reference - when tapping on a microphone is instant so my PTHD rig is doing fine. But I notice now that it is also instant on the kemper when tapping on the pickup when noise gate is down. But the noise gat up high tends to make the attack of things in general lag by a hair?
The greatest thing to me on the kemper in the first few days was the realism and the noise gate - all the way up doesnt eat into the threshold of the note ring which to me i find astounding. But when turning it up all the way (i kind of have to for sludgy death metal parts to get rid of the crackles and noise... well tapping on the pickup with the pick doesnt make a click sound unless there is a hard tap in which case i can hear the ping pong to the monitor....
Can anyone else help me out considering this? Or will the patches I will make with my own axe 2 to the return tof my randall satan to my cab to a mic to a pre .... (not to mention a profile of the satan itself) ... will that not produce high noise on the kemper profiles if I found a way to get rid of all of that in my axe fx 2 deep parameters? Or will that gain knob on the kemper want to add all this noise at a certain setting? I guess I have to read the manual but I am just demoing the unit...
I guess what I am asking is what is the best signal to noise ratio of the gain knob on the kemper during profile creation? And if my cab and righ doesnt have much noise at all to begin with then will the profiler clone this behavior identically so that I do not have to max out the noise gate knob on the kemper? Because the unit is whey more instant when the noise gate is down.
(Yes I did Keep my Axe FX 2 - the preamp modeling with power amp and cab modeling turned off and fed to the return of a tube amp or to a tube power amp - to a cab, is a great way to have many authentic preamp types replicated properly... but the Fractal is just a bit plastic sounding for DI. I find great use for both units.. provided that the signal to noise ration of the gain during clone time will be at optimal gain staging. and yes sorry to not have read the manual. I promise i will do that if I commit to buying oput the rental. lol)
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Turn the Kemper Noise Gate OFF when profiling. The Kemper Compressor should also be turned off.
See the Profiling tips at:
http://www.wikpa.org/Profiling_Tutorials
If you profile any sound (from an AxeFX or an amp) that does not have a noise problem, the Kemper profile of that sound will be just as noiseless as the original sound.
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(Just Axe 2 to real amp and cab btw).
Ok well if what you are saying is the case then I will be one very happy 'kamper'!
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Give it a try - and, let us know how it goes for you
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Ok. Was just feeling a bit apprehensive due to some really noisy hi-gain patches on the server... but will do.
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You might find the 2:1 and 4:1 gate stomps better suited to high gain anyway than the input section noise gate. They're more primitive, but they should impact the transient in a much more cutoff and immediate fashion (i.e. feel less soggy/slow).
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I would also try direct monitoring to see if you can't get things to improve by a few ms. For sure, you will get better results than input monitoring within protools.
There is a tiny bit of latency in the Kemper as with all digital devices, which I also feel sometimes. But you get used to it and 2-4 ms isn't really the end of the world. But if you route it through an underperforming DAW, it could become a major irritant.
Direct monitoring will resolve this issue more than tweaking the noise gate, imo.
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1) Better stop tapping on your pickups and start playing guitar, that's the only thing that matters.
2) Latency is normal, you'll have it everywhere, the KPA's latency is really low, it's about sitting 90 cm from a guitar-cab, which feels very comfortable and normal to me. There's also a natural latency in the whole process of playing a guitar (finger or pick --> strings --> pickup --> amp --> cab --> your ears).
3) Guitars respond very differently, they can influence your impression of "latency" more than you may think. My old '58 Fender strat with maple neck has a much faster response than many of my other guitars.
4) Switch off all KPA-effects, for recording you often don't need effects and you can add them later with Protools.
5) Avoid any latency from your DAW, try always to listen to the direct guitar-signal f.e. using a monitor controller.I play many sessions, very often with very tight and clean rhythm-tracks, I never had any problems with the KPA's latency.
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+1 for considering the Gate settings: many users reported they feel a delay in response at high settings.
+1 also for trying a combination of gates when playing: you have three different units to use/combine, I'm sure you'll find a satisfactory setting for your heavy-noise rigs
As for profiling, the KPA is very good at keeping all the "unrelated" noises, hiss, hums out of the profiling process: the "residual" noise comes from the amp's/pedals' character, which is faithfully reproduced
The Gain knob doesn't add noise, it's just amplifying the intrinsic noise from the profile.