Can we please get some kind of Kemper Editor Software for your computer

    Quote from MementoMori

    I'll trust what the evidence points to and what's been disclosed to me vs subjective feelings on the matter. Not too long ago you were saying you felt the Kemper had been abandoned. There's nothing about the hardware that prevents an editor, otherwise it wouldn't support Rig Manager. It's a matter of code, and the groundwork has been laid. And there was no "jumping the gun" as no timetable was given, which was expressed.


    Sadly, as much as I would love to believe the "evidence", there has been nothing concrete but conjecture. You mentioned someone at the booth telling you last year that an editor was in the pipeline.

    Does it really take more than one year to put together an editor? If they were working on it then, I can guarantee it would be ready now.

    Therefore, I would surmise that they weren't working on it then.

    Are they working on it now? Well, I think we really need to examine the evidence.

    If it comes out at NAMM or Musikmesse, that would be great. If it doesn't, then I guess it's quite pointless to suggest to people that an editor has been in the pipeline for over a year.

    As I stated, some things were included in the recent updates and betas. Whether you wish to believe that or not doesn’t really change the fact, same as my conversation at NAMM. :D

    Frankly to me it is hard to say what the heck the Kemper development crew is or is not doing on the editor front. I do know one guy who has a good full time development job was able to program a very good Toaster application that worked well if you used the firmware it was designed to work with. One guy, part time..... Think about that. If Kemper has more resources to toss at it than that and has access to all the code knowledge the Toaster guy had to figure out on his own then the project could move much faster.

    I suggest we try and move forward and well, if at some point Kemper comes up with the Holy Editor so be it. heck, the one the community makes might be better??? Hard to fathom that but it could well be further along. Here is what would be nice to see take place.

    1. I have spoke with the Toaster App developer and am waiting to find out if he will accept donations. If so I suggested we as users could buy him gift cards at a music supply store. Thomann's in DE is probably the one. I am in the US and did the exact same thing there for a friend. - Remember the code will be open source, so he will not "own" it. Yet those seeing value in his work would have a vehicle to reward the developer if they so desire.

    2. The present area of need development wise is for a GUI Developer. If there is one here in the forum willing to lend a hand please PM me. I will work things out and in short order get you 2 (or more) developers talking.

    3. Lastly the developer feels comfortable in knowing all the infor he needs from Kemper to move on except for one thing. He wants more information on the USB API. I will write support and ask if that can be had. But if someone else here by chance has any info on it PM me and let me know.

    Rock on,
    LBro

    Quote from LBro44

    1. I have spoke with the Toaster App developer and am waiting to find out if he will accept donations. If so I suggested we as users could buy him gift cards at a music supply store. Thomann's in DE is probably the one. I am in the US and did the exact same thing there for a friend. - Remember the code will be open source, so he will not "own" it. Yet those seeing value in his work would have a vehicle to reward the developer if they so desire.

    Thank you for your efforts - I hope you can motivate him to accept help and financial compensation from outside.

    The risk that Kemper will not disclose all of her secrets is high.
    Also, you can't expect Kemper to take the editor's needs into account in case of an update.
    Expecting that you can put pressure on Kemper with such an action, I don't think so.

    I will support this immediately, if the author of the editor reports himself here and gives e. g. a PayPal address for donations.
    If many people take part, the financial risk is rather low. Could work similar to crowd funding.
    I do not see any advantages for processing via an mediator.

    For many of us it could be a quick interim solution, although I believe that only a solution developed and maintained by Kemper makes sense in the end.

    Quote from Dean_R

    LOL, sorry but you must not know how the IT industry works and that's not a dig at the Kemper team as I'm sure they're different because they're a small company. In large companies the whole IT team usually spend their time hanging out while one or two programmers do some work and even those have so much slack time.

    That's the way lousy, large corporates did IT back in 1998. Things have moved on.

    We're talking about software development here, which is now an efficient and mature field. If they're sitting around it's usually because sales or marketing have failed to get them information or clarify their requirements.

    Look up Agile. :)

    We're also making the assumption that Kemper is doing ANY development on a full-time, consistent basis.

    I mean, if you compare the KPA to Helix or Fractal, development has moved at an absolutely GLACIAL pace. I'm not saying that's a bad thing... personally I think it's a testament to how revolutionary the KPA already is. Kemper could go months without ever touching the code base. Look at Fractal... they're releasing firmware updates monthly (at least) and they're STILL no better than the KPA for core amp tones. So if Kemper has a small team, it's entirely conceivable that they're working on other projects or handling the day-to-day of production and fulfillment. They will make far more $$$ greasing relationships with Andertons, Thomann, Sweetwater, and Guitar Center than they will by sinking development money into new reverbs. Just the truth.

    So... to me, it's simply unfathomable that Kemper has even one full-time developer on staff and has moved at this slow a pace.

    So I'm taking a guess that Kemper is moving in cycles and only does dev work when they see a need.

    Edited once, last by benvigil (January 7, 2018 at 7:29 PM).

    Quote from tommyguitar

    Y’all, don’t pitch any money into development until after NAMM this Jan. If it doesn’t come out, then let’s do it. This has gone too far.


    I seriously doubt the reason previous attempts have failed is because people were short of funding.

    I think a bigger hurdle is that Kemper Amps does not want to provide the necessary information to make third party attempts at an editor viable.

    There's obviously stuff going on under the hood that they don't want other users or competitors to access. That's why most people have abandoned development after some initial promising results.


    The problem with all 3rd-party Kemper "editor" endeavors is that they are Midi based. Not to diminish the hard work and creativity of these folks, but I will not use an editor based on a Midi connection. Furthermore, these developers do not have access to the proprietary codes required to communicate with the Kemper hardware via a PC, using USB protocol. So, there functionality has been severely limited. Again, I am certainly not pretending to speak for everyone...but give me a true USB Editor, or nothing at all...because a gimped Midi implementation is pretty much useless.

    And for that to happen, it is necessarily going to have to come from Kemper Gmbh. if it happens at all.

    Quote from Tritium

    The problem with all 3rd-party Kemper "editor" endeavors is that they are Midi based. Not to diminish the hard work and creativity of these folks, but I will not use an editor based on a Midi connection. Furthermore, these developers do not have access to the proprietary codes required to communicate with the Kemper hardware via a PC, using USB protocol. So, there functionality has been severely limited. Again, I am certainly not pretending to speak for everyone...but give me a true USB Editor, or nothing at all...because a gimped Midi implementation is pretty much useless.


    I use a third party MIDI based editor for my Kurzweil K2600 out of convenience, and while it works and is functional, my biggest issue with it is the latency.

    Quote from ColdFrixion

    I use a third party MIDI based editor for my Kurzweil K2600 out of convenience, and while it works and is functional, my biggest issue with it is the latency.


    It is not just the latency that concerns me...it is the fact that many of the deeper editing parameters will be inaccessible, without Kemper's communication protocol and code. Basically, the only thing a "Midi"-based editor will be able to do, is tweak parameters that are already listed and available in the Kemper Midi commands. Turning on or off an effect, here or there, is a far cry from what people are expecting from a PC-based USB editor (think Fractal and Helix).

    Quote from nightlight

    I seriously doubt the reason previous attempts have failed is because people were short of funding.

    I think a bigger hurdle is that Kemper Amps does not want to provide the necessary information to make third party attempts at an editor viable.

    There's obviously stuff going on under the hood that they don't want other users or competitors to access. That's why most people have abandoned development after some initial promising results.

    I tried to implement the Ctrlr application with MIDI over USB to no avail. As long as the relevant protocol and SysEx information is not available outside Kemper, it's of no use trying.Besides that, some information is not valid anymore. Whatever you offer to an ouside programmer, at some point he'll stuck, as KPS doesn't respond anymore. If you dump the KPA/Rig Man communication, you can see there is a lot going on on undocumented SysEx data.

    Quote from Tritium

    It is not just the latency that concerns me...it is the fact that many of the deeper editing parameters will be inaccessible, without Kemper's communication protocol and code. Basically, the only thing a "Midi"-based editor will be able to do, is tweak parameters that are already listed and available in the Kemper Midi commands. Turning on or off an effect, here or there, is a far cry from what people are expecting from a PC-based USB editor (think Fractal and Helix).

    Did you ever use the KPA MIDI Control editor?

    Quote from Dragonsf

    Which is what?

    Might be some other user-developed software.

    You know what irks me? I wish the midi parameter documentation was complete. We still don't even have official confirmation from Kemper Amps that you can access the loop functions using blah blah blah steps. I'm fully prepared for that carpet to be yanked from under us with any firmware revision now.

    And what about nrpn implementation? I know that some people can grasp that kind of programming, I'm sure I could too. But it's just a couple of lines in the manual. Just tell us some things while not giving us a bunch of examples. Or even all of the code required to access whatever feature. I know it's a lot of work. But I think it's just unfair not to tell us what is needed to access the deeper editing parameters of the Kemper.

    Perhaps some user could tackle that too, I wish I could help.