Hi All!
Reasonably long Kemper user here and ardent supporter of the brand as I believe that it does nearly exactly what it says it does; profile an existing amp signal chain and deliver that to you in a repeatable, reliable, and tweakable package. That being said I'm at a complete loss on 1 aspect of the experience...the one sitting in front of my computer while practicing or creating. I hear the youtube videos of profiles that sound great. Great tones that reasonably faithfully reproduce the original...and that's where the problem starts.
Take this for example:
In this video from Tone Junkies they state within the comment section that "Cesar Romero Hey Caesar! None, the audio you are hearing is from the guitar plugged directly into a Kemper running into the Universal Audio Apollo you can see on the desk and into logic. No post eqs or effects are used ever. If you have any of these guitars or similar these are the same tones you can get if almost no effort." I try and try and try and even though I have nearly the exact same gear (e.g. nearly identical guitar and pups -> kemper -> apollo -> logic I NEVER can get the tone that they achieve. Everything, on every profile, comes through my CMS 65s, sounding flat and thin. I play the Youtube clip through those same speakers and wow it sounds great. I play my actual guitar through the above signal chain and it sounds like a cheap facsimile of the profile. That's why the comment gets me. How is it possible if there is nothing being done to the profile on their or anyone else's end (no eq'ing, no added effects, no added compression, no mastering) that the clips sound great and the same profile played through nearly identical gear sounds...sad in person. I've tried mucking around with the definition, the clean and distortion sens, the output values, pure cab, etc all to no avail. Further, and I understand that this is most likely a case of mastering, the youtube videos and sound clips are ALWAYS louder than I can dream of getting the Kemper to be. I need to turn my Apollo up to >75% of max volume to get close to the same level of volume from a simple youtube video.
I realize that these problems are because of my own errors somewhere, I just have no idea where. I'm not expecting the "amp in the room sound" whatsoever because I know that a) that's not what you're hearing on any record and b) it's not what the kemper does but I am expecting to be able to readily replicate the tone that I hear from a youtube video. I have a reasonably extensive collection of guitars to match nearly anything anyone puts out there. I also understand that picking dynamics contribute to the tone but that doesn't account for the "flat and thinness" of the profiles living on my system.
Any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated. My tone is good now...I just want it to be great and I know the Kemper is capable of delivering it. I just need the help on my end to make it happen.
Thanks so much for reading this missive and I look forward to any and all suggestions, and yes flames for being a moron.
P.S. - I'm not calling out Tone Junkies whatsoever. I'm sure they're doing exactly what they say they are doing and I love their profiles. I just want to be able to sound reasonably close to what I hear when I buy the profile.