Profiling long recording chains

    Hear me out before the lapidation begins...

    I'm struggling to find a profile that sounds good when running directly to PA. And not going to spend money on commercial profiles that can't be refunded if there is not a single sound that I dig. So I figured I'd try and profile my own rig in a way that would give me the optimal sound.

    So here's the method to my madness: running through the preamp section of my amps only, FX send to interface/DAW, EQ and impulse responses, running back out to PA (or the KPA for profiling). That way, I could dial in a few great sounds that actually worked to my liking.

    Unfortunately, it seems that the Kemper is unable to profile this chain. Somewhere between the drive pedal, amp, post-processing in the DAW (although IR loader and EQ only), the gain structure gets lost. After profiling & refining, there's a ginormous difference in sound between the KPA profile and reference sound.

    Is there anything to be aware of when profiling like that? Should I rather create an IR from my DAW signal chain to be used with the Kemper and create a direct/merged profile instead (theoretically resulting in the same chain)?

    you shoudn't apply any additional compression to the signal.

    any EQ should profile fine. in fact this kind of setup isn't exactly new, people use it to created EQ-matched Profiles.

    So if you are using IRs that work as EQs, there shoudn't be any issues, obviously you don't want to add reverberation, tho.

    No reverb or compression of any sort. Basically just NadIR with impulse responses and ReaEQ to do a couple of cuts and a high shelf. Nothing I couldn't create a new/single IR from.

    The full chain is KPA send - > horizon devices precision drive - > Engl Invader in - > FX send - > Axe io interface - > Reaper - > NadIR - > ReaEQ - > Axe io out - > KPA return - > main out - > PA in.

    The gate is all the way down on the precision drive. Off on the Invader.

    I wonder what's causing the trouble here. Maybe the precision drive attack knob is doing sort of a multiband compression / transient shaping thing that simply can't be profiled?

    Are you sure the Axe interface isn't applying any dynamics processing whatsoever?

    As for the Precision Drive, if there's any compression going on in it and you're happy with the non-Profiled sound you get, there's no reason IMHO why the Profiled result should sound any different.

    Also, are you sure it's not just a simple matter of the gain knob's needing to be adjusted in the actual Profile? You didn't describe the "ginormous difference in sound between the KPA profile and reference sound" in any detail, but mentioned earlier that "the gain structure gets lost"; this is why I'm suggesting the "obvious" tweaking of... the gain knob post-Profiling.

    Will do. I'm under the suspicion that the "attack" mode is some sort of compression. A multiband compression makes total sense to tighten up the low end. That's a thing I'm really missing with the Kemper...

    The Axe IO is a normal interface. No processing going on whatsoever.

    I adjusted quite a few parameters (gain, clarity, EQ) to get closer to the reference, but the distortion itself sounds different. The gain knob makes the input hotter, which adds a different - for lack of a better word - colder/more metallic sort of distortion. The reference is more mid-rangey and warm.

    Ask Tone Junkies how they did theirs. I believe they did some profiles with a Prescision Drive. It might've been The Amp Factory tho, I don't remember. Sorry :wacko::saint:

    I tried to profile my Tokyo Drive and Apex Preamp and ran into gate trouble.

    You could run your PD into your DAW and monitor how the attack knob effects the eq range? Then just add or subtract. Use a gate and a soft shaper after perhaps. :/

    One other thing to bear in mind about this signal chain is that it only captures the preamp sound. The power amp is a significant part of most valve amps. When I tried profiling my Mesa Triaxis without any power amp the sound was pretty flat and dull/boring. However, the same settings taken from the power amp (Mesa 2:ninety) speaker out were great. While the IR in the DAW will add the speaker and mic portion of the tone, there is a lot of character in the power amp that will be lost when you send the resuting profile direct to FOH.

    I would try a DI box after the speaker out and send this to the DAW to add the IR then send everything back to the profiler.

    IR can include power amp coloration, but I wouldn't think the way preamp hits power amp, depending on settings, amp structure, pla pla, is carried over when using some random IRs, assuming that being the case.

    Surely it's possible to shoot particular IRs to help with this, if such "accuracy" would be of interest, and IRs can still sound great anyway.

    Some of my favourite tones are comprised of IR including tube power amp coloration + a real tube amp plus preamp (or profile of that stage).

    In terms of the precision drive: I was under the impression the noise gate is always on. Low settings don't switch it totally off. I had issues profiling with that pedal which weren't there using maxon808x. There's the chance it will wasn't only the noise gate of the pedal causing problems, but other aspects of how the pedal worked too.

    Depending on what you seek to achieve with the precision, it could be worth trying out another boost.

    And surely try without any boost to see the same issues persist. I've had cases using a similar set up to profile EQ'd tones where I never found out what was confusing kemper. But in others the eq matching didn't seem to add any extra issues.

    I guess another way around this could be to try and "bake in" the EQ changes into the IRs to compensate to the level possible. Then what you could do is convert the IRs to kemper format and import in kemper. You'd then test these tones to see if the results are close enough to what you are after, assuming you'd want to keep it all in one unit.

    The bonanza

    Edited once, last by Dimi84 (May 1, 2019 at 5:53 PM).

    Another workaround could be to try and emulate the EQ changes themselves within kemper using the equalisers. You'd then just convert and import the IRs to kemper as they are.

    But depending on what you are doing with EQ I would assume it may be difficult to replicate it all within kemper. That's a possibility.

    In that case, maybe playing with the IR itself would be more successful before importing to kemper... But depending on what method you choose, even there, I'd probably imagine some experimenting till it sounds right..

    For this reason if it was me in this situation I'd probably have a DI guitar signal ready to test through the various scenarios.

    The bonanza

    And a third scenario (I don't mean to derail; I mean to help) could be to profile while only applying the EQ changes while leaving the IR out the chain in your daw. I've had a fewwwwwwwwww cases where IRs didn't profile well. But this would probably be the last thing I'd thing was causing the profiling problem itself.

    The bonanza