Kone & Kabinet Q&A

My dear users

In the last days numerous questions arose about the Kabinet and the Kone, that have not been answered by our documentation yet.

Feel free to throw questions at me in this thread, and I will answer them short and hopefully quickly, as my time allows it.

CK

Quote from Peter_34

Hello, is the Kemper Kone available in version 7 for the Rack Profilier?

While the Kone itself is not directly downloadable by obvious reasons, the coresponding software part will come along a future software soon.

We were confirmed yesterday that the ships will all be going soon. So only a couple weeks ‚til the hardware arrives at our logistic points.

Now here is a first rough draft of the manual for the Kabinet and Kone. This should answer many question.

Kemper Kone / Kemper Kabinet

As you have read in the chapter xx, the Profiler can run linear speakers for monitor purposes, as well as classic guitar cabinets. But our company also offers a special speaker solution, that offers a maximum of sound varity: the Kemper Kone is a speaker that allows for a linear reproduction of your rigs, as well as mimicing several classic guitar speakers. It‘s your choice.

Connect the Kemper Kone speaker to the Profilers power amp output, or amplify it by an external solid state power amp, connected to the Profilers MONITOR OUTPUT.

The behaviour of the Kemper Kone is fully controlled by the software of your Profiler. To activate the „intelligence“, the Kemper Kone mode, navigate to the page „Kemper Kone“ in the OUTPUT section and press the soft button „Kemper Kone“.

You will find three parameters that you should be familiar with already; hey have been mirrored to the Kemper Kone page for your convenience: Monitor Volume, Monitor Stereo and MonitorCabOff. When MonitorCabOff is not highlighted, the Kemper Kone works in the full range mode.

Bass Boost

The Kemper Kone is seasoned for a perfect tone, when the cabinet sits on the floor. Whenever you lift a cabinet away from the floor, into the freefield, it will loose a certain amout of bass fundament, as the mirroring of the floor attenuates. This effect can be compensated by pressing „Bass Boost“, which adds 3 dB to the low frequencies.

Speaker Imprint Mode

When you highlight MonitorCabOff, then you deactivate the Cabinet Modul exclusively for the Monitor Output, in order to run a classic guitar speaker on that output or the build in power amp. You have learned this in Chapter XXX. The Kemper Kone mode fulfills this demand by switching from full range mode to the speaker imprint mode and offers you the choice of XX of the finest classic speaker imprints to chose from. Enjoy the ‚amp-in-the-room‘ sound! You might be surprised how different the sound is, compared to the full range mode.

Speaker Imprint

Selects one of the classic guitar speaker simulations. The imprints are adjusted to equal loudness levels. They can sound quite similar to each other, especially when you play a sound with slight or no distortion.

Directivity

The Kemper Kone features a larger high frequency dispersion than many classic guitar speakers. That is, a real guitar speaker will sound duller than the Kemper Kone, when you position your ears away from the middle axis of the speaker. Thus you might like to adjust the colour of the Kemper Kone towards a „creamier“ sound by lowering the Directivity parameter. The nice side effect is that the on-axis sound will also loose some of the harshness that classic guitar speakers naturally have. At Directivity set to maximum, the on-axis sound is identical to the original.

Note: Speaker Imprint and Directivity are only available in the speaker imprint mode, when MonitorCabOff is active. However, Bass Boost is available in both modes.

Here is some more properties of the Kemper Kone:

• The Kemper Kone comes either build-in into our Kemper Kabinet, or as a replacement speaker fitting in any 1x12, 2x12 or 4x12 cabinet for 12 inch speakers, open and closed.

• The impedance of the Kemper Kone is 4 Ohm only, to get the most efficiency from your power amp. Since 4 Ohm is usually the lowest impedance allowed for power amps, you should take care not to come below this value by connecting two cabinets or two speakers to the same power amp output in parallel. When two Kemper Kone speakers are mounted in a 2x12 cabinet, they have to be connected in series.

• Two or more Kemper Kabinets can be daisy-chained by the additional jack without danger, as the Kabinets are automatically put in electrical series by the build-in circutry.

• The Kemper Kone speaker and the Kemper Kone mode in the Profiler make a perfect team. Thus refrain from running the Kemper Kone speaker with any other sound generator than the Profiler. It will sound bad! The same goes for the Kemper Kone mode run into other speaker. It will also sound bad.

• Any solid state amp will work. Running Kemper Kone by a tube power amp will change the frequency responce and potentially sweeten the sound too much.

• Similar to the MonitorCabOff feature the Kemper Kone mode is only available for the Monitor Output, as well as for the build-in power amp, for your personal monitoring. The other outputs are not affected by these features.

• Due to its special cone design, the Kemper Kone speaker is not suitable for close mic‘ing. Use it for personal monitoring only.

• You can run Kemper Kone in stereo using the „Monitor Stereo“ function (XXX im Stage immer stereo!!!), either in full range mode or speaker imprint mode. Since the intelligence lies in your Profiler, all connected Kemper Kones chassis benefit from the Kemper Kone features simultaneously.

• You probably use Direct Profiles in your live set, such as acoustic guitar sounds or bass rigs. Direct Profiles are marked by having the Cabinet Module set to „empty“, thus featuring a full range sound. Running a full range sound through a classic guitar speaker is unpleasant. Therefore, in speaker imprint mode (MonitorCabOff active), when switching to a Direct Profile, Kemper Kone will automatically switch to full range mode for that rig. No preparation needed.

• A signal on the Aux Input fed to the Monitor Output by using the AuxToMonitor control will be processed by the Kemper Kone intelligence as well. It will always processed in the full range mode, even when you play your rigs in speaker imprint mode (MonitorCabOff active).

• Use two Kemper Kone equipped Cabinets as your little PA, maybe for a spontaneous party. Feed your music into the Aux Input in stereo, activate Monitor Stereo, use a stereo power amp into the cabinets. Only the guitar-speaker-like dispersion will make your cabinets appear different to a regular PA.

• The maximum Kemper Kone setup: Play guitar along the stereo music using the speaker imprints, while the music plays full range, through the same cabinets.

• Pure Cabinet is naturally available for Kemper Kone as well. As you would expect, it is only perceivable in the full range mode, where the Cabinet module is also fed to the Kemper Kone. In speaker imprint mode Pure Cabinet does not influence the tone.

Quote from HCarlH

Herr Kemper, I noticed the Kabinet is closed back. Will there be any disadvantage to loading the Kone into an open back cabinet (E.g. Tech 21 Power Engine) or is it simply a matter of taste?

In other words, is the Kone optimized for a closed back cabinet?

Thank you!

As you know, the Kone will support two directions.

I have optimized the linear route in our Kabinet, which is a fully closed cabinet [no ports). I have used some of the best studio monitors and other speakers as a reference.

I am confident you will achieve excellent results in other closed cabinets as well, since the air volume of regular cabinets does not differ too much. This is also true for 2x12 and 4x12 cabinets, as you would divide the effective volume by 2 or 4. If a problem arises still, even software updates would be an option.

But when you run the linear sound in an open back enclosure, you will loose the low and, and thus not being that linear. But that is not a bad thing, as you would anticipate this loss, when you play an open back.

My approach for the imprints was different. There it was not about a linear device, but a speaker that should produce the same sound as a reference speaker, no matter what cabinet it is.

So I had the original guitar speakers mounted in our Kabinet and compared it to a Kone in another Kabinet side by side. By this approach the imprints are independent of the cabinet, as the influence of the cabinet is equally applied on both reference and Kone, and thus falls out of the equation.

We did some quick tests with an open cabinet a while ago and we liked it!

Because the Kone‘s dispersion pattern is wider (less beam), the sound radiated backwards looses a bit of relevance, but this is not a negative aspect at all.