[Public Beta] PROFILER OS 8.0.0.21450

    OK, I see.

    I have done it again with your settings. No need to upload it again. Now it sounds exactly the same as yours.

    No wonder yours sounded more harsh than mine in the test I did before if you had Tone knob at 10.

    So I guess it's just a matter of taste, and you don't like the Kemper Drive where other users do like it. That's a shame for you. I hope you find some workaround.

    I have never used overdrives myself and tend to rely on amp distortion. But I do like the OCD (I have a real one version1,7) and I have tested against the Full OC in the Kemper and it is 90% the same. But it still sounds great and that 10% different doesn't mean worse, just a little different in some areas. Even all the different OCD versions are different from each other so I am not going to complain about that.

    Anyway. Happy to help and confirm that nothing seems to be wrong with your unit. It´s working as expected whether you like it or not.

    Atlantic No, I don't think this is a matter of taste, because if someone claims that these models are accurate, they must be accurate, and I have already laid out many examples of analog pedals in this thread so that you can obviously hear a significant difference.


    Just think if the kemper amp profiling was at the same level from beginning - what kind of feedback would he get? )

    "ok, it doesn't sound like mesa boogie or marshall, but it's a matter of taste, isn't it?)"

    And tons of shit from hardware amps fanats rain down on various forums....and youtube

    But that didn't happen because the kemper do profling very,very close ,, and I say this, an old school fan of tube amps ...

    And a very meticulous person about the guitar sound.

    But to my great regret - the overdrive modelling is not at the same level (

    In the early days of the kemper, I bought mine after 2 months of the official release, I already talked about the fact that overdrives are very weak, and posted examples on the this forum.

    Even if Christoph Kemper himself agreed with some sort of digital harshness and clipping in the my examples in this thread

    So something is rotten in the state of Denmark ? )

    Edited 6 times, last by artembankin (November 1, 2020 at 2:12 AM).

    Thanks Atlantic for your good eyes.

    Well, I went into this situation with trust, that the settings of the ODs are appropriate, so I have overlooked the Tone settings.

    Can you confirm, that you first example was made with Tone set to 8.0, the second made at 10.0, while the Rig you have posted has the Tone parameter set to 4.0?

    ckemper

    Yes ,but if i open this rig on my rig manager , i see tone set to 10 .....

    and all settings exactly the same as on mine screenshot ....

    I don't know why this is happening (some beta bug ? )

    (and I'm not 100% sure about the first example anymore, I've done a lot of them these days, and could get confused , i tend to think 10 )

    Edited 3 times, last by artembankin (November 1, 2020 at 4:03 AM).

    Quote from drog

    the issue I see here imo, is that you are not setting the pedal for unity with the Kemper , so you are basically boosting your signal to the Kemper with the pedal . Where the internal KD is set for unity with itself

    I didn't immediately reply to your post because I had to think about what you wrote. Maybe we have different expectations of an overdrive pedal or a different conception of an overdrive pedal's purpose?

    If you make sure the overdrive is set to unity gain, then you use it as a tone shaping tool only, without boosting your amp.

    And I for one use it as a boost with the option to shape the character of the boost. I don't want or need an overdrive pedal at unity gain. It's supposed to "overdrive" a cleanish amp setting into distortion (with the amount of volume deciding how much I want to push it and the tone controls helping to shape how the boosted amp sounds).
    The Colorsound Power Boost for example doesn't try to emphasize the mids like most people expect from a Tubescreamer. It's quite the opposite actually. You can boost Bass and/or Treble with the tone controls, but not the Mids.

    I like the amp being kind of "balanced" while it's cleanish ... and once it's driven into overdrive I love it being scooped. That's exactly what I can achieve with an overdrive pedal that has tone controls (as opposed to a clean boost for example).

    Most overdrive pedals have a Gain control which allows to add a bit of (mild) distortion to add a specific flavour of harmonic content if desired. But (to me) the key is the Volume (Output) control.

    Overdrive:

    to overexcite, overmodulate, overamplify, overload something ... to drive something into saturation

    Quote from lightbox

    It's supposed to "overdrive" a cleanish amp setting into distortion (with the amount of volume deciding how much I want to push it and the tone controls helping to shape how the boosted amp sounds).

    The thing is. When I use your rig, out of a mix, if I up the volume on the KD over 2.3 value, the amp gets clearly more distorted. On that sense you are pushing it the way you are describin. But for some reason that probably CK can explain, at some point the volume level does not get louder but with more gain the sound gets lost in the mix (as all high gain users know. More gain, you get lost in the mix and you have to compensate some way).

    CK has talked here about some dB limitations within the chain for safety reasons. But somehow when the dB come BEFORE the KPA if you use the booster pedal, that higher level goes thru the chain without problems.

    Quote from Atlantic

    The thing is. When I use your rig, out of a mix, if I up the volume on the KD over 2.3 value, the amp gets clearly more distorted. On that sense you are pushing it the way you are describin. But for some reason that probably CK can explain, at some point the volume level does not get louder but with more gain the sound gets lost in the mix (as all high gain users know. More gain, you get lost in the mix and you have to compensate some way).

    CK has talked here about some dB limitations within the chain for safety reasons. But somehow when the dB come BEFORE the KPA if you use the booster pedal, that higher level goes thru the chain without problems.

    No, this is not what I have said concerning lightbox' video.

    The volume drop of the amp when rising the KD volume is untypical and not right. Seems like a flaw in the software.

    lightbox, this might even happen with other pedals. Have you tried it?

    Please send us a backup of your unit.

    Quote from Atlantic

    CK has talked here about some dB limitations within the chain for safety reasons. But somehow when the dB come BEFORE the KPA if you use the booster pedal, that higher level goes thru the chain without problems.

    Yeah, this would be my guess as well. For many years I've used my Profilers without Kemper overdrives and boosts, I rather used either ready-made profiles I liked or just profiled my own amps/rigs with the sounds setup the way I like them.

    Only after this new Kemper Drive came, I got curious. As a result, I started to notice that it seems like the gain staging / headroom of the Profiler seems to be the culprit. Now I start to understand e.g. how people with active pickups sometimes have issues ... I don't own guitars with active pickups and I don't remember any client coming to the studio with active pickup guitars.

    When I profile amps, the profiled result always sounds and behaves very very close to the actual amp, with Clean Sens and Dist Sens at default. Even after 8 years, it still blows my mind how great this digital box can sound and "feel". Never ever changed that and have no plans of doing so. I couldn't and wouldn't do that on my amps either, right? So why should I shift the balance (and transition) from clean to distorted?

    I will still love my Profilers and use them on a daily basis, no doubt about that. And at least here in Germany, I can always use my real amps with the real pedals if I wish. So it's not even close to a "showstopper" issue for me. Just a bit disappointing to realize the (now) obvious limitations. ;)

    ckemper I can confirm that I experience the same volume drop behaviour that lightbox refers to. It happens with all Overdrive and distrotions that I have tested so far. It has always been like this as far as I can remember. I haven't really paid much attention to it in the past as I really never use OD stomps but any time I have tried I have always had this result. I get similar behaviour regardless of where my clean sens is set.

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    ckemper I can confirm that I experience the same volume drop behaviour that lightbox refers to. It happens with all Overdrive and distrotions that I have tested so far. It has always been like this as far as I can remember. I haven't really paid much attention to it in the past as I really never use OD stomps but any time I have tried I have always had this result. I get similar behaviour regardless of where my clean sens is set.

    In my case I wouldn't call it a volume drop but more a volume "stall". But with the added gain from the amp that you get over some volume values, the sound gets completely lost in the mix. But if you check the meter in your DAW there is no real volume drop. Hope that this makes sense.

    So, lightbox, I am not sure I understood correctly:

    To conclude, the issue is that due to dB limitations within the internal sound processing chain, when adding the the KD / OD, the output signal is subject to a volume drop and this only happens if the main signal volume is above a certain threshold at the beginning of the chain (before the amp)?

    Analogue "extra" pedals in front of the KPA have a different effect on the sound which cannot be achieved with the internal effects since they raise the "voltage" that is coming into the input of the KPA compared to the internal effects "just" shaping the sound?

    Can you confirm or correct me, if I am wrong somewhere?

    I think all other "issues" that have been discussed here, e.g. the behavior of the parameters of KD / OD, are more a feature than an issue since they have been implemented consciously that way.

    By the way, for me having just background about physics and not so much about audio engineering especially, it is awesome to read this thread and see, how you all are into the subject and give direct feedback to enhance KPA OS 8.0 for all of us. Thank you lightbox  Atlantic  Wheresthedug and all the others who are investigating this!

    Quote from artembankin

    ckemper

    Yes ,but if i open this rig on my rig manager , i see tone set to 10 .....

    and all settings exactly the same as on mine screenshot ....

    I don't know why this is happening (some beta bug ? )

    (and I'm not 100% sure about the first example anymore, I've done a lot of them these days, and could get confused , i tend to think 10 )

    Well, Tone at 4.0, 8.0, 10.0 make a huge difference in the high frequency content that we are discussing since days.

    We have made specific claims about the KD Tone control in our manual/addendum. We have explicitly claimed that the KD Tone matches the TS tone at noon position, but purposely has a wider span.

    Please try to load your „test rig“ back from the forum an check the tone. Even if there was a beta bug in the RM, it would be surprizing that by chance of all that things it‘s the Tone control that‘s set to a different value caused by a bug, while you kept creating A/B comparisons with different tone settings.

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    ckemper I can confirm that I experience the same volume drop behaviour that lightbox refers to. It happens with all Overdrive and distrotions that I have tested so far. It has always been like this as far as I can remember. I haven't really paid much attention to it in the past as I really never use OD stomps but any time I have tried I have always had this result. I get similar behaviour regardless of where my clean sens is set.

    100%, yes. I’ve had this since day one of owning a Kemper.

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    In my case adding an OD stomp reduces volume slightly compared to the same rig with no stomp engaged. I can raise this back up slightly with the stomp volume above 0. The meters on my desk show an actual level change. I will try and make a video at some point soon.

    But this is not lighbox' case.

    A drop in energy when the volume is around zero, is absolutely natural, due to the equalizer character of the ODs.

    Here it is about a volume drop of the signal caused by a pedal volume increase (!) above 2.2

    Do you experience this same behaviour?

    Quote from fourstrk

    Analogue "extra" pedals in front of the KPA have a different effect on the sound which cannot be achieved with the internal effects since they raise the "voltage" that is coming into the input of the KPA compared to the internal effects "just" shaping the sound?

    In my experience of the recent days of testing I would say the internal boost, overdrive or distortion stomp effects CAN boost the amp. But in a relatively narrow range compared to external analog pedals. Some analog pedals can have such an insane amount of boost that they will likely clip the input stage of the Profiler. If you try to compensate (and thus lower the level going into the Profiler) you can't achieve what the pedal does to a real amp.

    Even if an analog pedal boosts the Profiler's input into some clipping, the overall "extreme boost" still reaches the amp block. The internal boosts don't do that, there's a very obvious (audible) limit where an increase in the volume parameter starts to "compress" in a strange audible way. It might not be visible in peak levels but in certain situations (where it gets very obvious) you can see it happen on a short term loudness meter.

    Quote from ckemper

    Sorry, my question was always referring to other pedal models in the Profiler.

    Just now I tried with Full OC, Green Scream, Mouse, Metal DS ... same issue with all of them.

    I tried using the same DI track I used in the first demo (Strat with some heavy strumming that makes the Profiler's input LED flash green with some rare peaks into brief yellow).

    Up until around 2.3 or 2.5 the boost seems pretty natural and "open" ... from that point further up this weird compression starts to kick in.

    Quote from lightbox

    In my experience of the recent days of testing I would say the internal boost, overdrive or distortion stomp effects CAN boost the amp. But in a relatively narrow range compared to external analog pedals. Some analog pedals can have such an insane amount of boost that they will likely clip the input stage of the Profiler. If you try to compensate (and thus lower the level going into the Profiler) you can't achieve what the pedal does to a real amp.

    Even if an analog pedal boosts the Profiler's input into some clipping, the overall "extreme boost" still reaches the amp block. The internal boosts don't do that, there's a very obvious (audible) limit where an increase in the volume parameter starts to "compress" in a strange audible way. It might not be visible in peak levels but in certain situations (where it gets very obvious) you can see it happen on a short term loudness meter.

    Well summarized, thank you! :thumbup: