[Public Beta] PROFILER OS 8.0.0.21450

I just wanna throw out there that regardless of anyone being “in denial“ or not, the owner of the company is here, in the discussion, attempting to incorporate every possible bit of information, i.e. the request for backups etc., into the team’s analysis of this subject. While I’m guessing after a long period of development he and his team would love this to be done, again he is here.

Historically, a defensive posture doesn’t necessarily equate to a resistance to hearing about and then addressing substantiated issues with coding updates. Ultimately this company has built its reputation among professionals first and then among a broader base. If there’s something here, I’m guessing regardless of any perceived “tone“ in response that this is something Kemper is deeply invested in fixing.

Maybe the frustrated parties will understand that changes that impact thousands of users will be implemented only after serious deliberation.

Quote from Atlantic

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.

This volume stall is in a way a known feature.

It's caused by the volume compensation in the AMP that keeps clean and cleaner sounds at the same level as distorted sounds.

Is the volume stall in your way when you activate a stomp, or when you increase the volume of the stomp or both?

I think for me, what I would have liked to see is compression settings in the KD And Full OC boost along with a “Pure drive” style of volume increase knob. Put it all under the KD and Full OC so we can better tweak to our liking to real world pedal/amp interaction.

The KD volume acts to give the sound of tubes being saturated and you do get a similar sound but not as open sounding because we do not get enough volume increase. I can get much closer when I use the pure boost in slot x, to what I expected with just the KD boost. So I still need to use two slots. Not the end of the world but would be nice if it was all in the KD/ Full OC drives.

Quote from ckemper

This volume stall is in a way a known feature.

It's caused by the volume compensation in the AMP that keeps clean and cleaner sounds at the same level as distorted sounds.

Is the volume stall in your way when you activate a stomp, or when you increase the volume of the stomp or both?

I recognized it as a stall before testing with objective data. Of course that feature would be natural because of the amp compression at certain levels . Then I tested it at regular input (green led) and found that there was no stall but even increase of volume going from 2.2 to 5 volume value in the KD. After testing with a higher input volume as lightbox suggested I found a decrease in volume when going from 2.2 to 5 in the KD.

I am recording some examples for you to hear and even test yourself. I will upload them when they are ready.

I want to be clear here ckemper. I am trying to help. Not criticize your product. I´m testing a beta release here so I think that when another user reports a bug, If we can we should try and reproduce it to report.

Everyone here wants the best KPA that we can have.

Quote from ckemper

How does the signal react when you keep the KD volume at +5.0 but lower the reamping volume?

Testing this right now.

Quote from ckemper

This volume stall is in a way a known feature.

It's caused by the volume compensation in the AMP that keeps clean and cleaner sounds at the same level as distorted sounds.

Is the volume stall in your way when you activate a stomp, or when you increase the volume of the stomp or both?

This may be the case here as i connected boss OS-2 before my KPA and in fact I can drive amp much louder then KD. I've added even two booster modules after KD and still cannot reach the same level of loudness as with external drive without any other FX in the way. Maybe KPA treat my overdrived loud signal as clean and do not conpensate this in any way. Interesting fact is if I enable any kind of FX in slot A-D the level is decereasing.

Quote from DamianGreda

This may be the case here as i connected boss OS-2 before my KPA and in fact I can drive amp much louder then KD. I've added even two booster modules after KD and still cannot reach the same level of loudness as with external drive without any other FX in the way. Maybe KPA treat my overdrived loud signal as clean and do not conpensate this in any way. Interesting fact is if I enable any kind of FX in slot A-D the level is decereasing.

Yes, I have noticed this before and you can easily drive the input into clipping.

It looks to be by design for obvious reason of not having massive level jumps that the internal effects and amps have a compression/limiter applied so they are closer in levels. The pure boost after amp stack lets you get a bit more level but still not a huge increase like we can with a pedal.

It’s a limitation of the way it’s setup but at the same time, I am sure sound persons around the world are thankful as are many ears and speakers, lol.

We can get the flavours/ colours of the OD pedals and that is the important part. I can always compensate a bit when recording, right in my DAW.

Did anyone see the same bug I mentioned many posts ago ( no stomps shwoing on the remote) ?

Quote from ckemper

This volume stall is in a way a known feature.

It's caused by the volume compensation in the AMP that keeps clean and cleaner sounds at the same level as distorted sounds.

^This I believe is my issue. Good to know it’s meant to be there but... can we turn it off?

Quote from V8guitar

Did anyone see the same bug I mentioned many posts ago ( no stomps shwoing on the remote) ?

Sorry V8guitar but my remote is at the rehearsal room and we can't go there currently because of COVID restrictions at my city. So I have not been able to check that bug.

Quote from ckemper

Interesting.

What do you experience exactly?

A volume drop or signal degradaton or both?

How does the signal react when you keep the KD volume at +5.0 but lower the reamping volume?

Ok, so I have created a DI that can be tested. And I share some test files I reamped using it.

The DI was made with a Gibson Les Paul R8 using the bridge pickup. This guitar has typical PAF humbuckers with regular to low output. I tried to play hard and consistent and the input led was all the time on the verge of being yellow. I wouldn´t play like that most times but I reckon that I could play like that and I do when I get excited playing with my band. So it is not ridiculously hard or loud.

By creating this DI that you can feed to reamp at 0dB with no change in input volume you can test what happens using the lightbox rig and changing the volume on the Kemper Drive from 2.2 to 5.0

In the 3 test files that I have recorded I did always the same thing. I programmed a morphing change in that pot from 2.2 to 5.0. Then on each audio file while reamping I morph from 2.2 to 5.0 and back to 2.2

You can see that at 0dB there is a drop in volume when going from 2.2 to 5.0.

At -10 dB I would say that there is a volume "stall" and only the distortion changes.

At -20 there is an increase of volume and also an increase of the distortion.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qz8XUB…iew?usp=sharing

Quote from Atlantic

Sorry V8guitar but my remote is at the rehearsal room and we can't go there currently because of COVID restrictions at my city. So I have not been able to check that bug.

No problem, wondered if anyone else or Kemper had?

Hi, V8guitar.

Sorry I didn't notice this sooner.

I hadn't noticed this issue and I just double checked - the stomps show up fine in Performance Mode on the Remote for me.

The stomps are also working fine on my Kemper Stage in Performance Mode.

I'm running Beta 8.0.1.218158

Quote from V8guitar

I've found my first bug!!

So I loaded the beta, and totally forgot I had a gig, so went with it....set my gear up, plugged in my remote and....no stomps in performance mode.

Checked the cable, all fine and stomps showed up in browse mode but in performance, no stomps showing on the remote. The stomps were working on my KPA and working but just not showing on my remote. I quickly noticed they did work on one profile I had the new OD's on but all the others they were not there ( hence I know its not a cable issue).

Luckily I don;t really use stomps during a gig so no issue...

DonPetersen is this the right place to post this? If not please move..

Cheers,

ST

Quote from ST

Hi, V8guitar.

Sorry I didn't notice this sooner.

I hadn't noticed this issue and I just double checked - the stomps show up fine in Performance Mode on the Remote for me.

The stomps are also working fine on my Kemper Stage in Performance Mode.

I'm running Beta 8.0.1.218158

Working fine for me as well

Thanks both, I'll recheck....

Making a conjecture... maybe the currently discussed issue exists because of Kemper's fixed-point processing -- at a certain point, the drive processing portion's dynamic range runs out and the volume increase does strange things because it meets an overflow limit. Seems a complicated issue to solve/optimize if this is the case. End of conjecture.

Hi, Martin ( lightbox )

Thanks for all your contributions to the discussion. There's lots to consider and I appreciate the time and effort you've devoted to documenting your experiences.

Goal

Using your profile, test if I can reproduce

From about +2.3 or +2.5 up you'll not get more "open sounding" boost. You should be able to clearly hear how between +3.0 and +5.0 the sound starts to "step back", "compresses down" and sounds less "open".

Note

I'm not set up for recording so I took a different approach to testing your premise. If running the signal through a DAW and reamping at a higher input level is essential to what you are talking about - then my results won't matter to you.

Here's what I did

1. Loaded your rig lbxTubeThomsenKD (file attached)
2. Created a Performance Beta8KDrive (file attached).

The slots are populated as below so I could listen, and A/B test the effect of changes in Volume and Drive.

1. Original rig with Kemper Drive OFF
2. Original rig with Kemper Drive ON with your settings
   1. Drive 2.2
   2. Volume 2.2
3. Original rig with Kemper Drive ON with
   1. Drive 2.2
   2. Volume morphed from 0 to 5
4. Original rig with Kemper Drive ON with
   1. Drive morphed from 0 to 10
   2. Volume 2.2
5. Original rig with Kemper Drive ON with
   1. Drive morphed from 0 to 10
   2. Volume morphed from 0 to 5

Conditions

I made no other changes to the lbxTubeThomsenKD rig.

My Input section has

• Clean Sens 0.0
• Distortion Sens 0.0

I cannot get the Input LED to flicker yellow. It's solid green.

I have an expression pedal set up to control morphing. That way I could move through the values slowly so I could listen and watch the settings in the Kemper Drive change while playing.

Guitars:

• Santana MD (with active switch to get more single-coil sound)
• Hamer USA with Seymour Duncan zebra pickups
• Les Paul
• PRS with Soap Bar pickups (P90s)

Outcomes

No matter what I do, I do not hear the sound "step back", "compresses down" and sounds less "open"." as I

• Switch the Kemper Drive on/off (switching between slots 1 and 2)
• increase Volume or Drive individually (slots 3 and 4 using morph) [somewhat extreme]
• increase Volume and Drive simultaneously (slot 5 using morph) [pretty extreme]

Talking about sound is challenging at the best of times so I may be hearing the same thing you described, but not experiencing it in the same way.

If anyone is still reading, go ahead and download the Performance and check it out.

Cheers,

ST

Quote from lightbox

Ok folks, here's a last attempt to enable you to reproduce what I experience. First I will explain what I want to achieve, then I add a step-by-step guide what to do. Hope this helps and wraps up this topic (for me).

Please take the time to read carefully if you're interested!

What I want to achieve:

• Consider the Tube Thomsen amp profile to be a profile of a single channel amp. I want to have access to the entire bandwidth of sounds from clean to blasting heavy rock distortion (not quite high gain metal though) in the same way I would/could do with the amp, my guitar and the overdrive pedal.
• So the basic profile with guitar pickup volume at max but without any overdrive should give me a barely crunchy sound, just a bit beyond breakup ... when I strum hard.
• When I strum soft, do a bit medium to soft single note stuff and/or roll down the guitar volume knob a bit the sound completely cleans up. Nice.
• Now I want to "rock" this rig and I need an overdrive to help pushing the amp profile (the virtual tubes) way beyond "slightly crunchy". With guitar volume at max and hard strumming, I want to create a glorious blast that rocks the walls.
• But of course I can still roll down guitar volume to tame the distortion down to a pretty crunchy tone with relatively soft strumming and also a more cleanish tone with soft single-note picking.

Result: With my tube amp and an overdrive pedal I can cover all bases (minus "high gain" metal).

Now we want to get this exact same range on the Kemper Profiler.

How to reproduce:

1. First load the Tube Thomsen profile I had posted earlier with my first video demo.
2. Make sure that all stomps other than the Kemper Drive are empty.
3. Switch the Kemper Drive OFF for now.
4. Also check that Clean Sens, Dist Sens, Reamp Sens, Rig Volume, Volume in the AMP block are set to default (0.0).
5. After a few moments of noodling and testing the slight dynamics of the pure profile, please record a DI track in your DAW. You can (if you like) record a bit of softer playing but the important part is that you record some hard strumming as well. Just imagine you're on stage and want to rock the house. It might feel a bit weird without the Kemper Drive engaged but we'll get there shortly.
6. Now setup your DAW, audio interface and the Kemper Profiler for reamping.
7. When you playback the hard strumming DI into the Profiler (make a loop in your DAW!), make sure that the Profiler's input LED very briefly goes into yellow at least for the hard strummed transients! In your DAW you can adjust the levels accoringly just in case your DI track was too hot or too low. This step is crucial!
8. Now switch the Kemper Drive ON to boost the amp profile. No need to go nuts with the Kemper Drive Gain, just keep it relatively low.
9. And now, finally start changing the Volume parameter of the Kemper Drive. Go down to reduce the boost and gradually reduce the amp distortion, go slowly up to increase the boost (and amp distortion).
10. From about +2.3 or +2.5 up you'll not get more "open sounding" boost. You should be able to clearly hear how between +3.0 and +5.0 the sound starts to "step back", "compresses down" and sounds less "open".

Final thoughts:

If you compare this with a real overdrive pedal that offers plenty of output in front of a real tube amp with plenty of headroom, you'll not get this effect at all. You can even try the real overdrive pedal in front of your Profiler, push the Output volume of the pedal considerably and the result will go way further than the Kemper Drive at max.

Of course, there might also be clipping introduced because the Kemper's input LED will likely turn red with this serious boost in front. There's no digital clipping in real tube amps.

But the entire experiment is only to show how limited the boosting options inside the Profiler actually are, compared to the real world amps and pedals. The fact that we can't even use the full range of the Kemper Drive volume (in the above scenario) without this "compression", "limiting" and "stepping back" is disappointing (to me) and has absolutely nothing to do with real world possibilities ... what I tend to call "headroom" and "dynamic range".

Thanks for reading and cheers

Martin

Display More

Quote from ckemper

The Green Scream and the Kemper Drive have identical circuits, when Definition, Slim Down and Tone is set accordingly.

Here is a wav of a loop set to input, with me toggling between the KD 808 Mid preset and the Green Scream set up as the corresponding diagram of the real pedal. Both Stomp levels are at 0.0

I start off by switching between them every time the loop loops, but at the end much more frequently. The differences are subtle, but I can definitely hear a more nasal, mid-focused sound on the Green Scream, whereas the KD has a more open top end.

Quote from sambrox

The differences are subtle, but I can definitely here a more nasal, mid-focused sound on the Green Scream, whereas the KD has a more open too end

I made the exactly same experience.That is the reason I kept the green scream for a certain rig while most of the other rigs which got the the green scream previously now have the KD instead.

In any case the green scream still keeps its value when you look for this certain colour.

Cracks and pops using Spdif since the beta update. Where do i submit a bug?

Quote from CrazyShred

Cracks and pops using Spdif since the beta update. Where do i submit a bug?

A fix is already in the works