Hey,
When checking out rigs on Rig Exchange - if the description shows a cab, does that mean it was a full rig capture (not a direct signal from the amp)? Does that mean that the cab block would be better turned off so that you're not adding an IR to an already "cabbed' signal? Seems like most of the rigs come with a cabinet turned on which wouldn't make sense if the signal already went through a cab.
Also - does it make a difference when playing through headphones or monitor out?
A “full rig capture” can also be called a Studio Profile, and it does include the whole package of the amp into speaker cab as it sounded to the microphone(s) used.
If this was the only profile that was made of that rig, then the Kemper doesn’t really know what the amp would sound like if the sound was coming straight out of the amp with no cab and no mic. But it will try to guess what that might sound like, to enable the user to switch off the cabinet element of the sound if they want to, by turning off the Cab Module.
Why would someone want to do that? The answer is that if you wanted to run your Kemper into a regular guitar cab, say a Marshall 4x12, you wouldn’t want the Kemper to output the miked up cab sound, you’d want the sound of the amp alone. The sound of a miked up guitar cab going into another guitar cab would sound horribly muddy.
For greater accuracy in capturing the sound of the amp alone, a Direct Profile can be created, this is where the sound comes out of the speaker output of the amp, and goes into the Kemper being used to make the profile (IMPORTANT: this is done via a special DI box, not straight out of the amp into the Kemper!). With a Direct Profile, the Kemper knows exactly what the amp sounds like on its own.
If you want to play your guitar and send the output of the Kemper to a PA, or to studio monitors, or to full range flat response (FRFR) speakers, or to headphones, then you (most probably) want the sound of the miked up cabinet, so you leave the Cab Module switched on. If you deactivate the Cab module, the sound would approximate the sound of the amp on its own, with no cab.
So if you see that the Cab Module is lit up / switched on, that means the profile includes the sound of a miked up cab. Switch it off and you’ll get something like the sound of that amp with no speaker cabinet. This is so whether you are listening via headphones or the monitor out. Try switching off the Cab Module and you’ll hear the difference.
Hope that helps!
Just for completeness, in addition to what BadBadger said there is also a 3rd type of profile Merged Profile. This is conceptually the very best of both worlds but in reality some people have experienced mixed results.
A Merged profile is the result of taking the two profile types described above (Studio which inludes amp AND cabinet, Direct wich is just the amp withou a cabinet) then using the Merge button in the KPA to subtract the Direct Profile from the Studio Profile. This should leave a perfectly accurate profile of just the cabinet which can then be combined with the direct profile to give a more accurate split between amp and cabinet than the guess made by the Kemper when creating a studio profile.
Thanks very much. Interesting - so for the Studio profiles it is only the modeled approximation of taking away the cab - like adding a negative IR. I never knew that.
In Rig Exchange / Manager where is the indication what kind of profile you're encountering?
In Studio rigs, what does changing the Cab - right click on the icon or clicking drop down menu - do? And what is the difference between that and changing the imprint? Does changing either work differently through headphones vs monitor out?
