Display MoreFor so many years, people who pointed out certain limitations of the Kemper were often shut down harshly.
Many users had long been saying that there can be a bit of a midrange build-up, slightly more compression than the real amps and a high end that sometimes sounds a bit polished. Others mentioned that the Kemper can benefit from using external IRs at higher resolution or that external IR and cab plugins offer useful additional features (for example resonance controls). There were also reports that in some cases IR capturing produced better cab results than profiling.
The common response was that Kemper profiles are indistinguishably from the real amp. It's so close that it can not be improved. And Kemper cabs are superior and have more depth and realism. And that longer IRs were absolutely unnecessary. If something didn’t sound right, it was often attributed to user error. Kemper also stated that they hadn’t received any such reports from professionals. (I talked to quite a few pros, studios and Profile sellers that told me about problems and that Kemper does sometimes nail the tone pretty much, but does not give consistant results like now other solutions do. Most still like the Kemper for what it is).
And now things suddenly seem to have shifted over night
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With release of 2.0 profiling, the mid hump is said to be gone, compression is reduced and the cab section apparently benefits from longer IR lengths. What? So it is now official? Thy all agree and they all can hear it in the classic profiles now? MBritt, ToneJunkie now talk about the mid hump and a layer that has been lifted...And now they are exaggerating in the opposite direction for marketing
I understand that after such a long time Kemper had to react in some way and bring something new. More and more players have been moving toward newer technologies, often driven by the perception that newer automatically means better. Some returned and stated, they still like the Kemper feel better! But over time, Kemper began to feel a bit outdated for some.
Of course that also means expectations for a 2.0 generation are very high. And some people were hoping for more.
So now the questions are: How much better are Mk2 and Profiling 2.0 really? And where is the line between strategy / marketing and real improvements. What are the real technical reasons why 2.0 can’t run on the older devices? Or is it just a software feature set meant to boost Mk2 sales? Kemper is keeping very, very quiet and giving out very little information. At the same time, they don’t want any speculation - which is a contradiction. What else are people supposed to do?
I do agree with your statement and that's something we will never know, or will know someday maybe. The true is that we don't really know what MK2 units can do. Nobody knew the player already was an MK2, nobody knew it was a full Kemper with locked features, nobody knew that the player was able to profile (not even the company knew this I would say).
I don't think they're hiding anything, I really think they're trying to do their best to serve the customer.
Even that resonance "bug" is probably a bug. Will they use this bug to add that resonance in the MK1 units, were they planning to make that change and it was locked in this new upgrade because it was not finished.
I think we can't know that right now...
But we will know
you won't regret it !
It has been closed!