ckemper the email I have for you is dead, so please check your PM's.
Posts by drew_fx
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Quote from ckemper
We usually deal a lot with musicians that do not see Refining as a burden, but instead as a chance to control and polish the profiling outcome. As a good reference, there are the Guido Bungenstock videos that are spot on.
I have the assumption that you are not interested in finding reasons for your Profiles having too much bass.
You have mentioned our earlier email conversation that we had back in 2015, about profiling and refining, you have approached me back then, to discuss refining results.
Since constantly subpar refining results are very rare and usually have a specific technical reason, I am always happy to help in analysing the reasons.
I have found back that 2015 email conversation and the last message was from you saying you will resume the conversation after further testing. As far as I have seen, this was the last email from you. Hence my post above.
Now that there's a lot of enthusiasm to discuss this topic again, isn't it a good time to be curious and resume the talk?
Let's do it! I will email you.
It's not exactly true to put this down to "bass" alone. I think that was the mistake I was making back in 2015. I've found your email, but unfortunately the clips I sent you back then I don't have anymore. I will prepare some more clips and get them over to you this week.
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But why is everyone trying to convince Drew that he shouldn’t think that his empirical discoveries are relevant if they’re relevant to him? I probably fall on the side of the sensibilities of several of the other people posting, but I guess I just don’t see how that matters for the purposes of discussing the accuracy of an algorithm.
This is my take on it too. Even how I personally feel about the sounds is semi-irrelevant. I've got loads of great sounds here on my Kemper, but there is an amount of inaccuracy that annoys and frustrates me.
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The one thing I’m finding a little bit frustrating about where this thread has been going is that you guys are launching assumptions about each other’s lack of experience behind a console without knowing anything about one another, especially professionally.
I'm trying not to do that, I really am. I don't know anyone here and I don't know their background.
My background is, I've been audio engineering for 20 years. I've produced professional music tech products for the last 14 of them. I've made (as part of a 2 man team) 504 profiles that were slated for commercial release. Unfortunately corporate NDA's prevent us from selling them at the moment. They're really good though.
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This was in response to
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My point being you certainly appear to be making the case that people in the audience can tell the difference and even comment on it (with your examples) and therefore would also comment on the differences between the KPA and QC.
Now, I'll be the first one to say that sometimes my reading comprehension doesn't bat a thousand, but man it certainly looks like you were making EXACTLY the point you just said you were not trying to make.
I'm afraid you've got this all back to front and inside out. First of all, I didn't make any claim. Someone else did. I was countering that claim. Their claim was that the audience doesn't care and can't tell the difference. I countered this with my empirical observations that they often do care, and do spot the difference between rigs in a live setting, but that the artists very rarely get to even hear the feedback.
It was a completely tangential side-discussion that was not gear specific. You're making it gear specific. I've been to gigs where audience members will discuss guitar tones in between sets over beers, and they won't talk specifics because they don't know the gear. But they'll use words like fizzy, ice-picky, too boomy, etc etc - more descriptive language.
The audience to some degree does notice your tone. They might not be able to articulate it like we can, but they do have ears.
Quote1) Do you believe you could pick out the QC, the original amp, and a KPA playing in the context of a full band?
2) Do you believe that any differences that exist between the 3 would be noticed by an audience hearing only 1 of them live?
1 - No. I've never said I could.
2 - Potentially. They just wouldn't describe it in the same way.
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I believe the contention is that somehow the audience experience would be effected by using a lesser quality amp than the QC and/or Kemper .... or that the QC capture accuracy is better therefore the audience experience would be better than a KPA because of the improved accuracy.
Both of these are largely untrue in my experience.
While it is less likely, an old PodXT in the hands of a guitarist that is good and can tweak and eq his tone well (and is a great musician), can sound great live. Now, just to be clear, it is much more likely that a KPA or Axe IIIFx (or QC) would sound great since they are easier to get sounding good and have more "great" sounds in them.
Still, we are talking about what the audience experience is, and most audience members are much more effected by the stage presence of the band, the lighting, and literally a hundred other things much more than the guitar tone.
Claim QC capture is more accurate than KPA (Ok, maybe so)
Claim QC sounds "better" than KPA (Getting a little more shaky here)
Claim QC over KPA in a band results in the audience noticing the band sounds better (Ahhh. Nope.)
No one has claimed that. That's something you've made up in your brain.
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Amp accuracy does not automatically mean good sound.
99% of audience members have no clue what this kind of Marshall or that kind of Fender sounds like. So like I said. If you can make a cheap solid state combo sound great, the audience will have zero clue if it sounded close to the real deal or not. I’d be willing to bet that most guitar players using a modelling amp don’t even know what a real Dumbell sounds like (myself included) and a recorded version is not like actually plugging into one, so we have no idea how close it is either.
You can make any piece of gear sound good, or bad for that matter. Ha ha
My point was nothing to do with the gear.
My point was whether the audience would notice and/or care. And sometimes, they do. The artist just doesn't get to hear about it. So they think that everything went swimmingly, meanwhile you've destroyed the ears of the front row, and the back row didn't hear a single thing you were doing!
This happens regardless of gear. But the point I was responding to was that the audience doesn't care, so we shouldn't even bother trying to eek out the last bit of accuracy from our modelling gear.
Which is absolute balderdash.
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I have also heard POD’s , HD500 that sounded great. For that matter I have heard many guitarist tube amps that sounded terrible. Myself, I have recorded a Fender Mustang 15 solid state amp and it sounded wonderful.
So I don’t take your point to mean much that lesser gear means lesser sound. It’s all in how you use it and really in how you play.
You can make a QC sound just as bad as those examples you talked about. So meh!Superb way to miss my point.
My point was nothing to do with the gear.
My point was whether the audience would notice and/or care. And sometimes, they do. The artist just doesn't get to hear about it. So they think that everything went swimmingly, meanwhile you've destroyed the ears of the front row, and the back row didn't hear a single thing you were doing!
This happens regardless of gear. But the point I was responding to was that the audience doesn't care, so we shouldn't even bother trying to eek out the last bit of accuracy from our modelling gear.
Which is absolute balderdash.
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Pedal captures (potentially multiple, individually or all in one), into preamp or preamp and power amp combo captures, into power amp or power amp and cab mic captures, have never, NEVER, been possible
In a configuration, that allows you to tweak, every step of the way,
To fine tune or create new, tones, NEVER previously possible, in a very personable way that this has now been available
If you're talking about having individual captures for each part of the chain, yes you can do this. Then you could piece them together like lego. I don't know if it would sound very good separating the preamp and poweramp sections of the amp, but you could definitely do it.
Pedals work great. I've messed around with some boost pedal captures, and really liked what I heard. If you had a solid-state poweramp for capturing the cab+microphone as it's own thing, you could do it that way too. But probably better to just use the built in IR loading capabilities.
On the current firmware - the one without the upcoming improvements to delay+reverb ram resources - I can do this:
In effect, each one of the neural capture blocks could be any element I want. These are all amps right now, so I definitely wouldn't want to listen to this preset!
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I have the QC, Kemper, and Axe Fx. I have this urge to just pick one and forget the others....it's essentially option paralysis. How do you focus on playing? I almost feel as if I need to pledge my time to one unit but then I feel guilty about the others just chilling there. I also read too much into guitar forums. Essentially everyone claims the QC to be heads and shoulders above the kemper but idk, I think they are very similar in terms of pure guitar tone and I often lean towards playing the kemper given my familiarity and maturity of the unit. I guess those who have a QC at the moment pre-ordered either within the first months of it being announced or shortly there after so maybe they have a bias given they have waited so long and also are obviously big NDSP fans if they preorded direct without any knowledge of the product. Not saying the QC is a bad product! Just that to me, it isn't the gamechanger they tried to push it to be.
Nope, not me. I ordered mine in March this year and had it in May. I said before, I have no brand loyalty, and I'm throwing feature requests at NDSP like no-one's business! I definitely wasn't going to pre-order one. The other guitarist in my band did though. He got his in January iirc, and I tested it out a ton before I decided to purchase. Spending that much money isn't a simple decision for me and I had to know that it was spot on.
I'm a huge delay and reverb user. The delays and reverbs on QC are not good enough for my needs. Their tape delay doesn't even do oscillation effects, which I basically need for my music. So they're not good enough. Fortunately I can use my Strymon Volante or my Belle Epoch to get those sounds.
I said before, if you've got the Stryfecta, you're not going to be happy with the QC right now. You can only send one program midi change when switching scenes within a preset - which means you can't easily call up specific presets on each Strymon pedal. You could do it, but your banks would have to be thoroughly organised on your units so that you get the right three presets from the same program change command - what psychopath has time for that!?!
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Probably - what were you hoping to achieve by profiling both mics at the same time? Why not just one after the other?
In theory it would be twice as quick to make profiles.
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Hehe what? So two profilers sending noise through the same amp? Or one profiler only listening to the noise of the other one?
Yeah so that's what I thought might work.... one profiler sending the tones to the amp.... return signal from each mic to each profiler... hit the 'start profiling' switch on both units at the same time.... it got through the process and it did complete, just didn't sound very good!
I'm assuming the micro-second delay between each unit button press is what caused it.
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Yeah, don't touch the settings of the amp when refining. Some people think it's a cool way to trick the algorithm, but 9 times out of 10 it will make your profile worse.
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I've tried using two KPA's at once, to profile a 57 and a 421 to separate units. Making sure to hit the 'start profile' switches at the same time on each unit, unfortunately it didn't work very well. But it wouldn't be a bad shout to offer a way to sync profile sessions across units.
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So no-one ever got to the bottom of it? Just "reset your Kemper" ?? How was the Kemper data structure corrupted? How did it get that way?
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I'm curious if you would humor me and I won't give you a rebuttal or be snarky don't worry: Do you think drum samples/drum programs replace drums fully? If not: will they ever?
Not yet. They're very good in a mix, but for live performance I don't think they're quite there yet. But they're close. I do think eventually the gap will narrow to QC vs Kemper levels.
Right now we're at PodXT versus valve amp stages, when it comes to drum samples replacing an entire acoustic kit.
Doesn't mean they're bad. PodXT was on stacks of records in it's day.
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You found a way to dial it out in the first examples
I didn't. I didn't do anything to either device other than follow the process - QC... capture the amp. Kemper.... profile it, and refine it.
That's an example of the Kemper's inaccuracy and unpredictability. The QC too. It doesn't even always get the amp spot on.
Neither device is infallible. The point is, for my tastes, I tend to prefer the QC. Although not always, as I said before.
I think I'll leave it there. You're being needlessly snarky, and you've already tried a "gotcha" that completely failed, and so any clips or comments you make going forward can only be viewed with suspicion. Which is kind of crap, but it is what it is. That's the situation you put us in. I don't think we really have much else to say to each other that isn't just going to descend into more snark and eventually insults.
The bottom line for me - both units are good. No question. Absolutely no question. But if accurate to your real amps is important to you and if you like tighter more "focused" palm-mute response, QC seems to be better than the Kemper. If you like all the features of the Kemper and don't care too much about accuracy, then go for it. More power to you!
I'm keeping both units for now. I'd like to see profiling tech improvements for the Kemper within the next year or so. I don't care about WIFI or new fuzzes or new drives. I care about being able to replace a valve amp fully.
As an industry, we're still not quite there yet. But getting better as the years go by.
That's it. Thanks for putting up with me everyone!
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I find the whole "well this one profiles closer to the source!" argument to be such a tiny and ultimately meaningless thing to get caught up on.
That's a pretty strange thing for an audio engineer to say.
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You will go to all these lengths to prove the QC is better but the one thing you won't do.... edit the parameters of your Kemper profile.
You keep saying that. It simply isn't true. I've spent years trying to dial out what you yourself have acknowledged as a displeasing distortion character.
No amount of pre or post EQ gives me as pleasing a palm-mute response on the Kemper as the QC, or the original amp. This has been true for cabless signals as much as cabbed signals.
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Nothing because the kemper track had the fx by-passed and you know what: that's on me. You can hear the tell even in the messed up track which is which though and I'll give you a hint: listen to the end when you stop playing.
Okay... so after some more null tests..... between my original files and your files.....
your Original QC Kemper Refined double-clip:
- Left channel is definitely my QC with a 100% null.
- Right channel is definitely my Kemper Refined.
Your Volume Matched 200hz Cut KPA:
- Left channel is definitely my QC with a 100% null.
- Right channel doesn't null against anything. So I'm assuming that's the Kemper one with EQ applied???
So... my original guesses were....
QuoteOriginal QC Kemper Refined.wav - The left channel is the QC. The right channel is the Kemper.
Volume Matched 200hz Cut KPA - Same again. Left is QC. Right is Kemper - with a pretty severe scoop in the mids.
So I'm not exactly sure what I got wrong or what "gotcha" I fell for?? I seem to be 100% correct ????