"In a mix" is where 99.9% of listeners are going to hear your guitars. That's why I've always put a big emphasis on dialing in tones within a mix or at the very least double tracking (which in itself makes the guitars tonally different) and not to sound good completely isolated on their own. As I've stated if the argument is a raw QC capture is more accurate than a raw Kemper one I don't think you'll get any argument out of me or anyone else. That doesn't mean the Kemper can't be just as accurate to the real thing as the QC once you make a few adjustments, that's exactly why all the options to do so are there on the Kemper. It also doesn't mean that a capture or profile even has to be 100% accurate to sound good and honestly that's a situation that doesn't effect very man people.
I hate to make over-arching statements based on anecdotal evidence but in my experience the majority of the people who use a Kemper and probably QC users as well do not and will not make their own profiles. They use the ones provided or buy packs from 3rd parties and at that point there's is no way to tell how accurate it is to the source because you weren't there. Sure you could make the argument you could just go based on the reputation of the algorithm but there's no way to be 100% sure. For those people the process is ultimately irrelevant because they turn the browse knob and get the sound they want.
Would you not EQ your guitars in a mix or live? The real question is why wouldn't you that's exactly what the tools are for. It's kind of like having all the ingredients to make your favorite meal but leaving a few of them out because why should you have to add them? The meal should just taste good without them right? Maybe not the best example but hopefully one that's easy to follow. To me this is illogical, you want it to be as close as possible to the reference sound but don't want to take the appropriate steps to make it happen? You're ultimately ending up at the same place with either unit it's just one is requiring less work than the other.
Well, now we're gonna get into the philosophy of audio engineering I suppose. To me, when I EQ a guitar in a mix or live, I'm not EQ'ing the guitar to fix inherent problems in the guitar. I wouldn't track it if there were inherent problems - I'd aim to fix the problems before tracking. Not always possible of course, but that's the ideal.
But when I'm EQ'ing in a mix or live, I'm EQ'ing to make it fit with other instruments. This is a different thing to what we're talking about here. If I was making the claim that the Kemper can never be made to sound good, or close to the real amp, then everything you've said here would absolutely oblierate my perspective, and I should run home with my tail between my legs.
But that isn't my claim. My claim is purely one about accuracy immediately following the completion of a capture/profile. That's it. Everything that follows after that is indeed in the realms of production, engineering, and pure subjectivity.
If it takes extra steps for the Kemper to get closer to the sound, then this should surely indicate that advances need to be made on the profiling tech, so that the Kemper can make things easier and faster and better for their users, no???
To me, it doesn't quite make sense to say "yes, I agree with you, but you can do XYZ to get closer" - like.... the XYZ is already a foregone conclusion. Doesn't need to be said really.
As an aside; I try not to EQ if I don't have to. I don't want to introduce phase-shifts unless I absolutely have to.
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As I've stated if the argument is a raw QC capture is more accurate than a raw Kemper one I don't think you'll get any argument out of me or anyone else.
To be clear - that is exactly what I'm saying. Nothing more.
Speaking completely blue-sky a minute - What if Kemper releases Profiling 2.0 in 6 months time, which further automates the process and uses more tones during it's capture process that all of a sudden the Kemper is then way closer than the QC.... would I be out of order if I then jumped on the NeuralDSP forums and started talking about how I now prefer my Kemper for profiling?? Coz that's exactly what would happen!
What I'd like to see I guess would be something like this:
- Some clarity on what to play to solve XYZ problem during refinement. Maybe even have the Kemper prompt the user - ie: play this to make your palm mutes more accurate, play this to make your lead tone more accurate, etc.
- Add the definition control to the pages of the refinement stage, so that it's right there and ready to go. It's probably the most important parameter going and actually if I was wanting to get closer to the amp, I'd reach for that before an EQ.
- Some sort of option where I can tell the Kemper that XYZ set of profiles are all from the same amp channel, and to treat them in similar ways. Sometimes I notice if you profile a high-gain channel at different levels of gain, the refining stage makes them all sound quite inconsistent from one another. This isn't something you would spot unless you were right there when the profiling is occurring. The QC has the same issue btw.
- Figure out a way to improve the "noise-gate detected" issue. Sometimes a noise-gate is detected when there isn't one.
- Some amps like the Fryette Sig:X don't profile very well. I think it's because the Sig:X has some dynamic frequency response stuff going on at the input. So I would guess that what the Kemper hears when I'm playing my guitar is different to what it hears when it's sending all of it's test tones. I think this should be investigated; get the thing on a test bench and debug what the Kemper is doing and see if anything can be done to improve the accuracy.
- Are there any more parameters in the amp circuit that can be exposed to the user??? I know the vision for the Kemper is to make things easy and simple to use. But if there are other parameters that we can tweak that are being hidden from us... maybe that's a path forward???
Anyway.... I plan to do a video of each unit side by side. Not as a stupid "ZOMG! THE KEMPER IS BAD!!!" type video. But just an educational video where people can hear the differences in a post-rock/post-metal kind of context. I am a fan of the Kemper, I just would like to see some improvements.