Posts by PatriotsBiker

Quote from Jay Doubleyou

The way he crosses his forelegs looks very distinguished.

The irony of this shot is that him and his sister does not like it when I play through this rig if I've not turned down the presence.

The misses lets me keep a rig and a couple acoustics downstairs.

Once the levels are sussed out, it is a really nifty bit of functionality to use.

Quote from christianbad

i have to disagree, most profiles will clean up better than on the original amp.

You are sure the noise gate in the input section isn‘t dialed in to high?

Quote from nmgold

I also notice a lot of the profiles fall apart when you roll the volume down, they sound like they have an auto wah or a noise gate acting badly (when they are either "OFF" or totally removed).

I think nmgold is talking about something different than the high end here. I think he means that the overall signal coming from the guitar sounds as if it's too low for the profiler to use perfectly. It's almost as if the signal is not solid. Sometimes even with the guitar being dimed.

nmgold, I have had this to varying degrees. It became MUCH more common after I lowered the pickups from where the online dealer set them. My 4 electrics came to me with the pickups way too close to the strings. My ES-335 was 2/64th. (Yikes!!!) I set mine by ear through an amp, measured afterwards and ended up somewhere near manufacture specs. No more bass warbling, phasey thing. Works fine with the amp, but starts to be underwhelming through the Kemper when using some of the Rigs.

The "fix" is easy enough. Raise the Clean and Dirty values in the Input section to taste. I usually need to add 3-6db. Added benefit is being able to manage the amp volume & gain with guitar knobs improves. I've appended the Rig name with the short name for the guitar and my initials (eg "PB Tele", "PB LP", "PB 335", "PB Vela") You can also Lock the input section so that switching from rig to rig does not change things.

Also, the suggestions for the high end piercing thing do very well. I do mostly drop the Presence to taste when surfing through Rigs as a quick and easy temp fix. I do more if I end up keeping the rig as a common use item. That said, I do tend to use more gain with my Kemper, as well as using amps I normally would not. I'm gonna get chime at some point.

I was about to suggest sound samples, but if you found it, you're good.

One "gotchya" that can happen is when we hobbyists shoehorn sounds together, we nught hear something that is too loud and reach for an EQ and start notching the most upfront aspects of that down instead of simply turning it down.

Another note is to keep a mono plugin near the end of your chain and test it in mono at various times to check. There are entire articles out there on the topic, but it's main purpose is to ensure a common denominator type of thing so that the mix doesn't sound great in the studio and lousy on the home system or the car's sound system.

Have fun!!

I choose straps that do not slide. Something with rough material, like suede or roughed up leather that feels like suede. On a couple staps that I've not replaced yet, I put some self adhesive non-slide material rubber strips. I do prefer the suede, though.

I know this is not a thing in the stomp box world, but the ability to identify volume levels in to and out of each element in a chain would be a good thing for gain stsaging and trouble shooting. It could even share a meter - assign the meter's target via click or drop-down or whatever. Maybe default it to the beginning or end of chain and end of chain. A whole other can of worms opens with levels. VU, dbfs, RMS, etc.

Second thing is to add double click functionality to the number below any knob with a number for key entry.

OK, so my SPDIF cables made a difference. The SPDIF stereo signal's "false center" point was in the same place as the main out signal. I otherwise had zero issue with anything sounding "phasy". The signals were very close together, which is pretty good considering one got to the interface via analog and the other digital. It might be worth it to borrow a better quality SPDIF cable from someone and record both ways & compare.

One of these days, I am going to get off my butt and learn how to test these cables out with an ohm meter.

Quote from Jaskanpoika

I know that sound what the OP is talking about, been listening it for the whole time I've had Kemper. I've been trying to solve this issue for so long time and I've always knew that this isn't the way Kemper should sound. I can finally say that I have solved my hardest puzzle in my life and yet the solution was so simple. Electricity.

We live in a house that only has grounded outlets in our kitchen. Today I plugged my Kemper into one of the grounded outlets and holy sh*eet, is this how the unit is supposed to sound?! No more dirty high end and all the profiles actually sound different! For some reason this affected the whole signal chain so badly that I had to drop the input gain in my Kemper for ALL my guitars for about 5 db down. I always knew something was messing with my signal chain but now it is pure as it can be.

I don't know why I didn't try this before but OP as you mentioned in one of your DM's you sent to me that your house doesn't have grounded outlets and I'm pretty sure this is the issue.

Noisy electricity is a bear to deal with. It gets into absolutely everything in a chain. It's a battle of layered noises. Fix one noise, it just removes itself from the sum of all the noises. I chuckled recently when reading an old interview of Seth Lover, the PAF HB creator. He fought the same thing when he tried to create a totally shielded guitar prototype. (deemed to expensive to produce by the company)

How did you solve your issue? Are you moving into the kitchen?

Quote from musicmad

Definitely sounds like an SPDIF mismatch. I have the Twin at 44.1 khz. Here I first play with Kemper at 48 khz, then switch to 44 khz the second time around:

https://drive.google.com/file/…uXeAefOb/view?usp=sharing

Sorry for the over-playing. Am drunk

I had that same thing happen to me when I first tried this out using SPDIF on my twin, before correcting the difference. There's a second level of difference, too. That odd Convert button can make a difference even when the two speeds match up. I don't recall the results of trying this the other day, fwiw.

I did some additional testing late in the week this week. My stereo SPDIF output was imperfect. The "center" was off, kind of like a phasey thing, and the "height" seemed to be different. My new cables have arrived, but I've not had the time to check and verify improvement. I actually bought them bcause my cheap ones didn't fit well and this brand has a history of being oversized and causing component damage when trying to detach.

I know SPDIF is a digital delivery system, but it is not as absolute as many suggest. It is not simply a case of 1s and 0s as suggestted. I won't claim that fancy cables are better, but I do know defective cables can hurt or even kill a system. Think skipping, blips, clicks, blurry images and things like that when streaming movies 15 years ago. Perhaps a person has tried a Jitter big several times and had no improvement. That does not mean that someone else has not had it help. (I've had it help on and older machine, but not since then. It's deep in a closet somewhere here.) Point is, there is so much more than a simple 1 & 0 thing going on. A 1 & 0 paradigm is still only as good as what is is fed and of the components that come before and after.

Quote from Monkey_Man

Well, I'm definitely flea-bitten. Gotta powder myself with diatomaceous earth every day to suffocate those suckers.

Hey, nothing wrong with bass though it, man. I'm a bass player and it's the best thing I've ever played through by a fair margin. Nothing else has delivered the variety, mojo and detail I get out of this thing.

As for your vocals, maybe try some preamp Profiles. There's a bunch of 'em on the Exchange; they just might prove tricky-to-find.

Oh man, this Profiler changes my bass experience around. Inspiring is what it is. I'm no bass player by anyone's estimation, but this makes it feel like I'm playing it instead of the other way around. Especially anything on the e-string. Before, it was just mushy over-thick thickness on anything I played. The Profile handles it all - within reason, of course.

I spent an hour the other day picking out a Profile before it occurred to me that it was all better than anything I had ever come up with before. I grabbed the one that I think was in the lead at that point and rolled with it after a tiny bit of tweaking. I don't even remember the amp it was profiled from.

I read this thread. I agree with your assessment that they do sound awful. No offense. They certainly lack the harmonics I hear all over the place. Even I crank up my volume. It sounds like the difference when listening to hi-res music and cheap lo-res MP3s. I had an issue ever so briefly with an Apollo Twin USB that I putz around with downstairs. That was already on 48k, but my Kemper was not. I set my Kemper to 48k after discovering a weak stereo signal via SPDIF. To be clear, it is not that 48k is THAT much different. It's all to do with matching the rates. Both need to be the same, which I'm sure you know.

On other thing I did to enhance what I was listening to was to bring the faders in from 100% panned L/R to maybe 35% within the interface console. This would have no bearing on a signal sent along to my DAW. It's just for monitoring. This will do nothing for your recordings. If the signal was good before the monitors, it would be evident when bouncing it direct to WAV from your DAW.

In my home project studio space, I use an Apollo X6 with no issues, though I have not tried the stereo out from SPDIF. In the studio, before even testing things, I set my 2 SPDIF channels up to send the Kemper mono main output signal and the initial raw guitar signal. My stereo main outs go into my interface line-in ports via good XLR to TRS cables. My mono SPDIF signal isn't great for rigs that use a great deal of reverb and delay for obvious reasons. That aside, it seems to do OK and as expected. I will test this properly. I've also ordered two better quality cables, and will test those. These cheapo SPDIF cables have never done it for me on anything. They are 75 ohm, but that's about the only good thing I can say. I plan on recording both the main output via line-in and the stereo SPDIF for comparison when they come in.

Some questions. I hope I didn't miss the answers earlier in the thread. I'm old(ish). I've got a lot of home studio trouble shooting under my belt, so I may be able to help.

#1: Are you still not able to change from 44.1k to 48k in your PC?

#2: Is your Kemper sending 48k, and does whatever it does send match the interface?

#3: Does your headphone sound coming from the inteface sound like it does when the same headphones are plugged into your Kemper, allowing for minor variances, of course. (slight differences in onboard headphone amps would do nowhere near the difference that would cause concern like your issue.)

#4: Are your SPDIF cables 75 ohm?

#5: You said you changed all cables. Are you using the same brand SPDIF cables?

#6: Have you compared recordings from both main-out to interface line-in via XLR/TRS (NOT TS) to the same from SPDIF?

#7: Are you recording mono or stereo via SPDIF? (especially for those samples)

I do have some comments about the overall sound and how they change and don't change from profile to profile. I've never had an amp sim product that did not share similarities across the whole platform. My Avid Eleven Rack sounds like an Avid Eleven Rack. My Boss GT-100 sounds like a GT-100. I could easily pick out Axe III verses Kemper comparisons online after listening to them for a while. (naughty tricksters.....) Still, switching from one to another should yield recognizable differences without much effort unless tone-fry has set in big-time.

#7: What are your volumes inside your DAW and Interface in dbfs? (RMS and peak)

So far, I've just used a little bit after dialing it in. The one in line before the amp in the profiler. I try tonip the spikes back a couple of DB and then increase the volume a tiny bit until my RMS meter inside my DAW is about where it was before compression. It helps to maintain that solid feeling instead of the mushiness I always had LBK. (Life Before Kemper)

Cool test! Thanks for posting. Differences were obvious, but no way I could pick out a fav.

Quote from Monkey_Man

D'Oh! I meant lap steel of course.

It's still playing slide, right? All good fun. Next song will have some. I might run a DI signal from an acoustic in through the Kemper for the main guitar part. I have not messed with that at all, though. Bass will have to happen through it. Heck, I have a pedal for XLR(w/phantom) to TS conversion . I'm going to have to at least try a couple passes of vocal through something, yah?

Every time I see your user name, the opening line to the Stones song comes to mind - "I'm a flea bitten peanut monkey, all my ..."

Quote from deadman42

Not true!

Thanks for the great description and for sharing your story. I'm sure song writing and figuring all that stuff out is pretty much more than nothing. Don't let your own expectations or ideals beat yourself. It's about creativity, fun and all that. Enjoy!

Indeed! Every day I can, which is most days.

Quote from Monkey_Man

I love a self-deprecating sense of humour; it tells me a lot about someone.

Well done PB, and thank you for sharing. I especially liked the slide.

Thanks! Slide is fun. I'm very much looking forward to coming up with something good for the lap steel.

I'm not sure if I am the most dominate type-A, passive type or the most passive, type-a dominate type around.

Quote from sambrox

I wouldn’t think so with most modern DAWs. My old studio neighbour Holger Lagerfeldt did some exhaustive tests using Logic that showed that as long as you brought the level down before it hit the D/A stage, there was absolutely no adverse effects. DAWs have been using 32-Bit floating point calculations internally for getting on for a couple of decades now, and it is impossible to clip, though a badly coded plugin could potentially cause issues (I’m thinking of EQs and boosting levels close to Nyquist, though really those problems should be things of the past).

Sorry to jump in, but there are many urban legends in the audio world that ought to be put to rest

Jump in all you want, but I was not talking at all about clipping. Sweet spots and clipping are a long, long, long way apart. I was referring to differences between where a plugin has been modeled to mimic hardware to be at it's sweetest point at or around -18dbfs to -20dbfs in many DAWs including Pro Tools. The part I didn't know was if the modeled or profiled effects behaved as the plugins by folks like Universal Audio and Brainworx. I'll RTM before I ramble next time about how the levels within Kemper compare, but it's still all valid.

No legends. No clipping, either. A non-issue unless you really try, as you suggested.

Links below have the UAD plugin to plugin operating level charts (which changes my use of the Studor as I thought it was lower). Also included an old thread I used to reference a lot, despite having to weed through information. One I found a couple months ago has some pretty good information on gain staging, though very outdated methods using the trim plugin. The last one ties back into this thread and my point, which is to establish the needed end goal for the usage scenario and backwards engineer my rigs to make sure I am feeding good levels into my DAW.

https://uadforum.com/general-d…ing-chart.html#post257263

Discussion on Pro Tools Levels

PureMix Gain Staging Articles

I would never want to adjust anything other than Rig Volume unless I had a specific reason to do so. Any Amp Volume adjustment could have an effect on anything downstream, starting with the natural compression in the cabinet. Ultimately, that changes tone.

Another issue are the effects. If we adjust the amp output enough, in theory at least, could we also run into danger of taking an effect out of it's input level sweet spot? If these were real hardware at our feet, it would be a possibility. It can and does happen with ease inside of a DAW.

I'm going to approach the question of volume/loudness leveling in a similar manner to how I would use reference tracks in a DAW. One dirty, one clean. Ultimately, these levels will be relative to my desired tracking signal strength inside my DAW. Many factors in play and yet to be ironed out, but doing this will allow me to get close to volumes/loudness when not at my DAW.

Thanks for the welcome, folks. I'm having a good time with this. Lots of exploring. I've been so focused on acoustic guitars and my home project studio that my electrics have taken a back seat. I figured I'd share a little bit of my music story.

I've done over 60 original songs and maybe 6-8 covers. I do all the guitar, bass, piano & keys and vocal myself, and using mostly Toontracks' EZDrummer/Superior Drummer 2 & 3 for percussion. I started doing all of this in 2011 after a few years of fiddling with guitar. Learning everything at once is NOT a road I'd suggest to anyone, but it suit me fine except for the time it took. It was a great diversion as I slowly recover from a surgical head injury situation.

The fallout from this scattered approach is predictable. I am really good at absolutely nothing. I've got 60 songs that might be cleverly written at times, but all poorly performed and often poorly arranged. Couple that with a studio room that was inexplicably and well beyond horrible, by even small spare bedroom studio standards. Add to it various technical issues, like noisy house electricity and computers that didn't isolate main energy circuits from audio circuits and cheap, awful interfaces.

So, after 18 months of steadily improving all aspects of that situation, I was down to doing acoustic treatment and getting something for electric guitar tones. $2,500 worth of materials went into 27 bass traps this Winter, and last week, the Kemper arrived. All of this was to better equip myself to make better recordings of some of my songs. I chose 24 songs to re-do. I will still do some new originals, but will focus quite a bit on remaking my better songs. There have been several moments of discovery on the Kemper that had my thinking back to a song I had spent days trying to come up with a sound, along with finding new inspiration for new material.

I know my place in the world. I have no illusions of greatness or fame. I do have a few decently written songs, but they are by no means of quality that I would consider professional. This is just a hobby, albeit one perfectly suited for me. I have always been one of those types of people who love to learn. Any single aspect of music fits this trait nicely, but taking on so much at one time? It's an exponential thing. Absolutely wonderful.

OK, so here's an example of what I do. My musical tastes are eclectic. This one is a song more geared to Country than anything. This one was re-done twice as I made improvements to the studio, such as it is. After re-doing the room's acoustics, I had to relearn how to mix. I'm hearing everything so well now. It went from being how to best present the song despite the glaring defects to how to actually make it sound decent. Now the DI'd and ITB electric tones are only surpassed in awfulness by my vocals. It was some backing tones in this song that helped me throw in the towel and by the Kemper.

Pawnshop Guitars 3

I do have some other song examples dating back 6 years or so. If anything, I have at least made some progress. Still, somethings take a while to un-hear. With that in mind, I do not actually suggest listening to any of it. LOL