Making Profiles from VSTs for Bass

    Hey everyone,


    I've got a question for you about making bass profiles from VSTs...

    I've only just started getting into making my own bass profiles for live use but I've been using the Kemper for about 4 years now. I've been really impressed by the Neural DSP Parallax and decided to profile some of my signal chains for live use.


    I'm struggling to get the same sound from the Kemper as the instance of Parallax that I have in my DAW. I've had really good success with profiling real guitar amps in the past so I thought it was an issue with it being a VST. So I tried making a profile using Guitar Rig (granted, it sounded awful) but what I was able to profile was very similar to the vst, so I'm wondering what's going on.

    Here are some specs and signal chains:

    - Active Bass running into front of the Kemper
    - Direct Output of Kemper running into front line input of Focusite Clarett 8Pre with gain about 9 oclock
    - Running into Ableton chain with Parallax only - no EQ, no compression, no gate - around 5dB headroom

    - Output from Ableton to Line Output into Return Input on Kemper


    Below, you can find my Parallax settings...



    To summarise the difference between the two, what I'm hearing in the Profile of this chain is that the low end is super muddy, kind of like going through a distorted guitar amp with a bass. Maybe it's a weird thing with how Parallax works because it only adds distortion to the mid and high frequencies, and leaves the low end untouched. Could that be it?


    TL;DR...


    Why does my Neural DSP Parallax Profile sound muddy and gurgly compared to the original?

    Is this just the case with all VSTs?

    Maybe the parallel processing within Parallax is causing the issue?


    Thanks in advance for any guidance!!!

    looks like the plugin is doing multi-band processing.

    you could use the parallel path feature of the PROFILER to do something similar.
    lowpass filter the parallel path and high pass filter the 'standard' signal path,
    this way you can get a driven mid-range while retaining a clean low end.

    Quote from DonPetersen

    looks like the plugin is doing multi-band processing.

    you could use the parallel path feature of the PROFILER to do something similar.
    lowpass filter the parallel path and high pass filter the 'standard' signal path,
    this way you can get a driven mid-range while retaining a clean low end.

    Are there any Profiles on the Rig Exchange you can recommend that might demonstrate this?

    It would be helpful in understanding.

    Quote from DonPetersen

    looks like the plugin is doing multi-band processing.

    you could use the parallel path feature of the PROFILER to do something similar.
    lowpass filter the parallel path and high pass filter the 'standard' signal path,
    this way you can get a driven mid-range while retaining a clean low end.

    Hmm that's a pretty good idea actually. Didn't know I could do that on the Kemper. will give it a go

    Quote from Lobsta

    Are there any Profiles on the Rig Exchange you can recommend that might demonstrate this?

    It would be helpful in understanding.

    I've just uploaded my first attempt at profiling this. I didn't save any of the others so I can't share. You should be able to hear the gargly sound though. I've tried it out on a couple of my basses and it does the same thing.

    The profile is called "AO Parallax Bass" uploaded 24/02/23 at ~17:30 GMT