Posts by Per

You can order them from Thomann and they'll ship to the US, but Sweetwater are currently saying that the shipping date for those ordered in the US will be the 7th, if that's true then it may be quicker to order in the US.

I guess as this forum is now open to the public I may as well introduce myself. The name's Per-Anders Edwards, I'm in glorious California eagerly awaiting my KPA to arrive and I'll be profiling my Mesa 5;25 + THD, a small SS Marshall of unknown provenance and when I go back to the UK next my Laney LC30 and maybe the odd pedal here and there.

Most here who will introduce themselves now and in the future will be musical geniuses. Gifted individuals of incredible skill and dexterity for whom mastery of the fingerboard is so natural that some may say they were surely the very essence of Paganini reincarnated, or may suggest that they were born holding the guitar and subsequently of course giving extreme difficulty in childbirth and agony for their mothers (and fathers), a fact normally glossed over in most "born holding object" incidents. Others will humbly regale you with tales of the amazing deeds they have done with axe in hand and the auspicious company they have kept over the years through supposed serendipity, but truthfully renown of their talent. Well not I!

You see I am not one of them, instead I'm an amateur of extremely meager skill and play only for fun and pleasure but unfortunately for all of you I have nearly no shame in the total dross I produce. More or less I am to music what the Vogons are to poetry. So when I get time off from work for good behavior for a couple of hours and knock out a noodle or two (once I get my KPA that is) you'll all have them inflicted upon you with alarming (and unnerving) irregularity. It's no use protesting either, after the initial laughter has died down to be subsumed by confusion, anger, then fear and panic, and finally kowtowed submission as I continue to shovel my total twaddle on the forums your wailing and gnashing of teeth will be as music to my ears and your tears as salve to my savage brow, urging me on to ever greater deeds of horrific anti-music to administer to all and sundry. For a brief overture see http://www.peranders.com/music (using HD500, then earlier Mesa, before that Boss GT6, then before that Laney + GX700) I feel this is only right and proper in order to give you a gist and fair warning, so that that you may find sufficient earplugs or maybe do the double Van Gogh.

It's working ok for me with Firefox 10 beta on Windows 7. Do you have scripts disabled perhaps?

Focal CMS50's.

We're only at the beginning of the KPA, it'll be interesting to see how firmware progresses on it. I'd hope that the profiling, the actual amp sim itself as well as the fx (and their routing possibilities) would all be improved considerably during it's production lifetime.

Who knows, maybe that little Kemper poweramp slot might be able to do a lot more than just take an output signal, they may be able to offer modules with additional functionality and processing power to keep the product going a lot longer than the usual box of tricks. Here's hoping that they were thinking this far ahead with that.

It's equally exciting to see what's happening with the AxeFX and where that goes too, Cliff is a clever fellah and I'm sure he's got plenty of big plans. It's awesome to see both developers really listening and responding to their user bases so quickly with rapid updates and tangible improvements.

Hi Christoph, thank-you very much for answering. OK, good to know that you can re-amp!

With regards SPDIF will you be updating this to allow other bitrates than 44.1k in the future?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with your analysis on USB audio. I hope you don't mind if I outline why I think this is so :

Firstly, even though this is clearly targeted at studios I'm willing to bet that the majority of users will be guitarists that don't already have expensive convertors. So for them it being the sole interface is bang on perfect, and a great selling point.

Secondly, if you do have an audio interface the Kemper is looking to take up quite a few inputs and outputs on it which you may not want to spare if you want to use it for more than pre or outboard, for instance to re-amp or profile. I'm just a normal guitarist though I do have a very nice interface with the Apogee Ensemble, and I'm wondering how I'm going to route the Kemper in there together with everything else already taking up all the other slots. Which leads to...

Third consideration is that it's much quicker to change the audio driver option from within your DAW or even computer control panel (which allows separate IO options) than to plug/unplug physical cables or even reroute using your standard interface software (Maestro in my case). In fact I use the USB directly on my Pod HD currently for this very reason.

Fourth factor is that it's just convenient. Sometimes I just want to quickly jot down an idea and in those instances I will often just use the USB IO on the Pod (and maybe headphones). It's also convenient for me of course because I spend a lot of my time using Bootcamp coding away in visual studio in Windows and suddenly I have an idea and it becomes too much hassle to reboot just to knock the idea out.

I do think it would be worth your while and I know of several guitarists who would dive right in but for this holding them back. Their argument is simply that the competition has it, of course the Virus TI had it (was it so very bad there?) and it's just one of those standard sort of "expected" features now. It's disheartening to see people you've pointed in the direction get all excited and then when they ask that you get the puppy dog face and mumbling.

So I'd very much like to request that it be added or at least reconsidered (even though I know it's a huge pain to write or license drivers, audio IO etc). I think it would help round out what looks to be a fantastic product and give it wider appeal, even though it's expensive it's the sort of thing that's so desirable that people who otherwise wouldn't be able to comfortably afford it are saving up for.

I really hope you don't mind me saying this and that what I've said hasn't come across too strongly or in any way offensively (it's just eagerness), I just wanted to outline a few good arguments for.

The refining feature exists for a reason and yes it would have to be sensitive to what you play. If it didn't matter what you played with it then it wouldn't exist as you could simply not play anything at all through it.

What it's doing is simply comparing the frequencies you put through it with the output to try and match the model/EQ more closely with the real amp. The profiling process itself sometimes isn't enough, so you can refine it by giving it more signals to test with, the more you play the closer in theory you will get, but of course it's never that simple, sometimes a response is different at different frequencies, an amp may not respond linearly between playing chords and single notes so playing one may result in the other sounding off, which means it's really a case of refine using the same sort of riffs/notes/playstyle as you intend to actually use with the profile.

It's a case that while the KPA is clearly a huge leap forward there's still room for improvement in the technology, with the profiling (and probably the simulation side too) before it'll be able to match to the point that there's no discernible difference to a real amp in every single situation.

Don't forget that without a dead isolation room and totally neutral mic and mic pre some of the profile is going to be stuff outside of the amp, room noise, sympathetic resonance not least in the guitar itself. The KPA is only modeling the bits it recognizes in that signal chain, maybe it should do a separate convolution reverb sweep that attempts to capture just the room and resonant characteristics and try to subtract them from the amp profile or allow you to dial them up and down as much as you want. That might get things that little bit closer still.

Quote from Guitartone

You don't need USB to re-amp...you use the Monitor Out.

What studio uses USB for recording?

I'm willing to bet that the majority of KPA owners will be guitarists, not studio owners.

I have a digital setup, as much as I love analog for it's mojo I'm not going to be singing it's praises on the outputs of a digital unit, especially when it comes time to re-amp from my DAW and I want convenience and control. The point of the KPA is after all to replace an analog component completely, so I think it's only reasonable to expect to be able to (eventually) record directly out of the unit with something slightly more modern, controllable and convenient than barely working SPDIF.

Quote from guitarnet70

From the Avid forum, somebody reporting his meeting with Christoph Kemper:

"He seemed confident w his thick German accent! Said they have been released in the UK and such already. Had a big pile of them here. Navigation is slick and found my way around it pretty quick. Profiling an amp is pretty easy as well. Said there should be a pedal board out later this year and the next Version will have a power amp on it. There are still a few things Not working and are supposed to be updated soon."

While I find very exciting the first statement, I would like some official comment on the second one. It has always been said that the power amp would have been an add-on/upgrade module for the existing version, not part of a "next version".
In order to avoid "indignant whiners" ( ) to get all over this place, it would be nice to get message from mothership.

Hmm, seeing as we haven't even got them in the States yet I'd like to know the answer to this too. It would certainly sway my purchasing decision.

Are Kemper even at NAMM? So far I've not heard a single thing from anyone, anywhere. And that includes Kemper!

Someone give these guys an ipad or netbook or something so they can update their Facebook at the very least.

I called up Sweetwater to find out and the rep said "Sometime in February" but confided that he suspected the end rather than the beginning.

You know what's frustrating though? The knowledge that there's probably a bunch of them in the country right now down at NAMM

One for Mr. Kemper - Will this ever be possible via firmware update, or would it require a change in hardware? TI's a pretty important feature for many.

Don't tease, where the link? I might want to pick that up if the price is right.

We'll see what the flow is, but you're right it would be hard with a lot of profiles and for sure it would take a while to clear a backlog, but 500 for two weeks isn't all that much really, that's 1 every 40 minutes, have a couple of machines doing it if necesary and that should cover it. As I said though at the very least any site serving profiles should offer the ability for users to upload their own clips too (or allow them to reamp the preset tones using their own KPA), so that would take care of that.

Quote

Download every Profile and check them out for yourself....don't be lazy.

It takes a few seconds to download the files, copy them to a USB stick and import into the Kemper.

One man's incredible Profile is another man's POS.

Sometimes what appears to be a POS Profile turns out to be a gem after 30 seconds of tweaking just the EQ and Gain knobs.

If our laziness continues, pretty soon we'll be hiring a guitarist to
come play for us whilst we sit on the couch playing with our IPhones
listening to him playing through our gear.

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Oh come now, that's a pretty facetious argument! Not downloading and checking them all out isn't about being lazy, it's about having time and being practical. Pretty soon there will be tens of thousands of profiles up there, and even thousands for each amp and mic combo. It's just not feasible to go through them all. Some of us have limited time.

There's no pride in stifling progress and certainly no integrity to be gained giving yourself more work than necessary by having to download and install a thousand profiles on a KPA to find the one that you like, you can't seriously be arguing that pushing fewer buttons on a computer would make you a lesser guitarist can you?

Computers are here to make your life easier and help facilitate creativity (and less time wasted) the KPA is proof of this. This is brand new technology and a brand new website, now is simply not the time to be a luddite and set in your ways already! Good GUI and workflow don't stop you from expressing yourself, but it's equally important to understand that they wont help you be a better artist either, good tool design is simply about not getting in your way. There is no way that a better website or interface for browsing KPA presets is ever going to have any impact on your ability or integrity as a guitarist (or person).

guitarnet70 - It wouldn't need a VST version, just a Kemper connected to a computer via an interface and the ability to upload profiles via USB (and not require a restart). But it would really help out to be able to hear roughly what a profile sounds like and see others reviews of the sound, especially given the time it takes currently.

duplicate post

It would be awesome if when a profiles site goes up eventually it would be attached to a server that would run a script on upload to re-amp a simple clean guitar riff or two for each profile uploaded automatically through a KPA and encode and upload the resulting file as an MP3 next to each profile, and offer tags, comments and voting on the profiles.

Or failing that if the site would provide a set of standard test signals that users could reamp themselves using the profile and add to the profile page.

Either way it would save a lot of time and browsing.

Yup, it's me. I saw that. Now I just wonder what the outcome was, whether Christoph was interested in the Lerp profile and if it's planned as that would certainly be another pretty compelling reason to get a Kemper as I don't think anything else out there can do this (of course that's if and when it finally comes out in the US, still waiting patiently ).

Is it possible to take two profiles and mix them to create a new totally original amp sound out of them?

If so can you assign it to the gain control or even input volume to e.g. blend between the smooth gain of a marshall and the warm clean of a fender?

If not, is it or anything like it planned?

Yes, USB audio and PC editing (or even iPad editing via camera connection kit) are "must have" features really.