I don't do a ton of recording these days, but need to replace a Scarlett 2i2, or potentially use the Stage for everything. I watched the tutorial video and saw that you use returns 1-2 to record external sources. Am I correct to assume that if I wanted to use a microphone I would need a separate mic preamp? Trying to decide if it would make more sense to buy an inexpensive mic pre or just buy a new scarlett. It would probably be more streamlined for recording purposes if I wasn't jumping back and forth between two interfaces.
Posts by Grooguit
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Huge thanks all. Moved the blocks back around to "stock slot positions" ...spillover working perfectly now
Now ... maybe if one day we can get spillover working when going from Performance to Performance that would be the icing on the cake
All the best,
Ben
Not sure we'd get spillover between performances, haven't tried. I suspect that might be available depending on a setting, someone else can weigh in. There is a performance load parameter in system settings, set by default to "pending" in which you can control what happens when you switch performances. Pending means that after stepping on up or down, you still have to then step one of the five Rigs in the new performance to load a new rig. IF kpa's DSP allocation keeps some aspect of other Rig in a performance loaded up for gap free and spillover access, then their is a finite number of additional rigs in other performances that can be transitioned to without audio gap and lack of spillover. However, if my theory is correct, and if there's enough DSP to to allow even one additional Rig in another performance to be instantly accessed, then it is possible.
The default system setting for performance changes is "pending." You step on the up or down button and then have to choose which Rig you want in that performance before it loads. So while you are in one performance, you need instant access to the other four. But if you bank up in pending mode, you don't need instant access to the other four rigs in the performance you are leaving, you need instant access to the FIVE rigs in the new performance. Thus once you bank up, the kpa could dump whatever info was needed from the four rigs in the old performance, and load the info needed for the five Rigs. Even if this takes half a second to do, it takes half a second to move your foot and start pressing a Rig footswich after pressing the up or down foot switches anyway. If you change your mind before selecting a Rig and bank back the old performance, it could dump the five and load the four again before you'd have the time to move your foot and select a Rig.
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I bet some third party will do this and share it on this site or on a facebook forum or something. Companies that sell products often have to avoid mentioning specific companies and products they are seeking to emulate. Hence why clever nicknames that hint at the original are common in the guitar product industry.
There might be a misunderstanding about what liquid profiling does. Going back to square one. The reason people used tube amps and continued to use them today wasn't because "wow, the EQ controls on these amps are so powerful and amazing." the controls on some tube amps that otherwise sound amazing at a sweet spot kind of suck and do very little. But people keep using them because of their inherent warmth that the tubes produced. Some even use graphic Eqs in the effect loop or rely on the sound engineer to use his powerful tools to further tweak.
Prior to Kemper and some current competitors, the only reason people kept their tubes and stayed away from digital devices was digital lack of warmth and harshness. No one had a bone to pick with the robust EQ options on these devices. The original generic tone controls on the KPA are powerful and useful. Once you got a real amp sounding just so, then micing it to perfection, you'd profile it. The generic controls then gave you powerful ways to alter this idealized sound that couldn't be replicated on the original amp's limited tone controls.
Often, the only reason to go back to an original amp's controls once profiled is if you have a particular need for the amp with different settings than when it was profiled. But if you are using third party profiles of an amp you never owned or even touched, we have no idea whether the sound of that amp, with it's original tone controls set in a different way is a sound we'd even like. Nor is there reason to expect that if we did know what the best matching tone stack is, along with the original settings, that produce sounds we'd like better than adjusting the generic EQ or just having fun experimenting with random tone stacks.
I've not had a lot of time to dedicate to playing with LP yet. I suspect as I do, I'll discover particular tone stacks that I like using in general, regardless of the amp in question.
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As others have said, only delay block and reverb block spillover. The pure boost should sound the same if you place it before the delay. Also make sure the setting in your delays and reverbs is set to pre not post. Can’t remember what it’s called at the moment.
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I had a QC for a month. Never could get two amps to sound better than my favorite one amp captures, not to say it wasn’t fun trying and interesting. For all the nifty conveniences it offers, I found it took longer to set up and a number of things KpA still does better.
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From an economic standpoint, there is less need for liquid profile packs to include as many profiles when one can suffice for the range of the tone and gain knobs, at a with a certain cab mic'd a certain way, and with certain non-modeled switches set one way, etc. However, there is still an incentive for them to dial some of their favorites just so, maybe with nothing more than some changes to the EQ and gain and perhaps paired with a post EQ or certain amps settings adjusted, such as def, clarity and so forth. Any that have a OD pedal baked in....
Either way, with the flexibility of liquid profiles, perhaps 10 profiles can cover what 30 did before? Either way, the incentive to pay the same for a pack with technically a few number of profiles is no less. Over the years, the best comercial profilers have refined their technique, expanded the mic collections and expertise of what they like best for certain types of amps and cabs etc. As well as responded to customer feedback and what has sold and been liked afterwards.
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I've always kept the kpa manuals in a specific folder on my computer, a subfolder inside a bigger folder where I keep a lot of other KPA stuff, profile backs and whatever. When new ones come out, I delete the old ones and place the newest ones there. A week ago or so, I recall downloading the 10.1 main manual, and the 10.1 addendum. I first dragged all the old manuals out of that folder into the trash so that the folder was empty and placing the new manuals in it.
Yesterday, I went to review them and to my surprise the old manuals, including the non-English ones were back in that folder. I thought 'Huh, I must have not dragged them here." So I dragged ones to the trash again and placed the 10.1's alone in they folder. Just now, i look in that folder again, I kid you not the 10.1 main manual PDF is actually open on my computer, I just had it minimized. My KPA folder now contains all the 9.whaever manuals and the 10.1's are no where to be found, they are not in my downloads folder either What in the world is going on? Are these, since we are in beta, desired to revert to the old documents or something crazy?
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Unfortunately there isn’t any way to change modes other than directly on the KPA.
Darn.
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I'm using 3.4.45 with the lasted Beta 10.1.1 on a M1 2020 Mac Ventura 13.4.
*I'm noticing these issues in performance mode. Some of them have been issues for a long time on prior versions.
1) it partially freezes quite often. I'll click to a different Rig and the displayed controls, at the bottom don't change even though the sound changes. So for example it still shows the amp's controls for the prior Rig. Quitting and opening back up fixes it. In general it's advisable to wait a few seconds after clicking a Rig before clicking another or starting to adjust something as Rig Manager has a tendency to act glitchy if you make changes too quickly.
2) Sometimes it auto assigns a new effect to a footswitch, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it even adds it to a switch already assigned to something else. As such, I always have to watch the Stage on the floor to see what it will do so I don't discover later that it assigned the effect somewhere I don't want it. I don't know if it's possible to program the foot switches from Rig Manager, but having to crawl on the floor to do this while editing a bunch of rigs is a huge pain.
2) it seems to sometimes forget saved changes, changes that I confirm I are actually saved by leaving the Rig and coming back. Yesterday I wanted to add a default Graphic EQ to all five Rigs in 14 performances. So I loaded a Graphic EQ on one Rig, locked that slot and proceeded to go to each Rig in that performance, then saving. Going to the next performance, I went to each Rig within the performance, and saved again and so on. I confirmed that it was saving the EQ to the X slot in all five Rigs in each performance. When I opened it up this morning, the EQ was only found on the first Rig in each performance.
I guess I don't understand how the lock function works. If I lock an effect block, does it automatically place that locked effect on all the Rigs in a performance? Or do I first have to go to each Rig in that performance for it to temporarily overwrite that block. Once I do this and Save (which is "replace performance #.. in Rig manager) is it now saved in all five Rigs provided that I went to each one? This seemed to be what happened yesterday, which I confirmed doubling clicking on other performances and coming back to see if the change was still there across all five rigs.
3) For some reason it decided to assign the EQ to stomp IV, which I had already set up for use with my delay. So I get to go to all those performances and unassigned it over and over again even though I never programed it to do that in the first place.
4) Sometimes Initialize performance is grayed out, sometimes not. I thought perhaps that it only lets you initialize when you see the headphone Icon after double clicking, but sometimes even when headphone icon is selected the initialize feature is still grayed out on that performance. Going to another Rig and coming back usually gives that option back again.
5) Because it's so easy to accidentally start editing the wrong Rig or performance, I like to copy and paste performances into blank/initialized performances, before editing an adjacent one. For example, I often create a base performance with effects, morphs, and footswitch assignments all laid out nice and paste that performance into a couple blanks. (I tend to be more fixed in the combinations of effects I like to use, while exploring various profiles.) That way I can edit one, (often just placing a different amp and cab combination into those blocks) and not accidentally screw up the one I started with.
5) When pasting copied performances, it only lets you paste once. If, for example, you copy performance 2 and would like to paste it into initlilzed performances 78, 79, and 80 the paste function is grayed out after pasting once to 78, so you have to go back and copy again. Sometimes copy is grayed out sometimes not. Sometimes it seems to let you copy a selected but not active rig, other times you have to double click the Rig first.
6) When you attempt to rearrange the rig order by dragging a performance, it won't scroll slowly, it's all or nothing. So as soon as you hit the top of the screen, you either drop the rig their, scroll up some and drag it further (repeat these steps a dozen times moving far) or you move your mouse up a tiny bit and it flies all the way up to the top or vice versa files to the bottom. I can't get it to just scroll slowly so that I can drop the performance where I want it. This action can get glitchy if I don't do it slowly or try to move multiple performances at once. So it becomes an agonizingly slow process.
7) There doesn't seem to be a way to switch from browse to performance mode within Rig Manager. Having a Stage under my desk by my feet makes pressing these buttons super painful.Rig Manager often prompts me about an update being available when I already have the most current one.
9) If I paste a new amp profile and Cab into another Rig or performance, only some of the info flies over. If I leave the performance and come back, only then will it display the new amp and cabinet name. But "Name" (not the name in the green box) but what the name of the profile is doesn't change to reflect the pasted Rig, that name will still refect the name of the original profile that the Rig was made with. So I have to go to the other Rig that I copied the amp and Cab from and copy that name and then go to the new Rig and paste the name there. (If the name is short, sometimes I just manually type it. But I'm going for accuracy as I may later want to know what the original profile the Rig was made from. Sometimes things get glitchy when I attempt to do copy and paste the text sometimes not. Sometimes if I rename something such as the "Name" and then select a different Rig in the same performance, it will first say "syncing performances" and two seconds later its done. Othertimes, it doen't say that and the Replace performance # icon lights up. Perfumably in the former I don't have to save the changed name, as it already saved it while syncing performances, and I can't save it anyway since "replace performance #.." remains grayed out. In the later, I have to click "replace performance #.." in order for the changed name to not be lost when I switch Rigs. Other times I try to click on the field to edit the name and nothing happens.
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I have yet to discover a way to change from browse to performance mode within Rig Manager. Perhaps there is no way? So maybe this belongs as a feature request? But the Stage is physically designed to sit on the floor and I change modes a lot. Thus, when set up in my office, it makes sense for me to keep the Stage on the floor under my desk, pushed back a bit to where I can see it if I want and hit this footswitch to go to tuner mode. Now, if I take my shoe off I can press the browse and perform buttons with my toe. But otherwise, it is so painful when sitting with my guitar to try and bend down and switch modes without bumping my head.
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Go to downloads on kemper's home page, select manuals and download the addendum. The addendum announces all the new features in order from the most recent to the oldest. This same info is found in the manual, but presented this way you can see what is new in order.
It probably will make the most sense if you scroll down and read the oldest releases first, and the newer releases are often updates of older updates.
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I hear what you are saying. Your Crate story is making my point. If you can't play cleanly on an unplugged guitar then you can't REALLY do it just because it is plugged in to a hot amp. All the distortion, gain, harmonics, compression etc... will not change that. It may make it more likely for you to believe your fantasy(drunken or not) that your playing is better than it actually is. A hot amp will allow for certain sounds to be accentuated, such as pick harmonics, feedback, etc... but in the end your picking is what it is. You will not play any faster even though you may be deluded into thinking you can.
All good points. Working with a clean sound helps expose technique, and if fixed it increases speed. Everyone has a certain wall they can't get past given the time amount of time they set aside to practice that technique. Some techniques are rarely used with a clean sound, so if you only ever play a certain technique at a certain speed with a high-gain tone, does it really matter if it wouldn't sound good with a clean tone? If a part sounds good with the tone and gain level one desires to use it with, then it really doesn't matter if it would sound bad clean. Now, where it gets problematic is when you have to compromise tone by upping the gain higher than you want to hide the poor technique. Worse, I've had times where I've written a song or guitar part that requires a technical speed and accuracy that I'm not able to achieve or maintain.
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Some sellers, when doing packs have versions with multiple speaker cabs, and mics , different inputs, etc. As they release new stuff, all the profiles will be liquid in that there’s no reason not to put in all the info to make it ideal for liquid use. However there’s plenty of users that like the old workflow of having lots of sweet spot profiles to choose from and then only tweaking them as needed with the KpA eq and advance controls.
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Will this save a new version of the profile or replace the previous version?
It creates a new version; it doesn’t delete the other. That is, if you save it to the browse pool it doesn’t erase this original. If you save the performance by hitting save 3 times, it of course saves over the slot, but the rig in browse mode isn’t affected either. Only thing lost is the rigs settings in the slot of that performance.
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The liquid profiles are superior in that they can be used in the classic way as well. Though you can take an old profile and throw any stack on it, its authenticity in this regard would require knowing approximate values when profiled. The but if you profile with the new process, it's the same, except for inputing the specific values of the EQ. So if you like how the amp interacts using the liquid tone stack, use that. If not, use the generic EQ.
Whether one is better or not really depends on what you are trying to do. For some amps, they are too flubby when the gain is maxed. But if the profile was taken with a gain of 7 or 8, pushing it a little further with the generic gain might work better, giving you more gain of the sound you got at 7 and 8.
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Go to the Kemper home page, support, manuals and download the latest addendum. It will read down new features that have come out with each release, which reads from the newest to the oldest releases. It will catch you up.
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That worked thank you! Danke!
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It took me a moment to even post this new thread because where is says "new thread" is no longer in English. Perhaps some setting in my account got changed, not sure how as I haven't gone into my account settings. In any case, I can't figure out how to change it back to English, because all the links in the drop down are in another language and I don't know what I'm clicking on. I'm assuming "Absenden" in orange below is the post button.
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I did similar about five months ago. I had purchased a QC (but had kept my kpa). I loved its portability and it was fun to mess around with something new, but there were a handful of things that made me return it. The way it organized captures was completely disorganized and made it extremely to find a capture, especially once you download a bunch of things.
No effect presets. I missed the auto volume compensation when adjusting gain like the kpa, forcing me to do the dreaded, "adjust the gain, save, go to another preset and see if the volume matches, go back and adjust the volume of the first preset and hit save." Having dual amps and cabs was fun, but I didn't come up with any combo I like better than a single amp and cab; it just added needless complexity, used too much DSP, and created more volume balancing issues.
The ambient effects were limited and you needed to instances and a parallel path just to get a basic dual delay. The foot switches are too close together to be ergonomic and it's a pain live switching modes so I was doing a lot more tap dancing. No spillover between presets, so you need to utilize scene mode, so if you use presets between songs, you need to go from scene mode to preset mode and back to scene mode between each song. The shape of the kpa makes reaching to foot switches easier than the quad as well.
It had way less power than advertised and found it difficult to fit all that I'd like to use in a song in one preset, made necessary since you had a audio gap and no spillover between presets, unlike the kpa in which you can fly from rig to rig in a performance without issue. Finally, the other advantage of the QC being an audio interface is solved with the release of 9.0.
The touch screen was nice, no more convenient than using the KPA editor or IOS rig manager.
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to the original question, part of the reason for why JUST a kemper are not merely the particular strengths of this unit, but the convenience of using it by itself, with its light weight, size, and all inclusive editor. This is something true of most all-in-ones.
When I got rid of my Eventide H9 years back it wasn't because the updated kpa delays and verbs were better but were good enough to get the job done and weren't worse and arguably on par with H9 and other high-end effects makers units (actually the kpa ducking parameter is something I use a lot and no one else offers this control on all their algorithms) You can somewhat conveniently use one additional pedal with the KPA, or any other all in one. Takes just a minute plug and power it up, tucks in the pocket of a bag. However, once you add more, you quickly need a dedicated multi-pedal power supply, the need to permanently wire and velcro things up on a weighty pedal board, and then likely a more sturdy and heaver bag or case to transport it. Large pedal boards don't sit nice on a desk for ergonomics compared to the kpa head or even the larger Stage. Even more, these can be conveniently controlled with the editor even if it does sit out of reach or on the floor. Add some real pedals, or worse, pedals with their own editing and presets and you're going back and forth between different units and/or editors to organize your sounds.
Because I don't regularly use a volume or expression pedal, there's no reason for me to velcro the stage on a board with such pedals, and a thick padded bag is perfect. Also, the kpa foot switches are especially ergonomic when sitting directly on the floor and are not being elevated an extra inch .
Rig Manager often prompts me about an update being available when I already have the most current one.
