I don't really believe in profiling anymore...

Orvillain

Orvillain

Power User
Tangentially related to the Axe III I suppose.

But I've owned Kempers throughout the years, and I had a Quad Cortex primarily for the amp capturing functionality. Leaving all of the UI+UX differences aside... I genuinely have lost my "faith" in profiling/capturing technology.

The final tone you get is never 100% dead on to the real amp, which is what is promised. Then there are differences in the way the profiles react to the guitar when you roll the tone or volume back, different enough to the real amp where I no longer feel like I'm playing a capture of my amp.

I think the component modelling schematic based approach is superior. Because the mindset I'm in with that is "okay, this isn't my amp, but an amalgamation of all amps of this type" - which psychologically sets up a whole load of different expectations and assumptions. It's more freeing mentally. Even though there are very slight differences between the VH4 Silver models on the Axe III and my real VH4 silverface (likewise with my Satch JVM) I don't get as hung up on them as I do with the Kemper and QC.

To me, the two best modellers/digital solutions out there are the Helix and Axe III. Because they offer you tons of features, tons of freedom, and aren't restrictive and don't mentally paint you into a corner.

Capturing/profiling - offers the holy grail.... delivers moudly cheese feet with no socks.
 
I've never understood the interest in profiling as an overall modelling solution because afaik it only captures a snapshot of amp settings. Fundamentally I can't see how this is better than having a model of the whole amp with all the moving parts, and, in Fractal's case, many parts moveable in real time via modifiers. Seems like no contest.
 
AndyTNBD said:
Tangentially related to the Axe III I suppose.

But I've owned Kempers throughout the years, and I had a Quad Cortex primarily for the amp capturing functionality. Leaving all of the UI+UX differences aside... I genuinely have lost my "faith" in profiling/capturing technology.

The final tone you get is never 100% dead on to the real amp, which is what is promised. Then there are differences in the way the profiles react to the guitar when you roll the tone or volume back, different enough to the real amp where I no longer feel like I'm playing a capture of my amp.

I think the component modelling schematic based approach is superior. Because the mindset I'm in with that is "okay, this isn't my amp, but an amalgamation of all amps of this type" - which psychologically sets up a whole load of different expectations and assumptions. It's more freeing mentally. Even though there are very slight differences between the VH4 Silver models on the Axe III and my real VH4 silverface (likewise with my Satch JVM) I don't get as hung up on them as I do with the Kemper and QC.

To me, the two best modellers/digital solutions out there are the Helix and Axe III. Because they offer you tons of features, tons of freedom, and aren't restrictive and don't mentally paint you into a corner.

Capturing/profiling - offers the holy grail.... delivers moudly cheese feet with no socks.
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And if you got the fact in mind that you never-ever will get a modelling amp sounding like your physical amp, because it is not possible. (Statet on different articles or posts also here in froum)
Even if you got 2 or 3 valve-amps of same type they will sound different at the same settings because of tolerance of the parts. (resistors, tubes, transformers and not at least potentiometers). So why not dialing in tone by ears with an excellent modeler and forget comparison.
That gives your the most freedom.
And vice-versa - you really got the same sound on same modeller when dialing in same settings or load the saved preset.
So you are able to reproduce your sound what is much more difficult with analog amps.
 
I've been a Kemper owner for 9 years now. Purchased my FM3 which was replaced by the FM9 when it was released. I still love my Kemper but to be honest, the FM9 blows it away. Not only to my own ears but my band and audience are in agreement. I find the Kemper to be more digital sounding.
 
raccoon said:
And if you got the fact in mind that you never-ever will get a modelling amp sounding like your physical amp, because it is not possible. (Statet on different articles or posts also here in froum)
Even if you got 2 or 3 valve-amps of same type they will sound different at the same settings because of tolerance of the parts. (resistors, tubes, transformers and not at least potentiometers). So why not dialing in tone by ears with an excellent modeler and forget comparison.
That gives your the most freedom.
And vice-versa - you really got the same sound on same modeller when dialing in same settings or load the saved preset.
So you are able to reproduce your sound what is much more difficult with analog amps.
Click to expand...
The main Goal in the beginning is to take your amp capture and tour with it without thinking of the tubes, the weight, the mic placement … and this is what all these bands do
 
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sprint said:
I've never understood the interest in profiling as an overall modelling solution because afaik it only captures a snapshot of amp settings. Fundamentally I can't see how this is better than having a model of the whole amp with all the moving parts, and, in Fractal's case, many parts moveable in real time via modifiers. Seems like no contest.
Click to expand...
Yes it’s a snapshot but you can dial it very easily . Many people say that’s there is a lack of tweaking options but that’s wrong . All that you can tweak is already more than enough . You have eq, gain, all the main effects …I never feel that something was missing in the kemper, the controls are efficient . Just the sound that is fuzzy whatever you do . Some guys may like it but me not . I like the tightness of the axe . And if you want it dirty you can . Good luck to have a tight sound with the kemper , a mark type for example . You have always these high bees
 
Profilers are only as good as the people profiling the amps. The Axe Fx III is so much better because I can change the sound exactly the way I want it. Everyone who has a profiler finds about 5 profiles they can "live with" out of the thousands of profiles out there. Thumbing through amps to find the one I like is far more tedious than being able to just tweek things until they're just right.
 
My name is mud said:
Yes it’s a snapshot but you can dial it very easily . Many people say that’s there is a lack of tweaking options but that’s wrong . All that you can tweak is already more than enough . You have eq, gain, all the main effects …I never feel that something was missing in the kemper, the controls are efficient .
Click to expand...

But compared to the Axe, it's worse than barebones.
 
Overcaster said:
But compared to the Axe, it's worse than barebones.
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Sure . But when you own a head you don’t change the capacitors hm . The basic control are enough if the product is good . That’s nice to have 50 controls but how many time I find them useless in the axe … I turn the knob , turn my eyes 👀, and never again 😅. No for me that’s in the result where there is a lack, for the rest the kemper is gapless , the effects are nice … the clean is nice … the noise gate is probably the best gate ever . Just the distortion globally suck . That’s sad when you play rock music 😁
 
When I had the Quad Cortex I felt the capturing got me like 98% to the same result as my real amps when used through the same output system at the same volume. I think that's pretty damn good. It would let me leave an expensive amp at home and bring a more than good enough facsimile of it to a gig. Any tweaks needed can be done elsewhere. With the QC's ability to also capture overdrive pedals that would mean being able to leave some valuable vintage overdrive at home and not risk someone throwing beer at it. A QC is going to be easier to replace.

With other people's captures at best they serve as a way to try out a particular amp at particular settings and see how it works in your setup. I could not see myself relying on them otherwise and I find the "buy this and this person's Kemper pack for the best tones" just as unappealing as the 3rd party IR rabbit holes where you buy something and hope it sounds great with your setup.

The problem with captures is that while you get a pretty accurate replica of that particular amp at those settings, there's not much you can do to deviate from there while retaining that accuracy. The EQ does not work like the real amp. Gain knob did though so that's nice. A good way to make the captures better would be if you could define "this EQ knob affects this frequency range at this Q" so when you load the capture the 3 band EQ would operate at least closer to the real amp. But that already makes it a lot more involved to create accurate captures and it's already quite time consuming to cover anything more complex than a single channel amp's few sweet spot settings. It took me a lot of time to just offer QC captures of my Victory VC35 with the various switch combinations and there's only three of them (bass cut, mid boost and high/low power).
 
@laxu - it wasn't really close enough for me to be honest. Not in the end. Better than the Kemper though in fairness; the amps on the QC responded better to palm mutes and sounded more amp-like.

Kemper has this weird quackiness to the profiles, caused by the definition circuit.

When I play through my real VH4 and then the Axe III running the VH4 silverface, I don't feel any difference really.

I'm gonna flog my Kemper and put the money into an FM9 I reckon.
 
My name is mud said:
Yes it’s a snapshot but you can dial it very easily . You have eq, gain, all the main effects …
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sure - but as I dial in a profile, I would always be thinking "ok - how was this amp set (gain,BMT,pres,res...) when it was initially profiled, and what am I now doing on top of that" - seems confusing for those wanting to understand the logical workings of a given amp and learn how to dial a model in based on that understanding in addition to ears - and makes it harder to understand the true sense/characteristics of an amp.
 
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My name is mud said:
Sure . But when you own a head you don’t change the capacitors hm . The basic control are enough if the product is good . That’s nice to have 50 controls but how many time I find them useless in the axe … I turn the knob , turn my eyes 👀, and never again 😅. No for me that’s in the result where there is a lack, for the rest the kemper is gapless , the effects are nice … the clean is nice … the noise gate is probably the best gate ever . Just the distortion globally suck . That’s sad when you play rock music 😁
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exact opposite for me. I tweak until its unrecognizable haha, . i tweak all other parameters first. even for tone stack, if you wanna tweak bass mids and treble like on most modellers or profiling units without touch anything else i still find axe better for that cause even without tweaking advanced parameters you can simply change the type of tone stack or change its centre frequency and that automatically changes how b/m/t tweaks sound, can help in alot of cases in how the sound shapes out to be.

real amps look way too boring to me now. and the transformer match is a life saver, can open up the sound like so damn well . that alone makes so much difference especially on lower tunings. The speaker impedance ratio as well.


All these bands use kemper for familiarity with their own amps nothing else and in studio some people have mastered tying to capture the profiles well and learnt to eliminate the artifacts etc.

The AXE is always going to be one of a kind in this regard.
 
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In the hindsight, looking at the history of distortion and amplifiers, what we have had a different packages circuits packed in form of a physical amp to acheive specific goals / create distortion and sound which is great! and they have shaped the music we have all heard growing. But all of them have had some inherent flaws.

Moving forward into the future being able to shape distortion however you like with full freedom without constraints of a physical amp,or the circuit components is freaking great. and far superior than profiling or even modelling existing amplifiers.

Alot on the thread will not agree, but i think Cliff @FractalAudio shares my opinion. that was the starting point of his FAS line of amps , and also providing so many controls in the first place.

Being able to manipulate the signal into sounding however we want without any constraints is the way forward. and to be realistic i should say tending towards fewer and fewer constraints, rather than no constraints.
 
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AndyTNBD said:
I think the component modelling schematic based approach is superior. Because the mindset I'm in with that is "okay, this isn't my amp, but an amalgamation of all amps of this type" - which psychologically sets up a whole load of different expectations and assumptions.
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Fractal doesn’t model an amalgamation of all amps of a type, they take a specific one they think sounds like the perfect instance of it, make sure it’s set up the way it would be if it’d been perfectly maintained, then model the schematic and take measurements from the real amp and tweak until the model sounds right and matches the output for a given input. The model then works like the original when you turn the knobs on the amp or the guitar. That’s important: Cliff can test and prove it acts and sounds the same for an identical input. We can turn the knobs and the model adjusts like the circuit says it should.

That’s what I like about modeling, because its response is believable, and that’s what never made sense about profiling. A profile is a snapshot in time of the amp in that condition and state with the knobs turned certain ways. A friend has a Kemper and has gone around and around with it trying to adjust it to sound how he wants it to sound, and I tried to explain their process and the technology, and he’s so drunk on their koolaid that he misses the disconnect that at best he can only get it to sound as good as that profiled amp at those profiled settings. Add that he’s not equipped with the same hands and guitars as the player he wants to emulate, and he ends up frustrated with the sound. I haven’t played with him since lockdown so he hasn’t had a chance to use my Fractals, but he knows my tube amps and how picky I am about sound, so I’m sure the FMx would win him over in an hour of playing through them, knob turning and all.
 
When I originally was going to make the jump into the digital world, I was dead set on the Kemper because I didn't want to be "constantly tweaking" and I just wanted a good sound.

At the last moment, I bought the AxeFX III instead of the Kemper. What finally sealed it was realizing that if something wasn't exactly right with my tone, I could fix it with the AxeFX since it was modelling the entire circuit. The entire process, instead of just a black box final result. I realized I needed that flexibility, especially since I'm the kind of guitarist that never really feels comfortable with somebody else's sound (I never use factory presets, really).
 
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