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

How was this tested if you don't mind me asking? Volume pot, tone pot, ect. Profiled and captured an amp, used the same monitoring, and saw differences compared to source when guitar is at a different volume, tone pot level, differences which weren't there otherwise?
Lots of ways. The gold standard would seem to be to use a DI signal for the refinement, and a DI signal for the comparison, in order to remove performance variation from the equation. I've done that. Many differences still.

Even in a loadbox situation with the cab and microphone completely out of the equation, the Kemper and QC do not capture the source to 100% accuracy.

The Kemper typically results in higher gain, and fuzzier palm mutes. Tweaking the definition parameter can adjust this, but then you introduce some mid-high pick emphasis that sounds like a duck quacking.

The QC was typically lower gain and captures were a tad darker sounding than the real amp, but the palm mutes did not sound as bad as the Kemper.
 
Lots of ways. The gold standard would seem to be to use a DI signal for the refinement, and a DI signal for the comparison, in order to remove performance variation from the equation. I've done that. Many differences still.

Even in a loadbox situation with the cab and microphone completely out of the equation, the Kemper and QC do not capture the source to 100% accuracy.

The Kemper typically results in higher gain, and fuzzier palm mutes. Tweaking the definition parameter can adjust this, but then you introduce some mid-high pick emphasis that sounds like a duck quacking.

The QC was typically lower gain and captures were a tad darker sounding than the real amp, but the palm mutes did not sound as bad as the Kemper.
Ok cool. I agree that there are always differences, at least measurable in some manner. At times, they are very hard to hear in blind tests imo but are still perceivable when playing.

I cannot tell the difference here when listening back to the recordings of the DI.



But when I played guitar myself with the same profile vs source tone it was relatively easy to feel the differences.

I was just curious about the volume, tone pot comment specifically, them introducing extra inaccuracies.
 
What fascinates me is the difference between static and dynamic comparisons. It’s already been said that the Kemper profiles are static, working well only at certain guitar volume and tone settings. In the history of modelling we have been through a series of revelations over transients: for example amp sag, and speaker coil heating, and I expect there to be more. So what I’m looking for is not whether a model sounds exactly the same as a specific amp or recording. I’m more interested in how it responds to my playing, and whether my playing can pull out interesting texture from the model.

I understand what you're getting at, but for me I'm after some authenticity in comparison to my real amps. The issues with the Kemper and QC were this promise of authenticity but in reality, it isn't quite enough for me. Call it OCD, call it GAS, call it procrastination, whatever you want. But if the tone aint right, I don't feel like playing.

I was pretty non-plussed with the Axe II in the past, and have said as much over the years. But with the Axe III, it's pretty 1:1 with my real valve amps. I don't feel any difference, and a Diezel model sounds authentic, and a Marshall model sounds authentic.

Which is great, because even though I've never played a real SLO or Bogner, I have much more faith that they're close to the real amp. Which is important to me, even if it's just on a psychological level.

At the end of the day you're right, it is all about the sound of the thing.
 
Anyone who says they can hear if something is "digital" - care to test those ears? Im willing to bet youll fail every blind test I send 🤷‍♂️

Not to mention, basically every record recorded after 1994 has been digital in one way or another. Hell, CDs delivered the audio digitally. Did you resist and keep your casettes?

The whole thing is silly. These are the same people that say they can tell the difference in sound between a maple neck and a rosewood neck on an electric guitar. Again, we can blind test your supersonic ears if you want 😅

Im the pickiest bastard ever on tone, but lets keep it real at least. This isnt 2001, modelers have gotten a lot better.
 
Anyone who says they can hear if something is "digital" - care to test those ears? Im willing to bet youll fail every blind test I send 🤷‍♂️

Not to mention, basically every record recorded after 1994 has been digital in one way or another. Hell, CDs delivered the audio digitally. Did you resist and keep your casettes?

The whole thing is silly. These are the same people that say they can tell the difference in sound between a maple neck and a rosewood neck on an electric guitar. Again, we can blind test your supersonic ears if you want 😅

Im the pickiest bastard ever on tone, but lets keep it real at least. This isnt 2001, modelers have gotten a lot better.
Its rather the difference that you feel when playing on a full blown cab versus studio monitors or headphones that makes people think something is digital, more often than not it is also the room and not ideal monitoring conditions.
 
Anyone who says they can hear if something is "digital" - care to test those ears? Im willing to bet youll fail every blind test I send 🤷‍♂️

Not to mention, basically every record recorded after 1994 has been digital in one way or another. Hell, CDs delivered the audio digitally. Did you resist and keep your casettes?

The whole thing is silly. These are the same people that say they can tell the difference in sound between a maple neck and a rosewood neck on an electric guitar. Again, we can blind test your supersonic ears if you want 😅

Im the pickiest bastard ever on tone, but lets keep it real at least. This isnt 2001, modelers have gotten a lot better.
I did a test with six full time professional musicians.
They all claimed that they could hear a difference in different saddle material.
So I put six different saddles on a Strat, all different style and or material. The guitar was equipped with six D-Strings. The result was, that in the end no one could even hear or tell a difference between the saddles. We did the test again with six G and B strings with the same result.

As I have stated in another thread, sometimes guitarists have to much time, if they would spend their time in practicing they would have much more benefit in their tone.
 
I did a test with six full time professional musicians.
They all claimed that they could hear a difference in different saddle material.
So I put six different saddles on a Strat, all different style and or material. The guitar was equipped with six D-Strings. The result was, that in the end no one could even hear or tell a difference between the saddles. We did the test again with six G and B strings with the same result.

As I have stated in another thread, sometimes guitarists have to much time, if they would spend their time in practicing they would have much more benefit in their tone.
A-friggin-men. I recorded 2 songs this week, not a single person who listens to them is going to care. It either sounds good or it doesnt 🤘
 
Anyone who says they can hear if something is "digital" - care to test those ears? Im willing to bet youll fail every blind test I send 🤷‍♂️

Not to mention, basically every record recorded after 1994 has been digital in one way or another. Hell, CDs delivered the audio digitally. Did you resist and keep your casettes?

The whole thing is silly. These are the same people that say they can tell the difference in sound between a maple neck and a rosewood neck on an electric guitar. Again, we can blind test your supersonic ears if you want 😅

Im the pickiest bastard ever on tone, but lets keep it real at least. This isnt 2001, modelers have gotten a lot better.
Saying something "sounds digital" is just a stupid catch all phrase for "I can't explain what I don't like about it so I'm just going to blame it on the fact I know it's digital". Most digital guitar gear you can buy nowadays won't have any noticeable aliasing artifacts etc. and any non-desirable aspect you hear is not because it's digital but usually an issue with the algorithms running on the digital system.

Now, a maple neck and rosewood neck I could understand as I do feel like an actual rosewood neck does sound different. A maple vs rosewood fretboard though? Nah, can't tell the difference so I just pick based on looks.
 
A-friggin-men. I recorded 2 songs this week, not a single person who listens to them is going to care. It either sounds good or it doesnt 🤘
Yep!
I was a payed studio musician back in the late 90‘s and no one care which guitar, pickups or amps you use. You just had to do your job.
Sometimes I got called and I played what ever in the studio was available.
One of the best examples to me is Jimmy Pages guitar on Stairway to Heaven, most people thought he played it on a Les Paul and at the end he played it on a Telecaster.
 
Yep!
I was a payed studio musician back in the late 90‘s and no one care which guitar, pickups or amps you use. You just had to do your job.
Sometimes I got called and I played what ever in the studio was available.
One of the best examples to me is Jimmy Pages guitar on Stairway to Heaven, most people thought he played it on a Les Paul and at the end he played it on a Telecaster.
It's because those are so similar ;)
 
Anyone who says they can hear if something is "digital" - care to test those ears? Im willing to bet youll fail every blind test I send 🤷‍♂️

Not to mention, basically every record recorded after 1994 has been digital in one way or another. Hell, CDs delivered the audio digitally. Did you resist and keep your casettes?

The whole thing is silly. These are the same people that say they can tell the difference in sound between a maple neck and a rosewood neck on an electric guitar. Again, we can blind test your supersonic ears if you want 😅

Im the pickiest bastard ever on tone, but lets keep it real at least. This isnt 2001, modelers have gotten a lot better.
Which is why you still use the PODx3 from 2010 right? If no one can tell the difference why would anyone buy an Axe and not just buy the cheapest thing they can? While there are a lot of advantages like the in the box effects, consistency, routing, support and updates etc., accurate tone must surely be one of the biggest reasons people buy one. And on the occasional times an amp gets screwed up in an update, people notice the difference and loudly point it out here (@My name is mud for instance 😁) Would I notice it? Probably not but there are a lot more smart people with great hearing here than me that you are not giving credit to.
 
yes we are in 2021 but ... lets take an example of one the latest product .

ready ? take a deep breath

go directly in 4:44 in this video 😬



how do name that sound ? if this is not digital .... ahhhh maybe synthetic is a better word . thats hor-rible . listen to the gt1000 ... many "new" product still horrible souding, super digital . the axe is since now the "less synthetic" product of them all
 
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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.

So you are ok with modeling because you don’t expect it to sound like the amp modeled but you are not ok with profiling because it doesn’t sound like the amp profiled?
 
FWIW I've seen a video of the QC where the capture sounded WAY better than the model, and IMO it sounded absolutely beastly. Granted, I assume the modeled amp was paired with a factory IR and not a copy of the cab mic'ed for the capture, so there's that part having great effect on tone.

IMHO profiling/capture has it's charm when you have one or more amps and cabs you love and know inside-out, then you've crafted your Holy Grail settings and you'd want a digital representation of that combo... That's where Profiling/Capturing works wonders and, if FAS was to develop their own twist of the technology/procedure I'm certain it would sound as good if not better that both the Kemper & QC.

Again, IMHO, the biggest mistake people are making about Profiles/Captures is assuming it is a digital copy of the amp as a whole and its full functionality so they think they can tweak the profiles/captures to their taste and being disappointed when the Gain and BMT controls are all over the place. That's why I mentioned that their magic happens when you have your favorite amp already dialed in and your favorite cab properly mic'ed.
 
The acc
Which is why you still use the PODx3 from 2010 right? If no one can tell the difference why would anyone buy an Axe and not just buy the cheapest thing they can? While there are a lot of advantages like the in the box effects, consistency, routing, support and updates etc., accurate tone must surely be one of the biggest reasons people buy one. And on the occasional times an amp gets screwed up in an update, people notice the difference and loudly point it out here (@My name is mud for instance 😁) Would I notice it? Probably not but there are a lot more smart people with great hearing here than me that you are not giving credit to.
Nah. I have the axe because it basically gives me all the options I would have in a DAW, making an album, for my live tone. The compressors, eqs, effects, routing options, modifiers, ability to use across instruments, the foot controller, etc. The amp modeling accuracy is probably last on my list. Ive been able to make basically every piece of gear Ive ever owned sound good in terms of raw amp tones. But then again i go for "my" sound, not necessarily copying any particular amp or other artist. I used a gt8 for a while ffs 😅 🤷‍♂️
 
I've always thought of profiling like working on a static photograph in Photoshop; you can do a few things, tweak this, munge that, but it's still a static capture and there are limitations how far you can go with it.

As compared to modeling where it's like painting a picture; you can create anything and go anywhere you want...perhaps a bit more effort is needed to get where you need to be, but the flexibility and options gained are incredible and virtually limitless...you can create....
 
The acc

Nah. I have the axe because it basically gives me all the options I would have in a DAW, making an album, for my live tone. The compressors, eqs, effects, routing options, modifiers, ability to use across instruments, the foot controller, etc. The amp modeling accuracy is probably last on my list. Ive been able to make basically every piece of gear Ive ever owned sound good in terms of raw amp tones. But then again i go for "my" sound, not necessarily copying any particular amp or other artist. I used a gt8 for a while ffs 😅 🤷‍♂️
It is interesting to see the different motivations for buying an Axe. To be 95% honest, it really is a vanity purchase for me in some ways. I don’t have the dedication or time required to develop the technical and creative skills that I see on the recording page and am blown away by the way people have developed their talent from doom to country, bagpipes to metal, shoe gazing to atmospherics. But I do casually play in a band and have tried a lot of modelers (including profiler types) and for me authentic tone is near the top of the list. Short of using a real amp live (and the headaches that come with it) the Axe nails it.
 
So you are ok with modeling because you don’t expect it to sound like the amp modeled but you are not ok with profiling because it doesn’t sound like the amp profiled?
It's a psychological thing.

Profiling necessarily tries to say that it can clone your amp.

Modelling doesn't.

The two headspaces are very different. And I find one of them restrictive and annoying, and the other freeing less bothersome.
 
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