Question about Kemper

I'm not in any way to diss the KPA... however...
I am a former Kemper owner who has really put all his trust into the unit. I gave it a fair chance to impress me, had it for months, then I sadly felt like I have to sell it. Heck, I believed in it so much that I even went in a little forum dogfight with Mr. Scott that I regret now.
The problem with profiling in my book is a lot simpler than the need to get into technical details.
Profiling is a very limited technology. Since you capture a snapshot of a current situation, everything you do to tweak the given tone is after the fact. And tweaking after the fact is quite similar to working on a recording in a studio - a lot can be done, but it's absolutely not the same as going back to the amp and dialing it in differently. Same goes for switching cabs, it always left me with something more to desire. I also never was able to get the kind of frequency dynamics that I wanted to hear, the first unit that made it possible is the Axe II.
Being said that and owned a Kemper, I wasn't really able to overcome the fact that every tweak I do is "fake". I heard it all the time. And I heard digital fizz (or aliasing if you like), too.
I took my KPA to a professional player friend of mine for testing and he had to dial the treble kinda all the way out almost all the time to make the fizz disappear and make it sound organic... and it was not the triode fizz that is here with V10...
Also, I didn't like the customer support at all. I felt cheated quite a few times when I submitted my issue and they didn't even bother to give me a reply that it's being looked into. Christoph is someone you can really like and his person feels like a guarantee because he is so dedicated to the KPA but sadly the company itself in my view is not professional enough for me to trust. Even more after having booting issues daily and some other weird things going on all the time, and every FW update fixing a few issues and creating a few more...
I'm glad to be an Axe II owner, and I really don't want to diss the KPA, but, well, just look at the price difference. In my view it's meant for a different kind of audience.
Have to also add on a side note that back in the days when the KPA came out it might have actually been on par or on some occasions might have sounded better than the Axe II, but now with V10 I highly doubt the KPA could show me something jaw dropping.
 
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I was turned off by Kemper while playing their unit at namm after they said the $3000 or something dollar POWER AMP version was MONO
wtf
 
Of course if it sounds good it's good, and it does sounds good ! But you can prevent people interested in the technical aspect of things wanting to know more :) I found a strange thing with one IR I made from a Kemper profile. As it is bass heavy (like most IRs I made from the KPA, check my blog for a post about that and a youtube demo), I used Axe-O-Matic to add a filter in the chain, with a high pass at 80 hz, and make a new IR from that. With conventional IRs, this filter works like it should by cutting everything under 80 Hz. With the Kemper IRs, it sounds like I'm cutting everything under 300 Hz.
 
FractalAudio said:
A typical product design cycle takes about three years.

Profiling is a unique application of distortion model matching (see Klippel et. al) and EQ Matching (i.e. ozone). They have also developed a unique method of measuring input frequency response and dynamic response.

It is a fine product and produces good results. Whether those results are superior or inferior to other products is a matter of opinion.
Click to expand...


This!
 
fremen said:
Of course if it sounds good it's good, and it does sounds good ! But you can prevent people interested in the technical aspect of things wanting to know more :) I found a strange thing with one IR I made from a Kemper profile. As it is bass heavy (like most IRs I made from the KPA, check my blog for a post about that and a youtube demo), I used Axe-O-Matic to add a filter in the chain, with a high pass at 80 hz, and make a new IR from that. With conventional IRs, this filter works like it should by cutting everything under 80 Hz. With the Kemper IRs, it sounds like I'm cutting everything under 300 Hz.
Click to expand...

some nice info there
 
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