Thanks for not profiling !!

I have not, only tried one years ago. Liked my Axe-Fx 2 better then!

For capturing you can use either a loadbox or mic a cab. Obviously you get the cab sound baked in if you use a mic. I use a Bluetone Loadbox and run its lineout to the QC.
and to summarize years and years of posts about tone and capturing, 90% of it is the cab ir. I was surprised early in my nearly a decade with my Axe II and now my FM3 how much of tone - and I mean the basic foundation tone and not all the bells and whistles - is actually the cab and the ear (or mic capturing it ) vs. the actual contribution of the amp itself.

iu
 
I was surprised early in my nearly a decade with my Axe II and now my FM3 how much of tone - and I mean the basic foundation tone and not all the bells and whistles - is actually the cab and the ear (or mic capturing it ) vs. the actual contribution of the amp itself.
It is too true. I love soldering and modding tube amps. But, the biggest signature of the sound is the sum of the speaker types/models/cones, the cab types, the mics, mic placements, mic preamps. The amp is more about dynamic reaction, style of distortion, and filtering out the desired harmonics and timbre. But, speaker response stands out as the most wide-ranging, and easily noticeable feature of the overall tone.

Knoppler, "Money For Nothing" studio parable:

"I remember Mark's Les Paul Junior going through a Laney amp, and that was the sound of 'Money For Nothing'," says Dorfsman. "We were actually going for a sort of ZZ Top sound, but what we ended up getting was kind of an accident. Mark would be in the control room and we'd run a lead out to the main area, and I remember getting a channel set up to monitor, heading out to the room to move the mics around, and Mark's guitar tech Ron Eve getting on the talkback and telling me not to touch anything because it sounded amazing as it was.

One mic was pointing down at the floor, another was not quite on the speaker, another was somewhere else, and it wasn't how I would want to set things up — it was probably just left from the night before, when I'd been preparing things for the next day and had not really finished the setup. Nevertheless, whether it was the phase of the mics or the out-of-phaseness, what we heard was exactly what ended up on the record. There was no additional processing on that tune during the mix.

Later on, we tried to recreate that guitar sound at the Power Station with the same amp, same setup and same models of microphone, but we could never get it. I'd drawn extensive pictures and had a little map of how everything was set up, but there must have been something weird going on to make the guitar sound that way in Montserrat, because in New York it sounded like a cleaner, karaoke version of the same thing. I messed around with it for a good couple of hours, but Mark was just getting bored and wanted to move on. The whole thing was very confusing."
 
Profiling works only if you profile your own amps with your own guitars. If you want to use profiling to get the tone of other people's amps it won't work, because you'll have to tweak the tone to your guitar and pickups, and the results won't be natural because it's a static profile and not the actual amp or a modelled amp.
 
Profiling works only if you profile your own amps with your own guitars. If you want to use profiling to get the tone of other people's amps it won't work, because you'll have to tweak the tone to your guitar and pickups, and the results won't be natural because it's a static profile and not the actual amp or a modelled amp.

I can't speak for the Kemper but on the QC if I use a profile of my own Bogner, even if I tweak the capture block controls it still sounds like the same amp, but with the EQ in slightly different places. It works fine for still getting good tones out of it even if it's not an exact spot on match to the real thing. I've suggested that NeuralDSP adds a step to the capture process where you could define the frequency, gain range and Q of the 3 band EQ as that would let you as the capture creator to to make it behave closer to the real amp if you can figure out the closest band for each control.

The capture doesn't care about your guitar beyond what you dialed in on the amp. It will sound like that amp with those settings even if you plug in a different guitar, just like the real amp would. In similar vein, what cab you put after it will alter the sound. There's nothing "natural" about amp tones in the first place.

"Accuracy" gets thrown a lot in the modeling world yet most people have never used 90% of the real amps that have been modeled and definitely not the exact ones Fractal or NeuralDSP have based their models on. Let's take the Cygnus update. I am looking forward to trying it with my FM3 but at the same time the FM3 sounds just great as it is. So did the Axe-Fx 2. And the Axe-Fx Standard. In hindsight of course the new things sound much better, but without direct reference all we know is that something sounds good to our ears, whether it's 1:1 accurate or not.

Sometimes the model can even be better than the real thing. Having played a real Cornford MK50, I would never buy one because it was immensely loud even turned down. Just not practical at all, as good sounding as it was. But the Fractal model of that amp is one of my favorites because volume is not a problem on that and I can dial it in so many ways.

While it's good to strive for accuracy, ultimately these are tools and what matters is if they perform the job for what you are looking to do.
 
Profiling works only if you profile your own amps with your own guitars. If you want to use profiling to get the tone of other people's amps it won't work, because you'll have to tweak the tone to your guitar and pickups, and the results won't be natural because it's a static profile and not the actual amp or a modelled amp.
I think you mean Tone Match, not profile.

Profiling does not include a guitar in the process.
 
I think you mean Tone Match, not profile.

Profiling does not include a guitar in the process.

Nope, I mean profiling, at least as I experienced it with the Kemper (not QC).

it still sounds like the same amp, but with the EQ in slightly different places.

Exactly. When I am trying to get a tone I am hearing from let's say Slash, I can't, because even if I had a profile from his amp made with his guitar, I'll have to dial in some EQ or general tweaking to match my guitar/pickups. If I try to do it with the "fake" global EQ the results will be unnatural because different amps' EQ and other parameters are voiced differently than the global EQ. My experience is with the Kemper though, I don't know about QC and I've seen it does a better job at profiling. But many Kemper users have the same problem, they dont want to tweak profiles because they get weird results, but it's unavoidable because every profile is a static tone that sounds great with the guitar/pickups of the profile maker, but just good with other pickups.

You can generally get good results with everything nowdays, but if you are looking for 100% natural results I prefer the modelling approach.
 
It is too true. I love soldering and modding tube amps. But, the biggest signature of the sound is the sum of the speaker types/models/cones, the cab types, the mics, mic placements, mic preamps. The amp is more about dynamic reaction, style of distortion, and filtering out the desired harmonics and timbre. But, speaker response stands out as the most wide-ranging, and easily noticeable feature of the overall tone.

Knoppler, "Money For Nothing" studio parable:

"I remember Mark's Les Paul Junior going through a Laney amp, and that was the sound of 'Money For Nothing'," says Dorfsman. "We were actually going for a sort of ZZ Top sound, but what we ended up getting was kind of an accident. Mark would be in the control room and we'd run a lead out to the main area, and I remember getting a channel set up to monitor, heading out to the room to move the mics around, and Mark's guitar tech Ron Eve getting on the talkback and telling me not to touch anything because it sounded amazing as it was.

One mic was pointing down at the floor, another was not quite on the speaker, another was somewhere else, and it wasn't how I would want to set things up — it was probably just left from the night before, when I'd been preparing things for the next day and had not really finished the setup. Nevertheless, whether it was the phase of the mics or the out-of-phaseness, what we heard was exactly what ended up on the record. There was no additional processing on that tune during the mix.

Later on, we tried to recreate that guitar sound at the Power Station with the same amp, same setup and same models of microphone, but we could never get it. I'd drawn extensive pictures and had a little map of how everything was set up, but there must have been something weird going on to make the guitar sound that way in Montserrat, because in New York it sounded like a cleaner, karaoke version of the same thing. I messed around with it for a good couple of hours, but Mark was just getting bored and wanted to move on. The whole thing was very confusing."
I "think" I read somewhere that is was Mark's "Cocked Wah" that was a large part of that sound.
 
I can't speak for the Kemper but on the QC if I use a profile of my own Bogner, even if I tweak the capture block controls it still sounds like the same amp, but with the EQ in slightly different places. It works fine for still getting good tones out of it even if it's not an exact spot on match to the real thing. I've suggested that NeuralDSP adds a step to the capture process where you could define the frequency, gain range and Q of the 3 band EQ as that would let you as the capture creator to to make it behave closer to the real amp if you can figure out the closest band for each control.
Good to know about the QC. I have one on the way. I actually got the FM3 for the IRs and effects. I didn't really trust modeling that much. But, the FM3 just sounded better to me than the HX Stomp in the FX/IR dept. I was surprised at how much I liked the Fractal Models and the wide range of model tweaks available. I am now reconsidering the QC. I think it would still be useful. But, it doesn't seem as necessary as I once thought.
"Accuracy" gets thrown a lot in the modeling world yet most people have never used 90% of the real amps that have been modeled and definitely not the exact ones Fractal or NeuralDSP have based their models on. Let's take the Cygnus update. I am looking forward to trying it with my FM3 but at the same time the FM3 sounds just great as it is. So did the Axe-Fx 2. And the Axe-Fx Standard. In hindsight of course the new things sound much better, but without direct reference all we know is that something sounds good to our ears, whether it's 1:1 accurate or not.
In the hard-wired world extreme accuracy, down to the components, was needed to match not just vintage amp sounds but the vintage amp dynamics. It seems much less important in the other direction when the Fractal amp models can be adjusted in so many meaningful ways.
Sometimes the model can even be better than the real thing. Having played a real Cornford MK50, I would never buy one because it was immensely loud even turned down. Just not practical at all, as good sounding as it was. But the Fractal model of that amp is one of my favorites because volume is not a problem on that and I can dial it in so many ways.
The Fractal Cornford model surprised me as one of my new favorites. I knew about it. I just didn't think I would like it as much as I did. And yes, it is much more interesting to tweak in the sound I want, the way I want, for the exact situation. The FM3 is so much quicker and easier than soldering, waiting for parts, auditioning transformers, huffing tube amp heads in and out of cases -- I am just too old.
 
I "think" I read somewhere that is was Mark's "Cocked Wah" that was a large part of that sound.
Yep... Well there goes another perfectly good studio parable. I didn't find the actual reference. But yeah, several people tell the story that Mark Knoppler had to recreate the sound with Weird Al Yankovich and wasn't able to do it in the studio -- then later he remembered about the wah being on... And, I really liked that little studio story -- oh well, lol.
 
Nope, I mean profiling, at least as I experienced it with the Kemper (not QC).



Exactly. When I am trying to get a tone I am hearing from let's say Slash, I can't, because even if I had a profile from his amp made with his guitar, I'll have to dial in some EQ or general tweaking to match my guitar/pickups. If I try to do it with the "fake" global EQ the results will be unnatural because different amps' EQ and other parameters are voiced differently than the global EQ. My experience is with the Kemper though, I don't know about QC and I've seen it does a better job at profiling. But many Kemper users have the same problem, they dont want to tweak profiles because they get weird results, but it's unavoidable because every profile is a static tone that sounds great with the guitar/pickups of the profile maker, but just good with other pickups.

You can generally get good results with everything nowdays, but if you are looking for 100% natural results I prefer the modelling approach.
Again - profiles are made without the guitar in the signal chain. That's how the Kemper works. If you have a profile of Slash's amp and your guitar doesn't sound like Slash's....then yeah, it's not going to sound like his tone. Same exact thing happens if you had his actual amp and your guitar.

If you have a profile of Slash's amp....then you have a profile of Slash's amp. That's all the Kemper or the QC can do, and that is the intended design of the product....replicate what the original amp creates.
Your post above says you need to 'profile the amp and guitar'. My point is - that's not possible. The Kemper doesn't capture guitar tone...it's an amp profiler, not a guitar profiler. If you thought it would make a Strat sound like a Les Paul, then you bought the wrong product.

Tone Match on the other hand, can match his recorded tone....guitar, amp, cab, mic, console, etc.
 
Again - profiles are made without the guitar in the signal chain. That's how the Kemper works. If you have a profile of Slash's amp and your guitar doesn't sound like Slash's....then yeah, it's not going to sound like his tone. Same exact thing happens if you had his actual amp and your guitar.

If you have a profile of Slash's amp....then you have a profile of Slash's amp. That's all the Kemper or the QC can do, and that is the intended design of the product....replicate what the original amp creates.
Your post above says you need to 'profile the amp and guitar'. My point is - that's not possible. The Kemper doesn't capture guitar tone...it's an amp profiler, not a guitar profiler. If you thought it would make a Strat sound like a Les Paul, then you bought the wrong product.

Tone Match on the other hand, can match his recorded tone....guitar, amp, cab, mic, console, etc.

A profile is a "capture" of a tone which was made with a certain guitar and pickups. No guitar=no sound, no tone. You have to play in order to audition your tone, and you design your tone and make decisions based on what you hear when you play (again, a certain guitar with certain pickups).

The captured tone will not translate to another guitar. But if you could tweak the actual amp, you'd get a "real" result. You can't, so you'll get another result. Good or bad it's up to you (for me bad at most cases), but definitely another result. So basically, it's not like having the actual amp. The more you tweak, the more unrealistic the result will be. You may like it, but that's another story.
 
A profile is a "capture" of a tone which was made with a certain guitar and pickups.

A profile is a capture of an amp at it's current settings.
Whether or not you like that way that amp was set when it was profiled, is another question and topic.

This is why all the commercial profile makers sell profiles of the amp with the knobs in all 'knob configurations'.
Profile with Treble on 1....Profile with Treble on 2....Profile with Treble on 3.

As much as I didn't love that approach (trust me, I was anti-Kemper for years), it was really simple to find the right profile for any amp that I had commercial profiles for.

I sold the Kemper recently (maybe I'll buy a QC for fun). I love my Axe III and AX8 (and loved my Ultra and Axe 2). I'm a fractal fan, but I still though the Kemper was a blast to use, and easy to find amazing profiles. I saved my favorites onto a thumb drive in case I end up with a Kemper again at some point.

If the Axe had profiling, I wouldn't be upset.
 
Good to know about the QC. I have one on the way. I actually got the FM3 for the IRs and effects. I didn't really trust modeling that much. But, the FM3 just sounded better to me than the HX Stomp in the FX/IR dept. I was surprised at how much I liked the Fractal Models and the wide range of model tweaks available. I am now reconsidering the QC. I think it would still be useful. But, it doesn't seem as necessary as I once thought.

In the hard-wired world extreme accuracy, down to the components, was needed to match not just vintage amp sounds but the vintage amp dynamics. It seems much less important in the other direction when the Fractal amp models can be adjusted in so many meaningful ways.

The Fractal Cornford model surprised me as one of my new favorites. I knew about it. I just didn't think I would like it as much as I did. And yes, it is much more interesting to tweak in the sound I want, the way I want, for the exact situation. The FM3 is so much quicker and easier than soldering, waiting for parts, auditioning transformers, huffing tube amp heads in and out of cases -- I am just too old.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the QC when you get it.
The effects won't touch Fractal, but curious if the Amp capture process is as good as people are claiming.
I mean, the Kemper technology is 10 years old - surely there could/should be improvements by Neural.
 
Our other guitarist brought his QC over tonight and we captured my rhythm preset from my axeIII. It was seriously dead on. Even rolling off the volume knob. I’m impressed (not enough to ditch fractal, but still). It’s so cool: our sound is more coherent together because we have the same amp/cab but his guitar is juuust different enough that we don’t sound exactly the same.

Other things I noticed - UI is slow, clunky. IR loading process is horrid. No desktop app. But overall it’s very usable. He’s happy with it. It’s better than a kemper unit for sure. It does need some time to mature.
 
A profile is a capture of an amp at it's current settings.
Whether or not you like that way that amp was set when it was profiled, is another question and topic.

This is why all the commercial profile makers sell profiles of the amp with the knobs in all 'knob configurations'.
Profile with Treble on 1....Profile with Treble on 2....Profile with Treble on 3.

As much as I didn't love that approach (trust me, I was anti-Kemper for years), it was really simple to find the right profile for any amp that I had commercial profiles for.

I sold the Kemper recently (maybe I'll buy a QC for fun). I love my Axe III and AX8 (and loved my Ultra and Axe 2). I'm a fractal fan, but I still though the Kemper was a blast to use, and easy to find amazing profiles. I saved my favorites onto a thumb drive in case I end up with a Kemper again at some point.

If the Axe had profiling, I wouldn't be upset.
We basically don't disagree. It's just a matter of preference.

My experience with the kemper was good at first, because I had just entered the world of digital convenience. But then, I got tired of having a million profiles that would go from 0% to 90% of what I was looking for. And I feel that the reason is the profiling vs modelling approach.

When I got the Fm3 things became much simpler...I get a great tone, and if I want the same tone with less gain I just tweak a couple of parameters :)

Not to mention that the tone coming from my speakers is fuller, less compressed and without cocked wah.

Of course everyone can get great tones out of the Kemper, but from my experience it can get you there at 90% of what you are after, not more.
 
We basically don't disagree. It's just a matter of preference.

My experience with the kemper was good at first, because I had just entered the world of digital convenience. But then, I got tired of having a million profiles that would go from 0% to 90% of what I was looking for. And I feel that the reason is the profiling vs modelling approach.

When I got the Fm3 things became much simpler...I get a great tone, and if I want the same tone with less gain I just tweak a couple of parameters :)

Not to mention that the tone coming from my speakers is fuller, less compressed and without cocked wah.

Of course everyone can get great tones out of the Kemper, but from my experience it can get you there at 90% of what you are after, not more.
My Use Case for the Kemper was different (which I think is the biggest point I'm trying to make) - it does one thing very well. It clones an amp I have in front of me.

I surfed lots of commercial profiles and found some awesome stuff.
But what I really wanted it for, was capturing some amps I own, so that I don't have to lug them around any more.
I wasn't looking for a new tone, I already had it....I just wanted to capture it. My rig also doesn't exist in the Fractal (at least out of the box, I'm sure tweaking advanced parameters can nail it...but it's a lot of tweaking).

Example - my Marshall JMP-1 and 9200 power amp is my perfect tone. In 1 minute I capture it with the Kemper (or QC) - done.
In the Fractal, I have been trying to nail the tone, let's say overall tweak time is at least 3-4 hrs at this point.
So for the Use Case of capturing an amp in front of me - Kemper was easier.

I got fed up (or maybe just wised up) and took my Kemper, fed it into the Axe III, and Tone Matched. Now my Axe sounds like my Marshall rig.
Very inefficient (using a Kemper to capture, just to feed it into the Axe), but it worked.

The past week I have been tweaking the advanced parameters on the Axe III (JMP OD-1 amp) trying to get it to sound like my Tone Match. It's convenient because I can just keep flipping presets between my capture of the Kemper/JMP1 vs. the Axe JMP amp. I'm getting really close....but it's taken me a lot of time.

Again, why I wouldn't be upset if Fractal had profiling.
(I've also debated buying the X-Load from Fractal, because it would allow me to Tone Match any amp I have in front of me)
 
Would love to hear your thoughts on the QC when you get it.
Definitely, if I ever get the QC. lol.
I have been waiting 3 1/2 months for my order from Sweetwater. I was actually considering buying an HX Stomp to handle the effects for the QC. But, the HX just didn't do it for me. It just didn't sound quite right. So, I stepped up to the FM3. And then, I discovered how good the Fractal digital modeling was - not perfect -- but way better than good enough. Things tend to annoy me in digital. Sometimes aliasing, mostly transients don't feel right, or I wish the model was different in a way that I can't change. Sometimes, I don't really know what I don't like about a digital sound. But, something in the sound puts me on edge. I figured digital amps were mostly good for all-odd-harmonics metal or undefined hi-gain, or an amp that was drenched in delay and reverb. I had just given up on digital -- for me, personally. So, I was surprised by the Ares Fractal models. I actually enjoyed them. I was also surprised at what I could dial in to suit my personal taste. Until then, I had just expected that a capture/profile process was my best bet for happiness in the digital amp realm. My best research -- up to now -- says that QC and Fractal are both 24bit/48kHz. Helix and HX are 16bit/48kHz. And, Kemper is 16bit/44.1kHz. But, I could be mistaken. And, I have no idea about the oversampling rates. Or, what advantage the various algorithms have. How much aliasing is actually happening, and when. So, those numbers don't really tell me nearly enough. However, to my ears, even over youtube, the QC sounds more convincing than the Kemper -- which is why I jumped on it -- even though it is 1st gen. So -- at the time -- better capture, plus two amps, plus OD pedal capture (not fuzz) -- decided it for me. However, now, I realize that current straight-up modeling from Fractal works really well for me. And, the Fractal models have a level of tweakability that I actually need to be completely happy with an amp. The Fractal IR's and the effects are really great extras. And, like most everyone else here on the forum, I am pretty excited about the Cygnus models' arrival. I like tube amps because I can mod tube amps to suit my personal taste -- which changes. And, to be honest, there are still changes that I can't make to the Fractal models that I would like to be able to make. But, all in all, I am extremely happy with the FM3 and I am playing more guitar now and experimenting more with sound then ever. I wish I had taken this route sooner. So, a lot has changed in my perspective since the year started. I expect many more shifts in my thinking over the next few months. It will be interesting. Right now, I am less sure where, or even if, the QC will fit in. The FM3 already has me wishing for the Axe FXIII and more options and processing power. I can still see where a capture would be quicker than trying to recreate an exact sound. With Fractal, I am just as interested in the new sounds it can create. Things that are not in the physically range of an analog circuit. Or, too unlikely to physically succeed -- to spend the time to construct a test-run in analog.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom