Moin at All!
... nur mal so zwischendurch als Info, es gibt jetzt eine neue
Beta Firmware V 3.1.0!
Für mich sehr interessant daran: "MIDI Clock send aus dem KPA" und das funktioniert sehr gut!
LG Kay
Ich kann jedem Kemper-Nutzer nur empfehlen die neue "Pure Cabinet" Funktion auszuprobieren. Im Kemper-Forum wird diese Funktion quasi wie eine Revolution gefeiert (zumindest von der Mehrheit der Nutzer, die sie ausprobiert haben).
Ich erlaube mir mal, den Text aus dem addendum hier herein zu kopieren, damit ihr wisst, worum es geht:
Pure Cabinet (or "how to cure a decades-old sound disease")
"Pure Cabinet" will gently polish the sound of the virtual cabinet to move it toward the sound that you would hear directly - in other words: the sound of the cabinet without the microphone. The fundamental character of the sound will still be maintained.
Patient History
For several decades now, guitar amps and cabinets have been captured by microphones - this is the only way to capture the natural sound of the amp and cab, and convert it into an electrical signal for further processing, recording, or for further amplification by a PA during a live concert.
With the advent of digital amps, every guitarist gained access to hundreds of different guitar amplifier and cabinet sounds, all mic'ed and faithfully digitized. Now, those sounds can be played easily through a PA, in a home studio, or via headphones.
Digital guitar amps and virtual cabinets are a true paradigm change; in earlier times, amps were mostly heard directly, with no microphones involved at all. Even experienced guitarists often let a mixing engineer position the microphone, and only really care about the residual sound. With digital amps, this engineering is done before the event of playing live or recording. It is widely recommended among guitarists to use a full-range speaker when playing a digital amp - this allows them to take advantage of the virtual cabinet, ensuring that they hear the exact same sound that the audience will hear.
Symptoms
As a manufacturer of digital guitar amps, we found ourselves in an interesting situation:
On the one hand, recording and live engineers had constantly praised us for faithfully capturing and recreating the sound and feel of the most precious tube amps and cabinets.
On the other, we were hearing frequent complaints from new users that had a hard time adjusting to the full-range sound of digital amps. They would often describe the sound using terms like: "harsh", "nasty", "phasey", "boxy, or even "digital". They said the sound was far from being the nice, smooth and balanced sound of the pure cabinet they were used to. In short, they were missing their "amp in the room" sound.
In internet forums, the experienced users would often comment: "You just need to get used to that sound. It is the sound that you have been listening to on every recording in your life. This is also the sound that your audience will hear, when you play live or on a recording.".
And the experts were absolutely right. We, too, had been saying the same thing over and over.
Some recommended using a guitar speaker with the digital amp, to get the "amp in the room" feel. We fully supported this setup, with our optional, built-in power amp, and the recently released feature of using Direct Amp Profiles. However, this did not cure the "disease" of the full-range sound.
Diagnosis
Eventually, we realized that this cannot go on forever. It feels very uncomfortable telling respectable users that their perception of the mic'ed amp sound is "wrong", no matter how widely used it might be.
Can so many guitarists be mistaken? Or, are they absolutely correct in their first impression, and the more digitally experienced players have simply become desensitized over time?
It's like telling them: "Get used to the pain! Look at me, I cannot even feel it anymore. I'm a professional".
There are many theories floating around which attempt to explain the secret behind the "amp in the room sound":
Firstly, any 4*12 cabinet has a better bass response, thus pushes more air, than a regular, full-range studio speaker. This can be matched simply by using a larger, full-range speaker.
Then, there are some who believe that a closely mic'ed speaker does not capture enough of the surrounding room, and thus sounds too dry. However, if you placed your full-range speaker in a room, and played that sound, we think you would perceive that room, just as you would if you had your original "amp in that room". So, this does not lead to a solution either.
So we further analyzed the problem. We mounted a full-range speaker into a cabinet, and a guitar speaker into a second, identical cabinet to compare the sound under equal conditions.
The difference was immediately apparent: harsh, nasty sound components in the high-frequency range of the full-range speaker, playing the virtual cabinet/microphone, but no such nastiness from the guitar cabinet, when playing the amp sound with the virtual cabinet bypassed. This harshness was more or less apparent depending on which amp and virtual cabinet we selected. It disappeared on clean guitar sounds, since it is only distortion that stimulates those harsh frequencies.
It is very difficult to equalize the nasty elements of the mic'ed cabinets without significantly changing the character of the sound. Attenuating the frequencies in question will make the sound too dull, and it still won't sound like a pure cabinet.
Certainly, there are ways to control this harshness to a certain degree: Good positioning of the microphones, and mixing two or three microphones to average this effect, can lead to pleasant results. You can also use narrow-band equalizing to filter the nasty frequencies and fit the sound in the mix. However, this is more like treating the symptoms than curing the disease itself. Finding the right balance between the desired character and color, while avoiding nasty elements in the sound, is both difficult and time-consuming.
Once the guitar is fully embedded in the mix, the disturbing frequencies will likely be masked by other instruments, hence you would not usually notice them in a final mix of a professional recording.
Medicine: Pure Cabinet
For the Kemper Profiler, we have developed a completely new method of recalculating the sound of a virtual cabinet. We call it Pure Cabinet. The technique is Patent Applied For.
When activated, the harsh frequencies are identified and modified in such a way, that the “phasey” sound turns into a smooth, balanced sound similar to a pure amp in the room. At the same time, the main character and frequency response is maintained, so no further tweaks are necessary.
As a proof of concept we have let a number of these "desensitized" professional players and producers test the new Pure Cabinet feature in several situations. Their first reaction was along the lines of: "That pain that I got used to over the years, is now gone. It's a huge relief." They did not want to deactivate Pure Cabinet in any situation - there was simply no reason to switch it off again. So, much to our surprise, they did not miss the original mic'ed sound for a second. Not one of them looked back.
All applications that use the mic'ed sound (virtual cabinet) of the Profiler can benefit from Pure Cabinet: recordings, live venues, full-range monitors, in-ear monitors, or just noodling with headphones on.
The full-range sound, treated by Pure Cabinet, can be further processed with smooth equalizers. Without those nasty frequencies in the way, it will fit easily into the mix.
Medicine Prescription
Pure Cabinet is a global setting that affects all Rigs. It naturally adapts to the individual sound of each Rig - the more unbalanced the original Rig, the more impact it will have. With fully clean amp sounds, Pure Cabinet isn’t noticeable.
Pure Cabinet uses a switch to engage it and a continuous control to set the intensity of the effect. That's all! By switching on and off you can directly compare the impact of the effect versus the unprocessed cabinet sound.
The Intensity parameter allows you to control the degree of processing. If you are more into crunchy, blues sounds, you might prefer higher values of Pure Cabinet, creating a more open sound and bringing the character even more towards an amp in the room. If you are into hard rock or metal, you might prefer lower values, to emphasize the "microphone character", while still dampening the "phaseyness" of the sound.
Pure Cabinet is processed on the fly, thus the data of the Rigs are not affected by Pure Cabinet. The original sound of each Rig remains unchanged, and Pure Cabinet can be deactivated and reactivated at any point in time.
Aftermath
So, if the professionals aren't looking back since discovering Pure Cabinet, what exactly is it that they leaving behind?
It is the sound of mic'ed guitar amps, heard on billions of recordings and concerts over several decades. The artifacts described above just had to be accepted - there is no way to cure them with traditional techniques. Only digital guitar amplifiers can handle such complex processing as Pure Cabinet requires. It simply sounds better and, surprisingly, more analog and real.
Now, do Profiles of tube amps sound better on the Profiler with Pure Cabinet? Simply, yes! Can the sound of tube amps be improved by profiling these? Yes! When profiled, it sounds absolutely authentic. With Pure Cabinet engaged, it sounds even better.
