JiveTurkey
Goatlord
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Here comes Kemper. Bye Felicias
- Thread starter JiveTurkey
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Enchilada Jones
Roadie
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I'm not expecting it to make the bass, middle, treble and gain controls magically give us authentic full range to match those controls on all the tone stack permutations of the source amps. I'm guessing they have however found a way to make those controls much more effective at working to mimic those characteristics. I don't think he would include this feature if it is a mere gesture of a fix.
No USB and ineffective tone stack are the two things that I always thought were the weak spots of the design so if the improvement is significant it will be enough for me. I don't want it to be hybrid component modeling control of a profile because then it opens me up to the rabbit hole problem. I like plugging into a Kemper or ToneX and knowing I can easily find some quality examples of the amp I want to play with but sometimes I just need to make minor adjustments to it and the current controls toward that end quickly fall apart.
No USB and ineffective tone stack are the two things that I always thought were the weak spots of the design so if the improvement is significant it will be enough for me. I don't want it to be hybrid component modeling control of a profile because then it opens me up to the rabbit hole problem. I like plugging into a Kemper or ToneX and knowing I can easily find some quality examples of the amp I want to play with but sometimes I just need to make minor adjustments to it and the current controls toward that end quickly fall apart.
Fireproof
Shredder
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It's not inspiring me to buy my 8wtfeverth Kemper
; but all of this, 100%.
Agree with both. I know it’s probably over-said at this point - but any new innovations like this are just going to benefit us all in the long run as the tech gets better. Just think - it wasn’t that long ago when Kemper was the only “profiler” around - no we have QC, NAM, ToneX, Headrush. Excited to see what 2025 looks like.
metropolis_4
Rock Star
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I mean, it’s a free update. Nothing had been promised, but something was delivered that was unexpected.
I don’t see how there can be anything negative about that
I don’t see how there can be anything negative about that
Will Chen
Roadie
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- 234
I was a Kemper early adopter, and I can tell you they were messing around with a tone stack library from the beginning seems they just finally figured things out. CK is on record saying the profiling process more or less analyzes a target to automate parameter selection on a complex underlying model. Now...I'm doubtful the profiling process alone can accurately identify every amp out there and obviously if doing a full profile including cab that would muddy things further. However, a given amp should have a range of responses given it's design and a direct profile should be able to correctly identify an amp it "knows", so I can totally see this working for amp types the underlying model has reference data on.
DLC86
Roadie
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By a quick look it seems to talk about the same exact thing, and the application is from a few months after yours, same for the date they've been approved and granted.. I wonder if those who check these patents before approval did their job properly.
James Freeman
Rock Star
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Low+high level input test signal then pre+post eq matching 'trick' is old news, I've been using this trick long before I've seen any patent application.
Neither Kemper nor Fractal invented anything worth patenting here, how the patents were granted so easily is the real question.
laxu
Rock Star
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I would assume a lot of patents get granted because they are about something so highly specific that you need to understand the subject matter to interpret the application.
I tried reading through both and honestly have a hard time understanding the Kemper because of the way it's worded. Not that I understand the Fractal one well either but that's at least easier to follow.
James Freeman
Rock Star
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That's the whole point, isn't it?
You WANT to be vague to cover as much ground as possible.
Coincidentally both patented the same trivial EQ utilization.
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paisleywookiee
Rock Star
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I like Kemper, because it's a continually innovative product, even though I'm generally not a fan of the "capture someone else's shit" workflow. Certainly like them more than NDSP. Fuck those guys.
nicolasrivera
Roadie
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Well well well....this is getting interesting!
JiveTurkey
Goatlord
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A whole boatload of all of this.
Thing that is funny and certainly a characteristic of this subset of this type of gear. Headrush repackages a bunch of old, outdated turds into a new, latency-ridden battleship with gold knobs and we all hate it. Kemper sets that bar for profiling decade+ ago and keeps piling crap into that same device a decade+ on and I can't help but not look at the two the same way at all.
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Agreed. I think we're looking at "tone knobs that don't make profiles unrecognizable (as quickly)". Makes sense. (Like @Will Chen, I remember requests for and discussions of amp-specific tonestacks on the KPA forum going back many years.) Whether this new feature will also convincingly emulate non-linearities in gain from any given control remains to be seen.
Agreed, Kemper wouldn't add this if it weren't, at a minimum, a significant improvement. Definitely something for Kemper owners to celebrate (and non-owners to consider...)
JiveTurkey
Goatlord
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At the end of the day; it's still going to sound like a Kemper. For better (for some) or worse (for others). Cool though either way \m/
MirrorProfiles
Rock Star
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good luck to anyone matching amps without SOME kind of EQ, that would be truly patent worthy
Will Chen
Roadie
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Patent law is more or less like copyright law at this point. There are no patent police, it's self enforced via lawsuit.
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I read that Kemper viewed the unit as a professional device where users would already have a preferred interface.
Not positive but I bet they brought in more help to make this possible.
Byrdman
Shredder
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As a non-owner but my buddy has one I have played through a few times, makes me wonder if the amount of competition in the marketplace is the only reason for the update? Since this is a possibility, as a non-owner, I wouldn't consider ever getting one.
James Freeman
Rock Star
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I presume a lawsuit is not going to happen between Fractal and Kemper, I think the customers are different enough to not step on each others turf.
For Fractal it's just one small new feature but for Kemper it's the main thing, Kemper has everything to lose, and I don't think Fractal will try to kill Kemper just to be able to use a small new tone matching feature.
Will Chen
Roadie
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Of course there won't be a lawsuit, that would be extremely bad publicity in this case because profiling is radically different from Fractal's tone capture and Fractal hasn't brought any full profiling/capture process to market while the KPA has been around for 10+ years. And beside that, unless patenting some type of very specific process, a patent is more to protect the design of a physical product to stop someone from creating the exact same product. More general ideas get patented all the time, but it's extremely hard to straight up win most the time in those cases (though some do end up settling out of court, companies with enough capital don't want to spend time in court).
