Kemper Profiler MK 2

[Sascha Franck]

Now compare the tone of guitar solo of this one

In that case I wouldn't even know which one to prefer. Kemper version is too loud to properly tell.

 

[Deadpan]

Too much talking here...

If the Kemper is so great record some plexi tones that can be as good as that.

Quick noodling made with my fm3, 1959slp, volume pot is on 10 all the time. Find me a profile and record something with that real dynamic (no dynamic is not just lowering the gain when lowering the volume pot), punch, clarity, in your face crunch, depth and tone qualities (hear how the low E string got those ringing bell qualities).

No post processing, this is my crunch live tone. and give me the pleasure to not listen on your phone please.

If I had all those qualities in the Kemper I would have not cursed it.

I'll wait...

I love tone comparison.

Not my style of playing, and of course I am sitting too close to the PC...

 

[Enchilada Jones]

Too much talking here...

If the Kemper is so great record some plexi tones that can be as good as that.

Quick noodling made with my fm3, 1959slp, volume pot is on 10 all the time. Find me a profile and record something with that real dynamic (no dynamic is not just lowering the gain when lowering the volume pot), punch, clarity, in your face crunch, depth and tone qualities (hear how the low E string got those ringing bell qualities).

No post processing, this is my crunch live tone. and give me the pleasure to not listen on your phone please.

If I had all those qualities in the Kemper I would have not cursed it.

I'll wait...

Sounds great! open low note does remind me of piano.

Is that a single coil or humbucker at first?
If I'm going to try to match it I'd like to be using as close as I can to the benchmark you set so any details will help speed up the process.
I have FM3 Turbo and Kemper Player and Toaster. If I had your FM3 preset I could play through with that and record a DI then use that to re-amp and try different profiles...

This is so much more interesting than wading through yet another food fight in a gear forum cyber cafeteria. Give all the kids pickles and some are bound to try and shove one where it shouldn't go.

 

[Orvillain]

I love tone comparison.

Not my style of playing, and of course I am sitting too close to the PC...

There's something about that where it is almost a perfect exemplar of what I think Joshua is talking about.

Even though the gain is reacting more or less as you'd expect to the picking intensity... everything just sounds so constrained and polite. Really lacks that pissed off energy that his first clip of his real amp has.

And tbh, this kind of tone isn't my thing at all. I'm generally predisposed to hating this kind of thing. But I definitely hear what he's trying to get at.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, the first sound example @Joshual-L posted IMO is pretty much perfect for what it is. It's also the very kind of sound I was using for a long time (I was in an orginal rock band for a decade or so). So there.

Can the Kemper do that very sound? I wouldn't happen to know (would be interesting to hear that very setup profiled).

Can the Kemper do sounds that are very much in the ballpark? IMO yes. Because, as I was coming from that kinda ballpark before I went modeling, this was precisely what I was looking for at first. And then there was that Kemper loaded with all sorts of MBritt profiles and at least some of them felt "home" instantly.
Now, quite some of the MBritt ones likely are a bit more (lower) mid-forward, but as that was the kinda thing I was gravitating towards anyway at that time (and still am), I welcomed that kinda deviation.
But as said, I never noticed and kinda cocked wah effect as in it to be inherit or so. And I also found the dynamics to be extremely pleasing. In fact, I found them to be much more amp-alike than, say, during my first Helix testride.
And whenever I look for some Kemper profile demos, I can't say they're particularly cocked wah-ish, either.

 

[ChordInversion]

And they all sound like not too great profiles.
As said before, you can make anything sound bad.

Well, I'm not sure that he can make anything sound bad, but I sure can.

(it's a joke)

(except the part about me making things sound bad)

 

[OneEng]

The Freescale DSP 56k series used in the Kemper MK1 is discontinued, as in... no longer in production.

It is listed as "Not recommended for new designs". This is not the same thing at all as no longer in production. In fact, it is not uncommon for these types of chips to remain in production for many years beyond the notice.... and even then, prior to being actually "discontinued", last time buy notices are sent to the big users of those parts.

There hasn't been any official confirmation from Kemper, but apparently people have posted teardown videos of the Player, which is Mk2, that show the DSP chip in the Kemper is the same as it's always been. I've seen speculation that's because the assembly code would be too expensive to port. There is no quad core version of the DSP chip.

Yes there have. And as you mentioned, this is exactly the case. MK1 and MK2 use the same DSP and SRAM. There is no difference that I am aware of that there would be any hardware related sonic differences. In fact, I suspect that the entire DSP board is the same on the rack, toaster, and stage versions of MK1 and MK2.

That is why there were no other features added to the rack and toaster to bring them up to stage level.

You're looking on the wrong side of the processor board . That's the microcontroller, not the DSP chip.

Yes. It is my understanding that the entire CPU board has been replaced. Per the images in this thread, it is a SOC (system on a chip) that is attached with an edge connector (like a RAM DIMM).

Because then why wouldn't they be able to run the same thing on the MK1? Why even make a MK2 if it's the same chip?

Excellent question and the source of my speculation that Kemper intends to offer a PAID upgrade to MK1 users to the new profiling algorithms in MK2. The reason to make MK2 the same is code compatibility. It is my understanding that Kemper has utilized low level code on Kemper MK1 making it very difficult to port to another DSP chip.

There are reasons for the Mk2 aside from the new profiling, mostly I/O and memory. But it's hard to see how updating the chips around the dsp processor will make much difference to the dsp cpu power available for the new profiling/player code. I would tend to trust Kemper when they say the new profiling won't run on the Mk1 even though it has the same DSP processor, but you'll probably have to take that on faith.

I am having a tough time reasoning that one out. Why wouldn't it work?

Assuming that the library of profiles and rigs are all actually stored on the CPU application board, there may be a limit to how many can be stored there. MK2 could possibly store more than MK1.

The time to boot up being faster also makes a great deal of sense. That is the CPU application board (mostly). It also loads the last profile that was loaded when you shut down, but considering how fast a profile can be loaded (changing rigs should illustrate this time), I think this is negligible in the boot sequence.

 

[Orvillain]

It is listed as "Not recommended for new designs". This is not the same thing at all as no longer in production. In fact, it is not uncommon for these types of chips to remain in production for many years beyond the notice.... and even then, prior to being actually "discontinued", last time buy notices are sent to the big users of those parts.

Yup. I accepted I was wrong on this already.

My specialty areas are software development, product design, and DSP. Not Electrical Engineering

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

There's something about that where it is almost a perfect exemplar of what I think Joshua is talking about.

Even though the gain is reacting more or less as you'd expect to the picking intensity... everything just sounds so constrained and polite. Really lacks that pissed off energy that his first clip of his real amp has.

And tbh, this kind of tone isn't my thing at all. I'm generally predisposed to hating this kind of thing. But I definitely hear what he's trying to get at.

I agree, that said once the gain goes up the real amp gets pretty quackie in the mids just the same.
The headcold thing I always fight.

 

[LP59]

I am having a tough time reasoning that one out. Why wouldn't it work?

As I said, nobody outside of Kemper can answer that.

 

[OneEng]

Anyone want to make a wager on a Paid upgrade to MK1 users later this summer? I bet he would make a ton of money on it.

 

[KingsXJJ]

Behold, ye works of Kemper’s Mark II, shrouded in veils of uncertainty, stand as riddles in the dawn of anticipation. For lo, the ardent proclamations of artificers and savants, those erudite architects of circuit and code, weave grandiose tapestries of presumed mastery. Their verbose rhetoric, a maelstrom of vaunted certitudes, clashes in ceaseless disputation, each sage claiming sovereign insight into the machine’s arcane heart. Yet in the cacophonous agora of discourse, their contentions pile high, built on the brittle scaffolding of unverified conjecture. The device, mute and enigmatic, bides its hour of judgment, its virtues or frailties cloaked in the gloaming of untested boasts, deriding the hubris of those who profess to fathom its esoteric depths.

- Sir Conrad von Kemper

from The Chronicles of the Kemperazzi. Now available in paperback.

 

[Jarick]

All the "cocked wah" discussion is moot if the new profiling sounds better.

Anyone want to make a wager on a Paid upgrade to MK1 users later this summer? I bet he would make a ton of money on it.

That's probably pretty damn accurate lol.

I guess until someone cracks open the new device we won't know for sure right? It just wouldn't make any sense for them to advertise an "upgrade processing engine" if it's just a firmware update.

 

[Dom Mcsweeney]

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the room at Kemper HQ when they decided all this:

"we need to talk about NAM, Tonex, NDSP''

"ship a new coloured unit and tell everyone it's better... done!''

 

[LP59]

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the room at Kemper HQ when they decided all this:

"we need to talk about NAM, Tonex, NDSP''

"ship a new coloured unit and tell everyone it's better... done!''

FTFY:

"ship a new coloured unit and tell everyone it will eventually be better sometime in the future...done!"

 

[Dom Mcsweeney]

Yep.

I feel this is going to be the gift that keeps on giving.
Every 'react' based youtuber will keep spurring on the gold.
In a year or two, people will rehash it.

It'll be gloriously amusing.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Dunno, I think this is just legit. Whether the improvements will please folks, whether they will come up with some more stunts such as the payware upgrades, whether the UI will be suitable to accomodate the new blocks and what not - all that can (and will) be debated. But others than that, Kemper has shown to be a very serious business and they haven't been that successful for no reasons.

 

[PorcinePicker]

Thing is, I don’t believe that letting marketing get ahead of software development is just an oops. I suspect that when they release the new profiling, there will be a deafening chorus of “wtf, it sounds exactly the same”. They want to get some suckers to buy before the reveal.

 

[AFKAEjay(retired)]

All the "cocked wah" discussion is moot if the new profiling sounds better.



That's probably pretty damn accurate lol.

I guess until someone cracks open the new device we won't know for sure right? It just wouldn't make any sense for them to advertise an "upgrade processing engine" if it's just a firmware update.

I don’t believe for a second that the Mk2 doesn’t have updated hardware inside, tbh..unthinkable.

3 reasons:
1 They have always been straight shooters
2 They were clear in their communication that mk2 has more power. If that is a lie…even an idiot knows that would come out, and would be suïcide of their brand.
3 If that was the game plan, why not the same for the KPP?…instead that gets all the new goodies.

 

[AFKAEjay(retired)]

They want to get some suckers to buy before the reveal.

Of that was how they deal with their customers…why did they wait for 15 years?