Kemper Profiler MK 2

[Monkey Man]

Thought it was more or less confirmed that the DSP is the same in MkI and mkII?

I wasn't sure, hence why I said, "I reckon it's safe to assume that the new DSP / CPU power will take care of that "deficiency".

I assumed there'd be a decent step up in grunt 'cause I well remember that Kemper said on many occasions that they'd stocked up big-time on the old chips, but that was probably more than 10 years ago, meaning that for the new iteration it seemed a reasonable assumption that newer, more-powerful options would have been procured.

Thanks Ian. I haven't been to the Kemper forum in a year and a half due to not being able to log in, so I appreciate the info mate.

 

[Gary_W]

I wasn't sure, hence why I said, "I reckon it's safe to assume that the new DSP / CPU power will take care of that "deficiency".

I assumed there'd be a decent step up in grunt 'cause I well remember that Kemper said on many occasions that they'd stocked up big-time on the old chips, but that was probably more than 10 years ago, meaning that for the new iteration it seemed a reasonable assumption that newer, more-powerful options would have been procured.

Thanks Ian. I haven't been to the Kemper forum in a year and a half due to not being able to log in, so I appreciate the info mate.

On the Kemper forum / webpage / anything officially Kemper there is zero info AFAIK for what’s changed inside. I asked them directly on their forum and, whilst that post was seen by a mod and got a somewhat tangential comment, it didn’t get an answer. They just will not bite on this - their forum, their rules, fair enough. If you’re being a thoroughbred fan, you’ll tell yourself to not ask questions of the wizard who creates these things. If you’re on the fence, you’d reasonably say ‘tell me what’s different as otherwise you appear to be selling me exactly the same box for actual money and I’m not really into that when I have reasonable alternatives’. I 100% appreciate that they’ve given years of free upgrades on the mk1 and at some point that becomes unsustainable - this isn’t me moaning that they won’t give me more free stuff. I get it. But I personally needed more from them to confidently give them money when they wouldn’t happily tell me that, hardware wise, I wasn’t buying the same box!!

There’s reports in the wild of one chip change (a user report based on taking it apart) but that’s it I believe - on their official website, it’s worded in a way that you don’t know for sure if their are new things in there or if they are using old things more effectively…..

One other possible change *vs an older mk1*…. I also noticed that mk2 manual has better dynamic range on the input *compared to an old Kemper manual down at firmware 6*. The more modern mk1 had this change too (I think it changed a couple of years back) but this *might* explain reports from some users that mk2 sounds brighter than mk1 even though there’s no difference with the current profiles / effects. This is just a theory from me because, of course, there’s nothing written down about this.

It’s such a stark contrast to the Stadium launch where in the initial video they’re telling you that there’s a new gpu, more DSP, better converters, new touchscreen, extra knobs etc. Whatever else is going on, you are confident you are buying entirely new hardware. With the Kemper mk2, you have to have faith that there are changes because whatever they’ve changed (or not) they don’t want to tell you. I constantly have people telling me that’s how they roll. I know, based on years of experience. Just because someone has always been a certain way doesn’t mean they should continue when change would be a positive thing for users and for them.

 

[Jarick]

It doesn’t matter if there are new chips or old chips if there’s no new functionality to use them. It doesn’t matter if I buy a 100 MHz Pentium vs a high end modern PC if I’m just running DOS.

They already announced what Mk 2 has, we don’t need to reverse engineer the hardware to figure it out. There’s improvements in the speed and stability of using the device, a handful of fixed effects available, and TBD on higher resolution profiles. You’re not going to find a touch screen in there.

 

[Dimiguitar]

With the Kemper mk2, you have to have faith that there are changes because whatever they’ve changed (or not) they don’t want to tell you. I constantly have people telling me that’s how they roll. I know, based on years of experience. Just because someone has always been a certain way doesn’t mean they should continue when change would be a positive thing for users and for them.

The reason I would say "that's how they roll" is only because I don't believe change is going to come. So when I see people put time and energy into seemingly hoping they can influence such change, it feels like a waste on their part.

I've seen this first hand, big time. And since it became obvious years ago, when I owned a Kemper and would do many audio tests, I eventually stopped caring.

 

[LP59]

I wasn't sure, hence why I said, "I reckon it's safe to assume that the new DSP / CPU power will take care of that "deficiency".

I assumed there'd be a decent step up in grunt 'cause I well remember that Kemper said on many occasions that they'd stocked up big-time on the old chips, but that was probably more than 10 years ago, meaning that for the new iteration it seemed a reasonable assumption that newer, more-powerful options would have been procured.

There is no newer, more powerful, version of the DSP processor chip available for the architecture they use. It's an old architecture and development of it ceased long ago. I'm sure they have a stockpile, but that stockpile consists of the same chip they've always used.