Kemper Profiler MK 2

[dws2384]

I’ve used this one before but it’s fitting regarding the launch and roll out of Mk.2 and v2. Still cracks me up.

The thing is V2 profiling sounds really good…there was no reason to gaslight your customers and delete posts from your forum when anyone had legitimate questions about this seemingly forced upgrade.

Tonex and Neural released V2 which worked on existing hardware. Line 6 has been extremely transparent about how their new stuff wouldn’t from day 1.

All Kemper had to do was ACTUALLY improve the hardware with features that would make people want to upgrade and make the new profiling work on both versions if it actually could. Existing customers would have upgraded and kept old units as backups knowing they both would have the newest sounds but maybe not the newest GUI or features. Now you’ve alienated existing users and not done anything to attract new ones.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Kemper will "fix" that right quick.

The fact is Kemper has always had a cab resonance feature. The only thing that is new is that they exposed a couple of controls for it to the UI, so there's no reason it couldn't be available on the Mk1, even for V1 profiles. IMHO it's not really that useful. Offering a library of SIC's would be more useful.

You sure it wasn't power amp dampening/speaker excursion? Whereas the new feature seems like the bottom part of the impedance curve with selectable frequency.

 

[LP59]

I’ve be calling out for months that there’s zero reason that with the same DSP the MK1 can’t run the new profiles

You might be right, but there will probably never be conclusive evidence of that. All Kemper has to do is say is "V2 profiling won't run on a Mk1 at full resolution" and we'll have to take their word for it. Nobody outside of Kemper can ever prove that statement to be false.

 

[LP59]

You sure it wasn't power amp dampening/speaker excursion? Whereas the new feature seems like the bottom part of the impedance curve with selectable frequency.

Yes, the new controls adjust the lower peak of the impedance curve. However, that should not be taken to mean there is no impedance curve in V1 profiles and in the underlying V1 implementation. I suspect the only thing that is new is the exposing of those controls to the UI.

 

[dws2384]

You might be right, but there will probably never be conclusive evidence of that. All Kemper has to do is say is "V2 profiling won't run on a Mk1 at full resolution" and we'll have to take their word for it. Nobody outside of Kemper can ever prove that statement to be false.

Nah. This kind of stuff always gets exposed, which is why it’s such a bold play if true. Someone mad man will buy both units and swap the boards or something.

 

[guitarsandcoffee]

I'm not sure how Kemper explains or justifies this. Regardless, I'm out on MK2 and any future Kemper products. I thought it was bad enough how they software crippled the Player for paid features, but not as bad as this.

Once I have the resources later this year, it's on to QC, Stadium, or Fractal.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Yes, the new controls adjust the lower peak of the impedance curve. However, that should not be taken to mean there is no impedance curve in V1 profiles and in the underlying V1 implementation. I suspect the only thing that is new is the exposing of those controls to the UI.

Well no one is say it didn't have the hump.
But that's not the point the point is the ability to adjust it.
Just as much as adjust the resonance in the amp block for speaker excursio. Or simulation thereof.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Given the DSP available on the Kemper and what isn’t and isn’t possible with that tech, I can’t really see how anything on V2 is simply too much for V1.

If V2 was running NAM models or we knew it had 8x the DSP power, I’d maybe believe it. It’s weird marketing, and they’ll end up eating their words and backtracking (again).

 

[Orvillain]

 

[dws2384]

Given the DSP available on the Kemper and what isn’t and isn’t possible with that tech, I can’t really see how anything on V2 is simply too much for V1.

If V2 was running NAM models or we knew it had 8x the DSP power, I’d maybe believe it. It’s weird marketing, and they’ll end up eating their words and backtracking (again).

They should have just continued selling the existing hardware at the same or reduced price and csme out with something actually improved. V2 profiles should have worked at full resolution on both. You would have kept existing customers happy and gave them a legitimate upgrade path while also enticing new ones. The current plan does neither.

 

[Enchilada Jones]

I imported a 2.0 Rig into my Toaster running firmware 13. something.something, (pretty sure it is the latest non beta). I didn’t have the resonance nor resonance frequency controls in the Cab menu and it was definitely not the same sound from that same Rig that was also running in the Player right next to it which did have the ‘new controls’.

Are you guys saying the controls and functionality have mysteriously popped up elsewhere in Rig Manager and have different labeling? That seems unlikely.
Although, lately that could be Kempers new motto too.

 

[dws2384]

I imported a 2.0 Rig into my Toaster running firmware 13. something.something, (pretty sure it is the latest non beta). I didn’t have the resonance nor resonance frequency controls in the Cab menu and it was definitely not the same sound from that same Rig that was also running in the Player right next to it which did have the ‘new controls’.

Are you guys saying the controls and functionality have mysteriously popped up elsewhere in Rig Manager and have different labeling? That seems unlikely.
Although, lately that could be Kempers new motto too.

Yes, go to cabinet, turn on advanced, and you should see reso frequency and intensity.

 

[Enchilada Jones]

Yes, go to cabinet, turn on advanced, and you should see reso frequency and intensity.

Yea I did that late yesterday and it definitely wasn’t there. I’ll go plug the Toaster back in and try to see if it is somehow magically back now.
I do see it in the Rig Manager for Player but in older Rig Manager for Toaster it is not.
Are you using the new Rig Manager 14 to connect with a Kemper running firmware 13? I don’t think you can do that? I had to go back from 14 to 13 get the new MkII rig imported.

 

[Enchilada Jones]

Ok I do see Resonance and Q on Cab page in Rig manager 3.0x
It only appears when activating a 2.0 Rig
The value for resonance gets populated correctly with the number being the same as it is on the Player for the same Rig. However the Q is around 9dB and on the Player the (same control?) label says Frequency but it is around 4dB.

Moving the Q toward the lower number does bring in more low end , making the mkI closer to the mkII but it won’t let me match the values exactly. It’s as if the scale isn’t capable of accepting anything that low. It just snaps under 5dB and you lose the cursor control and it ends up between 5 and 6.

It’s hard to tell just from my little bit of listening and fiddling if that is really delivering the same function as the MkII or only some of it.
Someone with more patience and better ears…and knowledge of wtf those numbers mean should look into it.
Although, for me, the improved dynamics that came with the mkII update is still a factor even if this resonance control stays available. So the Toaster mkI is still going to be sold off. The Player is a keeper.

 

[nightlight]

This is a false statement. The competition does not use the Kemper patent or anything close to their very outdated technology. QC NAM and Tonex were also out before the patent expired.

Aw, shucks. Yup, absolutely correct. QC and NAM were out before the patent expired. ToneX was launched in Sept 2022, Kemper patent expired in June 2022.

I'd revise my statement to say, "Kemper did it first, others caught on to the idea and developed their own capture technologies."

 

[nightlight]

Yes it is. Open up your Mk2 and compare the DSP processor chip to your Mk1. It's the same.


Wrong question. The right question is: why doesn't the Mk1 have the extra fixed effects that are in the Mk2?

The processor being the same may not tell the whole story. Here's a thread on the Kemper forums that gets pretty technical on how this might all be done.

Upgrade MK 1 -> MK 2 - Kemper Profiler Forum

Will there be an upgrade path from MK1 -> MK2? I've worked in product design for many years and can guess what's happened here. I expect they left the product line (Head/Rack/Stage) run for too long and hit processor obsolescence. This MK2 update has…

forum.kemper-amps.com

PS: I have no dog in this fight having sold my Kemper (for the fourth time) a long while ago.

It would be interesting if someone is able to make the MKI run like the MKII, as many have said could be possible.

Chances are that Kemper would block that possibility if they found out though.

 

[Orvillain]

I'd revise my statement to say, "Kemper did it first, others caught on to the idea and developed their own capture technologies."

The thing you really should understand is, "Kemper did it first" is only true for the core philosophy - make a "clone" of a real amplifier.

Kemper do not do machine learning. They do not use neural networks. They do not use any kind of data-driven training process where a model learns the behaviour of the circuit from a dataset.

What Kemper actually does is a system identification process using test signals. It probes the amp with a series of stimuli and derives a DSP model that approximates the nonlinear response. It’s clever engineering, but it’s fundamentally a deterministic algorithm.

Modern systems like NeuralDSP QC captures, ToneX, NAM, etc. are doing something quite different. They train neural networks on large datasets of input/output pairs and let the model learn the transfer function. NeuralDSP even use their own robot (TINA) to help create the datasets; capturing training data from a reference amp, with the knobs at a range of values, and using that to create a parametric model rather than a single snapshot model. That's how they create their amp models.

So yes, Kemper absolutely popularised the idea of cloning an amp. But the underlying technology used by later systems is not just an iteration of Kemper’s method. In many cases it’s an entirely different class of modelling technique.

 

[crispsandwich]

I really don't understand why people are hating so much on Kemper over the mk2 thing. I am inclined to believe that there is a hardware limitation when it comes to playing 2.0 profiles on mk1 units. It doesn't make sense that they would introduce full rez on the cheaper Player units, yet intentionally exclude those who spent the extra cash on mk1 bigger units. So it must be a hardware thing. None of us really know though, so I could be wrong. It's pretty funny that they have seemingly dropped a bollock with having the new cab controls exposed in older Rig Manager versions, though .

They could have made it so 2.0 profiles didn't work on mk1 units at all. But they haven't, and the trade-off is they will run at lower rez. It's not the same as Tonex or QC v2, because Kemper have refined a process they introduced 14 years ago. It's a much bigger jump. So the fact 2.0 profiles work on mk1 units at all is pretty amazing, really.

 

[dws2384]

I really don't understand why people are hating so much on Kemper over the mk2 thing. I am inclined to believe that there is a hardware limitation when it comes to playing 2.0 profiles on mk1 units. It doesn't make sense that they would introduce full rez on the cheaper Player units, yet intentionally exclude those who spent the extra cash on mk1 bigger units. So it must be a hardware thing. None of us really know though, so I could be wrong. It's pretty funny that they have seemingly dropped a bollock with having the new cab controls exposed in older Rig Manager versions, though .

They could have made it so 2.0 profiles didn't work on mk1 units at all. But they haven't, and the trade-off is they will run at lower rez. It's not the same as Tonex or QC v2, because Kemper have refined a process they introduced 14 years ago. It's a much bigger jump. So the fact 2.0 profiles work on mk1 units at all is pretty amazing, really.

I really don’t understand why people want to defend Kemper? There are legitimate questions they could easily answer but instead they just ignore the questions, delete posts, and pretend its not happening.

“Oh it’s just a guitar modeller who cares” I do, this whole gaslighting BS is becoming so normalized throughout all kinds of industries/business because people just brush it aside with that attitude. In most instances there’s no way to actually call the company out, here, there is.

 

[crispsandwich]

I really don’t understand why people want to defend Kemper? There are legitimate questions they could easily answer but instead they just ignore the questions, delete posts, and pretend its not happening.

“Oh it’s just a guitar modeller who cares” I do, this whole gaslighting BS is becoming so normalized throughout all kinds of industries/business because people just brush it aside with that attitude. In most instances there’s no way to actually call the company out, here, there is.

I’m not defending them, I just don’t think it’s a huge conspiracy like some of you lot clearly do .