Some interesting news from Kemper (Profiler Player)

[Mongillo19]

Oh boy the idea of adding features for more money is souring my want to order one.

I think it sets a dangerous precedent. I've seen it happen in the video game market. Developers release half baked games for full price and then add in patches or "live service models". It kills games.

It's very hard to do right and I don't see it working out in the digital realm. To be honest, I hope it doesn't

 

[timbuck3]

Eeeeeasy there big fella, so am I

Well only when absolutely necessary and/or convenient.

DeGenaro sounds italian....

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

DeGenaro sounds italian....

Well it says in my passport its my artist name…was also moms maiden name.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

I think it sets a dangerous precedent. I've seen it happen in the video game market. Developers release half baked games for full price and then add in patches or "live service models". It kills games.

It's very hard to do right and I don't see it working out in the digital realm. To be honest, I hope it doesn't

Yeah, for me the milking thing is instant dismissal.
Especially when my interest was curiosity rather than want let alone need”.

 

[GuitarJon]

For those that don't want to click into facebook, was a series of images, some had "pedalboard" replaced with "gigbags" so seems like Stomp-sized. A profiler isn't a profiler unless it profiles? So I/O could be cramped. Intrigued.

View attachment 16056

It's funny how it's being marketed as a Profiler but it can't make profiles, right?

 

[Sascha Franck]

I don’t think your doing justice to the company with the wording “milking”.

Why not? The way they're still making bags of money from comparatively old hardware is quite qualifying. Yes, it's somewhat of a win-win situation, so their users defenitely profit, too. And yet, there's some pretty suspicious things going on in Kemper land - such as the audio interface they've simply hidden from their users for a decade. Could've been part of some "pay for extra features" plan as well (that they then abandoned for the time being).

Anyway, I think it's not necessarily all that bad of a thing. I mean, in software land paying for new features is absolutely common already and nobody's complaining.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Folks like you and me are a bit disappointed cause we want the “full enchilada“

Nah, not really. As said before, I want clever designs. And the Kemper Player, at least IMO, features some rather not so clever designs. Soundwise, it'd be all I ever wanted, but the functionality is severly crippled for no good reasons (and unlike, say, the newer drives, can't be brought into the thing with updates, paid or not).

 

[laxu]

For context on some of the previous discussions, this is what Christoph Kemper said on their own forums:

We are aware that the Profiler Player has the potential to serve the needs of very different users. On the one side there is the connaisseurs of pure amp tones, without the need for sprawling effect arrangements. On the other side there is the wish to play complex Rigs taken 1:1 from the big brother Profiler units. The Profiler Player has the theoretical potential to play full-blown Rigs. But I think it is understandable that we have not drawn a Profiler at half the price of a Profiler Stage but 85%-ish of it‘s featues.
Thus we consider since quit a while to offer one or two software upgrade (with costs), that will boost the Players features towards the Head, Rack and Stage.

The ability to create Profiles on the Player is also a story discussed by our team. There is a few issues to be solved, such as how to use the sole input of the Player for the return path and provide an A/B comparison.

The last paragraph is particularly interesting because it means they might offer a way to create profiles using the Player. That would give it more value because it would work for those with amp collections.

I looked at my used market recently and you can get a used Kemper Rack or PowerRack for only 150-200 € more than the Player, but the Player is much more compact and portable.

 

[Foxmeister]

The last paragraph is particularly interesting because it means they might offer a way to create profiles using the Player. That would give it more value because it would work for those with amp collections.

They should just create a software profiler to run on a computer a la ToneX.

They could charge for this if necessary, and not include a software profile player so that it is essentially "tied" to the Kemper Player.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I'd possibly even buy this thing and pay for some updated features instead of going for a Stage - but the aforementioned issues are absolutely nothing I'd want to deal with in that case (and quite obviously, there's no updates that'd fix them). Too bad, really. Maybe they should've consulted some folks outside of their fanboy bubble (aka Ingolf and Co.) before developing this thing. I mean, you see people complaining about the lack of even a small display everywhere. And even if it's not as important for most folks as it is for me, nobody likes the "new" knobs, either.

They should as well have thought about those paid update plans before. I'm sure plenty of folks would've been like me, considering this as a pretty viable alternative to a Stage (especially in case you already own a nice existing pedalboard) and even happily playing almost as much for it (once you wanted the updates). But with the hardware being crippled that much, chances are that people with rather give it a pass. As do I.

 

[texhex]

 

[BenIfin]

This might be "old" news but it looks like (?) amongst other "cut downs" the Amp block in the Player is *missing* the deep-edit-amp-parameters ... see this video that dropped about an hour ago.

Maybe I'm wrong ?

No secrets here on the TGF just how much I love and rave about my Stage running the new ground-up LP's.

This Player [product] isn't for me ... I get that ..... and maybe I'm just too old-school and not "2023 enough" ..... but this product strikes me as extremely albeit deliberately under-engineered / heavily neutered for the price ... which is about %50 the cost of a full Stage ?!?!?

And people are supposedly going to have to pay extra $$ for future feature additions (?) ... full Amp block controls ? ... morphing ? more efx types ? etc.... ?

I'm a massive Christoph / Kemper fanboi ..... but this has me stunned in many different not good ways

Ben

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I think it sets a dangerous precedent. I've seen it happen in the video game market. Developers release half baked games for full price and then add in patches or "live service models". It kills games.

It's very hard to do right and I don't see it working out in the digital realm. To be honest, I hope it doesn't

DANGEROUS!!!!!

 

[laxu]

DANGEROUS!!!!!

 

[Whizzinby]

2023, the year of “not designed for you”. Who, consumers?

As for paid DLC. Eww. Feels very IK Multimedia.

 

[mbenigni]

They couldn't even put a 1980's calculator display on it?

It’s not like they don’t have plenty of them in inventory. Their “full fat” products use exactly that. :)

I am squarely in the “some kind of display is better” camp. In my experience, any device this complex gets a little bit cryptic when you start trying to perform even mundane tasks (e.g. preset management, system configuration) without some kind of graphical or language-based feedback. I tend to lose patience with the need to memorize arbitrary LED states or button press sequences. “To enter mode X, stand on your left foot and flap your arms like a chicken three times… or was it four… until the LED turns the OTHER shade of orange. I think?” (The EHX Attack Decay is a brilliant pedal that sits unused on a shelf for these same reasons.)

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I'm less annoyed with the charging for upgrading as I am the philosophy of releasing a purposefully nerfed product that the user can then upgrade to the spec of the 10 year old flagship rather than...working on a new flagship. Even if they don't want to change the underlying everything because CK is a stubborn SOB, they could still do stuff like:

(1). just double the signal paths either for dual stereo amps or so guitarist and bassist could share a single Kemper at the gig.
(2). Allow serial profiles so you could run a dirt pedal profile into an amp profile.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I'm still not completely (un)sold on the idea of being able to "upgrade" the smallest device up to the flagship save for ins/outs/whatever non-existent hardware differences you can't make up for?

 

[JiveTurkey]

I'm less annoyed with the charging for upgrading as I am the philosophy of releasing a purposefully nerfed product that the user can then upgrade to the spec of the 10 year old flagship rather than...working on a new flagship. Even if they don't want to change the underlying everything because CK is a stubborn SOB, they could still do stuff like:

(1). just double the signal paths either for dual stereo amps or so guitarist and bassist could share a single Kemper at the gig.
(2). Allow serial profiles so you could run a dirt pedal profile into an amp profile.

Stubborn af

 

[mbenigni]

For context on some of the previous discussions, this is what Christoph Kemper said on their own forums:

We are aware that the Profiler Player has the potential to serve the needs of very different users. On the one side there is the connaisseurs of pure amp tones, without the need for sprawling effect arrangements. On the other side there is the wish to play complex Rigs taken 1:1 from the big brother Profiler units. The Profiler Player has the theoretical potential to play full-blown Rigs. But I think it is understandable that we have not drawn a Profiler at half the price of a Profiler Stage but 85%-ish of it‘s featues.
Thus we consider since quit a while to offer one or two software upgrade (with costs), that will boost the Players features towards the Head, Rack and Stage.

The ability to create Profiles on the Player is also a story discussed by our team. There is a few issues to be solved, such as how to use the sole input of the Player for the return path and provide an A/B comparison.

The last paragraph is particularly interesting because it means they might offer a way to create profiles using the Player. That would give it more value because it would work for those with amp collections.

I looked at my used market recently and you can get a used Kemper Rack or PowerRack for only 150-200 € more than the Player, but the Player is much more compact and portable.

I think this is all reasonable and above board. My main issue with this approach is that it leads to a design process that arbitrarily under-leverages some of the hardware, and paints UX into a corner. The control layout etc. imply that the lesser effect count etc. are all that the hardware is capable of. Hearing that it’s been hamstrung for no better reason than product differentiation is just sort of unsettling.

So eventually you may be able to have a player with all the bells and whistles, and I think that’s cool. There is a lot to like about this device. But it’s always going to have a control scheme etc designed for that diminished feature set. This has kind of been a Kemper thing from day one, e.g. painting “delay” and “reverb” labels on immovable effects blocks until finally, years later, agreeing to make them movable. UI literally painted into a corner.