Kemper Amps introduced the Kemper Profiling Amplifier – a new amp that ‘learns’ the sound of any amp – at the 2011 Winter NAMM Show.
Here’s what Kemper has to say about the Profiling Amplifier:
The Kemper Profiling Amplifier is a new concept for guitar amplification in the digital domain. The Kemper Profiling Amplifier “learns” the sonic behavior of any guitar amplifier and offers the tone and feel the player knows from his “real” amp. Now there can be a profile available of any sonic condition the tube amp setup can provide.
The Kemper Profiling Amplifier will come with profiles of classic tube amps: the british, the californish, the germish … of course including the classic speaker cabinets which are a part of the profiling result.
The Kemper Profiling Amplifier will come as a lunchbox size device ,with all the professional connections for home, studio and on stage use. It is completed with a stomp box section, a master FX section and a set of unique, before impossible parameters for shaping the amp profiles further, from classic architecture to modern. A realistic power amp sagging, which is normally only available at very high volume, is also “a part of the stack”.
Here’s an overview of the new Kemper Profiling Amplifier:
Kemper Profiling Amplifier, Part II
The retail price for the Kemper Profiling Amplifier is not decided yet, availability is expected to be in the second quarter of 2011.
via Axetopia, Synthesizers on Flickr
Yeah, but I'm not interested in it unless it uses valves…
Profile the warmth
sceptic. Learning sonic behaviour is not new, but how can it learn how the amp reacts to different tones (high/low strings), different combinations of strings, different volume on the guitar, plucking the strings gently or hard, different eq-ing of the guitar, and different settings on the knobs on the amplifier?
It's close…but even on crappy computer speakers you can hear a difference in tone. The Kemper version has a raw/rough edginess to it…especially in the crunch/distortion tones.
This is the same thing I've heard in just about every sim/pod…to date.
Yeah, in a busy mix or a live gig one might not care…but that homogenized "buzz" underneath that actual tones is alway there with any type of digital modeling/simulating…and now profiling.
I do like the concept of it. I can tell there’s a bit of latency with the model (i.e., a slight delay between picking & the onset of the sound) which I guess is unavoidable.
I think it looks hilarious. At least it doesn’t look like a pod, eh?
The only way to get the sound of feedback is feedback. No amount of DSP and software sophistication can use feed-forward for emulation because playing the feedback is controlling the loop parameters with your fingers in real time. For some reason audio engineers can’t understand the nuanced expression of Lou Reed, Jimi and Neil Young for example. For the gearheads, this would require finger sensor output from a guitar-synth neck (or performance parameter extraction) and a tactile driver on the bridge. Another key point: tube sound derives in part because tubes are FASTER than transistors, and digital is SLOWER than analog. You DSP geeks are throwing away the phase components of the FFT. Try to keep up.