Axe-FX vs amp sims

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You can kind of hear the "compressed tonality" problem in even that video.. no doubt it's heavily compressed and post produced video but still.

My issue with the kemper is that the "in-between" high-gain sounds, either at lower guitar volume or picking levels, do not have the proper output levels and "slap".. once you turn up the gain, at least on the few tube amps I've either owned or had the pleasure using for a while during recording sessions, the actual volume output should go slightly down.. or perhaps not in real levels but psychoacustically it feels like the levels should be lower in a strange way, like less air is moving. This kind of thing is missing in the kemper. Everything sounds a bit compressed.

This will sound like blasphemy to a large bunch of you but.. this kind of "compressed tonality" is one of the things in the Line6 products that has always bothered me a lot.

I can't really explain it accurately enough with my meager English skills though. Heck I'd probably even struggle in my mother tongue. You can do an A/B comparison though on the Kemper in any music store with a good selection of Tube amps. Just make sure you aren't listening to the tonality nor drive quality but rather the "amount of air moving". Kind of like how you can get some digital compressor models quite close to their analogue counterparts tonally and "technically" but the actual impact and punch is lacking.

In this regard I think Thermionic is actually a bit better than the Kemper.
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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I'm thinking that what you're talking about might be due to missing power amp stage on the basic Kemper - not sure which one you've played, the one with the power amp or the one without it. I played on the power amp version through a FRFR cabinet... holy cr*p!

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Ah.. yes that could actually be it! I only played the version that was first released, the true vanilla one. Not even sure which firmware it is. It's been in the shop several years as a "try it for yourself here" thing. I also used it with headphones only but to be fair, I had my own headphones with me that I use daily so this only levels the playing field compared to the other amp sims.

.. but yeah, you may have a point there.

Question to all of you: Am I the only one quite a bit disappointed in ReCabinet 5? I'm one of those who never really liked the sound of the ReCabinet series but I always thought it was due to the impulses included.. however I just loaded some RedWirez impulses into ReCabinet 5 and did a quick A/B versus Ignite Amps NadIR plugin. The difference in sound quality is astounding. NadIR sounds way better.

I had NadIR set to it's "extreme" IR length mode and on the ReCabinet I turned off the EQ and the Dynamics thing. Even with all of these settings turned off the difference in tonality is huge. I tried my damnest to null the two IR loaders but was unsuccessful.
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Hmm, interesting. To tell you the truth I'm not using any other IR loaders, just Recabinet, suits me fine after EQing the IRs I want to use...

It might be a good point to bring up to Shane, see what is going on there?

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Just on the compressed sound of the Kemper mentioned by bmanic.

Kemper KPA allows some deeper editing of parameters for the profiles. The Kemper forums have some discussion of this. There are parameters like Compression and Power Sag in the amp parameters and there are also parameters like Definition and Clarity which are more about the tonal balance. It seems like the profiling technique and equipment choices of the originator of the profile will determine a lot about the potential of a particular patch but there is definitely scope to tweak things further.

Might be worth climbing in there and seeing what you can do in the AMP edit pages next time you get a chance to put one through its paces.

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In theory Nebula should be better for cabs than impulses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2THDomwV-s
Intel Core2 Quad CPU + 4 GIG RAM

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"pretty close"

:lol:

There is NO noticeable difference.

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incubus wrote:
Uncle E wrote:Have you tried the Plugin Alliance Chandler GAV19T yet?
Yep, didn't like it. Not chimmy, not very flexible, not very good distortion, begs for a pedal in front of it.
Now that you mention it, I always use the UAD RAW distortion pedal in front of it and never use it alone. It sounds great that way.

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bmanic wrote:You can kind of hear the "compressed tonality" problem in even that video.. no doubt it's heavily compressed and post produced video but still.

My issue with the kemper is that the "in-between" high-gain sounds, either at lower guitar volume or picking levels, do not have the proper output levels and "slap".. once you turn up the gain, at least on the few tube amps I've either owned or had the pleasure using for a while during recording sessions, the actual volume output should go slightly down.. or perhaps not in real levels but psychoacustically it feels like the levels should be lower in a strange way, like less air is moving. This kind of thing is missing in the kemper. Everything sounds a bit compressed.

This will sound like blasphemy to a large bunch of you but.. this kind of "compressed tonality" is one of the things in the Line6 products that has always bothered me a lot.

I can't really explain it accurately enough with my meager English skills though. Heck I'd probably even struggle in my mother tongue. You can do an A/B comparison though on the Kemper in any music store with a good selection of Tube amps. Just make sure you aren't listening to the tonality nor drive quality but rather the "amount of air moving". Kind of like how you can get some digital compressor models quite close to their analogue counterparts tonally and "technically" but the actual impact and punch is lacking.

In this regard I think Thermionic is actually a bit better than the Kemper.
Think what you will, but I just put Thermionic/Recabinite up against the Kemper and IMO it was no contest. The Kemper is so alive, dynamic and full sounding where the Thermionic seemed, like all the software sims I've used, to be kind of band limited and a little dead sounding. The Kemper seemed to let my guitar's character bleed though nicely where Thermionic seemed to just totally mask it. Don't get me wrong, Thermionic seems capable of good sounds and maybe the IRs it ships with the demo aren't that great, but if you were in a room with both I think you'd change your mind. After writing that I put it though Speakerphone and I was able to get it to sound better, but overall I find it so noisy (why so noisy?) and masking of my EMG's nice chimey tone that it's not going to get me to sell my Kemper any time soon. As expensive as it is, it's worth every penny to me.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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incubus wrote:"pretty close"

:lol:

There is NO noticeable difference.
Pretty big difference listening here though old AKG K702s plugged directly into a Mac Mini.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

Post

zerocrossing wrote:
bmanic wrote:You can kind of hear the "compressed tonality" problem in even that video.. no doubt it's heavily compressed and post produced video but still.

My issue with the kemper is that the "in-between" high-gain sounds, either at lower guitar volume or picking levels, do not have the proper output levels and "slap".. once you turn up the gain, at least on the few tube amps I've either owned or had the pleasure using for a while during recording sessions, the actual volume output should go slightly down.. or perhaps not in real levels but psychoacustically it feels like the levels should be lower in a strange way, like less air is moving. This kind of thing is missing in the kemper. Everything sounds a bit compressed.

This will sound like blasphemy to a large bunch of you but.. this kind of "compressed tonality" is one of the things in the Line6 products that has always bothered me a lot.

I can't really explain it accurately enough with my meager English skills though. Heck I'd probably even struggle in my mother tongue. You can do an A/B comparison though on the Kemper in any music store with a good selection of Tube amps. Just make sure you aren't listening to the tonality nor drive quality but rather the "amount of air moving". Kind of like how you can get some digital compressor models quite close to their analogue counterparts tonally and "technically" but the actual impact and punch is lacking.

In this regard I think Thermionic is actually a bit better than the Kemper.
Think what you will, but I just put Thermionic/Recabinite up against the Kemper and IMO it was no contest. The Kemper is so alive, dynamic and full sounding where the Thermionic seemed, like all the software sims I've used, to be kind of band limited and a little dead sounding. The Kemper seemed to let my guitar's character bleed though nicely where Thermionic seemed to just totally mask it. Don't get me wrong, Thermionic seems capable of good sounds and maybe the IRs it ships with the demo aren't that great, but if you were in a room with both I think you'd change your mind. After writing that I put it though Speakerphone and I was able to get it to sound better, but overall I find it so noisy (why so noisy?) and masking of my EMG's nice chimey tone that it's not going to get me to sell my Kemper any time soon. As expensive as it is, it's worth every penny to me.
Like I've said, ReCabinet is pretty bad. If you tried it with that and the supplied IRs, then you pretty much completely killed the Thermionic part of the equation (imho, I'm sure there are people who like it.. there's even people who like Guitar Rig, go figure). :)

Each to their own though. I have to go a bit deeper into the kemper and start tweaking. So far I've only gone through the presets of the thing. Then again, I don't want to tempt myself too much.. it's not like I can afford it right now either. :hihi:
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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bmanic wrote:
zerocrossing wrote:
bmanic wrote:You can kind of hear the "compressed tonality" problem in even that video.. no doubt it's heavily compressed and post produced video but still.

My issue with the kemper is that the "in-between" high-gain sounds, either at lower guitar volume or picking levels, do not have the proper output levels and "slap".. once you turn up the gain, at least on the few tube amps I've either owned or had the pleasure using for a while during recording sessions, the actual volume output should go slightly down.. or perhaps not in real levels but psychoacustically it feels like the levels should be lower in a strange way, like less air is moving. This kind of thing is missing in the kemper. Everything sounds a bit compressed.

This will sound like blasphemy to a large bunch of you but.. this kind of "compressed tonality" is one of the things in the Line6 products that has always bothered me a lot.

I can't really explain it accurately enough with my meager English skills though. Heck I'd probably even struggle in my mother tongue. You can do an A/B comparison though on the Kemper in any music store with a good selection of Tube amps. Just make sure you aren't listening to the tonality nor drive quality but rather the "amount of air moving". Kind of like how you can get some digital compressor models quite close to their analogue counterparts tonally and "technically" but the actual impact and punch is lacking.

In this regard I think Thermionic is actually a bit better than the Kemper.
Think what you will, but I just put Thermionic/Recabinite up against the Kemper and IMO it was no contest. The Kemper is so alive, dynamic and full sounding where the Thermionic seemed, like all the software sims I've used, to be kind of band limited and a little dead sounding. The Kemper seemed to let my guitar's character bleed though nicely where Thermionic seemed to just totally mask it. Don't get me wrong, Thermionic seems capable of good sounds and maybe the IRs it ships with the demo aren't that great, but if you were in a room with both I think you'd change your mind. After writing that I put it though Speakerphone and I was able to get it to sound better, but overall I find it so noisy (why so noisy?) and masking of my EMG's nice chimey tone that it's not going to get me to sell my Kemper any time soon. As expensive as it is, it's worth every penny to me.
Like I've said, ReCabinet is pretty bad. If you tried it with that and the supplied IRs, then you pretty much completely killed the Thermionic part of the equation (imho, I'm sure there are people who like it.. there's even people who like Guitar Rig, go figure). :)

Each to their own though. I have to go a bit deeper into the kemper and start tweaking. So far I've only gone through the presets of the thing. Then again, I don't want to tempt myself too much.. it's not like I can afford it right now either. :hihi:
Yeah, I may have a much different opinion if I had some great impulses... but it's been a long time since I've tried Recabinite and I didn't like it then either. Terrible.

But I did have a weird noise floor thing though. Not sure why it's so incredibly noisy.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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zerocrossing wrote:
incubus wrote:"pretty close"

:lol:

There is NO noticeable difference.
Pretty big difference listening here though old AKG K702s plugged directly into a Mac Mini.
?

I mean, I know my ears are not the best anymore, but it's not anything the listener is going to hear.

If you stress over that kinda difference, then you have my sympathies.

EDIT, sorry, my old school brashness comes across too hard here.

What I'm saying is that unless you have crazy hyper hearing, there is very littler here. A small tweak of the eq/volume will easily make either of those sounds identical and they are close enough right now.

I'm gear whore (well, not as bad as I used to be :lol: ) but eventually you need to compare apples to AT LEAST fruit (not tacos)

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BTW, I own Bias and it's good sounding.

But.....

-NO TRANSFER!
-Can't even change your email :roll:
-2 authorizations, then you are done.

I've tried the support route and it's been a dead end. Money gone here.

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incubus wrote:
zerocrossing wrote:
incubus wrote:"pretty close"

:lol:

There is NO noticeable difference.
Pretty big difference listening here though old AKG K702s plugged directly into a Mac Mini.
?

I mean, I know my ears are not the best anymore, but it's not anything the listener is going to hear.

If you stress over that kinda difference, then you have my sympathies.

EDIT, sorry, my old school brashness comes across too hard here.

What I'm saying is that unless you have crazy hyper hearing, there is very littler here. A small tweak of the eq/volume will easily make either of those sounds identical and they are close enough right now.

I'm gear whore (well, not as bad as I used to be :lol: ) but eventually you need to compare apples to AT LEAST fruit (not tacos)
No, you're damn civil compared to many. I always say, if you don't have thick skin, stay out of forums. Part of it is my fault. Maybe "big" was not quite the right word... but I do think there was a significant difference. I've mentioned this before, but recently I got a turntable as a gift and my wife and I have had fun comparing the sound to some of my CDs and Apples streaming format. My wife is one of those people who say, "I can't hear a difference, my hearing sucks." Yet, she instantly heard differences between all the formats.

It's like seeing a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night. If you're in someone's home and you see the print, you just enjoy it. Maybe you saw the original years before and you don't notice much of a difference between the print and the original. In a sense, there might not be a difference if the general emotion of the painting is successfully shown in the print, but there still might be something missing. A depth of color that the print process can't replicate. The texture of the canvas bleeding through. The texture of the paint strokes.

Sometimes with audio in a mix it can even be more subtle but I think it would affect you. What I heard in that demo sounded a little more limited in bandwidth and maybe a bit more flat dynamically. I think we're all so used to listening to MP3s that we're used to this kind of thing. I bet if you were listening to the original mix vs the plug in mix in person you'd notice the difference right away. I bet we'd notice the difference between my Kemper and the original amps too. Nothing is perfect. Just use the best thing you can get your hands on and make music.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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