Axe-FX II vs Kemper: Fractal's Comments

Started by onemoreguitar, April 30, 2012, 12:51:00 AM

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onemoreguitar

This was posted by Cliff Chase, who owns Fractal, on their forum.  Thought you guys might find it interesting. 

In answer to wether the Axe II would have "profiling":

http://forum.fractalaudio.com/axe-fx-ii-discussion/51563-will-axe-have-profiling-2.html

Quote
It now has Tone Matching which is arguably the most important part of profiling.

Profiling consists of four parts:
1. Finding the input EQ.
2. Finding the "shape" and bias point of the nonlinear transfer function.
3. Finding the output EQ.
4. Finding the compression, or sag, characteristics.

The Axe-Fx II with V6 uses a hybrid modeling/profiling approach. The Axe-Fx modeling is much more complex in that it does not use a single waveshaper with adjustable shape and bias point. It uses multiple dynamic nonlinearities including preamp and power amp modeling. Profilers distill everything down to a single static waveshaper and then adjust the shape (probably a x+k/x-k waveshaper) and bias point of that waveshaper to try and match the measured transfer function. They then find the input and output EQ and the compression.

With V6 the Axe-Fx II uses a combination of modeling and profiling. The amps are modeled using our exclusive multiple dynamic nonlinearities that very accurately replicate actual tube triodes and our new power amp modeling which fully recreates the behavior of a tube power amp and output transformer. The models are then refined by applying test tones to the actual amp to find deviations between the real amp and the model. For example, traditional circuit based modeling cannot account for things like parasitics since these are not represented by the schematic. So we now augment our traditional circuit modeling with measurements from the actual amp and store that data in the model.

With Tone Matching you can morph a model to match other amps. This works best if the model and amp are similar.

There are numerous advantages to this approach. These advantages include full control matching. The drive, tone, etc. controls behave just like the real amp. You're not just getting a snapshot of the amp at some setting. Another advantage is full separability of the amp from the cabinet. Due to inseparability of linear responses, profiling lumps the amplifier output with the cab response. The multiple nonlinearities also capture the complexities of amps that rely on both preamp and power amp distortion. Single waveshaper approaches cannot capture the complex interactions of multiple distorting stages and the concomitant duty-cycle modulation, EQ modulation (which produces note bloom and swirl) and the vagaries of feel.

The one disadvantage is that you only get the amps that we have modeled. If you have an amp that is very unique that we haven't modeled then Tone Matching may not fully capture the essence of that amp. Profiling allows you to capture that amp at your favorite settings with your favorite cab. Another disadvantage is that modeling is very labor intensive. We have to enter all the circuit data, measure the control tapers, verify the model accuracy and then apply all the fancy test tones and capture the refinement data.



In response for a wish list request for a sine sweep tone:

http://forum.fractalaudio.com/axe-fx-ii-wish-list/51607-sine-sweep-test-tone-tma-block-better-nearly-perfect-amp-matching-2.html



QuoteThe third voice of the synth was added for this reason. Connect an LFO to the Freq parameter and use it to sweep the DUT and the amp block at the same time.

Pink noise also works very well.


Further in to the same thread:


QuoteThere's a bunch of other tricks you can do. When I catch up on a few pressing things I'll do some tutorials. For example, you can do near full "profiling" using a two-step process. Capture the output EQ with the Tone Match block at high excitation levels. Export that to a cab IR. Add the cab block after the amp. Reduce the excitation level way down so that the reference amp and the model are operating in the linear (or near-linear) region. Do another Tone Match. Move the Tone Match block before the amp block. Now you have a fully profiled amp.

wink, wink, nudge, nudge...

BTW, using this method with the sine wave, models can be easily shared.

onemoreguitar

Here's a video tutorial on tone matching.


LeeMorant

That's pretty cool, in an ideal world I'd own both :)  In this world I just downloaded the mesa JP presets from rig exchange and tweaked the treble a bit, job done.   I wish I had more money  :P

musicman65

As Cliff states...its MODELED AMP MORPHING not PROFILING. So you take pre-modeled amp and apply an eq patch derived from a ferquency sweep of a real amp to morph the tone to something closer to what you want. That's a great feature. I suspect he's feeling the heat from the KPA and providing features to keep Axe users from migrating.

The Kemper forum is loaded with Axe users....the general consensus is that the KPA does what is does best....PROFILE. The Axe does what it does best....MODEL AMPS and FX.

I'm not an Axe user so I can't say how real their MODELING is....better than other modelers, I am sure. I can say that my KPA is so real, its dejavu. I profilled a few of my amps and its unbelievable how accurately it captured the essence and soul. I can feel the tubes....or something. Pretty magical whatever it is.

We live in exciting times in the digital music realm. The fact that I can download a profile of another user's actual 1959 Fender Bassman head and cabinet and get that same mojo with the press of a button is just awesome!

Add alt tuning, guitar modeling, and G2M synth from Roland and my tone toolbox is complete! I'm still working on my VG / KPA setup but excited with the esults so far.

bd



Jim Williams

From what I have herd I think that amp profiling thing is a useless technology and the Axe-FX II is the way to go. After seeing this video I would never even consider a profiler amp over the Axe-FX.
Skype: (upon Request)

Everything from modeling to the real deal, my house looks like a music store.

Elantric

#5
QuoteFrom what I have herd I think that amp profiling thing is a useless technology and the Axe-FX II is the way to go. After seeing this video I would never even consider a profiler amp over the Axe-FX.

Excellent - this advice helps keep the Kemper Profiling Amp my go to secret weapon for real tube amp tone a bit longer.


EQ Matching is a powerful tool, but you cant re - EQ a JC-120 to sound like a Dumble.

At the end of the day, I prefer to play through gear that breaths and has life and responds to my playing style - and the KPA does all that and more.

Bill Ruppert

"From what I have herd I think that amp profiling thing is a useless technology"

WTF?????

germanicus

I have neither an axe-fx 2 or a kemper (yet), but both seem like viable options.

Looks like the axe has more effects capabilities.

The kemper sounds amazing, but i dont have alot of interest in running around profiling specific amps.
I would rather have a kemper that just loads in others profiles at a lower cost from the online library.

My albums done with modeling/guitar synth at http://music.steamtheory.com

JTV69/59P/Godin LGXT/Multiac ACS/Variax 700 AC
Helix/FTP/GP10/VG99/SY1000
Traynor k4

Bill Ruppert

I have almost 1300 profiles loaded in from the user group!
Yikes, that is a LOT of amps.

Kevin M

Also, doesn't the KPA already come 'stock' with a number of profiles preloaded?

Elantric

#10
All I can say is owning the KPA has been my top rewarding experience post purchase. No regrets,  and the quality and playing response of the real amp profiles shared by the active KPA community are excellent.  I no longer desire to borrow my friends real Dumble ODS, as my KPA already has that amp covered.

Edit : above was true in April 2012 when bulk of Kemper profiles were very good

However today you must wade through lots of junk/ useless Kemper profiles in the shared repository online before you find a good one.

aliensporebomb

#11
How many profiles can you store?  I know with VG-99 there's only 200 user savable presets and sometimes wading thru all of those to get the right sounds can be a little challenging if you're in a hurry but if you can store over a thousand it gets to be like satellite tv!  How do you deal with all of those presets in a gig or recording situation?  "Oh, wait, I've got that Dumble ODS here somewhere, preset 1138 I think..."
My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

Elantric

#12
Suggest watch the youtube videos, yes the KPA can store all those profiles, and it uses a normal USB thumb drive for getting the profiles into the  KPA

Each profile is under 4k size, and there is an efficient browser built into the KPA,  so plenty can be on tap at the session.

1000 KPA profiles can be stored inside the KPA.

Bill Ruppert

#13
Todd
You can take your favorite profiles and put them in a quick menu that only shows those profiles.
I also save all mine with the letter V in front so I just jump to the V,s and there they all are.

imall41

Quote from: Elantric on April 30, 2012, 08:54:13 AM
Excellent - this advice helps keep the Kemper Profiling Amp my go to secret weapon for real tube amp tone a bit longer.
;)
And, as much as I would love to keep it a secret also, the more who experience this box, and become part of the KPA community, the faster the updates will come.

Granted, I am still in the honeymoon phase with my KPA, but this is the longest this phase has lasted with any piece of gear I have owned.
This is the first time, in my obsessive search for tone, that I have lost all desire to look any further.
Yes, it has some bugs, but there is nothing to be fixed in the main purpose of why it exists, which is to sound, and feel like you are playing a tube amp, which it does now, bugs and all.
There are also many users who  say, they haven't had one problem in over two months of constant use.
Either way, I have no doubt, that within a year, Mr Kemper, and his team, will have this thing firing on all twelve cylinders.
Especially, considering the speed that firmware updates have been released already.
It's literally like a dream come true. I can leave my house with my KPA lunchbox slung over my shoulder, guitar in one hand, and powered speaker in the other, and setup and play anywhere, and not wish that I could have brought more with me.
(of course, the GR-55 was already in the car :-)
I apologize if I'm sounding fanboyish, but I just felt the need to chime in here.
For me, this box is truly a game changer.

aliensporebomb

It sure would be nice to be able to leave my mesa studio preamp at home but take a "replica" of it in a lightweight box to a gig or session.  I've gotten really close with the VG-99 I must admit but it's not 100%, most like 94-96%.  Close enough for most to not be able to tell the difference.  I definetely need to try one of those out but I hear it's like when Al DiMeola tried a ferrari - it was fun but then he had to have one!  Just what I need, more expensive music gear!
My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

Charles5150

#16
I've been an Axe Ultra user during two years. It's a great piece of gear, I really liked it, wouldn't say it's like the real thing, but in terms of portability and use in gigs and studio to me was a great solution. The routing posibilities are far beyond VG-99 or KPA.

But......

It's not plug and play at all, you have to spend lot of time tweaking to get the tone you want. I'm as confortable tweaking as playing, but can understand some friends of mine who don't like to tweak at all.

I reached some great tones after hours of equalizing, some CAE superstrat tones:

http://soundcloud.com/charles5150/isthislove

Even close into Eddie territory:

http://soundcloud.com/charles5150/mean-street

So, you can get nice tones with it you are into spend lot of time on it.

The big BUT came when they announced the AxeFxII, then I realized that I would be in the waiting list during months, and I felt really dependable on it. So, I sold my Ultra in November and got back to the analog world, using a HK Tubemeister and analog pedals for gigs and the VG99 for rehearshalls.

First time I heard about the KPA, I though it was the same convolution thing again. Kind of a "make-your-own-amps" pod. Then, some videos convinced me that it's a different thing, specially the Nasville session one, to me it sounded amazing. And, most important, you don't have to be a sound or IT engineer, it's plug and play.

On the other way, Fractal, who always laughed about profiling, now make the pathetic move to sell customers some thing that appears to be profiling but has nothing to do with it, and they call it "tone-matching". Come on, tone matching is EQ matching, some thing you could do with a lot of DAW plugins around there, it's about compairing two eq curves, and deduce what eq moves you have to apply to the first curve to sound like the second one. I myself applied this technique to get some tones in my Ultra months ago before the II tone-matching.

The truth is YOU DON'T NEED TO BUY AN AXE-II TO DO TONE MATCHING at all. But nowadays the Fractal world is so biased that it doesn't matter what old thing with a new name they come with, or if they call tone-matching or magical-mojo or whatever, they are into buying it eyes ( and ears ) closed.

I'm saving money to buy a Kemper ( it's a click away from any major store, f*** the waiting lists ) and very excited about it. I want to think in terms of melody, harmony and rythmn instead of eq, compressors....










onemoreguitar

I knew this one would be contentious.

I can't believe anyone on this forum complaining the AFX isn't plug and play.  There's nothing plug and play about the VG-99 or the GR-55 or any other Roland VG or GR product.  My Ultra was far easier to get a good tone out of than my VG-99.  When I compared my best Ultra patches to my best 99 patches, the Ultra won hands down when it came to amps and effects.  The II is a whole other beast.  The first 40 stock patches are all extremely usable amp and stomp box patches.  Starting from an empty program in the II, I can get any guitar/effect setup, gig ready, in less than half the time it takes in the VG-99 and the final product walks all over the VG version in terms of sound, feel, flexibility, you name it...

Keep in mind that the video I posted is only a tone match to an iso track, not to an amp.  If you read through what Cliff wrote you'll see that step 2 is where the Kemper and AFX differ the most.  Whereas Kemper is using a static waveshaper, the II is using it's amp models. 

One of the biggest thing that stands out to me with the Kemper, which you can easily see in that long UK video test someone posted, is that a player experienced with tube amps can feel which is real and which is the Kemper every time.  One of the other things is that in every test I have seen, when they try to make adjustments to a profile, it has always worsened the sound considerably. 


Quote from: musicman65 on April 30, 2012, 08:25:32 AM
As Cliff states...its MODELED AMP MORPHING not PROFILING. So you take pre-modeled amp and apply an eq patch derived from a ferquency sweep of a real amp to morph the tone to something closer to what you want. That's a great feature. I suspect he's feeling the heat from the KPA and providing features to keep Axe users from migrating.


Actually if you read through what he's saying, the point is whatever name you call it, it still follows those same 4 steps.  They're both doing the same thing.  The Kemper simply has a different step 2 which is setting the shape and bias point of the static waveshaper.  The Kemper also has the speaker's influence mixed in.  With the II, making the speaker IR can be a separate step which means the amp could be separated from the speaker so that you could actually have a modelled amp that you could switch cabs on. 

I don't think he's feeling any heat.  He can't make them fast enough.  They've only recently been able to occasionally keep them in stock in the US.  There are still long waiting lists throughout the rest of the world.  It's becoming a bit of a standard for touring acts.  Not sure what heat you're referring to. 

BTW, people have started to tone match guitars as well as amps.  Check the Fractal forum.

Here's an electric with a piezo matched to an acoustic.

http://soundcloud.com/antcarrier/acoustic-simulation-2

Strat to SG

http://soundcloud.com/zentman/sg-pup-capture

Viola

http://soundcloud.com/zentman/viola

Bill Ruppert

#18
Quote"One of the biggest thing that stands out to me with the Kemper, which you can easily see in that long UK video test someone posted, is that a player experienced with tube amps can feel which is real and which is the Kemper every time.  One of the other things is that in every test I have seen, when they try to make adjustments to a profile, it has always worsened the sound considerably."

There is A BIG reason he can tell every time and I almost wrote them about it.
ANYONE with half an ear can tell which is which while in the profile mode.
There is a latency to the profiled sound that disappears when you go back to the normal play mode.
He feels the latency in the profile mode and its a giveaway.
That's the feel difference.
They should have set up an A/B in the normal play mode and he would have been scratching his head wondering what was what..


A2theT

Quote from: Bill Ruppert on April 30, 2012, 09:01:27 AM
"From what I have herd I think that amp profiling thing is a useless technology"

WTF?????

Well I think his comment may have come off a little harsh but I've said this before.  I have no requirement for the ability to profile amps so the feature is useless to me but we will all benefit from the technology.  I have minimal amps to profile.  I have no access to amps that need profiling.  As you've mentioned you have 1300 profiled amps.  Holy crap!.

I just need a unit that allows me to play with them.  I'd love to have a mini-kemper (non profiling version )and an Axe-Fx!

BTW, I noticed now with the release of Fractals v6.0 firmware they're sold out of Axe-Fx II's again...
HEAVY on the METAL
Axe-Fx II, Roland VG-99 + FC-300, Roland GR-55, Digitech Jamman Stereo, Ibanez/ESP/Jackson Guitars

Kevin M

This thread has deteriorated sufficiently!  :-).

Pick the tool, or tools that work best for YOU!

musicman65

#21
Quote from: onemoreguitar on April 30, 2012, 04:45:39 PM
I can't believe anyone on this forum complaining the AFX isn't plug and play.  There's nothing plug and play about the VG-99 or the GR-55 or any other Roland VG or GR product. 

Maybe I misinterpreted what he wrote but I think he was saying he had returned to stomps and amps recently and the AxeFX was complex whereas the Kemper is generally plug and play so it appealed more to him. I personally don't mind complex systems with lots of options.

Quote from: onemoreguitar on April 30, 2012, 04:45:39 PM
Actually if you read through what he's saying, the point is whatever name you call it, it still follows those same 4 steps.  They're both doing the same thing.  The Kemper simply has a different step 2 which is setting the shape and bias point of the static waveshaper.  The Kemper also has the speaker's influence mixed in.  With the II, making the speaker IR can be a separate step which means the amp could be separated from the speaker so that you could actually have a modelled amp that you could switch cabs on. 

Step 2 is the voodoo. That's where the KPA captures the amps waveform and dynamic idiosyncrasies that make it organic. That incudes the variable response to a non-linear load (the speaker cab). An unloaded (or resistive load) poweramp has a different response than one driving a speaker. Everthing in the chain from input to the grill on the cab are part of the profile.

Yet Kemper still can seperate cabs from amps...That's a basic feature of the KPA. Each profile is an amp AND cab. You can save the amp or cab separately, mix, match, exchange with other users. Different test processes are used to derive this separation. Its way more than a sine wave sweep.

Quote from: onemoreguitar on April 30, 2012, 04:45:39 PM
I don't think he's feeling any heat.  He can't make them fast enough.  They've only recently been able to occasionally keep them in stock in the US.  There are still long waiting lists throughout the rest of the world.  It's becoming a bit of a standard for touring acts.  Not sure what heat you're referring to. 

Cliff is a businessman. If he hasn't noticed the new kid on the block that has a feature the he is now emulating in his product...I'd be concerned. Its healthy competition and that's the heat I refer to. We all benefit from that. Hey, maybe if the Kemper gains ground and the AxeFX waiting list gets shorter, the price will go down. No one would fuss over that!


Quote from: onemoreguitar on April 30, 2012, 04:45:39 PM
BTW, people have started to tone match guitars as well as amps.  Check the Fractal forum.
Here's an electric with a piezo matched to an acoustic.

Bill Ruppert posted a KPA profile of an acoustic simulator a few days on the Rig Exchange. This whole profiling/tone matching idea is going to create advances we haven't imagined yet....

I think we all agree both products are innovative and either can yield very musical tones in the hands of a creative player. Nuff said!

Exciting times for the digital musician!

bd

Charles5150

Quote from: musicman65 on April 30, 2012, 11:22:25 PM

Exciting times for the digital musician!

bd

Absolutely !
Competition = Options = Better tones = Lower prices

Bill Ruppert

#23
After all of that.....
I still adore my VG-99 and GR-55.
They are ALWAYS by my side and always will be!
Untouchable.

cynegetic