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beagles15t
Member
really friken stuck between a quad cortex and a fm9 , can someone explain why one is better than the other ? I hear a lot from each unit in terms of tone and flexibility
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chumbucket
Well-known member
The Quad Cortex is new and not very well established yet while the Fractal unit is building on a history of successful predecessors. The Fractal doesn't do captures but it has a ton of amps and effects built in.
Bro KV
Well-known member
Modeler vs Profiler, they are different. I have the AxeFX3 and it is a great piece of gear.
JerEvil
Well-known member
Quad is also a modeler. The amp models are really good. The next update adds a good bit of stuff which will make some folks quite happy.
The Fractal stuff is killer. It really comes down to what form factor you like and if you want to be able to have capture use.
The Fractal stuff is killer. It really comes down to what form factor you like and if you want to be able to have capture use.
TheGreatGreen
Well-known member
A profiler is simply a modeler that can also listen to an amp, or any non-linear source that generates distortion and has an EQ signature, by sending a bunch of signals to it and measuring what comes out the other side, and then applying those measurements to a pre-existing model "frame" it has in its memory.
Most if not all modelers can do this, as it's how a lot of modeling companies get their models of amps in the first place. The difference between these modelers is basically what parameters are exposed to the user.
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Bro KV
Well-known member
As I understood it and I may be way off. A modeler is designed around the circuit signal flow through an amp (for instance). Whereas a profiler is a capture of the output of said amp. Maybe there’s more to it and definitely would love to dig deeper
TheGreatGreen
Well-known member
Definitely! Let's think about how it might that work.
disclaimer: I don't work for any guitar-gear company, this is all speculation on my part and could be wrong, but this is what makes sense to me based on what I've read from people who do work in those companies, and how it might logically have to work...
It can't be magic, there has to be a built-out mechanism that makes it function, right? And you can't really just capture the output of something as complex as a tube amp as a singularly capturable thing, how would that work? What you have to do is isolate all the individual variables that might be important to shaping the sound and then measure how they behave under all practically measurable frequencies, amplitudes, and transients, and then define the behavior of all those variables along whatever input curves there might be per variable.
Basically, a profiler puts a bunch of signals through an amp, each one measuring for something different. For example, part of the process is to measure only the characteristics of distortion. How much, what frequencies are filtered, how quickly the distortion comes on and how saturated it gets, then the profiler will put out other signals to measure the overall output EQ, what does the final output EQ curve look like, and probably a ton of other variables. After that point, the profiler will plug all those variables and curves into one of several pre-built models in the unit.
For example, Kemper has a handful of internal, bare-bones "framework" models not exposed to the user in its database, and it it will actually listen to the amp during profiling, and then pick out the closest model to the real amp on its own and plug in those discovered variables into that model, then save all that info to a file it calls a "profile."
It's all "modeling" by definition really, in that it's all about building a digital "model" of the real amps. What changes from product to product is how a tube amp's performative variables are harvested and implemented, and how many variables are taken into account.
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MadAsAHatter
Well-known member
I'm not expert either... Same as you, I'm basing this on my understanding of what I've read and what makes sense logically. BUT take all this with a grain of salt because I may be completely wrong in my understanding of how it all works. If I am please correct me. I don't want to accidentally confuse anyone.
I think you have a pretty decent explanations of how a profiler like the Kemper works, but I think that's only half the picture. Like you said everything is modeling, but what separates a modeler from a profiler is the way it creates its simulation.
My understanding is that a profiler like Kemper captures its simulation pretty much how you said. It analyzes frequencies and responses then applies it to its built in parameters and calls it a profile. You end up with a snapshot of the profiled amp, but adjustment of setting such as EQ or distortion can only be adjusted so far beyond what was captured. Beyond that it falls outside of it's capabilities and begins to not hold up.
Modelers like AxeFX are more like a digital simulation of a circuit and doesn't necessarily need to capture frequencies. The designer/programmer would basically build an amp circuit in a computer program. Said program would then use whatever algorithm to simulate how the circuit would behave; how the amp will sound. At least that would be the core. It would get more complex as you add in IRs mic simulation, etc. The end result is a program that can simulate the amp and all of it's variables. So you can get the full range of EQ, distortion, etc. from 1 to 10 plus more as you dive deeper into allowed parameters.
I think the Quad Cortex is an attempt to marry the 2 technologies where you get both a profiler and modeler in terms as described above. How it merges the two I have no idea.
