Continuing the discussion from First topic, what about the MOD Duo?:
The last days I found some time to continue my comparison between the MOD Duo and the Kemper Amp. These are my results so far.
At first I created a rhythm sound for using it with my two Engl 2x12" cabinets, powered by the Matrix GT1000FX.
With a single guitarix amp simulation it wasn’t possible to find an acceptable high-gain sound with enough punch and dynamicresponse, compared to the Kemper it always sounded flat and boring. I added a second (parallel) guitarix amp simulation with different settings and the dynamic response was significantly better then, but still not good enough. Then I added the GxTubeScreamer… with a thoroughly tweaking (took about two hours) of the various gain/drive/distortion settings of the three plugins the dynamic response was quite good: fairly high gain, but still transparent and not muddy.
Then I adjusted the amp simulation’s EQs by ear to come as close as possible to the Kemper’s sound. For fast switching between the MOD Duo and the Kemper I used a simple A/B switch.
I was trying for a few minutes but realized that the basic EQs could not fulfill this task, so I had to use an additional parametric equalizer at the end of the signal chain. By using an measurement microphone (Behringer ECM8000) and an analyzer I was able to find adequate settings quite fast.
In my opinion the sound quality of the MOD Duo for this task reaches about 85% of the Kemper’s sound quality, what’s fairly good!
After this I started with the second part: setting up the speaker cabinet simulation for the second output. I splitted the signal chain after the amp simulations and sent it to a second part-chain of a “Caps” Plugin, a room simulation and another final parametric equalizer.
I tried all of the settings for Caps and finally chose (decision by ear) “Engl”, because this came closest to the sound of the Kemper’s cabinet simulation. Then I sent the MOD Duo’s and the Kemper’s sounds parallel to analyzers to find the settings for the parametric EQ. Despite the use of the analyzers it was still hard to set up the EQ, because the Caps Plugins cabinet simulation causes some gaps in the spectrum. This seems not to be a problem of the chosen “Engl” preset, all of the presets have some of these gaps at different parts of the spectrum. I had to use quite extreme settings to compensate this, but finally reached about 80% of the Kemper’s sound quality for this part.
This is the setup of the pedalboard:
Overall I can say that the MOD Duo definitely is on the right way. The weaknesses seem not to be in the hardware, “just” in the software, but this can be solved for sure.
The biggest limitation of the MOD Duo in this comparision was the poor quality of the cabinet simulation “Caps”. It would be great to have another cabinet simulation with the possibility to upload several own speaker impulse responses and then to switch between these.
If I find some more time the next days I’ll record some audio relating to the comparison and let you know.
