Using profiles on a Kemper, you may at some point feel the meaning of the settings changed.
The response when turning the Gain and EQ knobs moved more "like that amp" than before. This is a change from the addition of the mechanism called Liquid Profiling.
The premise of what a profile records moved a little here. If so, what the recording side should keep needs to be reconsidered along with it.
What did conventional Profiling record?
Kemper's profiling is originally a mechanism that copies "the state of an amp ringing at a certain setting" whole.
Fix the real amp's knobs at a position and the Kemper analyzes the sound of that state. What's made is a profile copying that one-point state.
Important here: what's copied is basically "that one point."
For example, profile an amp with the Gain set highish and that distortion amount is recorded. You can recall that profile on the Kemper and lower the Kemper's Gain knob too.
But in the conventional mechanism, that Kemper-side knob movement didn't necessarily move the same as the real amp's knob. It had the character of being adjusted by the generic Gain/EQ movement the Kemper prepared.
So the profile, accurate as "the copied one point," didn't reproduce the real amp itself in the response when moved from there.
Precisely because of this character, CSL has emphasized making explicit "at which setting it was copied." Since the destination when moved can't be guaranteed, the conditions of the copied one point are exactly the buyer's material for judgment.
What did Liquid Profiling change?
Liquid Profiling is a mechanism that steps into this "response when moving the knobs."
The point is the idea of the Tone Stack. The Tone Stack refers to the amp's EQ circuit — the mechanism where the Bass, Middle, Treble knobs make the sound while influencing each other.
How this Tone Stack works differs by amp. On one amp, lowering the Middle feels like the lows and highs lift together; on another it doesn't. The EQ isn't independent — they interfere with each other.
The conventional Kemper didn't reproduce even this way of interference per profile. With Liquid Profiling, by specifying the amp's Tone Stack type, the EQ knobs came to work "like that amp."
Something similar can be said of Gain. How the distortion increases when moving the knob is handled to approach the real amp's behavior more.
As a result, the profile changed character from "the copied one point" to "a record you can move somewhat like that amp."
Note here: you can't call this "perfect reproduction." Liquid Profiling is a mechanism to approach the real amp's behavior, not to become the real amp itself. That it approached is a fact, but the scope you can declare should be viewed calmly.
Which is exactly why Gain and Tone Stack information matters
With the profile becoming "a movable record," the meaning of recording-time information changes.
Conventionally, if only the copied one point was accurate, that was the product's center. Since the destination when moved was outside the guarantee, conveying "where it was copied" sufficed.
After Liquid Profiling, the response when moving the knobs ties to that amp's Tone Stack type. If so, the information "which Tone Stack does this profile assume" relates directly to reproducibility.
The same for Gain. At which position the real amp's Gain was at recording. That one point becomes the reference point for the Liquid Profiling response. Move it with a vague reference point and you lose track of what you're moving from.
This isn't the simple story of "just write the knob numbers finely." It's that you need to keep, in a form the buyer can read, which amp's, what kind of EQ behavior that profile assumes.
In addition to the copied one point's conditions, "how it's built to be moved" from that point. The scope to record widened from one point to one point and its surroundings.
How CSL displays the conditions
What CSL has made explicit at recording is Gain, Cab, Mic Position, and input conditions. This is based on the idea that a profile can't be chosen by amp name alone.
After Liquid Profiling, the axis of this policy doesn't change. But there's now meaning in adding the Tone Stack premise to the displayed conditions.
Concretely, which direction of amp that profile copied, where the recording Gain was, at which position the EQ was copied. These are treated as reference points more than before.
CSL handles putting out real amp names on product pages carefully. The policy of using directional expressions like "British-style," "American-style" doesn't change here either.
Rather, since it doesn't rely on the amp name, the condition explanation — how the Tone Stack works, the Gain reference point — needs to be more careful. Liquid Profiling, I see, increased the scenes where that condition explanation works.
The idea of caveats is the same. Just because the movable range widened with Liquid Profiling, we don't write "it becomes any sound." It's a record you can move like that amp, from a certain point. The posture of writing the guaranteed scope and the non-guaranteed scope separately doesn't change.
The meaning of recording at CSL
Liquid Profiling changed the profile's character. It approached, from a copy of a fixed one point, an adjustable record with an origin.
Still, what CSL wants to keep hasn't changed. Not the one absolute correct sound, but the record of a unit tidied and actually ringing at that moment.
What changed is that this "one unit's record" became more movable than before. Precisely because it became movable, the meaning of accurately keeping the origin conditions increased.
Where it was copied. Which Tone Stack it moves on. At which input conditions it was recorded. These are like a map for "moving" the profile.
Without a map, even a movable record loses track of where it's moving from. That CSL keeps making conditions explicit is to hand that map to the buyer.
In short
Liquid Profiling is a mechanism that brings the Kemper profile's "response when moving the knobs" closer.
By assuming the Tone Stack type, the EQ and Gain came to work more like the copied amp. The profile changed character from a fixed one point to an adjustable record with an origin.
But this isn't perfect reproduction. The fact that it approached needs to be handled calmly.
Which is exactly why the meaning of keeping the recording Gain and Tone Stack premise as reference points increased. That CSL keeps making conditions explicit is to keep, in a form the buyer can read, where that record can be moved from.