Swanky Amp (release 1.4.0)

[garrinm]

Big thanks for the reviews and feedback in the survey! The detail in those reviews really surprised me and I'm very glad I was able to create something that (some) of you really enjoy.

For anyone with a couple of minutes to spare who haven't yet filled out the survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link

Back in action now though - and v1.2 is cooking with gas!
I tweaked my presets a little, and I love the "indicators" on the drive and grit knobs.

I'm glad you like it. Seems version 1.2 is doing a pretty good job. Glad to hear also your presets didn't get too far out of whack.

I have one little feature request though. When loading up a saved project in Reaper, and you open up Swanky Amp - is it possible to show which preset (or a changed version indicated by *) is currently loaded?

I implemented this a while back, but looking over it now I made an incorrect assumption about multi-threading lifetimes . So it works for some hosts but not others. I will try to get a fix for this in 1.3.

Garrin

[jbraner]

I implemented this a while back, but looking over it now I made an incorrect assumption about multi-threading lifetimes . So it works for some hosts but not others. I will try to get a fix for this in 1.3.

Thanks Garrin - it's not a big deal, but "nice to have"

[anthonypage]

Hi Garrin, I just stumbled upon your amp sim and I'm really enjoying exploring it. Reading your blog post it says the roots were from a Tweed Deluxe circuit which happens to be my main amp. I'm always looking to recreate those tones in the box. Any pointers for a starting point on some of the knobs?

I'll be sitting down side by side soon, I'll be sure to share a preset if I get close.

Thank

[guitarzan]

I'm sure Garrin will be along with some pointers, but I think the key to getting tweed-like bahavior where you can go from a chimey "clean" to sagging fuzzy overdrive with the guitar volume knob is to try to pass a hot cleanish signal to the power amp section.

To me the Tweed Deluxe is all about power amp drive and dynamics, so in LEVELS I have INPUT turned up to near H even though I'm using single coils, and PRE AMP DRIVE set moderately (5ish — settings all from memory, sorry), in STAGING stick with one or two STAGES and I think I have the OVERHEAD up over half way. You'll need quite a bit of LOW CUT (seems like I'm up by 7 or so). Headroom with very little compression seems to be the goal in the PRE AMP section for vintage Deluxe tone and dynamics.

Then run POWER AMP DRIVE up fairly high (6-7…) and I think SAG is set 5-6, maybe higher. I set SAG with the volume on the guitar rolled back to my "clean" tone and adjust SAG until I can just hear/feel the sag onset when I dig in. The rest, all of it for that matter, is "set to taste".

To really get what I was looking for out of Swanky Amp I put a "tape" echo type plugin in front — the clean repeats hitting the struggling power amp really brings out the chime and seems to enhance the sag. I'm running above unity out of the echo plugin to boost into Swanky Amp, but that's probably no different than turning up the INPUT LEVEL a bit more for all I know.

It really surprised me with the touch sensitivity and rich harmonics, very natural (but prominent if you want it to be) sag — but the kicker is the almost Fuzz Face-like guitar volume control cleanup. Never thought I'd experience that in a digital sim.

[garrinm]

Hi Garrin, I just stumbled upon your amp sim and I'm really enjoying exploring it. Reading your blog post it says the roots were from a Tweed Deluxe circuit which happens to be my main amp. I'm always looking to recreate those tones in the box. Any pointers for a starting point on some of the knobs?

I'll be sitting down side by side soon, I'll be sure to share a preset if I get close.

Thank

Hi Anthony, glad you're liking it so far. I'll be upfront about this: at this point Swanky Amp might have some Tweed Deluxe at its heart, but it's taken a life of its own. The basic "tube" I use in the amp was derived from a Tweed-like circuit, though even that one had some modifications to help aspects of the simulation.

The good news is then that the compression behaviour, voicing and rough dynamics should resemble that kind of circuit because the fit captured the tube's output given all these factors. The bad news is that the way that tube is combined in staging and with the tone stack means it can't replicate the Tweed anymore. And the controls in the plugin allow you change that tube even further away from what was seen in the simulation.

I think you might get some good results if you don't try to go for a "as close as possible" preset, but instead go for try to get back some of the characteristics you like from the Tweed but also treat Swanky Amp as a different amp altogether.

Be sure to set your input level: lightly strum a chord and try to get the input meter to peak near the S or H mark to get a signal of the same level as a typical single coil or humbucker. You can always increase this to replicate a boost pedal. Or decrease it to get more headroom.

Guitarzan's post I think is a very good approach. In a similar vein, here's what I would do: start with a single gain stage (turn that knob all the way down). You probably want to keep that around there for vintage amps. The pre-amp distortion should come from the first tube, if you're hitting it with a hot pickup and/or a boost. There's also an inverter tube that could add some distortion, and you could try to replicate that with a 2nd gain stage and moving around the overhead. But honestly I don't think you'll get very far doing that, so I'd keep it at 1 stage.

Next turn the power amp drive down, and play with the pre-amp drive until you get a crunch sound like if you played an overdrive through your tweed but kept the volume down. Depending on your setup you might not be getting much distortion from the pre-amp tube of your Tweed, so to replicate this you'd want to keep the pre-amp drive below 5 (assuming you've gain staged correctly).

Then play around with the power drive until you get a sound like what you'd expect from turning up a Tweed. Just looking for a similar amount of distortion, and pay attention to what it sounds like when you're picking softly: is it cleaning up like you want?

I would also recommend playing with the higher end of the "grit" parameter which has dynamics more resembling vintage amps (lower grit values tighten up the time scales and makes things get closer to solid state territory). For a similar reason you could try to decrease the "tight" parameter, but I find that one is best used to tweak the voicing rather than really change the character of the distortion.

Garrin

[garrinm]

Update 1.3.0 is out. The main feature here is even more tone stack variation. If you turn the knob past 5 you'll get into AC30 territory, with a twist: the mids control will affect a broad boost / cut near 1 kHz. This finally offers some real mids control, and its built on top of yet another contribution from Dave Clark.

https://resonantdsp.com/swankyamp/

For anyone with a couple of minutes to spare who haven't yet filled out the survey, you can find it here. Any feedback is appreciated.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link



Beyond that, once I got to fixing the bug reported by jbraner that lead to a slew of small improvements to the way preset saving is handled. If you notice anything wrong please let me know, there could be a minor bug or two left to iron out there.

Your old presets will adjust to the new model with no change to how they sound.

A "tone stack" setting near 0 gives a Fender-like tone stack, near 5 gives a Marshall-like stack, and near 10 gives an AC30-like stack. The AC30 model is provided by Dave Clark and compares very nicely to references. But this being a plug-in, I've added a straight-forward peak eq to control the mids. The result is that with the tone stack knob set around 7-10 you can get tones that have some of that sweetness of the AC30, and then you can adds mids to that for more sustain and punch, or remove them for a deep scoop.

In the end it's just more variety for you to experiment with. You can always keep that no dialed back into familiar territory.

Garrin

[anthonypage]

Thanks for the thorough details! I’ll dig in as soon as I can.

Cheers
Anthony

[pough]

If you turn the knob past 5 you'll get into AC30 territory

Oooh...

[garrinm]

If you turn the knob past 5 you'll get into AC30 territory

Oooh...

That's an AC30 tone stack. You still need to tweak the distortion parameters to get an overall AC30 feel. Here's a good starting point:

• tone stack at 10 (to get the pure AC30 model)

• pre-amp drive around 2

• pre-amp grit around 7

• power-amp drive around 3

• low cut around 9-10 for a really clear sound

• stages at 1 or 2 (I find 2 brighter, but in that case move overhead up to 7)

The cab is a bit of an issue since it's modeling a 4x12. But I found a good sound with the distance down to 0, a bit more brightness (around 7), and turning the dynamic down to around 3 to have the sound darken when you strum hard.

I again want to be clear: it's not an AC30. It's Swanky Amp sounding like a bright vintage amp with overhead room... so like an AC30 xD.

Garrin

P.S. let me know if you like this configuration / how you modify it to your taste. Could be a good preset to add.

[garrinm]

Patch 1.3.1 released: reduces the popping when changing presets, fixes a small issue with hissing when pre amp drive is at 0, and improves the pre amp drive knob range. Your presets should be unaffected (they will adjust to the new pre drive settings). I think the pre amp drive feels much better. The same tones are available as with the previous versions, they are just a bit easier to find on the knob.

I'll stop posting this after this post, but once again for anyone who hasn't filled out the survey yet, you can find it here (it's very quick):

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link

You can also find it on the KVR marketplace where you could drop a review if you were so inclined (of course it doesn't have to be five stars, I'm sure everyone has different experiences with it):

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/swanky ... sonant-dsp

I'll be posting some near term plans sometime today.

Thanks,
Garrin

[kvraudio38]

One more time related bug reported on github that makes the amp not worth using in a production yet. Other than that is it still a very interesting amp simulator.

[jbraner]

I was just about to post, and saw that 1.31 is up.
Testing 1.31

Presets - the preset name loads in Reaper now - thanks!
re: working with presets - I don't know what you're *supposed* to do but:
- editing a preset is simple
- editing a preset to save as a new one - I just type in a number and a new name, then hit save. It asks if i want a new one or a rename - so I pick new. if I got the number wrong, I just look at the list to see where I want it to go, and change the number of my preset - and hit return. Now it is in the correct place.
All very simple and much easier than it seems when typing it out

AC30 tone stack
I made a preset pretty much like you described, and it is a nice clean AC30ish sound
Definitely different than the same settings with the Fender tone stack. I still don't care for the Marshall one - but again, that's just me - nothing wrong with the tone stack!

I dirtied up the AC30ish sound. it seems to like preamp drive (going higher) than power amp drive - to my ears anyway. The power amp drive seems to get a little nasty as soon as it gets over 7 (into the "warning" area. This is not a problem - just me saying what I don't like
Others will love it
I did get a good distorted AC30 tone stack sound with power amp drive at 8 but backed off the preamp drive to 4 and backed off the high and presence quite a bit (they were both nice and high for the jangly clean AC30ish preset).
I'll give you all the presets if you want - but I reckon it's more fun for people to build their own

Question - does a real AC30 have sag when the power amp drive is high? I set sag on 6 for that distorted sound - and it sounds good to my ears - but that doesn't mean much!

I think that's all for now...

[guitarzan]

Question - does a real AC30 have sag when the power amp drive is high? I set sag on 6 for that distorted sound - and it sounds good to my ears - but that doesn't mean much!

I can't rember the details, but an ac30 does sag, sort of… it primarily comes from the way the power tubes are biased rather than from the rectifier — but it still pretty much sounds like sag.

[jbraner]

Question - does a real AC30 have sag when the power amp drive is high? I set sag on 6 for that distorted sound - and it sounds good to my ears - but that doesn't mean much!

I can't rember the details, but an ac30 does sag, but it primarily comes from the way the power tubes are biased rather than from the rectifier — but it still pretty much sounds like sag.

Thanks guitarzan - so we'll just make it up then

[garrinm]

One more time related bug reported on github that makes the amp not worth using in a production yet. Other than that is it still a very interesting amp simulator.

Thanks for reporting!

I just ran a loop for 45 minutes with the same settings and recorded the output of Swanky Amp. I found the signal was entirely consistent in that time. How long before the onset of the issue for you?

If anyone else notices any strange behavior please let me know. This might be hard to track down, maybe it's platform specific.

Thanks,
Garrin

EDIT: I tested in 1.3.1 and the report is from 1.2.0, so that means I didn't correctly match the settings I saw in the screenshot. Before 1.0 (I think) I did an overnight stability test and found no deterioration. So the old stability issues seemed to be resolved. It's possible something new crept up in the tonestack which changed from 1.2 to 1.3, so it might be very hard to get to the bottom of this. I will run a series of stability tests over the next day. I will keep tracking this in github.

EDIT2: I ran the plugin for 2 hours with on and off playing in a different host. Still no issues. This might be CPU specific, host-specific, or something even weirder than that. I will have to monitor this closely and wait for others to encounter the issue since it doesn't seem to affect my system. I will try some more tests nonetheless.