KVR Audio

garrinm · Post by **garrinm** » Wed Oct 21, 2020 8:19 pm

kvraudio32 has noticed the sound quality deteriorating after running the plugin for long periods of time. I'm unable to reproduce this on my system. The good news is that this doesn't affect all systems, and hopefully affects only a minority of users. The bad news is that until I find out more about it, I'm unable to make progress addressing the issue.

So if anyone notices the sound quality deteriorating after extended use, please consider posting either on the GitHub page or in this thread. Please refer to the questions in the GitHub page if posting here.

https://github.com/resonantdsp/SwankyAmp/issues/34

If you do encounter the issue, simply restarting the plugin (disable then enable in the host / DAW) should fix it.

Thanks,
Garrin

guitarzan · Post by **guitarzan** » Wed Oct 21, 2020 8:38 pm

EDIT: Nevermind, my problem might very well be caused by the fact that my guitar needs repair — the output jack is impacted into the body from using a straight plug (damned hollow bodies) and it keeps cutting out, so maybe I was just hearing an intermittently bad connection sounding all trippy through the noisegate, tape delay, and reverb. I'll be sure to post if it happens after I do some guitar repairs.

garrinm · Post by **garrinm** » Wed Oct 21, 2020 9:46 pm

I want to take a moment to share my near-term plans:

In the coming weeks / few months, development of Swanky Amp will be mainly to address bugs when necessary, and maybe make a few simple tweaks if anything obvious shows up in the survey / in this thread.

I'll be switching my main focus to the pro version, but as I make improvements that I can easily port back to Swanky Amp I'll do that. In particular when I get around to looking at the cab section again I'd like to bring a 1x12 and maybe 2x12 model to Swanky Amp.

I'll be building more documentation for the plugin. Expect something like a manual, and hopefully some video(s) explaining how to build your tone with the plugin.

I'd like to keep the blog going. The next post will be all about sag. After that I'm considering starting a more general series about guitar tone from the perspective of the circuit and wave signals.

I'll be active on this thread and will be posting updates here. The main difference going forward is that software updates will be less frequent (than the current pace of an update every 2 days xD), other than to address bugs.

Garrin

kvraudio38 · Post by **kvraudio38** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 7:06 am

It affected an Intel Core 2 Quad. The bug reported the architecture as amd64 like in x86_64.

garrinm · Post by **garrinm** » Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:38 pm

Alright after some digging around by kvraudio38 it seems the bug is intermittent and might be related to particular setups in Linux. For anyone not on Linux I wouldn't expect you to get the issue, but of course if you do please report it here.

I did run the plugin overnight and found no degradation in signal quality.

pough · Post by **pough** » Sat Oct 24, 2020 12:14 am

garrinm wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2020 11:38 am 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.

I'll take it.

garrinm wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2020 11:38 am P.S. let me know if you like this configuration / how you modify it to your taste. Could be a good preset to add.

I don't think I deviated much from your prescription.

v1o · Post by **v1o** » Sat Oct 24, 2020 1:45 pm

I've been checking this out. I'm not a guitarist but I've been running synths and even vocals through it. If you bypass the cabinet section and then go very easy on the power amp, you can warm things up without losing articulation or distorting things beyond recognition. The amp simulation is very alive and dynamic in a way that brings life even to mundane synth patches.

So I was thinking the emulation on this is very good. Maybe you could bring out a version, that's just the preamp section, and that's tuned for warming up synths and other instruments.

garrinm · Post by **garrinm** » Sat Oct 24, 2020 3:04 pm

pough wrote: ↑Sat Oct 24, 2020 12:14 am I don't think I deviated much from your prescription.

Just tried out your preset, I like it. I might add a bit more room to the low cut to exaggerate that brightness even more (optionally, of course). And I think I'll include that preset in the defaults, it'll be nice to show that range of settings.

Thanks,
Garrin

garrinm · Post by **garrinm** » Sat Oct 24, 2020 3:10 pm

v1o wrote: ↑Sat Oct 24, 2020 1:45 pm I've been checking this out. I'm not a guitarist but I've been running synths and even vocals through it. If you bypass the cabinet section and then go very easy on the power amp, you can warm things up without losing articulation or distorting things beyond recognition. The amp simulation is very alive and dynamic in a way that brings life even to mundane synth patches.

So I was thinking the emulation on this is very good. Maybe you could bring out a version, that's just the preamp section, and that's tuned for warming up synths and other instruments.

Hey v1o,

Thanks for dropping a comment. I love hearing about odd use cases like this. I'd definitely thought about whether or not the saturation model would be good as a standalone saturation plugin. In fact the power amp saturation has a lot going on and some nice shaping from modeling the transformer. Really glad to hear you're liking it in your mix.

I also find it can be good for stereo: try doubling a track, hard pan left and right, and then add just a bit more distortion on one channel. If you're near the edge of breakup (most of your signal is clean, but the big transient crunch), then the two channels will crunch at different times and the release will sound different. You can exaggerate this even more by tuning the sag and tight settings. I find it's a really nice stereo effect.

I've got it on the list to allow disabling the pre amp / power amp. Maybe for the next version. Down the line maybe I'll make a standalone saturation plugin, why not. But for now that'll be a bit too much overhead to manage.

Thanks,
Garrin

EDIT: I read that wrong. I thought you were using the power amp alone. The stereo stuff I'm talking about will work best with the power amp saturation. I never really thought about the pre amp as a good way to add saturation, but very cool you're using it that way. I might have to try it out that way too xD.

oneshotdeal · Post by **oneshotdeal** » Sat Oct 24, 2020 3:53 pm

This is fantastic.

Are you planning on building a VST2 version by any chance? Studio One hates VST3 for some reason.

garrinm · Post by **garrinm** » Sat Oct 24, 2020 10:52 pm

oneshotdeal wrote: ↑Sat Oct 24, 2020 3:53 pm This is fantastic.

Are you planning on building a VST2 version by any chance? Studio One hates VST3 for some reason.

Unfortunately Steinberg has deprecated the VST 2 API and they aren't handing out licenses for it anymore to new devs. And the last thing I want to do is get in trouble with Steinberg.

That said, JUCE (the framework used to build this) can build again the VST 2 API. So someone who has the SDK (and has permission to use it) could compile it without too much hassle from the source code (https://github.com/resonantdsp/swankyamp).

Garrin

garrinm · Post by **garrinm** » Mon Oct 26, 2020 5:02 pm

Quick status update:

Swanky Amp's been making the rounds in some publications and on YouTube. It made GearNews.com's Best Free Plug-Ins of the Week list, and got picked up on the YouTube channel of a fellow KVRer, SumnSumnSumn.

https://www.gearnews.com/best-free-plug ... d-monique/
https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2020/1 ... onant-dsp/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ULircegw7E

The website got a quick update and I quoted some of the reviews (thank you!)

https://resonantdsp.com/swankyamp/

A bit later this week I'd like to put out 1.4 which will be a minor update adding more range to the low cut to get more room in the range of those bright AC30 tones. Hopefully there's enough controls to prevent those tones from getting too brittle.

I also want to take the opportunity to say thank you, once again, to everyone who's been participating in the development. It's very rewarding to now see the positive reaction to Swanky Amp. And I'm sure it owes a lot of that success to the reports, requests and generally the support of this community.

Garrin

Spitfire31 · Post by **Spitfire31** » Mon Oct 26, 2020 5:39 pm

Very cool website update!

.jon · Post by **.jon** » Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:19 pm

Chrome on Android: the floating header bar obscures the top part of the content.

kvraudio38 · Post by **kvraudio38** » Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:50 pm

Garrin, have you looked at the low cut in staging that affected the tremolo effect? If so, any guess what the problem might be?

Swanky Amp (release 1.4.0)