Swanky Amp Pro released (1.3.0)

[garrinm]

I just got this new plugin and loaded it in Reaper. It looks great on a 4k laptop screen with 250% Windows scaling already out of the box, and the GUI size can be adjusted even further. One little bug I noticed is that the preset selection list doesn't actually scale, so I need a microscope to choose a preset. Is this a Reaper or a plugin problem?

Thanks for the feedback. I'll have to look into the preset menu scaling, hopefully it's not a difficult fix but these kinds of things have a way blow up in complexity sometimes.

[garrinm]

Version 0.5.1 is finally out and brings with it 4 new pedals: a fuzz (based loosely on the Rat fuzz), a chorus effect (based loosely on the CE-2), a compressor and a boost pedal with frequency control.

https://www.resonantdsp.com/swankyamppr ... l#download

The previous pedal models have also been revisited and sound quite different. The green over drive should sound a lot more like what is expected from a tube screamer soft clipping circuit, and the orange distortion sound much closer to a DS1 hard clipping circuit.

Keep in mind that the pedals aren't carbon copies of their real world counter parts. They are more like mods of those pedals, with some differences in the voicing of the circuits and what would amount to slightly different op amp components. However they should sound familiar and capture the character of the real world counter parts.

The chorus effect in particular, while based on the CE-2 effect, underwent quite some manual tuning to get it to sound good.

Garrin

[prodigal_sounds]

I like the chorus. And the AMP sounds great as usual.

I am having trouble with the CAB Bypass. It is unclear whether the lighted switch means "CAB engaged" or "CAB disabled" and the help text isn't, um, helping. I think the polarity of ON/OFF should be unambigious. I'd rather the LIGHTED switch mean that the CAB is ENGAGED and when it is dark, the CAB Emulation is Off/Disabled. Just like the pedals.

[garrinm]

I like the chorus. And the AMP sounds great as usual.

I am having trouble with the CAB Bypass. It is unclear whether the lighted switch means "CAB engaged" or "CAB disabled" and the help text isn't, um, helping. I think the polarity of ON/OFF should be unambigious. I'd rather the LIGHTED switch mean that the CAB is ENGAGED and when it is dark, the CAB Emulation is Off/Disabled. Just like the pedals.

That's a good point. Unless I'm really overlooking something it should be fine to implement that in the next patch.

Thanks for the feedback!

Garrin

[jbraner]

OK - I ran through the pedals and here are some thoughts:
- The TS is really good (as mentioned in my email) - just like a "real" one.
- The Rat is great now - you gave it some bottom end (ie balls) and I think it sounds really good now.
- The chorus is *perfect* in default settings. I would just super glue these settings where they are and never touch them It doesn't go in to the "way out" chorus territory - but who cares?
- I like the (orange) DS-1 a lot too.
- Boost is nice. It sounds good on it's own, and sounds nice going in to the TS too. I'm not really sure what I'm doing with the "freq" knob - so I just leave it in the middle
- the comp is a pedal comp. I can hear it doing something when I turn down the threshold - but if I ever want a compressor, I've got a lot of other compressor plugins to use, like I'm sure most of us do

I checked the automation parameters and they are really comprehensive! So we can automate the stomps coming on and off and all the settings too - nice!

What do you think about some sort of "FX presets" so we could copy our pedal settings from one (normal) preset to another? Is that easy enough to do? Even some kind of RH click copy/paste would be easier than dialing them all in from one preset to the next. (it would probably be best to copy the whole pedal page rather than individual pedals)
Of course - we could always fill up our "pedalboard" on the first preset and then create variation presets from there - so it's not super important.



=================== off topic ==============
I ran all these tests with a "normal" guitar input - but I have to add - when I enable my tube preamp (before Swanky) this amp sounds absolutely stellar! Even the FX sound great - so they don't mind being hit with a signal that's already been through a preamp.

This amp must be getting ready for prime time now - it is sounding really good!

[garrinm]

What do you think about some sort of "FX presets" so we could copy our pedal settings from one (normal) preset to another? Is that easy enough to do? Even some kind of RH click copy/paste would be easier than dialing them all in from one preset to the next. (it would probably be best to copy the whole pedal page rather than individual pedals)
Of course - we could always fill up our "pedalboard" on the first preset and then create variation presets from there - so it's not super important.

Interesting idea. It's certainly possible, the major bottleneck here would actually be finding a good way to express this in the UI. It probably won't be my top priority in the coming weeks, but I do want to add more pedals as time goes on so I could see this being a natural extension of that work.

I could imagine either:

1) there is an import / export button on the pedal page. You just save and load XML files as with the presets.
2) when you load a preset, you have the option to load just the pedal section.

Any thoughts?

Garrin

[garrinm]

I want to give a quick update regarding next steps. Right now I consider the plugin nearly feature complete. From the originally slated content to be added during beta, the only outstanding feature is cabinet customizations.

Here are the next steps (barring any major issues arising from this patch):

1) On Monday next week (or thereabouts, but probably actually *on* Monday for once) there will be a patch which will add 4 more pedal slots so that you can use 8 at once and paginate between them. I will increase the price to $45 to reflect the fact that the plugin has reached a quite usable level of stability.

2) On Monday the following week (or thereabouts) there will be an update which will bring about more cab customization. In particular the sliders should allow for smooth changing of parameters and there should be an open back cabinet option made available. The price will again increase for that update to $55.

3) Depending on any fixes that need to be made, I expect the full release the following week. Some time after release the price will be increased to $75.

Please keep the feedback coming. I will definitely be addressing any issues that come up (I'm currently investigating the scaling issue with the preset menu on scaled up displays). And I don't plan on abruptly ending development after release so requests can still find their way into the product if they make sense to implement.

Thanks,
Garrin

[jbraner]

2) when you load a preset, you have the option to load just the pedal section.

That would work. So, you load "just the pedals" and it loads into the current settings?

That would work, because you could save a preset of "pedalboard". it would have all the other settings but it doesn't matter. then you could even have "pedalboard-1", "pedalboard-2" etc - and even save them in a pedalboard folder

1) there is an import / export button on the pedal page. You just save and load XML files as with the presets.

Actually, this would work too - you just "export" your pedalboard to a xml file - either with the rest of your presets or in a pedalboard folder.


Yeah - either one of them would work
it just means that if you have your amps set up - and then come up with some good pedal configurations - you can easily add them to other amp setups...

[jbraner]

I want to give a quick update regarding next steps. Right now I consider the plugin nearly feature complete. From the originally slated content to be added during beta, the only outstanding feature is cabinet customizations.

Here are the next steps (barring any major issues arising from this patch):

1) On Monday next week (or thereabouts, but probably actually *on* Monday for once) there will be a patch which will add 4 more pedal slots so that you can use 8 at once and paginate between them. I will increase the price to $45 to reflect the fact that the plugin has reached a quite usable level of stability.

2) On Monday the following week (or thereabouts) there will be an update which will bring about more cab customization. In particular the sliders should allow for smooth changing of parameters and there should be an open back cabinet option made available. The price will again increase for that update to $55.

3) Depending on any fixes that need to be made, I expect the full release the following week. Some time after release the price will be increased to $75.

Please keep the feedback coming. I will definitely be addressing any issues that come up (I'm currently investigating the scaling issue with the preset menu on scaled up displays). And I don't plan on abruptly ending development after release so requests can still find their way into the product if they make sense to implement.

Thanks,
Garrin

Sounds like a good plan!!

[goaud27]

Since the plugin has a modular structure, is it possible to engage or disengage various parts of the chain separately: pedals, pre-amp, power amp, cab (by clicking on their name)? Currently, it is only possible to disengage the cab. Would be interesting to try the cab alone with other amp sims (e.g. for heavy tones).
And a small thing, shouldn't the order be Pedals-Amp-Cab, instead of the current Amp-Pedals-Cab?

[prodigal_sounds]

I agree with everything @jbraner said. The compressor definitely compressed, but I could only tell when I turned the threshold down, and at first blush that was just "turning the volume down".
I don't know if it is practical to automatically increase the output level as the threshold goes down - if you're emulating a known behavior of a guitar pedal, then "as you were".

I had no idea about the automatable parameters. How cool!

[pough]

And a small thing, shouldn't the order be Pedals-Amp-Cab, instead of the current Amp-Pedals-Cab?

The pedals come before the preamp but it looks like they come after the gate and input controls on the amp section. I think either way it's done would result in a bit of confusion, but the amp is the primary section. You can think of the pedals as a pre-preamp FX loop. That's how I see it, anyway.

[garrinm]

Seems 0.5.1 is going well, I hope everyone's getting some good tones out of it.

Thanks for all the feedback, here's a few quick answers:

I agree with everything @jbraner said. The compressor definitely compressed, but I could only tell when I turned the threshold down, and at first blush that was just "turning the volume down".
I don't know if it is practical to automatically increase the output level as the threshold goes down - if you're emulating a known behavior of a guitar pedal, then "as you were".

I tried to keep the compressor as simple as possible and loosely based off of compressor pedal circuits. I kind of like the sound of this one when you turn the mix down a bit. Gain compensation isn't trivial unfortunately since it depends on how loud is the guitar (e.g. if you switch from a single coil to a humbucker pickup you'll all of a sudden get a lot more compression). Anyway I'll have a look at the parameters and some other pedals for inspiration in case something stands out as a particularly good idea to implement.

Since the plugin has a modular structure, is it possible to engage or disengage various parts of the chain separately: pedals, pre-amp, power amp, cab (by clicking on their name)? Currently, it is only possible to disengage the cab. Would be interesting to try the cab alone with other amp sims (e.g. for heavy tones).

This is definitely possible. I would be inclined to actually create separate plugins for the various components. And anyone who has a license key for the full pro version can grab those plugins too for free. I'm not promising anything just yet but that's what I'm looking into. At the very least I could add some more toggle buttons.

And a small thing, shouldn't the order be Pedals-Amp-Cab, instead of the current Amp-Pedals-Cab?

The pedals come before the preamp but it looks like they come after the gate and input controls on the amp section. I think either way it's done would result in a bit of confusion, but the amp is the primary section. You can think of the pedals as a pre-preamp FX loop. That's how I see it, anyway.

As Pough points out, the pedals do come before the pre-amp in the signal chain. The arrows in the main page try to show this, but I do realize the tab order is different. This is so that your main focus is on the amp as this is usually the first thing you want to configure.

It is good to note though (thanks Pough again) that the noise gate and input levels come at the start of the signal chain. I consider those "plugin-level". The input level comes at the very start of the signal chain as it is used to normalize your guitar signal level (since this can vary wildly from one user / setup to another depending on the audio interface pre level). Then the noise gate comes right after and gates the entire plugin. Then after that you have a standard guitar chain: pedals -> pre amp -> tone stack -> power amp -> cab.

Thanks,
Garrin

[jbraner]

I tried to keep the compressor as simple as possible and loosely based off of compressor pedal circuits. I kind of like the sound of this one when you turn the mix down a bit. Gain compensation isn't trivial unfortunately since it depends on how loud is the guitar (e.g. if you switch from a single coil to a humbucker pickup you'll all of a sudden get a lot more compression). Anyway I'll have a look at the parameters and some other pedals for inspiration in case something stands out as a particularly good idea to implement.

I wouldn't knock myself out over the compresser pedal - you really only want a *basic* compressor in a pedal

[prodigal_sounds]

I wouldn't knock myself out over the compresser pedal - you really only want a *basic* compressor in a pedal

agreed