Neural Amp Modeler NAM amp capture/profile player FREE *December 14, 2023 update 0.7.7

[ThomasHelzle]

Yeah, same here. I was trying out sims for many many years and always found them a bit meh for what they cost.
Now I can just uninstall the ones I have (not many).
I'll probably keep Swanky Amp, that was the only other one I found really good at some settings.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I can see absolutely NO reason to ever buy an ampsim again, judged by the situation today. NAM is THAT good, it's free, it's open source, and it will only get better. And fast! Algo ampsims will disapear, and in the commercial ampsim market we will see a complete change.
What will come? Don't know. But NAM is a gamechanger. In the true meaning of that word... And most of all because it's free, open source.
Two weeks ago, I was frustrated. It was so hard to get ITB guitar tones right. Especially VOX and tweed tones.
Now?
Solved! By NAM and the folks that use it.

I think the game changer is TONEX. Same concept and core technology, but has the benefits of a better GUI, browser, standalone application, idiot proof capture process built-in, and a massive user library already that's searchable. Oh, and a hardware pedal already!

NAM is the, "oh, it's really cool that someone else is doing this for free" alternative. But it's got nowhere near the finished product feel that TONEX does. But that's cool too. Not bashing NAM. Glad it's out there. I have no doubt it will get better and better.

But I do agree that the profiling tech basically kills modeling for me.

[bagpipe200]

Just downloaded NAM and tried it for the first time. It's really good. I'm always looking for something which sounds good with a light crunch guitar tone, and I found something good almost immediately. I think it'll take a while to totally delve into as some of the guitar preset names are pretty cryptic. But it's off to a great start

[Raksha]

I can see absolutely NO reason to ever buy an ampsim again, judged by the situation today. NAM is THAT good, it's free, it's open source, and it will only get better. And fast! Algo ampsims will disapear, and in the commercial ampsim market we will see a complete change.
What will come? Don't know. But NAM is a gamechanger. In the true meaning of that word... And most of all because it's free, open source.
Two weeks ago, I was frustrated. It was so hard to get ITB guitar tones right. Especially VOX and tweed tones.
Now?
Solved! By NAM and the folks that use it.

I think the game changer is TONEX. Same concept and core technology, but has the benefits of a better GUI, browser, standalone application, idiot proof capture process built-in, and a massive user library already that's searchable. Oh, and a hardware pedal already!

NAM is the, "oh, it's really cool that someone else is doing this for free" alternative. But it's got nowhere near the finished product feel that TONEX does. But that's cool too. Not bashing NAM. Glad it's out there. I have no doubt it will get better and better.

But I do agree that the profiling tech basically kills modeling for me.

I don't care about interface, gui, and all the non-musical stuff. NAM is great now, will be a lot better. Every software developer MUST relate to NAM. NAM will have the whole www on it's side, so commercial developers needs to be very cleaver to earn anything from guitar amp software from now on. That's why NAM is the real gamechanger!

[AdminNAMcom]

This has been mentioned in the thread before, but NeuralAmpModeler.com is now live.

https://neuralampmodeler.com/

This contains a built in librarian web app called ToneHive for upload and download, ratings of tones and discussion. I am developing a protocol to allow for direct communication between the app and the library which will allow for ToneX like patch switching.

[ThomasHelzle]

Cool, I'll keep an eye on that website!

BTW:
Did anybody capture any markbass amps yet?
I haven't seen any so far in the downloads, but it may be the names - I am not fluent with amp model names at all...
That is one major problem ATM IMO for people who aren't deep into amps.

Cheers,

Tom

[carayo]

This has been mentioned in the thread before, but NeuralAmpModeler.com is now live.

https://neuralampmodeler.com/

This contains a built in librarian web app called ToneHive for upload and download, ratings of tones and discussion. I am developing a protocol to allow for direct communication between the app and the library which will allow for ToneX like patch switching.

Just discovered NAM, mind blown . The fact that is open source is just amazing.
One thing I disliked about ToneX is that you’re paying for user-submitted models. No problem in paying for software or paid models, but if a user submits a model for free, you shouldn’t charge for it.
As a newcomer my biggest issue is that I don’t find it easy to tell which models have speakers/cones included and which don’t. Personally I’d prefer just all-in-one tones that capture the whole amp, including cabinet and speakers. Seems to me like the “standard” intended use is with an additional cab speaker IR.
Maybe for model files it could be useful to have a mandatory field/value that specifies what the model actually includes, specifically cab/cabless. As it is, you usually can’t tell just by the file name.

[zerocrossing]

This has been mentioned in the thread before, but NeuralAmpModeler.com is now live.

https://neuralampmodeler.com/

This contains a built in librarian web app called ToneHive for upload and download, ratings of tones and discussion. I am developing a protocol to allow for direct communication between the app and the library which will allow for ToneX like patch switching.

Just discovered NAM, mind blown . The fact that is open source is just amazing.
One thing I disliked about ToneX is that you’re paying for user-submitted models. No problem in paying for software or paid models, but if a user submits a model for free, you shouldn’t charge for it.
As a newcomer my biggest issue is that I don’t find it easy to tell which models have speakers/cones included and which don’t. Personally I’d prefer just all-in-one tones that capture the whole amp, including cabinet and speakers. Seems to me like the “standard” intended use is with an additional cab speaker IR.
Maybe for model files it could be useful to have a mandatory field/value that specifies what the model actually includes, specifically cab/cabless. As it is, you usually can’t tell just by the file name.

Yesterday I spent hours looking for .nam files and auditioning them, including finding cabinet IRs that worked well with them. Many were overall duds, like a 65 Deluxe Reverb that had a weird distortion thing going on… as if someone had split the signal and sent half of it to a fuzz box and mixed in 20% of it. If I’d been working, I’d have easily made the $150 to pay for Tonex.

I’ve not tried Tonex on its own, but I did try it in Amplitube 5 and it was fairly clear what captures included cab IRs. What wasn’t clear was how to get to that list, after choosing Tonex as a type. From a UX perspective, it’s pretty horrible. They seem to be optimizing things for you to buy more software, not use the software that you’ve already purchased. Though to be fair, Tonex is free to me at this point, as I didn’t buy it.I do own a bunch of other models for Amplitube. Tonex models should just show up like every other amp choice, but maybe with a little badge on the icon that lets you know what it is. If it is a complete capture, it should automatically disable the cabinet.

But you’re right in pointing out that for a paid plugin, there should be some tagging system that automatically prompts you for an IR for models that don’t have one. At least for their captures. Or maybe just choose a default and put a question mark on the IR slot to let you know that there was no captured cab and it’s just taking a guess.

I think the plugin is really just a way for people who own the hardware to have an extra option. It doesn’t particularly seem like a well thought out piece of software. I’m not sure why anyone would use it if they’re not doing a capture.

NAM is great though, and if you want to capture your own gear or have time to wade though what’s been posted, you can get the same, or maybe better, quality captures. It’s bare bones, though. For how small the UI is, it would be nice if it looked more like a preset browser, where you could more easily see your captures and IRs. The noise gate is a bit crappy, if you’re used to one that’s good. It seems to be very picky about what IR you load into it, so I gave up and just used the free NadIR, which is great.

One thing that you totally miss out on when you use something like NAM or Tonex, when you’re using separate IRs you do not model anything that represents how a tube amp reacts to a load, unless you used a reactive load during the capture. I definitely heard this a lot when sifting though .nam files. It might seem trivial, but a tube amp output stage is directly influenced by how the load of a speaker changes based on what it’s doing. Think of it as an active EQ. That’s where the “warm” phrase started out, as a tube amp will roll off high frequencies at louder volumes, where a transistor amp doesn’t behave differently based on the load, thus sounding “colder.” (Of course, this can be approximated in various ways… but that’s another story.) When I use my AxeFX, which also uses IRs for the cabinet section, you see in the cabinet block that there are controls for how it mimics the tube amp stage. It makes a huge difference if you’re trying to get that tube amp sound, though I’ve also loved pure transistor amps. My old Ampeg stereo chorus amp from the 90s had such a great metal sound, and the cleans were glorious. I miss that thing, but I’m so awash in great amp models that I’m sure it’s mostly just me missing those days.

[melvee]

Hello everyone
Just a couple of important points from someone who spent their life recording guitars
This is a very promising software as far as my personal shootouts went

First of all - its extremely important to educate the profile creators that an accurate load is a must for getting the adequate Impedance Curve (IC).
Basically its an EQ curve that poweramp is applying to the output reactively - i.e based on the fact what kind of load (speaker, cabinet construction or a loadbox) its followed by. Its the same parameters as Depth(Resonance) and Presence found on many amps.
The best option is of course using a simple DI box between the amp/cabinet, that would lead to the most accurate results since the load would be natural and corresponding to a given amp/combo. Of course this solution is not silent in any way, thats where loadboxes come into play.

I can't stress enough that a correct IC relies on the loadbox accuracy - out of many units we've measured only AMT PE-120 and St Rock react IR were spot on and sounding exactly like the cab load, the close second is Suhr Reactive Load (but its a bit more brittle than the speaker its aiming to emulate - easily fixed by a corrective matching IR though)
the rest of the units were not ideal - even the popular ones like tordpedo and the rest, simply because they have a simplified IC and thus should be avoided
you can find a few images of ICs here for better understanding https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/ ... on.169430/
Also the tweakability of the loadbox is important. For example you're capturing an open back cabinet, the low resonance is going to shift to 50-75hz, instead of 100-100hz of a closed one based solely on the physical construction(yes the poweramp reacts to the way those speakers move reactively!). AMT has that switch, Fractal LB-2 also has that switch, albeit it has a fixed depth parameter which is again not ideal

Secondly - a hard disagree on the notion that the profiles should include cabinets - its what rendered most of the profilers useless for professionals in the past since getting a good sounding direct amp capture is far easier for anyone than getting a good sounding speaker/cab/mic setup and skills to get a useable sound out of it.
there's plenty of great sounding IRs out there and they are practically nothing more than a post eq filter, so its very handy to change the cab IR afterwards to sit the profile into the mix. comparing the amps through one familiar IR is also a far more easy and efficient workflow. Direct amp profiles is way to go and thats what I love about NAM, it seems the devs have that understanding

Thirdly, in our measurements we've found a couple of things that might be improved soundwise, also the fuzz pedals and parallel distortion amps/pedals are not coming out exactly right at the moment. If there's a chance to aid in the development, we'd be happy to contact the team and hand over our findings

Cheers

[melvee]

A couple of blind shootouts against the real amps if anyones interested. impressive stuff
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/52zqti4x9h3b ... 8L7ha?dl=0

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Hello everyone
Just a couple of important points from someone who spent their life recording guitars
This is a very promising software as far as my personal shootouts went

First of all - its extremely important to educate the profile creators that an accurate load is a must for getting the adequate Impedance Curve (IC).
Basically its an EQ curve that poweramp is applying to the output reactively - i.e based on the fact what kind of load (speaker, cabinet construction or a loadbox) its followed by. Its the same parameters as Depth(Resonance) and Presence found on many amps.
The best option is of course using a simple DI box between the amp/cabinet, that would lead to the most accurate results since the load would be natural and corresponding to a given amp/combo. Of course this solution is not silent in any way, thats where loadboxes come into play.

I can't stress enough that a correct IC relies on the loadbox accuracy - out of many units we've measured only AMT PE-120 and St Rock react IR were spot on and sounding exactly like the cab load, the close second is Suhr Reactive Load (but its a bit more brittle than the speaker its aiming to emulate - easily fixed by a corrective matching IR though)
the rest of the units were not ideal - even the popular ones like tordpedo and the rest, simply because they have a simplified IC and thus should be avoided
you can find a few images of ICs here for better understanding https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/ ... on.169430/
Also the tweakability of the loadbox is important. For example you're capturing an open back cabinet, the low resonance is going to shift to 50-75hz, instead of 100-100hz of a closed one based solely on the physical construction(yes the poweramp reacts to the way those speakers move reactively!). AMT has that switch, Fractal LB-2 also has that switch, albeit it has a fixed depth parameter which is again not ideal

Secondly - a hard disagree on the notion that the profiles should include cabinets - its what rendered most of the profilers useless for professionals in the past since getting a good sounding direct amp capture is far easier for anyone than getting a good sounding speaker/cab/mic setup and skills to get a useable sound out of it.
there's plenty of great sounding IRs out there and they are practically nothing more than a post eq filter, so its very handy to change the cab IR afterwards to sit the profile into the mix. comparing the amps through one familiar IR is also a far more easy and efficient workflow. Direct amp profiles is way to go and thats what I love about NAM, it seems the devs have that understanding

Thirdly, in our measurements we've found a couple of things that might be improved soundwise, also the fuzz pedals and parallel distortion amps/pedals are not coming out exactly right at the moment. If there's a chance to aid in the development, we'd be happy to contact the team and hand over our findings

Cheers

I personally disagree on the 'no cabs is better' thing. Why? In large part for reasons you so clearly articulate. Allow me to explain:

1. It's not a straightforward or foolproof process to create an Amp Only capture. As you point out, it varies very wildly based on which reactive load box you have and it's capabilities. I've done some experimenting with that here using a Tone King Iron Man Mini, and the DI out from that is very woofy sounding and doesn't pair well with cabs without some major EQ pre-cabinet to compensate. Note: as an attenuator, it works great, but not so much when it comes to adding a DI out to amps that don't have one. So how many folks are going to have the hardware to even do a good amp only capture? But...everyone's got microphones! Plus, I'm just a "combo" guy. I want the sound of the amp+speaker, not the amp plus some speaker cabinet that may or may not be appropriate.

2. Then, assuming you create a great amp only capture, it's still just a hassle finding IR's that work. I've got a nice collection of IR's from Ownhammer, Worship Tutorials, and York Audio (plus more from others) and the IR's don't always pair well. Then with things like Ownhammer, you get stuck into "which of these 3,000 IRs on the one cabinet will sound best". Ultimately, I just end up EQ'ing anyway. For those reasons, the IR workflow just takes all the joy out of what I'm looking to accomplish. I don't begrudge others who prefer it though.

3. When it comes to capturing amps, you only really get into trouble with guitar mic'd captures when using multi-mic setups and they're out of phase. Single microphones will work just fine from a phase perspective. Sure, a single SM57 sounds flat with a weird mid, but lots of great guitar tones were done with a single SM57. I frigging love what you get from a single M160 plus a teensy bit of EQ. No phase issues there. And hey, I'm not paying for anything, I'll keep the good and discard the not so good. I've gotten a lot better at mic'ing guitar cabs in the last few months, I'll tell you that much. And hey, that's a good thing that ultimately benefits me and anyone that uses my TONEX captures. I think everyone should look into how to carefully improve phase response with multi-mic cabs. I'm always looking to improve my engineering skills. I feel like making captures for TONEX has helped wildly.

4. Most importantly, the amp+cab captures sound better when done well.

Just my two cents. I'm glad that there are folks out there doing things both ways.

[metalifuxx]

This has been mentioned in the thread before, but NeuralAmpModeler.com is now live.

https://neuralampmodeler.com/

This contains a built in librarian web app called ToneHive for upload and download, ratings of tones and discussion. I am developing a protocol to allow for direct communication between the app and the library which will allow for ToneX like patch switching.

Just discovered NAM, mind blown . The fact that is open source is just amazing.
One thing I disliked about ToneX is that you’re paying for user-submitted models. No problem in paying for software or paid models, but if a user submits a model for free, you shouldn’t charge for it.
As a newcomer my biggest issue is that I don’t find it easy to tell which models have speakers/cones included and which don’t. Personally I’d prefer just all-in-one tones that capture the whole amp, including cabinet and speakers. Seems to me like the “standard” intended use is with an additional cab speaker IR.
Maybe for model files it could be useful to have a mandatory field/value that specifies what the model actually includes, specifically cab/cabless. As it is, you usually can’t tell just by the file name.

Yesterday I spent hours looking for .nam files and auditioning them, including finding cabinet IRs that worked well with them. Many were overall duds, like a 65 Deluxe Reverb that had a weird distortion thing going on… as if someone had split the signal and sent half of it to a fuzz box and mixed in 20% of it. If I’d been working, I’d have easily made the $150 to pay for Tonex.

I’ve not tried Tonex on its own, but I did try it in Amplitube 5 and it was fairly clear what captures included cab IRs. What wasn’t clear was how to get to that list, after choosing Tonex as a type. From a UX perspective, it’s pretty horrible. They seem to be optimizing things for you to buy more software, not use the software that you’ve already purchased. Though to be fair, Tonex is free to me at this point, as I didn’t buy it.I do own a bunch of other models for Amplitube. Tonex models should just show up like every other amp choice, but maybe with a little badge on the icon that lets you know what it is. If it is a complete capture, it should automatically disable the cabinet.

But you’re right in pointing out that for a paid plugin, there should be some tagging system that automatically prompts you for an IR for models that don’t have one. At least for their captures. Or maybe just choose a default and put a question mark on the IR slot to let you know that there was no captured cab and it’s just taking a guess.

I think the plugin is really just a way for people who own the hardware to have an extra option. It doesn’t particularly seem like a well thought out piece of software. I’m not sure why anyone would use it if they’re not doing a capture.

NAM is great though, and if you want to capture your own gear or have time to wade though what’s been posted, you can get the same, or maybe better, quality captures. It’s bare bones, though. For how small the UI is, it would be nice if it looked more like a preset browser, where you could more easily see your captures and IRs. The noise gate is a bit crappy, if you’re used to one that’s good. It seems to be very picky about what IR you load into it, so I gave up and just used the free NadIR, which is great.

One thing that you totally miss out on when you use something like NAM or Tonex, when you’re using separate IRs you do not model anything that represents how a tube amp reacts to a load, unless you used a reactive load during the capture. I definitely heard this a lot when sifting though .nam files. It might seem trivial, but a tube amp output stage is directly influenced by how the load of a speaker changes based on what it’s doing. Think of it as an active EQ. That’s where the “warm” phrase started out, as a tube amp will roll off high frequencies at louder volumes, where a transistor amp doesn’t behave differently based on the load, thus sounding “colder.” (Of course, this can be approximated in various ways… but that’s another story.) When I use my AxeFX, which also uses IRs for the cabinet section, you see in the cabinet block that there are controls for how it mimics the tube amp stage. It makes a huge difference if you’re trying to get that tube amp sound, though I’ve also loved pure transistor amps. My old Ampeg stereo chorus amp from the 90s had such a great metal sound, and the cleans were glorious. I miss that thing, but I’m so awash in great amp models that I’m sure it’s mostly just me missing those days.

Have you joined the NAM Facebook group and had a poke around and reading how people are capturing? Your ears or brain must be missing something if you don’t think people aren’t doing the same capture process as what Tonex is doing. Many and most people are using loadboxes after the power amp output between the speaker and a lot of people post pics or vids of the process. Yes, not everyone uses the same loadbox, which will result in different speaker impedances. Some “dishonest” people are probably capturing plugins and not noting that it is a plugin as well, just like in the Tonex database. But for the most part the majority people making the high quality captures are using a quality loadb, and most people will include the ESR deviation calculation and amount of epochs for the training output, as well as the graph. Tonex has a set maximum epoch quality resolution at around 288…most NAM user modeling higher gain harmonic rich amp signals are using between 500-1000 epochs. There are some modeling rack preamps now and synergy modules, alone and with a power amp in the same pack. There have been people capturing power amps now too, which can be used in conjunction with preamp models or seperate ampsim plugins that dont have a power amp section. Lots of pedals now too. There quite wealth of audio tech geek talk and discussions, as well as new users asking about the best loadbox to buy and differences between different loadboxes. Also the amount of people posting quality profiles strictly to the Facebook group is growing so fast every day, its very hard to keep up now. Most people are not using those repository download sites i mentioned yet, you really need to be apart and sift through the group on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. It went from about 200 members a month ago to now over 2,500+, and seems to grow by at least 100 new members a day now with new people wanting to capture and share thier real amps. It’s amazing how fast this group grew.

As far as full rigs, amp and cab, there are some, but they determined the ESR quality is way lower when done in combination with a mic. I don’t know whether IK does it this way or an IR is added and baked into the whole preset, but the general capture process is the same…don’t let Tonex fool ya. At the end of the day, its apples and oranges. Some things NAM does better, and there are a few things that Tonex may do better. You still cant beat free and high quality with NAM though.

[melvee]

I see where you're coming from but to me modular approach always works best.
the kemper, th-u, tonex - all suffer from having 1000s of profiles and 95% sound equally unusable even if the amps itself sound fine - the eq curve is out of whack and its always a shame. The direct approach solves all that and if the loadbox used was up to the task - its really foolproof as most amps sound just great at noon.
I've got a cab IR selection that works great, its like having your little cab-mic setup - you know your cabs very well and youve got them at your fingertips to mix and match. I know where the good ones are in my library and it works like a charm every time
and yh that iron man is not a proper loadbox for the same reasons stated above. most attentuators serve a single function and not good in a recording situation, I've had that famous "ultimate" attentuator and measured it for fun - the resulting curve was atrocious. completely messed up the amp sound.
btw you can measure your IC curve by reamping/recording something with the amp direct and the preamp output hooked up. basically the difference of those signals is the impedance curve - the imprint of your poweramp based on how its loaded

just as an illustration - here's my amp loaded with 3 cabs with different speakers, all look roughly the same:

[jamcat]

TONEX captures can be done with or without cabs, and you specify the signal chain during the Tone Model creation process. The TONEX algorithm is somehow able to separate the amp and cab, and you can replace only the amp or cab component with one from a different Tone Model*, if you wish.

Whether or not there is a dynamic element to the isolated cab component of TONEX Tone Models is unclear, but I don't know why anyone would opt to use a static, linear IR for a cab over a dynamic ML model of one, since speakers are moving things with their own dynamic response curves and saturation thresholds. If anything, what I would do is capture both the amp and cab independently with NAM, and use 2 instances, rather than use ML and IR together.

* TONEX only. Not currently supported in AmpliTube 5.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I see where you're coming from but to me modular approach always works best.
the kemper, th-u, tonex - all suffer from having 1000s of profiles and 95% sound equally unusable even if the amps itself sound fine - the eq curve is out of whack and its always a shame. The direct approach solves all that and if the loadbox used was up to the task - its really foolproof as most amps sound just great at noon.
I've got a cab IR selection that works great, its like having your little cab-mic setup - you know your cabs very well and youve got them at your fingertips to mix and match. I know where the good ones are in my library and it works like a charm every time
and yh that iron man is not a proper loadbox for the same reasons stated above. most attentuators serve a single function and not good in a recording situation, I've had that famous "ultimate" attentuator and measured it for fun - the resulting curve was atrocious. completely messed up the amp sound.
btw you can measure your IC curve by reamping/recording something with the amp direct and the preamp output hooked up. basically the difference of those signals is the impedance curve - the imprint of your poweramp based on how its loaded

just as an illustration - here's my amp loaded with 3 cabs with different speakers, all look roughly the same:

The only 2 attenuators/reactive load boxes with a DI output that will accurately capture the sound of the amp are two units that are very difficult to track down from companies I've never even heard of? And the Suhr, only kind of works? You see why I think amp only captures are not the best idea?

Who's got that? How is that easier than: point microphone at speaker about from about 2 inches away, move to center of speaker for brighter, and edge of speaker for darker?