Neural Amp Modeler NAM amp capture/profile player FREE *July 25, 2023 update 0.7.5

[metalifuxx]

But you always have to wonder why someone will hate on a free plugin or certain other plugins so hard, but then praise a certain company's plugins.

I just get frustrated dealing with this stuff. I tried to get on NAM several months ago, but the price for entry was just way too high, commitment-wise, and I don't have the time to spend on geeking out on someone else's project. I already have to deal with GitHub and makefiles myself, so that's the last thing I want to do in my music-making free time. That's the kind of thing that's going to make me stabby.

So it's good to hear you no longer need to compile stuff yourself. But it's still way too inaccessible to the average person. Maybe with over 2000 members in the NAM community, someone could muster putting together a proper website with some html and some download links like every other freeware has, and perhaps some instructions that don't come in a .md file.

And I still haven't even been able to figure out where to download a profile. I went to that repository link when you posted it, but all I saw was a page of profiles from a single user with "test" in the name. This whole NAM business seems extremely disorganized to me. I want to be able to get into it, but none of you are making it easy.

But it's funny that you think I have only praise for TONEX. You've clearly never read my posts on any IK thread. Over there, I hate on TONEX and praise NAM. But at least I was actually able to download and install TONEX and some Tone Models.

I just updated the first post of this thread on the current state of the (now) plugin, forgot to keep doing that as I made single post updates. Sorry if there was any confusion. I just looked at it for the first time in a few months and now i see why There's links to more than enough profiles to give you an idea of how it sounds. As of the last few weeks, per request of most the profile creators they do not want their profiles put together in a single zip download pack to be shared wherever. There is a starter pack of about 200 I put together over a month ago when things first started to take off. Two guys have since created normal download repository sites (non github) for profiles, but people keep sharing them directly to Facebook posts, so that's just kind of hard to control at the moment.

[meloco_go]

Over there, I hate on TONEX and praise NAM.

So you admit being a troll and sh*tposter?

[jamcat]

Actually I just find both NAM and TONEX to be full of unfulfilled potential, and I speak my mind about both. Both have qualities the other could benefit from, and I say as much.

[meloco_go]

Actually I just find both NAM and TONEX to be full of unfulfilled potential, and I speak my mind about both. Both have qualities the other could benefit from, and I say as much.

That is fair, but how can you praise the product you couldn't even try? Maybe I misread you, dunno

[Fannon]

Even as a geek, I have to admit that this has an unnecessary high-entry barrier. But I'm also impressed by what was created here and the potential in it.

Maybe that high-entry barrier is even a feature for a 0.x version. You might want to get a smaller initial target group to keep feedback and support to a reasonable level, especially since it's one person doing the core development work.

Btw. I personally can live with the current limitations. I got a very nice sound out of it when combining it with other VSTs. Only one thing bugs / worries me a bit:

There is currently no real structure, taxonomy, categorization, naming convention of NAM models. I really hope that such a structure will be established and **pre-defined**. If not, everyone will have a different idea on how to organize things, leading to a big chaos. This is also why I prefer Arturia / u-he over Vital. Not because Vital is a bad synth, but because it's a total chaos to find and manage presets there. Having no pre-defined structure is only a non-problem for those, who create content themself or want to take the time to categorize everything themselves to their own scheme.

[jamcat]

Actually I just find both NAM and TONEX to be full of unfulfilled potential, and I speak my mind about both. Both have qualities the other could benefit from, and I say as much.

That is fair, but how can you praise the product you couldn't even try? Maybe I misread you, dunno

Well, my biggest issue with TONEX is that it's just snapshots. It's my understanding that NAM has parametric modeling since v0.3, (perhaps by interpolating multiple captures?)

But, as is always the case with NAM, information about that is pretty scant and obscure. I have no idea if there are actually said parametric models available, who, if anyone, is making them, or how accurate or complete these amp models actually are. Apparently you have to find the Wizard of NAM to get these questions answered.

[metalifuxx]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eaDCAk3ynM

[sguyader]

Unfortunately my subscription to the FB group was automatically refused. No idea why.

It was most likely not answering the question / agreeing to the rules - if you do it again and do that it'll be approved

They will ask you a few question to make sure your not a bot, I am not sure what the questions are, but they are only there to prevent spam bots from invading the group...not to restrict anyone that truly wants to join. There is also one or two moderators approving all the real people, so maybe it was an accident. Dom McSweeney is one of the mods, see if you can get a hold of him, if by chance there was an error.

This - I'm the other mod, and the only reason for the question/rule thing is to help avoid spam and shitposters. Sometimes we make a mistake, and FB will autodecline users who don't answer. Definitely don't want to gatekeep anyone from getting involved.

Oh that was my mistake, I only answered the question and I didn't see the checkbox to agreeing with the group's rules. I'll try again, sorry for the buzz.

[northern_fox]

Well, my biggest issue with TONEX is that it's just snapshots. It's my understanding that NAM has parametric modeling since v0.3, (perhaps by interpolating multiple captures?)

But, as is always the case with NAM, information about that is pretty scant and obscure. I have no idea if there are actually said parametric models available, who, if anyone, is making them, or how accurate or complete these amp models actually are. Apparently you have to find the Wizard of NAM to get these questions answered.

I just updated the first post of this thread on the current state of the (now) plugin, forgot to keep doing that as I made single post updates. Sorry if there was any confusion. I just looked at it for the first time in a few months and now i see why There's links to more than enough profiles to give you an idea of how it sounds. As of the last few weeks, per request of most the profile creators they do not want their profiles put together in a single zip download pack to be shared wherever. There is a starter pack of about 200 I put together over a month ago when things first started to take off. Two guys have since created normal download repository sites (non github) for profiles, but people keep sharing them directly to Facebook posts, so that's just kind of hard to control at the moment.

The capability for parametric modeling is there, but it's not something people are/can do yet without a lot of knowledge. Steve did a proof of concept of that a while back IIRC, but that's the only one I've seen, and you'd have to compile a plugin specifically for that case I think due to controls and such.

The FB group is the place to ask, honestly and you'll get an answer pretty quick. It's the only official page right now besides github. Some users also started an unofficial discord which is a good resource, and they're co-developing a repository site of some sort (also open source). Based on what I've seen, I think it will be better than what others have done so far and the community there seems excited and helpful too. The FB group is dedicated mainly to NAM itself, and will stay that way for the time being. NAM isn't a company or for-profit operation and it's literally just Steve doing his best to create this tool for everyone - so do please try to keep that in mind. All this other stuff is a community effort to make it better for everyone. I know not everyone uses FB, so I do apologize if that's a barrier for now.

Oh that was my mistake, I only answered the question and I didn't see the checkbox to agreeing with the group's rules. I'll try again, sorry for the buzz.

All good! We're happy to have you and anyone else join

[AC222]

Judging by the length of this thread, there's a lot of enthusiasm which is awesome. And for free, hard to complain.

Among the positives after checking this out, it really does sound different when change the captures. A lot of other profiling type product offerings out there tend to sound a bit samey like they have the same processed sound and filter going through each amp so Mesa Boogie Lonestar could sound similar to an AC30 at similar gain settings, which of course is not true in real life.

This truly sounds different with different amp captures. Bravo. The low end response is also excellent in comparison to the real deal as other profiling competitors seem to really lack bottom end punch of real amp for instance all of the Neural DSP captures miss those deep lows while Kemper's low end sounds super compressed.

My one gripe about this current iteration free and all is that the captures sound somewhat lifeless. Something is missing here in the transient response. When you dial up a cranked JCM 800 with a booster in front you can get the amp to roar. In the current state, this to me is missing here and I hope this can be improved upon. All that said, I think this is a nice leap forward in profiling technology.

I have gripes on all the profilers. Kemper sounds too compressed, Neural DSP is missing some gain and the bottom end beef, the Tone Matching on Axe FX is way off, Bias Amps sound seriously flat, the the Overloud Th-U sounds very samey and boxy plus there's no potential for community captures, Revalver's Tone Capture system is too samey and lacks dynamics, the Tracing from STL tones all sounds the same even in spite of the claims of capturing entire chains, Tonex seems to almost have exaggerated dynamics and lacks serious punch.

This one compares favorably to a lot of the alternatives. I'd like to see this have a little more roar or juice going on, maybe something is off in the high midrange or what not but nice to see we are getting closer.

[northern_fox]

This one compares favorably to a lot of the alternatives. I'd like to see this have a little more roar or juice going on, maybe something is off in the high midrange or what not but nice to see we are getting closer.

If you're able to demonstrate what's missing in some way, definitely post it to the github page. It's very active and stuff like this is a good way to help improve NAM

[zerocrossing]

OK, I went back to Neural Amp Modeler for a second look. Someone on FaceBook (in the exclusive group! ) mentioned that he'd solved the boomy-soup issue by backing off the gain before it hit the plugin (not using the plugin's gain control). So, I downloaded some of the captures that I'd previously deleted for sounding like poop.

They no longer sounded like poop. Not all were my cup of tea, but at least now it was more about my personal taste, and not some issue with a poor capture or problem with the plugin. Some of the high gain stuff had a bit of aliasing if you played very high notes, but I'd say it was nominal.

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify things. If you load up the plugin and find that the captures sound totally off, back your gain down -7 dB and it perks right up. Also, don't use the IR slot. I've found it to basically be worthless. Just use NadIR instead, which is much better and flexible.

That's all.

Glad I could be of help

In the continuing saga of crappy sound from NAM, I decided to see where the level starts to break the model... and I couldn't. It wasn't my level in. That was fine. I removed the compressor (which I was just using to bring down the gain) and it still sounded fine.

Then I thought, maybe it was because I had been using the IR loader for a bit and then got an error so I abandoned it for NadIR. Maybe something pooped out in that sequence. So I tried reproducing it. Nope. Still sounds good after many of the same cab loads and unloads.

I don't know what it was/is. Other people are experiencing it too, so I assume it's some intermittent bug. I didn't have it all day yesterday and even though I only beat on it for an hour or so today, it still seems fine. I guess... gremlins.

[metalifuxx]

ToneJunkieTV is on board now and will be putting out free NAM captures in the coming weeks (mentioned/discussed at 24:50)
https://youtu.be/dAHT3-dpin4?t=1488

[zerocrossing]

When you dial up a cranked JCM 800 with a booster in front you can get the amp to roar. In the current state, this to me is missing here and I hope this can be improved upon.

Recording, or it didn’t happen.

[AC222]

When you dial up a cranked JCM 800 with a booster in front you can get the amp to roar. In the current state, this to me is missing here and I hope this can be improved upon.

Recording, or it didn’t happen.

Just use your ears bud. Also listen to the the emissary plugin demo. Older version or not you can hear with the same consistency that the captures version sounds flatter than the original as in less lively in the transient response. It's a great tool for what it is. Just pointing out I don't think we are quite there yet as in the captures are exactly like the real thing. Some discerning individuals can tell the difference and for them it that difference whether it is small or big may matter.

For many folks, they won't care and will be thrilled to get a free approximation of an amp sound but for those that try to convince that it is indistinguishable, they could take their sales pitch somewhere else.