For people who don’t play guitar, this is really commonplace technology now. Engineers worked out how to model the circuit behavior of any amp a while ago. Powerful valve guitar amps have really interesting effects on the waveform particularly when driven hard, but that valve technology is expensive, unreliable, bulky, and very loud when producing some of the most sought after tones.
The most popular guitar amps now are all solid state, but the internal computer digitizes the guitar signal, then processes it in the digital domain, doing eq, applying the “sound model” of an old amp of your choice, also applying effects like chorus and reverb at the same time. Then the D to A convertor feeds the resulting signal to a neutral transistor power amp circuit to the speaker, at as low a volume level as you want.
The BOSS Katana range or the Fender Mustang GT range are both very popular. They are good value, sound great, and can sound like anything from a Fender Twin Reverb to a Marshall stack set to 11. All without shattering your neighbor’s windows.
A decent tube amp is not significantly more expensive than a decent modeling amp, particularly considering the used market. They're also just as "bulky" as a solid state amp - the heaviest components are the power transformer and drivers.
When you start talking about professional gear, the cost of modeling amps is more than tubes.
I'd also contest that this is "figured out" - this area is actively researched.
Price and weight are close. About $2500. AxeFx III is about ~6.8 Kg. Between a half and a third of a Plexi head or an AC-30 Head.
For a stadium band. It makes the stage setup much easier. No cabinets, mics and low stage volume. Each member gets a rack with two units (backup) and you are done. Sound will be always the same. Less likely to fail.
For a small band, you don't need the bulky rack editions. You get the same sound quality in pedal form (Helix, FM-3, etc). It can be carried in a bag.
In both cases, the sound engineer has an easier job. You plug your devices directly to the mixer/Front of House.
Most musicians program few pre-defined rigs, but a device like this gives you not only one sound, but the sound of ~300 amplifier models including some rare collection items.
Yes you have more control, it also sounds worse. They have advantages in live reproduction, yet you still see tubes mic'd up in the studio.
And for a small band even if you have a FoH mix, it's going to sound better out of a 40W combo than through whatever PA your vocalist dragged along. But that's just my opinion.
Digital models do a good job in a vacuum (no pun intended). They do a very poor job of modeling how a guitar and FX chain load and drive the preamp of an real tube amplifier (which is really difficult to capture in either white or black box models). That's also a key to getting lush and evocative ranges of tone from a single configuration.
Just speaking as a player, I don't really fiddle with my tube amps all that much. The tone changes come from dynamics of my hands and controls over my pickup volume controls, and it's accentuated by my drive and boost pedals. That kind of play doesn't translate well to modeling amps which don't have the low headroom, lower impedance inputs of a pure tube stage. I don't need 300 different amp models, I need 1 amp model for 300 tones.
I don’t know what your idea of “lower impedance” but a pure tube stage has an input impedance that measures close to open. Off the range of my multimeter, I bet. You just see the Miller capacitance and with the grid-plate somewhere around 1.6pF and maybe 20dB gain, it’s not a lot. The input impedance of the guitar amp is usually dominated by the 1 MΩ resistor to ground, and the tube barely registers because the input impedance of a preamp tube is so high. This is usually considered “high impedance” (as opposed to “ultra high” like you see in a piezo amp, which might run 10 MΩ).
It is very common to see solid-state equipment with lower input impedances, especially guitar pedals.
There’s a lot of weird voodoo electronics repeated around guitarist’s forums so you got to watch out. Just quick fact check: small tubes = high impedance input, in most normal configurations, normal operating conditions (cathode is positive relative to grid).
Just as another point of reference—this is why you hear about “tube microphones”. These microphones have a vacuum tube inside them as a preamp / buffer, and the reason you might want to use a tube for these applications is precisely because the input impedance is so high. When they moved away from tube mics what you see replacing them is something like a FET, possibly bootstrapped, to try and replicate the naturally high impedance of a tube.
Yes the input impedance of a good tube is much higher than the typical 1 Megohm resistor referencing it to ground.
That's a million ohms so not much of your guitar signal is wasted passing through it to ground.
The input impedance of the tube reacts dynamically according to the signal coming in, and the often dynamic behavior of whatever is plugged directly into it.
When that's just your guitar without any pedals or anything, that can be the most dynamic from a touch-sensitive point of view.
There are a ton of people doing ad-hoc stuff like this on YouTube if you search for it.
ABX test is definitely the wrong type of test here. It is only really useful for testing if there are differences, and in general a tube amp and a digital sim are not going to sound the same as each other. What I’ve seen as more common is that you’ll have someone playing blind through a selection of digital models and tube amps. If you’re lucky, the digital models and tube amps may be closely matched, but that’s not necessarily the only way you would want to run a test.
There are also an incredible number of different scenarios that need to be taken into account in a simulation, so you’d want to try different styles of amp. Various overdrive scenarios are harder to simulate, broadly speaking.
Nobody is buying or playing those big heads these days. It's super rare to see people buying tube amps above the 50w range even for stage use. They're just too loud and unweildy and weigh an absolute ton.
I've been in high end music retail for several years and even the big name stars we deal with are buying primarily combo tube amps in the 40w range.
The idea that this technology is "the most popular" is incorrect as is the idea that tube amps are unreliable.
The katana and fender GT sound "fine" but the assertion that they can model traditional tube amps well enough for stage use is also a little suspect. Those specific amps sound thin and lifeless compared to the amps they attempt to model.
Where these types of amps shine is that they're lighter and you can have a more consistent sound at lower volumes. For a person in their house who isn't really worried about having a specific sound or may not even know the difference between british and american voiced amps these are great options. Also the volume issue only comes into play when we're thinking about gain and compression. My fender Deluxe Reverb sounds amazing at low volume.
The AxeFx and helix stuff is a little better but that stuff is way more expensive than your average tube amp, particularly on the used market. Your average 40 watt tube amp from fender, vox, marshall, etc will run you $700-$1500 while these high end modellers can easily be $2500+.
As far as tube amps being unreliable goes I'd love to see some sources on that. I've played fender amps from the 50s and marshalls from the 60s that sound every bit as good today as they did when they were made.
I work in very high end music retail where I'm fortunate enough to get to play all kinds of new and very old gear. I can confidently say that modelling is getting better and has drastically improved in the last 20 years but still has a ways to go if it's going to completely replace tube amps for stage and studio use.
Modeling can also give you an incredible pallette at your fingertips.
But the same fingertips can not even be trained to fully master the pallette available from a simple amp like a vintage Champ or Bassman without even reverb or tremolo.
Careful choice of guitar, pickups, strings, tubes and speakers each broaden the pallette and build on each other and these are all user selectable, just nowhere near as convenient as changing digital models. Also most vintage pro amps in excellent working condition or fully restored are more reliable than the cabinets, whose reliability mainly depended on how high it fell off the truck from. You're supposed to have spare guitars, cables & strings anyway, plus tubes and an extension speaker to avoid show-stoppers if you only have one amp.
Transistor amps shouldn't be turned on in direct sun either, but they can last quite a bit longer before expiration.
We had a very talented guitarist locally who had a great sounding Line 6 100 watt 2x12 which lasted a long time, but replaced by an older, longer-lasting Twin Reverb he regained a certain stonk that you could tell had an effect on the dance floor.
There are many advantages. Less maintenance, lower stage volumes, better for in-ear-monitoring use, sound consistency, less weight to carry, and the ability to explore hundred of amps sounds with a single device eg. check https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Amplifier...
Linking to an endorsement page doesn’t tell the whole story.
I would be pretty surprised if Metallica were using the technology you are describing. They have an extremely consistent setup that has worked for decades and an effectively infinite budget.
That’s just one concrete example.
I think a lot of the comments in this thread are missing the fact that if a player thinks a thing has irreproducable properties, they may be happier and more creative while using it.
Metallica IS using this in every single concert they have played after they experimented with them in the Antartica show. AxeFX II, but I saw AxeFX III in a recent photo.
I just returned a Helix because of lackluster... everything. I'll try modelers again in a few years. I think of tube amps a lot like I think about Vim.
I want to preface by saying I love playing with music instrumentation and other audio software and it’s long been on my list to learn more to play with ideas much like OP so hats off to Keith for releasing this software.
But as far as guitar instrumentation goes— I have a lot of respect for good solid state amplifiers—think Roland Jazz Chorus—that are not modelling another sound but a very intensively tuned original instrument.
As for physical, electrical amplifiers versus a software emulated version I just can’t see the point in using one outside of the [potential] convenience.
Now, if your goal is to take that signal and twist it into something new altogether that’s different. But if I want to sound like an AC30 I don’t know why I would use something like hats just trying to sound like an AC30 versus something that is and AC30.
Lacklustre has always been my experience. Like leaving a tube amp too quiet—not saturating the tubes. It just tends to sound dull.
Outside of "convenience" they're attractive for the flexible routing and parameterization. I can only realistically deploy 4 tube screamers and a handful of delays before someone notices they're all set almost exactly the same way. I'd love to replace the combinatorics with presets, and although MIDI routing is an option, it sure would be nice if a compact reliable digital solution sounded good.
So that's why I want it to be good... But it's not.
Sure, I hear you— but then are you really looking for good modelling? Or are you looking for an entirely novel sound processing that just drew inspiration from the physical devices? I understand the latter. I don't understand the former... except for maybe as an exercise.
The Helix is honestly pretty awful, so I'm not surprised you returned it. I spent some time auditioning modellers a few years ago, and my reaction to the Helix was "LOL! Seriously??"
The Kemper is far more credible, with the AxeFX system and and some of the better amp sim plugins you can buy from (say) UAD following behind.
There's only one criterion for success- blind taste test with my current rig. At this point I need mathematical proof or someone to risk something (money) for me to try again. No offense, but other people's ears have always let me down.
Yeah I didn’t get this statement. I only play tube amps, and most guitarists I know only play tube amps. I actually don’t know anyone that plays a modeling amp. Maybe they’re more popular outside of my sphere, but even with popular YouTube guitars players, they all play tube amps. Mostly Fender.
I never saw the point of getting a real tube amp unless you play exclusively in a studio or rehearsal room.
The volume required to crank and get the best of it sounds it makes it too loud for almost any residential area.
One of the best features of modeling amps is that you can get the sound of a cranked amp set at a high volume, with low/moderate real volume or even with head-phones.
Even in a rehearsal room, real amps are too loud and make the band members start competing for volume. Low stage volume and in-ear-monitoring allows me to play better.
This is really only an issue if you're driving 100 watt amps to the brink to get higher gain. You can buy 20 and even 10 watt tube amps that sound fantastic and are much more manageable.
Guitar players always think you need a gigantic marshall stack to get good tone when for most people that is way too much and they'll never hear it the way it's supposed to sound.
Low wattage is still too loud for home / apartment. You need something in the milliwatt range, and those are (unfortunately) very rare. They’re not too hard to make but there is some extra expense and there are some patents in that territory.
Milliwatts? Rubbish. Kids have been playing rock and roll through AC15s or 22W Deluxe Reverbs (or louder!) in garages and basements for decades. A 5W Champ or similar certainly can get loud but is fine for bedroom or apartment use, at least during daytime hours.
As a teenager I played a Hot Rod Deluxe (40W!) in my parents' basement with no real complaints.
Crank your AC15 and play it in the basement, it will destroy your hearing pretty fast without protection. I used to take a homemade 5W amp outside and hear it echo in the woods. Fun times. Quick math—the Vox AC15 has speakers with around 100 dB SPL@1m,1W sensitivity, so if you’re cranked then it’s +24dB, and if you’re 2m away then that’s -12dB, and that’s 112 dB SPL, somewhere around “car horn” or “chainsaw” on the loudness chart. Medical literature puts it at under 1 minute before permanent hearing damage.
It’s not like a stereo where 15W is weak. A 15W guitar amp is pretty damn loud.
If you don’t crank it then I don’t see the point. Or don’t hear it, anyway. I can’t stand the sound of a clean Vox. It’s gotta have some grit.
It takes all kinds. If you’re running your tube amp below breakup, you might as well just use a solid state amp. It’s only under overdrive conditions that you get compression. Outside overdrive conditions, there is not really any clue that you are using a tube amp. Mostly linear is mostly linear.
It could be that you just like the volume. The speakers in the AC15 are fantastic. Or it could be you don’t think of it as gritty, but I do.
I have and have restored a few fender blues juniors and they are all quiet enough for residential. Just crank the volume but keep the master at 1-1.5. It’s not ideal, but you do get the desired sound.
Take it as a fact that you’ll commonly have higher standards than your audience. This applies to software, actors, musicians, whatever.
That, and your experience affects your performance. It’s easier for an actor to act in a room full of props and other actors, versus a green screen. Easier for a musician to make music with the gear and tone that they prefer.
"...Take it as a fact that you’ll commonly have higher standards than your audience. This applies to software, actors, musicians, whatever..."
Can you explain this a bit more? I do not see this is commonly true, it is the exception and not the rule in many cases of 'someone and their audience'.
It might be true that that 'someone' believes it, however misguided.
Any form of art or engineering requires a huge amount of background knowledge and/or practice experience, and artists and engineers should have a better grasp of the technicalities than the audience.
But audiences tend not to care about specifics. They care if you can live up to expectations and provide the experience they expect. So if a performance is lacklustre, or a piece of software is stupidly designed from their POV, they'll know something has gone wrong - but they won't know (or care) exactly why.
Amateurs and wannabes tend to fethishise equipment instead of art. There's a lot of "If only I had that equipment I could do this properly."
The reality is that expensive pro-grade equipment only ever adds a final layer of polish. It's also good at not getting in the way with unnecessary frills and complications.
So a world-class professional with a budget guitar will always outplay and outperform an amateur with a pro-league instrument. No exceptions. And a professional photographer will always take better photos with your phone than you will. And so on.
The professional may notice some polish is missing and they may have to work harder than usual - but they will be able to do the job, while an amateur won't, no matter what they're using.
Indeed, and I'm conscious of this as an amateur with a pro-league instrument. ;-) I spent many years playing a student grade instrument, had used it for countless performances, and nobody ever complained about my sound.
But a nicer instrument is a pleasure to have, and provides me with the assurance that anything wrong with my sound is strictly a matter of improving my own abilities. So it's a challenge to live up to the quality of my instrument.
I'm not an electric guitarist, but this is a dilemma that every musician faces at some point. Being a musician can involve an obsession for quality that can't be explained in utilitarian terms.
One thing is that the audience only has to tolerate your sound for a couple of hours, and can always seek refuge at the bar or just go home. You have to hear it over and over, night after night. You also have to hear it at home. As an amateur, most of my playing time occurs in my own living room.
Another thing is that there's a layer of the performance above the basic sound of the instruments, that the audience might perceive even if they can't quite put their finger on what it is. It's what separates a great performance from a dull one. We're all trying to find what that thing is, and it involves exploration on many fronts, including how we choose and optimize our instruments.
It's harder to tell the difference when recorded (although it's not that hard). The bigger problem is around what it feels like to play. Even the best modelers do not have the "feel" of a tube amp and that will influence the way you play.
I follow a lot of Metal artists. And many have switched their live setups to modeling amps long ago. The amount of different tones and effects they use (in a single song) just make that all the more practical. It's also a lot stuff to haul and setup at the venues.
Even Metallica is running all digital for their love shows. Although they do still mic up for studio work.
No one has mentioned Kemper yet, and Kemper - made by the same programmer who developed the Acccess Virus DSP synth - is the go-to modelling system for pros and serious wannabes.
This is really a solved problem. DSP won. You can freight multiple valve heads around if you really want to, but no one in the audience or the rest of the band is going to notice, never mind care.
Latency can be an issue if you are playing through a desktop computer or laptop, but its very manageable (for the most part) if you set up your buffers right.
I have never ever noticed any latency issues with any physical hardware, even for equipment from years ago.
A lot of hardware audio interfaces were usb2 which demands cpu time as the system has to poll the usb device rather than act on an interrupt. This caused very low latencies to basically never work without dropouts. I can distinguish a 20-30ms latency and above that it becomes too difficult to ply anything meaningful. Even my semi-pro tascam interface could only sample between 11-14ms. Faster cpus over the last 5 years and ultimately Usb3 solved the polling problem but is just now picking up traction in newer devices due to the usb-c connector.
The complaint about CPU time is interesting—surely the whole point is that you want to spend CPU time more often? Then again, it’s been a long time (15 years?) since I’ve seen dropouts, and I’m definitely using USB2 (not USB3) and low buffer sizes (more like 10-15ms, not 20-30ms).
If you're doing all of the emulation and signal processing on a general-purpose computer, then sure, you often run into latency problems, and part of the set up process for those software tools is latency calibration. The one that I use when at my desktop, Guitarix, is very conservative with its latency, defaulting to like 500 milliseconds, I turn it down to 20-30 or so and it still functions on my hardware and you can't tell the difference: it's the same time delay as playing through a speaker 20 feet away.
Second Yes. I would not play this at a live gig myself, but it does run fine on my Acer laptop with i5 processor, which is not meant for serious audio processing. If you try it and are getting latency issues, try adjusting the sample rate. Also the stand alone app seems to run much slower than the VST plugin, but most people interested in this I expect would use the plugin anyway.
Get a usb3/usb-c audio interface. Focusrite or presonus are the current favorites. Usb3 does not have the polling problem which cactuses dropouts. Another simple fix is switching to a real-time kernel when using jack (big assumption you are using Linux heh)
Just tried it out, I don't know if I would say it sounds like a $600 tube amp especially in high gain scenarios (it really didn't like my active pickups), for a free plugin it is definitely great. In comparison to the Archetype Nolly plugin from Neural DSP it doesn't really compare, but but for something thats free and can be trained at home on custom audio samples its pretty cool.
Neural DPS's plugins are great. I actually ended up ordering the real version of an amp I tried with a plugin. I never thought I'd say that! But their plugins are realistic enough that I can actually have some confidence that the real thing will be what I'm after.
Mercuriall's plugins are amazing, too. Their Spark plugin and SS-11X (can't tell the difference on that one) are so unbelievably good. If this open source one can do what Spark can do.. I dunno.. I'd shave my beard.
Yeah, totally.
Their ReAxis plugin is a very solid plugin as well, delivering a full triaxis gear + some nice effects, the whole thing for less than $100.
This thing is amazing and can deliver a high quality result for every kind of tones out there from clean to very high gain.
What a time to be alive for a guitarist.
wow, I was literally just about to download the trial for the archetype nolly (after being iffy on whether the fortin nameless was right for what I wanted), what are the chances it's being discussed on HN.
I'm hoping that the nolly plugin can cover both dirty and clean sounds well enough to not need a second plugin, fingers crossed
Here’s my unscientific breakdown of how I view the Nolly, Cali, and Nameless plugins.
Nolly: most versatile thanks to its multiple amps, far and away my favorite for most things. I recently used it to mix an entire album of very polished black metal, replacing the real fuzzy mic signals captured in the studio. The band loved it. Extremely detailed. Got some gorgeous cleans out of it, too.
Cali: this one reminds me a lot of my own Marshall tube amp. It was the first one that really sold me on using Neural DSP plugins instead of amps in the studio. It’s a lot dirtier than the Nolly and I don’t find it appropriate for situations where I want a very polished sound. Recently chose this over the Nolly for a more organic sounding black metal project.
Nameless: this always sounds unnatural to me. It’s good and intense but I always come away feeling like it’s fizzy and flat. It’s a simulation of an amp Fortin made for Meshuggah, so I think it might have a very specific audience. Last year, I blended this with some live amp signals to get some added bite and it worked nicely but I haven’t reached for it since then.
You might also consider disabling the cab sim in the plugin and use a third party IR loader. I find GGD Zilla Cabs to be a complete game changer, a cheap and crucial upgrade to every one of Neural DSP’s plugins.
Any experience with Plini? It seems to be the closest to Nolly, and from a cursory look it seems people generally like it better. I suppose I'll have to get the trials for both to compare
I had never heard of GGD's IR loader, seems awesome! Definitely on the list of things to buy now
Feel free to drop a link to the album you made with the nolly plugin, I'd love to take a listen
I haven’t used the Plini but only because I hit Nolly last and I’m thrilled with it. I’m pretty sure the Nolly rhythm amp is modeled after a 5150 or a 5150II, so it’s very familiar for me since I mostly work with extreme metal.
I seriously can’t say enough good things about Zilla Cabs. Just make sure to disable the cabs in the amp plugin or it’ll sound weird!
The album I did with the Nolly plugin isn’t something I can share yet, unfortunately.
I just spent a couple of hours playing with the nolly trial and it's awesome, lots of fun. Definitely getting some 5150 vibes from several of the presets, I believe it
If you are looking for a plugin with good cleans as well as dirty I would say the Nolly plugin is better when compared to the Fortin Nameless, but it was a while ago that I used the trial, however I don’t remember being as in love with it as the Nolly. I had a hard time choosing between it and the Abasi plugin but I felt like Nolly shined more in a wide range of scenarios. Overall I have been very happy with it, 10/10 would recommend especially since they recently added a build in tuner. I have had some issues but I think it’s just my $30 usb interface.
The Nolly is awesome, tons of options in there for both clean and dirty sounds. The awesome thing is you can try all their plugins before buying to make sure it’s what you need.
Interesting that Kemper hasn’t been mentioned yet. They are a German company who make profiling amps, which basically consist of software able to profile an existing amplifier within ~2 minutes, and then perfectly replicating it. In an interview the inventor said that they have only on the order of 30 parameters which are configured during the profiling process, in which the device sends certain signals through the amplifier, and analyses the output. To make it stage-ready, it also has hundreds of effects and pedals (delay, wah, fuzz,...) on board.
Those Kemper profiling amps are widely used in the music industry, from hobbyists to absolute professionals. There are studios who profiled their 100s of custom amps with different mic pickup settings, and now only use the profiling amp instead. Paul Gilbert has one, and loves it, and he is reaaally picky about sound.
Apart from profiling your own amps, there is also a vast online library of profiles uploaded by community members. So if I want my amp to sound like Green Day, or just pick a certain amp like a Mark IV, I just search for that, load a matching profile into the profiling amp, and try it out. A plethora of parameters like gain can additionally be adjusted like on a normal amp - the profiling process somehow accounts for those parameters too.
That’s an interesting take for sure, and I think I read about this caveat elsewhere. Let me just add that Paul Gilbert has a very broad musical range - there surely is a lot of high gain shredding (at least in earlier days), but he‘s also doing amazing work with clean settings and acoustic guitars. His hearing is not the best though, so maybe subtle differences in dynamics escape him :)
Personally I think that most problems people report about Kemper‘s sound stem from their speaker setup. If you use it for audio recordings or for loud stage setups, you most likely won’t be able to tell any difference. There are lots of blind tests out there and people often think that the Kemper is the real amp.
That revolution has pretty much happened already. There are giant ecosystems of non-Arduino systems out there. In many hardware DIY/maker circles you almost never see the traditional Arduinos anymore.
Funny enough, esp8266 boards is all I can find in my country. Probably because it's cheap and versatile. I need to try it, but can't think of anything to use it for.
Nowadays it's better to directly start using an ESP32, if you want to experiment. It has bidirectional I2S, (for example mic in, apply dsp, then out to speaker), is dual core, which would allow you to do the audio-related stuff on one core, and everything else (like communications) on another core.
If you then see that you don't require all the good things an ESP32 has to offer, maybe because you only want to drive a LED strip via WiFi and read some sensor values, then you can step down and use an ESP8266
The context of this thread is audio processing, so having I2S (Inter-IC Sound, with DMA) on board is really valuable, as is having an additional core.
In my case, I can order a bundle of three esp8266 13.79€, or a bundle of three esp32 for 17.99€, both as the most lazy, fastest delivery option on Amazon. If you know that you don't need the extra features of the esp32, save yourself the 4.20€ (1.40€ per board) to keep the cost down. But if you're new to it and want to explore the possibilities of a modern µC, it would be a mistake to save in the wrong place.
Even consider getting a LOLIN32 Lite (three for 19.99€), since the width of the board is smaller than the normal esp32 and esp8266 dev boards, which then lets you use both sides of a breadboard to plug in cables. All the other boards are so wide, that on a normal breadboard you will have to decide which side of the board you want to have a row of externally accessible pins, and on the other side all the cables must be plugged in below the board (search for "LOLIN32 Lite width breadboard")
Saving on cost can also be a premature optimization.
> Or are you referring to hobbyists?
Any context that is not production. Development, Education, Hobby.
Neural DSP, developers of what are arguably the best amp sim plugins available right now, claim that their upcoming floor modeler uses what they describe as “unique biomimetic AI technology” to create its sounds. I wonder how different their work is from this. https://neuraldsp.com/products/quad-cortex
I’m personally kind of over lugging an amp around and if live music ever comes back, I’m likely to sell mine and go with a modeler + power amp. The technology has just come so far and the convenience can’t be beat, especially if you do a lot of studio work or need to travel with your gear. A lot of demanding metal bands have switched away from tube amps and I’m already using plugins for recording as much as possible, so this seems like the next step.
Thank you! Any feedback is appreciated if you get around to trying it out.
If you look at the WaveNetVA repository from Aalto University that my plugin is based on, at least one person affiliated with that project works at Neural DSP. I suspect that the QuadCortex uses something like this (maybe a more advanced neural net) combined with other proprietary techniques and application specific hardware. They claim they can do the rig capture in 3 minutes, whereas the models I trained for the SmartAmp took a few hours on a GPU.
This will get lost in the pile, but I've done some tests with a dumb-as-a-brick neuralnet, 5 layers of 128 nodes, reLU, and the thing shows INCREDIBLE quality. I build VST plugins as a hobby, and have done several amp and guitar effects plugins. I also build and design tube amps.
I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality I was getting, and it was simple enough to run in real-time using pytorch (well I exported the model to onnx and used a c++ lib to run it). I was on my way to making a little startup company around the idea when covid hit and priorities radically changed
Would the neural net be useful for modeling other hardware? Or is it configured specifically for guitar amps? If so, would it be able to model something like a hardware compressor?
Most people, including guitar players, can't tell the difference between popular modelling devices and real tube amps when subject to a real blind-test.
The of neural networks in this field should be measured against current modelling technology, not real hardware.
In case any of you want to play with this on your mac and need a usb type-c interface to try this out! :) sorry for the plug but it was too relevant. Great job on the plugin!
Gonna fire off a kickstarter here in about a week and wanted to collect some followers as far ahead as possible! Promo is definitely not my jam! You're right, that page is totally worthless.
Anyway, it's super simple. I just wanted a type-c version of what was already out there, and maybe for it to sound 'reasonable' at a sub $30 price point. It is only 16-bit 48kHz, but does a great job at dialing in tone, recording a quick riff, etc. Bottom line, it's about -90db noise floor and 80db SNR.
Wow, I am blown away by the feedback and discussion from everyone here. Just want to say that this is an extremely different experience from any other site I’ve been on, so thank you for that. Future goals for this project are to improve the audio quality and get community contributions for model training of different hardware. It’s very much still an experimental project, but I wanted to give an idea of what is possible using deep learning for audio applications.
Ah, thank you for pointing that out. So if I wanted to use the title I have, I should write an article with that title. But even then it seems I wasn't in line with the quality of posts expected for this site. Will definitely keep that in mind for future posts.
I'm a mod here and have changed the title to one that fits the guidelines better. Don't worry—as others have said, it's a great post! I hope you'll continue to share your work on HN and maybe participate in other discussions you find interesting.
(For those who are curious, the submitted title was "Free guitar plugin on GitHub sounds like $600 tube amp by using deep learning".)
You know friend, I haven’t tried your project (yet) but your documentation is excellent as are your responses to all the comments on this thread. I think you have a whole lot to be proud of and I haven’t even tried your plugin yet!!
I think that you can get lower latency and better sounding models with convolution. It's also quite fun to build your own impulse response library from things around your home, emulating the properties of your kitchen sink for example.
Whether or not it is nonlinear is another question. I'm saying that amp emulation using convolution is cheaper computationally, usually a lot more approachable and way more configurable. Ultimately people use this to make sound, so I'm commenting on the sound qualities that convolution affords which to me are good enough considering you've already gone digital to model something analog anyway.
The thing is, convolution based guitar amp simulation is not going to sound like guitar amp, because convolution can't model the nonlinearity. You might get otherwise interesting sounds, but not what is usually considered the electric guitar sound.
I was actually thinking that something like this in combination with a “reference” preamp would be the key. This is a similar approach that Townsend microphone’s have taken and they’re supposed to be absolutely fantastic.
In any case, it’s total BS that waves, et. al, can charge hundreds of dollars per plug-in when at the end of the day it’s just software, and I was wondering to myself the other day why there isn’t more stuff in the open source space. I’m grateful to have seen this now, and I’d probably be interested in poking around this kind of stuff more. I have no idea how one actually goes about writing a VST or UA or AU plugin, but this is a great start, thanks!
Hey, saw your comments a couple of weeks ago on the wavenetVA repo, this is looking great! Will try training spring reverb and analog tape, those have been pretty hard to model with DSP.
Also, what do you think about diffwave? Only seen speech examples so far but seems an order of magnitude faster than wavenet.
Nice, I’ll have to look into diffwave, have not heard of that. You may have difficulty training on reverb effects due to the nature of the WaveNet model. It works well for distortion, but for effects that extend past around 50 milliseconds like reverb or delay, it might not be able to capture it properly.
That's unlikely to end well. You really need custom audio hardware - or at least dedicated commercial-grade stuff, for this sort of application. Latency is HUGELY important. 2-3ms can be felt, and most consumer level stuff uses buffers WAY bigger than that.
of course you could, using second hand stuff. I haven't tried pi 4 yet but anything with a modern ish i5 and mic input should suffice (Gigabyte Brix, Lenovo Thinkcentre Mini), can be picked up cheaply and run both Windows and linux well. look for some USB foot pedals as they are cheap, low latency switches which act like a keyboard so you can assign pretty much anything to them within the OS. they come in singles or triples. as for an amp, studio monitors can suffice (I use a pair of Behringer MS20s which cost <$100) since playing live they will be miced up and/or routed directly to the venue's PA anyway. it might be janky, less durable and less reliable but it's great fun and certainly not impossible
That's super cool. I've been both playing around with building analog pedals and thinking about how to cram various single board computers into a pedal enclosure for open source effect modelling goodness. How much compute does running the model use?
I've been using guitarx, it includes some tube emulation, but I haven't really noticed much of a tonal difference between them. This looks interesting, but I run Linux so it is a no go.
IANAG, but it sounds like it's recorded through a speaker in the room, and the miking wasn't optimal. Now that might be the recording we watch, or the actual output of the plugin; no way to tell. But apart from that, it's quite good, IMO.
As a guitarist, it is important to understand that any time you tell a guitarist that the sound is digital, the guitarist will scoff and say it doesn't sound like real tube amp, regardless of what they said or thought before knowing it was digital.
I gigged around Boston in the early 2000's playing guitar in various rock and metal bands, usually in front of 15-20 people. I had been using a 1960's Fender Bassman and changed out the tubes to some Sovtek ones. Sound guy at one of the clubs (who's had been around for 20+ years at that point and seen everything) noticed right away and asked why my amp sounded off. A little while later I bought one of the first Line 6 modeling amps and my first gig with it the same sound guy said "Ahh, you put the old tubes back in". I'm like, "Nope, totally different amp, and it's all digital.". He didn't believe me and while he was inspecting the amp kept saying "No, no, no. There's tubes in here I can smell them warming up".
A lot of the time they don't mean analogue when they say they don't want digital - they mean that they want knobs and switches to play with. I think some modern Moog's even have a digital stage in the signal path (I might be making that up but I have some vague recollection of it in a schematic)
Making a synth sound good has very little to do whether it uses analogue or digital synthesis these days, but analogue equipment is (for the same price) less reliable, uses more power, less flexible, and more susceptible to being damaged by impacts (and keep in mind that you can't repair a lot of modern gear with SMD soldering experience anyway)
I will say that making digital synths that sound good is an incredibly difficult technical challenge. There are enough mediocre digital synths around that people can get turned off from them. Meanwhile, you can copy some old schematics out of a book somewhere and get something not far from a classic analogue sound. All of the mediocre analogue synths are dead and forgotten.
Sounds (to whom?) like a $600 (which one?) amp using deep learning (why does it matter?).
To expand on this:
-$600 tube amp is not description of a sound. And a plug-in is not something you plug your guitar into to make enough noise for 300 people. "A plug-in sounds like a $600 speaker" makes almost as much sense as the title; by the sound of an amp people often mean the sound of the combo box which houses an amp and a speaker.
-If this emulates a particular amp, the title should say which one
-If it does a good job at emulating a particular amp, where's the side by side comparison? The video demo only shows the plug-in.
-There are plethora of guitar amp plugins. What makes this one any different or better?
-What's the significance of deep learning here? Plenty of ways to make this plug-in without deep learning. Why use deep learning?
Etc, etc, etc.
"An open-source guitar amp VST plug-in made with deep learning" would be a better title, even though the article leaves much to be desired.
Absolutely it's clickbait, I'm trying to get some visibility on my open source project.
To answer the question of why it's $600 specifically, it's based on a model of a Fender Blues Jr. Tweed, msrp $600. The models are evaluated to have a 1.5% error to signal ratio, meaning it's 1.5% different from the actual recorded signal, coming from an SM57 microphone.
I really do appreciate the constructive criticism, and well observed points. I'm new to promoting a project and also this Hacker News site. I'm actually floored it's getting this much attention.
The fact it uses deep learning doesn't make it better than traditionally modeled amps, but it does mean that someone with no domain experience for amp modeling (like me) can come in and make a good sounding guitar plugin.
I'd say don't even argue about marketing/ads/clickbait with the HN and Reddit crowds.
Just ignore that part, trust me, it opens up debates that go literally nowhere and leave you feeling worthless or worse. Any advertising is the devil incarnate to some people.
The title worked fwiw.
Just take the criticism related to the product itself.
Which, to me, looks very interesting, but I'm not into audio at all.
So my dumb question is, do you use this to emulate guitar sounds or can you plug in a guitar through a computer and use this plugin as an amp? D:
I'm too tired, I'll re-read the GitHub page to maybe understand it better.
It is a plugin that you play a guitar through live, like an amp on your computer. The tone of a real world amp is what's being emulated. More specifically, the distortion quality, which in tube amps is difficult to replicate with traditional mathematical models.
Yea this is the only reason you're getting some negative feedback. You should read the guidelines and interact with some submissions elsewhere to get a feel for the community.
That stuff aside, good work, and I starred it on Github.
Now that you are here, you can update the project description.
I feel like the point that this way of making a plug-in allows anyone with the hardware to easily create an emulator for it is not really coming through. That's the selling point of deep learning.
Opens computer back up
Excellent point, and it looks like my title was corrected, thank you for fixing it and not deleting it, whoever that was.
What I'm really aiming to do in the long run is to get other musicians and machine learning enthusiasts to train and share models that will work with these plugins for a variety of hardware. It's very much a new technology to me and I'd like to figure out what all it can do.
Yeah I'm not a company here, just a musician with an interest in machine learning and a few amps cluttering up the bedroom. I'd love for other people to train and share new models with this technology. I think that making this free and open source gives it the potential for much smarter people to make something bigger than I can do on my own in my free time.
Looks like a very outstanding engineering approach.
Different construction of the same tube type will have different musical characteristics, sometimes dramatically so especially when overdriven beyond linear operation. Even though measured performance would be equivalent in things like power supplies or most other non-audio circuitry, or even non-overdriven audio.
There is a unique difference when plugging guitars straight in versus using a common pedal or preamp of any type. The very limited magnetically generated power coming out of the quite high impedance of your pickups is directly connected through minimal resistance to the input pin of the even higher impedance tube electrode which extends into the vacuum. From that point on, your music is being basically sprayed through space.
So plugging direct (or true bypass) is the only way to be magnetically coupled directly to the vacuum you will be spraying your music through to begin with. You can feel it when you crank it whether overdriven or not.
A pedal or preamp inserted between guitar and legendary amp can overdrive the amp in its legendary way much easier sometimes because of the gain provided by the additional circuitry upstream of the amp, it can be very tasty but you are no longer magnetically coupled to a legendary tube amp.
Also unless the preamp/pedal is a simple clean gain stage such as an EH LPB2, which simply boosts the high impedance guitar signal unchanged using 9V battery power to give the amp more input amplitude than a plain guitar, the pedal is more likely to be generating the audible distortion rather than, or at least in addition to, the overdriven tubes.
You probably have more than one 12AX7, even most individual amps. Might as well try each one in the most critical input socket to get the most musical one picked out, along with checking for hum, hiss & microphonics which you don't want being amplified from that early of a gain stage.
It's only the big power tubes that can require matched pairs or quads, 12AX7's can be switched at will.
If some of your 12AX7's don't sound better than others, you've got all crummy tubes or there is something else concealing the full tone available.
Seems to me an emulator based on ML could be trained by live playing of the exact guitarist, guitar, and rig that you wanted to generate sound similar to.
Then it should be able to convincingly generate a synthetic tune of its own having the characteristic musical style of the player using the tone of the combined gear. Probably easier said than done.
Instead when you trigger tone output from the model digitally you would think some of the fingering variations might be heard too, but probably not any musical style, even if all are in the model to an extent.
When you plug in your guitar and play through it I think your own musical style would prevail like normal, and the fingering influence could be good for augmenting less expressive fretwork, but there are going to be times when you want to plug your own select guitar into just the amp portion of the model.
To get this option you would need to have sampling/insertion points between the elements, or at least between the guitar & amp.
You need to know what the signal looks like right before it goes into the amp so you can see the exclusive effect of the amp model alone and compensate for the guitarist & guitar (& pedal) during training.
If you're not going to draw on the musical style or instrument being in the model, maybe it shouldn't always be there to begin with.
It might be possible to switch them in or out like an effects loop.
Otherwise when you plug in your guitar and process it using the model, you're hearing a guitar plugged into another guitar plugged into a tube amp. And that's provided the training guitarist's musical style is only lurking silently.
It's based on a Fender Blues Jr according to the vid. It sounds pretty good for a free plugin, but as you said there's tons of free VSTs and cheap solid state amps that can do better.
I think it sounds good for a hobby project though!
Linking a store page just to illustrate that price tags are pointless when you talk about musical instruments, and also to give people who don't know an impression of what these $$$ go for.
You still need a sound system to get the sound out of a plug-in, and PA systems certainly aren't free. The cost of a comparable PA system + free plug in will easily exceed the cost of this amp.
This is why talking about $$$ while comparing a plug in vs. speaker hardware is kind of silly.
>I think it sounds good for a hobby project though!
And it's great that we have this project! The project is great, the documentation is lacking, the title is not good at all.
The most popular guitar amps now are all solid state, but the internal computer digitizes the guitar signal, then processes it in the digital domain, doing eq, applying the “sound model” of an old amp of your choice, also applying effects like chorus and reverb at the same time. Then the D to A convertor feeds the resulting signal to a neutral transistor power amp circuit to the speaker, at as low a volume level as you want.
The BOSS Katana range or the Fender Mustang GT range are both very popular. They are good value, sound great, and can sound like anything from a Fender Twin Reverb to a Marshall stack set to 11. All without shattering your neighbor’s windows.