NAM: neural amp modeler

Jonathanthomas83

TTBZ said:

I'm hoping Two Notes eventually release Genome in hardware form/Opus V2 kinda thing and keep the capture player as part of it too. I'm only currently playing at home so playing through my DAW is fine, but would be nice to have a decent bit of hardware to take it to gigs etc.

 Yeah, totally. That's my hope, too. I think they're a prime candidate to take this forward. Be interesting to see. I'm still holding on to a very naive and pointless hope that Kemper will see the light and enable their Profiler hardware to use NAM captures alongside Kemper profiles...but we all know that's never going to happen.

Vintage65

Jonathanthomas83 said:

TTBZ said:

I'm hoping Two Notes eventually release Genome in hardware form/Opus V2 kinda thing and keep the capture player as part of it too. I'm only currently playing at home so playing through my DAW is fine, but would be nice to have a decent bit of hardware to take it to gigs etc.

 Yeah, totally. That's my hope, too. I think they're a prime candidate to take this forward. Be interesting to see. I'm still holding on to a very naive and pointless hope that Kemper will see the light and enable their Profiler hardware to use NAM captures alongside Kemper profiles...but we all know that's never going to happen.

They've got nothing to lose as they are not in the profiles game, and it would make their hardware more relevant. It's not the sort of thing I can see the owner doing though.

TTBZ

Jonathanthomas83 said:

Tried a Dual Rec capture last night that absolutely blew me away, and in my humble opinion, blew away sounds I’ve been getting on the Tonex plugin, too.

This is slightly disappointing to hear, as I was just thinking if ToneX is anything like NAM in terms of feel and overall sound then I might go all in and sell my amp (which has been sat in the cupboard for at least a year!) get the bigger ToneX pedal! Loving the tones I'm getting with NAM at the minute, but I do like being "disconnected" from the pc since I already spend so much of my working day staring at one  maybe I should hang on and see if a Genome hardware option materialises.

Jonathanthomas83

TTBZ said:

Jonathanthomas83 said:

Tried a Dual Rec capture last night that absolutely blew me away, and in my humble opinion, blew away sounds I’ve been getting on the Tonex plugin, too.

This is slightly disappointing to hear, as I was just thinking if ToneX is anything like NAM in terms of feel and overall sound then I might go all in and sell my amp (which has been sat in the cupboard for at least a year!) get the bigger ToneX pedal! Loving the tones I'm getting with NAM at the minute, but I do like being "disconnected" from the pc since I already spend so much of my working day staring at one  maybe I should hang on and see if a Genome hardware option materialises.

I hear you. Tbh, I was disappointed too because up to that point I was all in on the idea of a Tonex full fat for my high gain needs, too. But two things have prohibited that…not being able to find a JCM800 Tonex capture that suits and sounds like my old amp (I’m getting closer with every NAM pack I try) and secondly, finding that Mesa NAM capture really made me think! Was spot on to my old amp recordings.

EDIT: I still think that the Tonex captures sound amazing, by the way, so don't let what I'm saying there put you off.

guitartango

Any one tried the https://aida-x.cc/ plugin ? . Seems to be more stable than the Nam plugin, but doesn't import Nam profiles.

The Toneking profile for Nad, sounds really good, I wonder if someone will "Hack the Helix" and allow imports of Nad profiles?

thecolourbox

I vaguely recall when looking at Tonex before that you can capture modelled amps as well, so you could profile your favourite Helix setting for example into a Tonex capture aslso, so I assume it would be possible to create a Tonex capture of a nam capture to enable you to get the best of both worlds maybe?

Or would that change it too much possibly

Vintage65

guitartango said:

Any one tried the https://aida-x.cc/ plugin ? . Seems to be more stable than the Nam plugin, but doesn't import Nam profiles.

The Toneking profile for Nad, sounds really good, I wonder if someone will "Hack the Helix" and allow imports of Nad profiles?

I think they have modelled a part of the tonestack.

"Our plugins utilize a conditional modelling approach capturing the volume or gain knob in various positions and allowing the AI figure out the rest.

This gives you full control for each channel that we modelled with the plugins. Dial in you favourite sound from sparkling clean to heavy distortion all with the same model."

Some Aida-X profiles have started to appear on ToneHunt, but it's just a trickle at the moment.

Also some more profiles here - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/1agajwyg0cukrt31e36ob/h?rlkey=11fdd06dwxvkv82ny7jtkxivf&e=1&st=93qo06la&dl=0

guitartango

Vintage65 said:

guitartango said:

Any one tried the https://aida-x.cc/ plugin ? . Seems to be more stable than the Nam plugin, but doesn't import Nam profiles.

The Toneking profile for Nad, sounds really good, I wonder if someone will "Hack the Helix" and allow imports of Nad profiles?

I think they have modelled a part of the tonestack.

"Our plugins utilize a conditional modelling approach capturing the volume or gain knob in various positions and allowing the AI figure out the rest.

This gives you full control for each channel that we modelled with the plugins. Dial in you favourite sound from sparkling clean to heavy distortion all with the same model."

Some Aida-X profiles have started to appear on ToneHunt, but it's just a trickle at the moment.

Also some more profiles here - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/1agajwyg0cukrt31e36ob/h?rlkey=11fdd06dwxvkv82ny7jtkxivf&e=1&st=93qo06la&dl=0

I check those out, also seen a Fender Blues Junior Nam download, the future is bright. Cant believe this all opensource !!

TTBZ

In the interests of gear science I did a quick A/B clip of the Splawn NAM capture and my 2525H/Captor setup through the same IR (York Audio MV30 Mix 1). Obviously quite different amps but variations on the Modded Marshall thing that I love. The results are actually quite similar but as you'd expect in real life - the 100w Splawn has a bigger low end thump and the 20w Jubilee sounds a bit thinner on the palm mutes. There is *something* about the real amp I prefer when playing though, could just be confirmation bias at play. It's a bit more raw and in your face which I like and it has a vocal lower mid "growl" that I like. I will say all of the 2525H NAM captures I've tried have sounded awful compared to the real thing! Anyway my point of trying this was I wanted to see if the captures can sound and feel like the real thing and they definitely can, provided the person capturing does a good job. 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0xvdpds5djztftxt71ki2/NAM-vs-2525H.mp3?rlkey=0xayo56hhpnvbmdsimb97jy1q&dl=0

In all clips it's NAM first then the Jubilee. Real amp is noisier due to my pedalboard not having a good power supply!

adamino

guitartango said:

Any one tried the https://aida-x.cc/ plugin ? . Seems to be more stable than the Nam plugin, but doesn't import Nam profiles.

The Toneking profile for Nad, sounds really good, I wonder if someone will "Hack the Helix" and allow imports of Nad profiles?

There is nothing unstable about NAM.It keeps getting better and better.

guitartango

adamino said:

guitartango said:

Any one tried the https://aida-x.cc/ plugin ? . Seems to be more stable than the Nam plugin, but doesn't import Nam profiles.

The Toneking profile for Nad, sounds really good, I wonder if someone will "Hack the Helix" and allow imports of Nad profiles?

There is nothing unstable about NAM.It keeps getting better and better.

I found a couple of times that Plugin would freeze up and CPU quite how compared to aida-x-cc. Think it depends on the captures. 

Guitar > Helix Stomp (No amps/Cabs> Daw>NAM>Reverb IR, sounds good. 

Jonathanthomas83

TTBZ said:

In the interests of gear science I did a quick A/B clip of the Splawn NAM capture and my 2525H/Captor setup through the same IR (York Audio MV30 Mix 1). Obviously quite different amps but variations on the Modded Marshall thing that I love. The results are actually quite similar but as you'd expect in real life - the 100w Splawn has a bigger low end thump and the 20w Jubilee sounds a bit thinner on the palm mutes. There is *something* about the real amp I prefer when playing though, could just be confirmation bias at play. It's a bit more raw and in your face which I like and it has a vocal lower mid "growl" that I like. I will say all of the 2525H NAM captures I've tried have sounded awful compared to the real thing! Anyway my point of trying this was I wanted to see if the captures can sound and feel like the real thing and they definitely can, provided the person capturing does a good job. 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0xvdpds5djztftxt71ki2/NAM-vs-2525H.mp3?rlkey=0xayo56hhpnvbmdsimb97jy1q&dl=0

In all clips it's NAM first then the Jubilee. Real amp is noisier due to my pedalboard not having a good power supply!

My questions and doubts about this were put to bed when I saw solid data around the accuracy. Obviously, science isn't really as sexy as hearing and playing and it's probably no substitute in the eyes of many, but cold hard fact is that NAM is as close as you're gonna get to the real thing right now and the differences, as you'll hear are pretty negligible. Whether that's enough to prefer the feel and sound of the real thing is up for debate, but I'm sleeping easy at night with this stuff...for a change...it used to bug me, but not any more, because as the video shows, it's pretty close.

It gets pretty nerdy but this guy is pretty good with this stuff...

Vintage65

Jonathanthomas83 said:

My questions and doubts about this were put to bed when I saw solid data around the accuracy. Obviously, science isn't really as sexy as hearing and playing and it's probably no substitute in the eyes of many, but cold hard fact is that NAM is as close as you're gonna get to the real thing right now and the differences, as you'll hear are pretty negligible. Whether that's enough to prefer the feel and sound of the real thing is up for debate, but I'm sleeping easy at night with this stuff...for a change...it used to bug me, but not any more, because as the video shows, it's pretty close.

It gets pretty nerdy but this guy is pretty good with this stuff...

I thought the Maths level was just about right, and it explained why AI assisted interpolation for the tone stacks is the way forward, at least until massively parallel supercomputers are readily available on Amazon.

Vintage65

It's hard to keep up with the latest developments these days as all sorts of gear is being captured by AI, not just amps and pedals.