Thanks for all the views and comments! You folks are amazing! 10 COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT NAM - ANSWERED! ua-cam.com/video/zAbobd7MNrs/v-deo.html
Oh my goodness - 10k views in 5 days. This is absolutely amazing to me, and something which I never thought would happen to my small channel. You folks are the best, thank you so much for watching and enjoying the content. This really means a lot to me.
Dude your content is very good, but for God's sake, normalize your loudness! Or at least warn your viewers that your guitar parts will be way louder than your voice. I'm trying to keep the little hearing I have left. Geesus.
There was the Mode Machines vPED Pro, which was released five or so years ago. I believe there was also a rack mount VST host as well. It cost more than a decent laptop and a MIDI foot switch combined, and suffered from compatibility issues and a lack of storage. Ultimately it sold poorly, as it didn’t really do anything that a laptop couldn’t do better.
There are audio interfaces in pedal format but they need to connect to a PC or Mac. A stand-alone vst pedal would need to be a fast mini pc running windows with a good audio interface an some kind of touch screen and would still need to run windows - with all the stability that implies and would cost a few 100 to get started.
@@tobins6800 I can well imagine someone making a little Linux system. I just think something like this should exist in this day and age, is all. I love the Poulin Powerball, 8180 and the Bogner. I'd be happy with those.
Excellent comparison and documentation of the procedure you used. The Null Test is an uncompromising and fair arbiter when employed properly. I didn't know there were any good Software alternatives to the ToneX software. But, it's the hardware ToneX Pedal that makes portability of Captures/Profiles so attractive and practical for the gigging musician. Thanks
Amazing video - great job! Comparing via flipped phases (null test) was brilliant. One thing to keep in mind - IK can always improve TONEX to get even closer but not sure most will notice a difference, especially in a mix. That and the ecosystem with hardware pedal make it a no-brainer. I will be keeping an eye on NAM moving forward.
Right on all points. I very much hope that tonex will somehow add a manual mode allowing to set the epochs manually or so. The. It would be unbeatable. But also 470 € more expensive than NAM. But both have their place. ToneX earns all success they have!
@@PippPriss tonex pedal plus helix is very good combo. however tonex & tonex pedal needs to improve the gui both on hardware & software. yet it's not very intuitive
I think it's official now, all profilers and modelers are great. When the cheap brands like Mooers and even open source stuff sound great, we topped. Just pick the one that seems to fit your need and price point the best and run with it, it doesn't matter any longer.
I wouldn't go THAT far, but what i've realize is you can now get pro result with basically any of them. I've been fighting for over 10 years trying to record my amps properly, but i failed to keep in touch with modelling. and no matter what i do modelers seem to sound more pro than what i get myself...
Like the previous comment says you can indeed get pro results with almost any modelling software and even with some budget multieffect units that rely on the same principle (e.g. Zoom's). The price differences are a matter of ease of use, how intuitive and flexible the GUI looks and feels, how immediately can you get to a great tone after tweaking for your particular instrument, etc.
@@amaurythewarrior Recording the best amp in the world with the best equipment will not make your pro recorded guitar tracks automatically sound pro in your mix. It's a mix, everything push and pull each other, it's about wise decision making with your EQ and compressors. A pro can run a 50$ Amazon Basics amp sim pedal and make it sound great in a mix because he has a vision and know how to avoid pitfalls to achieve said vision...
@@CarcPazu yes, i know all there is to know about mixing, and i mostly agree with you, but for me i have issues recording actual which i didn't have using gearbox/pod farm and modelers in general. i wasn't fond of the sound, but it worked in the mix pretty easily (i didn't even EQ at the time) - while micing an amp properly is a different story. i can't imagine recording an amp and NOT doing eq, because it always sounds harsh. but maybe i would have a different problem with 50w or 100w tube amps and bigger cabs rather than 20w and 1x12.... but I KNOW it can sound good, since i've heard it. But I haven't been able to get these results myself.
This review is amazing. So cool to learn that there is an open source project aiming at profiling, and done with such high quality. And thank you for explaining everything clearly and without metaphors for 3 year olds!
Thank you for the kind words! I am also really happy about the mostly positive reception this video received. It definitely fired up my eagerness to revive my UA-cam channel somewhat and test a lot of amazing products which have been recently released! 🙂
Love this video :) maybe you've learned this by now, but... SHIFT + UP ARROW - in reaper will zoom waveforms vertically (but not raise the amplitude), will make aligning phase/zero-crossing much easier
I knew that one already some time ago, but forgot about it, but yeah this comment reminded me again of this functionality and I've been using this nearly on daily basis ever since. Late thanks ;-)
Very well done and thorough walkthrough and comparison! The null test is an excellent idea, something I use all the time when checking how various modelers and sims compare against each other. It's sometimes easier to hear the difference's when the tones are close otherwise. I also think NAM got a bit more of that harmonic feel that the real amp head had. It's subtle but I can hear it. Great vid man \M/
Thanks for the deep dive and especially for updating the original with the latency adjustment! It looks like the advantage of the ToneX gives you a pedal for your pedalboard when gigging, and the advantage of NAM is the price and DAW use.
Exactly! If you are a gigging musician and you need a platform to do so, then ToneX is where your money is best spent at - even though there are some stuff going on hardware wise in the background, but it's all quite nerdy and tinkering stuff, while ToneX is a commercial product and simply the safe bet with losing too much quality-wise. If you like nerding out, need to separate the capture and training processes (like pre-recording the test-files before doing the training at another day or so) and you want peak quality and don't care about CPU consumption, NAM is the clear winner. Thanks for watching!
Great! I’m a huge fan of ToneX and it totally replaced my kemper and Quad Cortex! NAM is also my new great studio tool. And it will go better and better with updates, competition is now open 😊😊😊😊
ToneX is fantastic - my first video which I uploaded was totally flawed in the Null-Test and offered the impression ToneX being far off. But NAM is just that tad better than ToneX, but understandable - I run my models on 750 machine learning epochs, and ToneX catches roundabout 250 - of course there will be a slight deviation in accuracy. But if ToneX ever allows for this tweakability, or offers a "crazy mode" above Advanced, then of course ToneX will achieve same results and will be able to beat every other alternative out there through it's ecosystem! As you said - COMPETITION IS OPEN! :-) Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@PippPriss thanks for sharing this and the insight into the plugin. Seems like a great plugin however I think that it will have a hard time competing with tonex because of marketing and reach. Also the thing that tonex has going for it is the hardware. Being able to grab your sounds in a little pedal is awesome.
@@Rouwiinator I hear this stance quite often and I’m curious why more people don’t lean into a laptop based rig. Better processing power, more flexible especially if you’re running something like MainStage and a midi foot controller like the fcb1010. There are interfaces like the Quantum series that offer close to 0ms latency. I’ve heard people say it’s not convenient but I just don’t see how. Maybe I’m missing something🤷♂️
@@davidgray4995 midi programming would also be a thing so that you would barely have to use a foot controller at all. The simple reason I prefer dedicated hardware is simply that I trust it more to run the way it is supposed to. A PC likes to receive updates to its OS and the Plugins you would choose to use that easily can mess with your setup.
@@davidgray4995 I can chime in on this - a laptop is absolute superior in power, but not dedicated to that single task. It is a more fragile and delicate balance you have to keep up. Just imagine running a Windows machine, which short before a gig starts up starts to update for whatever f*d up reason. And if you are ONLY using a laptop dedicated for audio, then the cost is so high that you can easily justify purchasing a higher tier dedicated unit, and then still have a more stable and also rigid setup. But that said, I have played in a cover band where the guitar player (very young, 18 years old) used a MacBook with the Tim Henson Archetype plugin. I guess this will become more normal over time.
Great information, clear and articulate. I know there's no way to predict how the software will develop and if a hardware manufacturer will step in and develop a pedal solution for NAM captures. I am curious - and this could affect Tonex users as well - if older captures will end up being compatible with later - future - hardware and software developments. For example, will Tonex captures be compatible with Tonex mk2? Being backwards compatible can often be a drag on innovation. No worries really, it's important to... "be here now" and just appreciate the great tools that are available now. I doubt most of us are going to sell our favorite amps after making a capture anyway.😅
This was an awesome video you put together here !! Maybe I can finally get the Mike Morin preamp tone in order ….. yeah I’m still trapped in the 80’s 😅
Forgot about that trick, thanks! Will save me next time when aligning for the null test (learnt it once through the almighty Kenny, but forgot about it)
@@PippPriss I was wondering about that too since with Audacity you can zoom in but this much more sophisticated software can't? Glad it wasn't the case lol
@@brianmac8260 No, that's different. The mouse wheel zooms in on Reaper's workspace; Shift + Arrow zooms in specifically on waveforms *only*, while leaving the workspace layout unchanged.
What if ToneX has DC offset filter (lowcut maybe at 10hz), that would throw a null test off. It would also explain why there is a difference mainly in the lower frequency spectrum. Commercial plugins like ToneX could have things like DC offset under the hood.
Thanks Pipp, I've learned a lot from your NAM coverage. Exciting to see and hear a tool like that emerge now, widely available. Minor/major note re. video quality: you might want to sort out your (auto)focus some day. I'll keep on watching anyway, content is king.
Thanks for the reply - yeah, I am using an Logitech Stream-Cam, which on every time loading OBS I gotta set up Manual Focus again, and sometimes I forget to set that up, sometimes not. I am thinking about getting an Elgato FaceCam Pro, but that's a hefty investment with 300 bucks. But thanks for sticking around!
@@PippPriss I've looked for something similar and gave up on the webcam thing early on. Some of the newer mirrorless cameras can stream FHD (at least) with clean HDMI output. If you aren't streaming much anyway record to SD and export to video editor, with total control of quality, focus, aperture, white balance, nice stuff. Some newer phones might be OK as well. Canon R50 and M50 mkII, Panasonic GH-something (G100?), comes to mind. For static shots like these manual focus is also an option. And you'll get a very nice camera for rest of life :)
Thanks! In the NAM group in the profiles of Tim Robertson there is actually a Splawn! I am not sure if it's the Nitro though, but if in doubt GO CHECK IT OUT 😎
Absolutely. I was in the digital game since 2009, when POD Farm 1 was still a thing. Amazing to see how things have picked up, especially in the last 5-7 years.
Thanks so much! Unfortunately I do not own any of those units, only the ToneX software. But Mendel did a great comparison between Kemper,QC, ToneX and the real amp, and ToneX is the winner. Since NAM is slightly more accurate, you can go figure how awesome NAM would perform! 😎
@@kernelxsandersno it doesn't. In my opinion, you cannot really compare different modellers and profilers based on an absolute accuracy level, because they all probably used different amp and recording setups. With profilers you can obviously do it - even though, most of the "sound character" comes from the speaker and mic-setup anyway, so some percentage of difference in the amp profiling (or modelling) should not make a huge difference for real world use. Different analogue amps probably are probably more different from one another than the different versions of them in QC, Kemper, Fractal, Helix etc.
For 200 euros or something, used even less, you can buy a touchscreen mini PC, and with a bootable USB drop a lite version of the win11 or win10 (I use a win10 pro version with 1,7gb(using my own serial number)) + a midi controller. Running 2 instances of NAM, other plugins running, you can use pedals before if you want with a portable amp like the old Yamaha THR10 MKI or why not, a simple audio interface. In future the mini PCs more powerful would be easier to find and probably a better choice vs stuff like Quad Cortex, even for rehearsals or live situations.
Nice video, although I would have appreciated to hear comparison also on clean or just with minimal crunch/distortion. Having a lot of distortion kind of hides the possible differences for me.
Thank you! I am unfortunately a total idiot when it comes to cleans - but what I am thinking of doing is a video where I am not diving into how NAM works or so, but just explore different tones with NAM, together with possibly other freeware plugins to kind of make good clean tones, good crunch tones, good high-gain tones on a budget. I could imagine such a video fairs well view-count-wise and offers a bit more for people to enjoy. What'ya think of something like that? 🙂
I have bough Tonex and I can understand the sound of it, it is not so good as NAM. Tonex has something that's not like the NAM or real amp. I wish it was as good as NAM. BRAVO for your technical video comparison.
Well, I also have ToneX, and actually the ToneX pedal, and I am with you here. ToneX does lack something, whereas NAM is super accurate. But that said, ToneX is very much well enough for live use and is also a great concept. Compared it yesterday to a Kemper, and there was just a minute difference.
Glad some open source companies are challenging ToneX like NAM and GuitarML. ToneX didn't impress me at all when I tried it tbh,...very cool demo! Thanks
A VST hosting pedal ... hmmm, isn't HeadRush attempting to do something like that right now with the Prime unit. This could get very, very interesting. And the Quad Cortex has been promising this since 2019.
@@PippPriss yeah! i'm actually already using it in a project. i don't like it that there isn't a stereo version - for stereo delay - but i certainly like how it sounds, the simplicity of it, and the eq curves i think are well chosen.
NAM sounds AWESOME... but am I the only one having extreme CPU usage, compared to Tonex? I have a i7 8 core CPU, and this is crazy! In Studio One 6, disabling/enabling 1 instance of Tonex doesn't change CPU performance.. but enabling NAM makes it jump from 35% to 50-55% (I have a of tracks with lots of plugins, so that's why my CPU usage is at 35% initially).
NAM is a bit CPU heavy for some folks, I personally never had an issue. This stems from the fact than there are different architectures, similar to ToneX three quality tiers, and most people out there use the highest standard, as well as me. What you can try to do,.since NAM is so accurate, is train a model based on my model, but use the Feather or lite architecture instead of the standard architecture. Should yield in great sounds as well with less CPU consumption.
Absolutely! My tip: use my captures which can be found in the description as a starting point. If more is desired, check out the facebook group and search for following users and their models: Helga Behrens Jon Arnolds / Petr Canov Tim Robertson They have awesome amps, ranging from 5150 to XXX to Dual Rec to Mark IV to VH4 and more!
Thank you! I try to be fact-driven in these type of videos. I am in general a very positive person, so it's very hard for me to bash a product or anything. But I do want to kind of undermine my points with evidence. Thank you for watching and also explicitly highlighting this aspect of this video, means much to me 🙂
Great video!Could you test also the new plug in called AIDA-X? Also free and they have the option to add it in the MOD Dwarf pedal. It is a game changer for me!
Thanks for the tip! Certainly interesting, I will see what I can do on checking that one out. I do not have the MOD Dwarf, even though that unit had me intrigued quite some time!
Would be nice if there where chapters to point towards you null tests mentioned here, tonex owners who dont gig are jealous for buying a pedal for nothing
There are actually chapters when I open it, but yeah the null-test is hidden in the "Amp vs NAM vs ToneX" chapter - around 17:00 it starts, for anybody interested. Thanks for adding this comment, I will add it to the description!
For me, the take-away is not which one is better. It's so damn close. No, the amazing thing is how accessible good tones are now. I paid a small fortune for my Kemper and now I can get just as good or better tones for free. Thats huge.
this is great! thanks for the deep dive on this! do you know if there is a discord group for this? i don't have facebook, so sadly, i can't get access to any of the community captures
The MOD Dwarf only loads LV2- plugins, which is a different standard than VST. But in the NAM community there are people working on a LV2 version, or they even might be finished doing so! Definitely worth checking out!
I wouldnt be one bit surprised if you didn't get close to the same null off two of the real Amp. Because it's analog every take will be slightly different even with the same source, as will really good digital. Would be interested in hearing this. :)
I did this test, and you are in fact right - the null test between the same amp, two hours in between, will be less accurate than the ToneX vs. NAM null-test. However, ToneX does tend to clean up the model by a significant amount, so the feel of ToneX is "the worst" and this difference does not reflect very good in the null test (by pushing up Presence and a tad of gain you can undo these differences though to a great extent). But, therefore ToneX is a commercial solution, so a lot of profile creators will jump on board at some point in time, and the ToneX Pedal has a great form factor which NAM does not offer. It's just a matter of preference. I think NAM is so cool because of the open-source community aspect and it's accuracy.
That is absolutely true, even with POD FARM Joey Sturgis has mixed great album sounds - but what's your verdict? Should we go with ToneX, starting at 150$ with the amazing ToneX Pedal or with NAM which is free, but does not offer any hardware portability (at least when we discount taking your Laptop and an interface with you?) In the end, it's just a matter of preference. while I am still in the honeymoon phase with NAM, I do like plugin suites alot, because they allow me to dial in my tone carefully - STL Tones Josh Middleton for example is amazing!
humans are crazy .. in 1932 someone decided their solo was being lost under the squeal of horns and invented the electric guitar .. it didn’t sound much like a guitar but it had its own unique cool sound .. enough that nearly 100 years later people are still trying to clone it .. then along come a bunch of hippies who go “we need to amplify the signal of the signal going into the signal .. signalling the germanium transistor driving a valve sound we all know and love and here we are trying to clone that .. then in the seventies .. well we just turned everything up full .. and made transistor amps like HH and Radio Shack got in on the act .. and we want to clone that too .. the worst sounding amps have a place too right? and then someone went louder .. and louder and louder .. which has a certain feel to it .. a stack of 4x12s going off inches from your ear makes you see stars .. and we want to clone that IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT .. and here you are analysing which piece of code does the best job of analysing and recreating other human mistakes, bloody mindedness (I’m a guitarist and I want my girl to hear my part loud in the mix .. NO .. LOOK AT ME .. OVER HERE .. TILL YOUR EARS BLEED) she’s impressed .. and now I can sound like I’m making enough noise to shatter the foundations of the building I’m in and play it quietly enough on my phone and still sound good without waking up the grandchildren .. but wait .. all this tech .. does it actually sound that good? they wanted us to feel their angst and wrath .. to lay down with Satan and denounce the Church .. I mean Rev Smith down at the chapel was a bit fruity with his hands wasn’t he .. no wonder they were angry enough to tease more distortion out of that stack .. and as software .. as Ozzy draws his pension .. humans .. I mean HUMANS .. what on Earth are we doing? I want to be a dog!
It's derived out of the STL Tones Josh Middleton Tonality plugin, and with friendly courtesy of the fine folks at STL Tones allowed for staying uploaded! Shout-out to them! Awesome company, awesome plugins!
@@PippPriss fuck dude, took me a few tries to find it, but I found it, cause there's a few other unrelated bands , artists on there that use Tempest as well, but I found yours, killer album, love those riffs, cheers from Vancouver, Canada, hope to catch tempest around here at some point. Ed
Hi, I don't speak English well, so I write with the help of a translator 😀 Please advise, I have installed the plugin, I can see the app and also the standalone plugin in daw.. Still it doesn't work for me... I have the input on the sound card set to audio, the cable is plugged in and I can't hear, no NAM sound... The input indicator on the NAM shows no signal.. But I can hear only clean sound from the monitors ... Is it necessary to install something else besides the plugin? Thanks for the advice 😀
Hi Vlado! Normally, if you hear "clean sound", then there should be input signal on the NAM plugin. Have you loaded models? You have to load models into the Neural Amp Modeler, so that it works.
Thank you so much for checking out TEMPEST! Glad you liked it! Unfortunately, the rig was an Axe-FX preset of Widek, the engineer who mixed and mastered our album, and I have no access to this tone.
I did that mistake on my first version of the video and got torn to shreds by the ToneX user group 😂 so I remade that portion, threw away the old video since I had to completely reupload. But it was worth it. A properly attempted analysis will always hold up against, and the view count and positive reception of this video shows this. Thanks for watching!
I tried this and I didn't hear anything special, no matter how many .nam files I tried. And even with latency set as low as possible in my DAW, it sounded and felt exactly like every other guitar plugin in my DAW --- very processed and with a latency that makes playing through it impossible. How come I can sculpt fantastic tones with no discernible latency with my NuX MG-30, but I can't get anything better from this than the old Boogex plugin? I'm sure I'm missing something --- what is it?
Have you set the sample rate to 48 kHz? What is your buffer size? I have a roundtrip latency of under 5 ms - that's like standing 1,5m away from a guitar cabinet, which, let's face it, would be plain idiotic. So I assume you have something set up wrong, if you have perceivable latency. Of course, the quality of the sounds given is highly dependent on the capture you are loading - did you like the tones I got in my video and tried these captures, or did you went for other captures? In all fairness, NAM is hard to compete vs. full scale amplifiers and modelling amplifiers, because these have all these features to change the tone. But when it comes to pure capture-tech, NAM definitely is the most accurate solution, and yes, the price (=free) is the actual game-changer here. If you'd pay 30$ for this, it would have a hard time competing against ToneX SE on Sale for 50$ in value.
Great video!! thank you! 1 question.. what causes that static sound?? And is it the original file that has it or the modelled file?Am I correct in assuming the null test doesn't tell you which stem has this sound missing... ORRR is it noise created by both stems being a little different.. hope this question makes sense.. basically I'm trying to find out whether the NAM sound introduces this noise or doesn't have it to begin with OR it doesn't exist in either and is noise created by the process... THANKYOU:))
Hi there! I hear no static sound, do ,out have a timestamp? If there is noise, most likely it's EMI interference from the PC. NAM in itself does not add any static noise or aliasing sounds, at least not in amp+boost.captures. when doing full rigs, my experience that s bit aliasing fizziness is added above 12kHz. But since speakers do not really efficiently operate in these frequencies anyways, you want to cut everything above 9-10kHz. IRs basically shave off that frequency range as Welly so it's no loss tone-wise. Hope this helps :-)
@@PippPriss thanks for replying!!! I’m sorry!! I wasn’t specific at all lol!! My bad! At 21:50 when ur nulling the sounds the left over sound is what I’m referring too.. there seems to be low level guitar signal and also a static /distortion Type sound..
@@richiebranco Sorry for the late reply, life came inbetween. The static noise you hear are leftovers of the null-test. I would categorize them as "slight differences in the very complex thing that is distortion". So the static is not any noise in the regular sense of noise, but actually shows that frequency-wise most stuff has been cancelled out, but in regard of complexity of distortion, there is a small portion "inaccuarcy" to any method given.
Unfortunately I cannot upload other peoples work out of respect to their work, but I can share one link to Jon Arnolds and Petr Canovs captures, which are definitely among the best - posting all the links understandably is not possible for me, and we are discussing heavily in the group regarding some form of centralized repository system. drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s6kfBa-dO_m2Uwa7q3bVP6FZxr0PMwbg?fbclid=IwAR0wlDW4EYuDi_Byp2o6NGdWDMQ5dbk7cTG8EiKzBc_rmoB1pT3s-AzYQVc
The crackling is basically the "leftover" after putting source and destination files in reverse phase relation to each other. So everything perfectly "nulls out", except for some dynamic shifts in gain and compression, which is the crackling. This shows how super close both ToneX and NAM (more accurate than ToneX) are.
The crackles are so unusual, because there is so much phased out, meaning NAM is so incredibly close. If there were more differences, like what I saw and heard on Kemper profiles, then it would sound less like a camp fire ;-) Thanks for asking, glad to always help and engage!
Where do I find the community to try out some of the .NAM files? I've downloaded the plugin but not sure where to go from there just to try out some sounds. Thank you for making the video.
In the description, there should be a link to the Facebook group. One of the featured threads is the model thread. As a starting point, in the video description there is also a link to my own models :-) Enjoy!
Hi, check out my model pack in the video description, I have updated the entire model structure. I have some clean tones there, most noticably the clean channel of the Bugera 333, which I love for thick compressed cleans. Using the input to crank it you can get a nice edge of breakup/light Crunch tone which works great with single coils. My tip: either use it the tone as is with your fav IR with a chorus for thick tones, or crank the input to max and add a delay for lead playing. Also have a VOX AC15 capture and the clean channel of an Marshall JVM410 Joe Satriani Signature. :-) Let me know if the tones suit you well and what you think about the captures I made. :-)
If you haven't fixed it yet, or for anyone else with the issue - If your computer can handle it, set the buffer lower. I've had good results at 192 which I believe is the lowest the amp software goes. Set this on the focusrite config software and the DAW/amp software. Also, within the software settings if you're using the standalone amp software, make sure it's set to ASIO. DirectSound will have loads of latency.
Unfortunately, there very few hardwares which can host plugins. The MOD Dwarf can load plugins in the L2V format, which is currently under discussion on the github page for NAM. I think I also saw in the facebook group, that one user managed to get it working on his NeuralPi pedal, which is kind of a Raspberry Pi - based plugin hosting pedal or so.
Well, I personally do not care too much about the UI, Tone.NET and these things, but actually look at both products in their capturing accuracy, as this is the core foundation of both technologies. While you have a point, in the respect of what I just stated, NAM in fact is better than ToneX. But that is of course a debatable take. Anyhow, thanks for watching :-)
I just searched some lofi Background music which was royalty free 😂 I will search for something more inviting for the next video. But it was easy to find and served it's purpose quite well 😂
@@PippPriss Your Audience are guitar player who want to noodle along... just dont do music, please! The Video is great and thank you for introducing me to NAM :)
@@berndkiltz Thank you for the very kind words! I have seen a lot of videos of yours (fellow German here) and it's an honor that this video has appealed to you execution-wise (except for the music). 🙂
Thanks for all the views and comments! You folks are amazing!
10 COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT NAM - ANSWERED!
ua-cam.com/video/zAbobd7MNrs/v-deo.html
Oh my goodness - 10k views in 5 days. This is absolutely amazing to me, and something which I never thought would happen to my small channel. You folks are the best, thank you so much for watching and enjoying the content. This really means a lot to me.
Algorithm hit, great job bro! Got you in my feed.
very very goood work maan :D
This video helped me find this gem of a channel!
Dude your content is very good, but for God's sake, normalize your loudness! Or at least warn your viewers that your guitar parts will be way louder than your voice. I'm trying to keep the little hearing I have left. Geesus.
I'm actually legitimately surprised no one has brought out a VST hosting pedal... I just feel like this should exist in this day and age.
There was the Mode Machines vPED Pro, which was released five or so years ago. I believe there was also a rack mount VST host as well. It cost more than a decent laptop and a MIDI foot switch combined, and suffered from compatibility issues and a lack of storage. Ultimately it sold poorly, as it didn’t really do anything that a laptop couldn’t do better.
There are audio interfaces in pedal format but they need to connect to a PC or Mac. A stand-alone vst pedal would need to be a fast mini pc running windows with a good audio interface an some kind of touch screen and would still need to run windows - with all the stability that implies and would cost a few 100 to get started.
Not really. It could have custom firmware, that could simply run VST's.
There is a sort of one. Runs LV2 however. Check out pedal pi
@@tobins6800 I can well imagine someone making a little Linux system.
I just think something like this should exist in this day and age, is all.
I love the Poulin Powerball, 8180 and the Bogner. I'd be happy with those.
Excellent comparison and documentation of the procedure you used. The Null Test is an uncompromising and fair arbiter when employed properly. I didn't know there were any good Software alternatives to the ToneX software. But, it's the hardware ToneX Pedal that makes portability of Captures/Profiles so attractive and practical for the gigging musician. Thanks
Open source projects like these are truly inspiring. Incredible!
Just tried it.. and you're right. It is better. Actually a lot better imo.. Thank you for bringing it to my awareness.
Very glad to have stumbled across this. I’ve joined the community now and look forward to seeing everyone’s captures 🙏
Amazing video - great job! Comparing via flipped phases (null test) was brilliant. One thing to keep in mind - IK can always improve TONEX to get even closer but not sure most will notice a difference, especially in a mix. That and the ecosystem with hardware pedal make it a no-brainer. I will be keeping an eye on NAM moving forward.
Right on all points. I very much hope that tonex will somehow add a manual mode allowing to set the epochs manually or so. The. It would be unbeatable. But also 470 € more expensive than NAM. But both have their place. ToneX earns all success they have!
@@PippPriss tonex pedal plus helix is very good combo. however tonex & tonex pedal needs to improve the gui both on hardware & software. yet it's not very intuitive
That is why I went with QC. Tons of effects and stereo amps. All this hardware will be updated softwise but Im a nerd and will follow NAM for sure.
I think it's official now, all profilers and modelers are great. When the cheap brands like Mooers and even open source stuff sound great, we topped. Just pick the one that seems to fit your need and price point the best and run with it, it doesn't matter any longer.
I wouldn't go THAT far, but what i've realize is you can now get pro result with basically any of them. I've been fighting for over 10 years trying to record my amps properly, but i failed to keep in touch with modelling. and no matter what i do modelers seem to sound more pro than what i get myself...
Like the previous comment says you can indeed get pro results with almost any modelling software and even with some budget multieffect units that rely on the same principle (e.g. Zoom's). The price differences are a matter of ease of use, how intuitive and flexible the GUI looks and feels, how immediately can you get to a great tone after tweaking for your particular instrument, etc.
@@amaurythewarrior Recording the best amp in the world with the best equipment will not make your pro recorded guitar tracks automatically sound pro in your mix. It's a mix, everything push and pull each other, it's about wise decision making with your EQ and compressors. A pro can run a 50$ Amazon Basics amp sim pedal and make it sound great in a mix because he has a vision and know how to avoid pitfalls to achieve said vision...
@@CarcPazu yes, i know all there is to know about mixing, and i mostly agree with you, but for me i have issues recording actual which i didn't have using gearbox/pod farm and modelers in general. i wasn't fond of the sound, but it worked in the mix pretty easily (i didn't even EQ at the time) - while micing an amp properly is a different story. i can't imagine recording an amp and NOT doing eq, because it always sounds harsh. but maybe i would have a different problem with 50w or 100w tube amps and bigger cabs rather than 20w and 1x12.... but I KNOW it can sound good, since i've heard it. But I haven't been able to get these results myself.
@@technoguyx pro, yes depending on how important realism is. in a pop mix, or industrial, seems DId guitars would be perfectly fine.
This review is amazing. So cool to learn that there is an open source project aiming at profiling, and done with such high quality.
And thank you for explaining everything clearly and without metaphors for 3 year olds!
Thank you for the kind words! I am also really happy about the mostly positive reception this video received. It definitely fired up my eagerness to revive my UA-cam channel somewhat and test a lot of amazing products which have been recently released! 🙂
Love this video :) maybe you've learned this by now, but...
SHIFT + UP ARROW - in reaper will zoom waveforms vertically (but not raise the amplitude), will make aligning phase/zero-crossing much easier
I knew that one already some time ago, but forgot about it, but yeah this comment reminded me again of this functionality and I've been using this nearly on daily basis ever since. Late thanks ;-)
Open Source Rocks. I have Tonex and Love it but Open Source projects are the future. Thank for this . well done. Subscribed ;)
Very well done and thorough walkthrough and comparison! The null test is an excellent idea, something I use all the time when checking how various modelers and sims compare against each other. It's sometimes easier to hear the difference's when the tones are close otherwise.
I also think NAM got a bit more of that harmonic feel that the real amp head had. It's subtle but I can hear it.
Great vid man \M/
Thanks for the deep dive and especially for updating the original with the latency adjustment! It looks like the advantage of the ToneX gives you a pedal for your pedalboard when gigging, and the advantage of NAM is the price and DAW use.
Exactly! If you are a gigging musician and you need a platform to do so, then ToneX is where your money is best spent at - even though there are some stuff going on hardware wise in the background, but it's all quite nerdy and tinkering stuff, while ToneX is a commercial product and simply the safe bet with losing too much quality-wise. If you like nerding out, need to separate the capture and training processes (like pre-recording the test-files before doing the training at another day or so) and you want peak quality and don't care about CPU consumption, NAM is the clear winner.
Thanks for watching!
Great! I’m a huge fan of ToneX and it totally replaced my kemper and Quad Cortex! NAM is also my new great studio tool. And it will go better and better with updates, competition is now open 😊😊😊😊
ToneX is fantastic - my first video which I uploaded was totally flawed in the Null-Test and offered the impression ToneX being far off. But NAM is just that tad better than ToneX, but understandable - I run my models on 750 machine learning epochs, and ToneX catches roundabout 250 - of course there will be a slight deviation in accuracy. But if ToneX ever allows for this tweakability, or offers a "crazy mode" above Advanced, then of course ToneX will achieve same results and will be able to beat every other alternative out there through it's ecosystem!
As you said - COMPETITION IS OPEN! :-)
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@PippPriss thanks for sharing this and the insight into the plugin. Seems like a great plugin however I think that it will have a hard time competing with tonex because of marketing and reach. Also the thing that tonex has going for it is the hardware. Being able to grab your sounds in a little pedal is awesome.
@@Rouwiinator I hear this stance quite often and I’m curious why more people don’t lean into a laptop based rig. Better processing power, more flexible especially if you’re running something like MainStage and a midi foot controller like the fcb1010. There are interfaces like the Quantum series that offer close to 0ms latency. I’ve heard people say it’s not convenient but I just don’t see how. Maybe I’m missing something🤷♂️
@@davidgray4995 midi programming would also be a thing so that you would barely have to use a foot controller at all. The simple reason I prefer dedicated hardware is simply that I trust it more to run the way it is supposed to. A PC likes to receive updates to its OS and the Plugins you would choose to use that easily can mess with your setup.
@@davidgray4995 I can chime in on this - a laptop is absolute superior in power, but not dedicated to that single task. It is a more fragile and delicate balance you have to keep up. Just imagine running a Windows machine, which short before a gig starts up starts to update for whatever f*d up reason.
And if you are ONLY using a laptop dedicated for audio, then the cost is so high that you can easily justify purchasing a higher tier dedicated unit, and then still have a more stable and also rigid setup.
But that said, I have played in a cover band where the guitar player (very young, 18 years old) used a MacBook with the Tim Henson Archetype plugin. I guess this will become more normal over time.
I enjoyed a lot this video, a respecful and honest comparison.
Also great pick technique playing that riffs!
Thanks for the feedback! Both products are amazing, so no need to bash one over the other 😎
Great video! Thanks for putting the time to make it!
Awesome, I tried it and pushing the input on the full rig I had GREAT results, it's as good as my quad cortex ! Well done !
Thank you, glad you are enjoying NAM!
okay spot on you’re doing pretty much the right thing to align them assuming your sample rate is high enough
Great information, clear and articulate. I know there's no way to predict how the software will develop and if a hardware manufacturer will step in and develop a pedal solution for NAM captures. I am curious - and this could affect Tonex users as well - if older captures will end up being compatible with later - future - hardware and software developments. For example, will Tonex captures be compatible with Tonex mk2? Being backwards compatible can often be a drag on innovation. No worries really, it's important to... "be here now" and just appreciate the great tools that are available now. I doubt most of us are going to sell our favorite amps after making a capture anyway.😅
My amps are going nowhere! If at all, it's rather an incentive to buy more amps, to capture them and then... well, then... then... keep them?! ;-)
And also, thank you for the kind words! Glad you liked the video!
been using some of your models- great stuff!
This was an awesome video you put together here !! Maybe I can finally get the Mike Morin preamp tone in order ….. yeah I’m still trapped in the 80’s 😅
Glad I could help ya on your tone quest ;-)
By the way, you can zoom in on the waveform in Reaper using Shift + Arrow Up (and out again by Shift + Arrow Down).
Forgot about that trick, thanks! Will save me next time when aligning for the null test (learnt it once through the almighty Kenny, but forgot about it)
@@PippPriss I was wondering about that too since with Audacity you can zoom in but this much more sophisticated software can't? Glad it wasn't the case lol
Try the Mouse Wheel even.
@@brianmac8260 No, that's different. The mouse wheel zooms in on Reaper's workspace; Shift + Arrow zooms in specifically on waveforms *only*, while leaving the workspace layout unchanged.
Dude, very good analysis! Thanks, man!
It's still impressive that the free product is noticeably closer to the original than the for-profit option.
Well to be fair the tech in the Kemper is practically ancient by now. It's been out for like 12 years.
@@vaughanmacegan4012 Yeah but it's in comparison to a product that came out this year, not the Kemper.
What if ToneX has DC offset filter (lowcut maybe at 10hz), that would throw a null test off. It would also explain why there is a difference mainly in the lower frequency spectrum. Commercial plugins like ToneX could have things like DC offset under the hood.
This is incredible, the times we live in.
Thanks Pipp, I've learned a lot from your NAM coverage. Exciting to see and hear a tool like that emerge now, widely available.
Minor/major note re. video quality: you might want to sort out your (auto)focus some day. I'll keep on watching anyway, content is king.
Thanks for the reply - yeah, I am using an Logitech Stream-Cam, which on every time loading OBS I gotta set up Manual Focus again, and sometimes I forget to set that up, sometimes not. I am thinking about getting an Elgato FaceCam Pro, but that's a hefty investment with 300 bucks. But thanks for sticking around!
@@PippPriss I've looked for something similar and gave up on the webcam thing early on. Some of the newer mirrorless cameras can stream FHD (at least) with clean HDMI output. If you aren't streaming much anyway record to SD and export to video editor, with total control of quality, focus, aperture, white balance, nice stuff. Some newer phones might be OK as well.
Canon R50 and M50 mkII, Panasonic GH-something (G100?), comes to mind. For static shots like these manual focus is also an option.
And you'll get a very nice camera for rest of life :)
@@PippPrissyes great video but, personally, I prefer videos without background music. Your speaking delivery is already engaging enough. Thanks
I have just test this amp mod and have to say, it is the best I have tried ever!!!. Forget all the others this is the BEST!!!!!
Sounds great. Didn’t know there was now access to NAM. Very cool!!
Hey, great video. I've never herd of this before.
I'd LOVE to get my hands on a Splawn Nitro!
Thanks! In the NAM group in the profiles of Tim Robertson there is actually a Splawn! I am not sure if it's the Nitro though, but if in doubt GO CHECK IT OUT 😎
Very thorough and impressive info, thank you!
can you demo this with some more subtle and clean lo-gain tones rather than just thrash metal? it would be appreciated
Awesome. Great time to be a studio guitarist.
Absolutely. I was in the digital game since 2009, when POD Farm 1 was still a thing. Amazing to see how things have picked up, especially in the last 5-7 years.
@@PippPriss same here, POD days lol
This is cool! Would be awesome to see a Quad Cortex or Helix comparison, etc. Great start to your channel! 👍🏻
Thanks so much! Unfortunately I do not own any of those units, only the ToneX software. But Mendel did a great comparison between Kemper,QC, ToneX and the real amp, and ToneX is the winner. Since NAM is slightly more accurate, you can go figure how awesome NAM would perform! 😎
Wait, the Helix has capturing features?
@@kernelxsandersno it doesn't. In my opinion, you cannot really compare different modellers and profilers based on an absolute accuracy level, because they all probably used different amp and recording setups. With profilers you can obviously do it - even though, most of the "sound character" comes from the speaker and mic-setup anyway, so some percentage of difference in the amp profiling (or modelling) should not make a huge difference for real world use. Different analogue amps probably are probably more different from one another than the different versions of them in QC, Kemper, Fractal, Helix etc.
For 200 euros or something, used even less, you can buy a touchscreen mini PC, and with a bootable USB drop a lite version of the win11 or win10 (I use a win10 pro version with 1,7gb(using my own serial number)) + a midi controller. Running 2 instances of NAM, other plugins running, you can use pedals before if you want with a portable amp like the old Yamaha THR10 MKI or why not, a simple audio interface. In future the mini PCs more powerful would be easier to find and probably a better choice vs stuff like Quad Cortex, even for rehearsals or live situations.
Great sounds. Great playing, man.
interesting idea to use cancellation (aka "null test") to detect difference. That's as objective as you can get
To be fair, was not my idea - I saw this method on Mendels ToneX video and thought this was extremely smart to do so. Credit, where credit is due ;-)
EXCELLENT COMPARISON... THANK YOU, SIR !🤩
Thank you for watching and commenting!
Awesome video, thanks!
Glad it helped!
Amazing, did not know something like this existed !
This is awesome! Thank you 🤘
Hey, don't be too hard on yourself :) We all live and learn
You files sound killer. I had to bounce a few to mono to get them to work, but they're really good
Glad you like em! Yeah,.my IRs have been shot back then in stereo, and I forgot to convert before posting them and became a bit lazy 😎
Nice video, although I would have appreciated to hear comparison also on clean or just with minimal crunch/distortion. Having a lot of distortion kind of hides the possible differences for me.
Thank you! I am unfortunately a total idiot when it comes to cleans - but what I am thinking of doing is a video where I am not diving into how NAM works or so, but just explore different tones with NAM, together with possibly other freeware plugins to kind of make good clean tones, good crunch tones, good high-gain tones on a budget. I could imagine such a video fairs well view-count-wise and offers a bit more for people to enjoy. What'ya think of something like that? 🙂
@@PippPriss absolutely!!
I have bough Tonex and I can understand the sound of it, it is not so good as NAM. Tonex has something that's not like the NAM or real amp. I wish it was as good as NAM. BRAVO for your technical video comparison.
Well, I also have ToneX, and actually the ToneX pedal, and I am with you here. ToneX does lack something, whereas NAM is super accurate. But that said, ToneX is very much well enough for live use and is also a great concept. Compared it yesterday to a Kemper, and there was just a minute difference.
Just down loaded this n the models ,gotta get the Facebook ones.gonna try yours later. Ty bro
Glad some open source companies are challenging ToneX like NAM and GuitarML. ToneX didn't impress me at all when I tried it tbh,...very cool demo! Thanks
Tonex did not impress you? Ha ha ha ha...yeah right.
You're doing something wrong then, because it's better than the Kemper, which has been used by pro producers on countless albums for years and years.
A VST hosting pedal ... hmmm, isn't HeadRush attempting to do something like that right now with the Prime unit. This could get very, very interesting. And the Quad Cortex has been promising this since 2019.
thanks for the info. very interesting. i'm gonna definitely give it a try.
Hope you tried and enjoyed! Thanks for checking it out!
@@PippPriss yeah! i'm actually already using it in a project. i don't like it that there isn't a stereo version - for stereo delay - but i certainly like how it sounds, the simplicity of it, and the eq curves i think are well chosen.
great video man and amazing tones .. thx so much !!! so close amp real really ... NAM is possible better alternative today thx to share !!!
So glad I could help you getting your hands on a great piece of software! :-)
@@PippPriss great tones really ... try record cover using this profiles amanzing .. so is possible share reaper projetc entire ??? i loved this demo
If they can get a forum for uploading models and some way to make a pedal like the ToneX with an updateable rom to upgrade when new firmware is out.
holy f it sounds amazing when you loaded the IR...wow
NAM sounds AWESOME... but am I the only one having extreme CPU usage, compared to Tonex? I have a i7 8 core CPU, and this is crazy! In Studio One 6, disabling/enabling 1 instance of Tonex doesn't change CPU performance.. but enabling NAM makes it jump from 35% to 50-55% (I have a of tracks with lots of plugins, so that's why my CPU usage is at 35% initially).
NAM is a bit CPU heavy for some folks, I personally never had an issue. This stems from the fact than there are different architectures, similar to ToneX three quality tiers, and most people out there use the highest standard, as well as me.
What you can try to do,.since NAM is so accurate, is train a model based on my model, but use the Feather or lite architecture instead of the standard architecture. Should yield in great sounds as well with less CPU consumption.
@@PippPriss would mixing with a feather model used as a proxy work? Then swap it out for the max quality one before final mixdown.
Awesome find! Thank you for this! Subscribed with the bell!
Hopefully I can capture this onto my Tonex Pedal :)
how do you get your DI's to sound that rich? ive never gotten anywhere close on any of my setups
Hmmmm, this is interesting, will def be checking this out when I get off of work. Are there many high gain tones out there to run with it already?
Absolutely! My tip: use my captures which can be found in the description as a starting point.
If more is desired, check out the facebook group and search for following users and their models:
Helga Behrens
Jon Arnolds / Petr Canov
Tim Robertson
They have awesome amps, ranging from 5150 to XXX to Dual Rec to Mark IV to VH4 and more!
Great job. A very serious investigation.
Thank you! I try to be fact-driven in these type of videos. I am in general a very positive person, so it's very hard for me to bash a product or anything. But I do want to kind of undermine my points with evidence. Thank you for watching and also explicitly highlighting this aspect of this video, means much to me 🙂
Excellent analysis.
Thank you very much!
I am unable to use it - Cakewalk is unable to see it...
Great video!Could you test also the new plug in called AIDA-X? Also free and they have the option to add it in the MOD Dwarf pedal. It is a game changer for me!
Thanks for the tip! Certainly interesting, I will see what I can do on checking that one out. I do not have the MOD Dwarf, even though that unit had me intrigued quite some time!
I tried to join the FB group twice but they don't accept my request somehow... anybody knows whats going on there ??
Would be nice if there where chapters to point towards you null tests mentioned here, tonex owners who dont gig are jealous for buying a pedal for nothing
There are actually chapters when I open it, but yeah the null-test is hidden in the "Amp vs NAM vs ToneX" chapter - around 17:00 it starts, for anybody interested. Thanks for adding this comment, I will add it to the description!
cool, i downloaded it but can not find any modelers or ir for it
Check Out tonehunt.org for thousands of models to load into NAM! :-)
For me, the take-away is not which one is better. It's so damn close. No, the amazing thing is how accessible good tones are now. I paid a small fortune for my Kemper and now I can get just as good or better tones for free. Thats huge.
Great video !
Thank you!
this is great! thanks for the deep dive on this! do you know if there is a discord group for this? i don't have facebook, so sadly, i can't get access to any of the community captures
I would listen vs QC and kemper haha :D
Unfortunately do not own any of those products. But I have a buddy with a Kemper. Maybe I can arrange something on this front in the future!
I always tought about a vst loading pedal , mod dwarf does something similar but I guess it loads only specific created vst’s
The MOD Dwarf only loads LV2- plugins, which is a different standard than VST. But in the NAM community there are people working on a LV2 version, or they even might be finished doing so! Definitely worth checking out!
@@PippPriss being able to bring nam to the stage with a simple device would be a great solution !
I wouldnt be one bit surprised if you didn't get close to the same null off two of the real Amp. Because it's analog every take will be slightly different even with the same source, as will really good digital. Would be interested in hearing this. :)
I did this test, and you are in fact right - the null test between the same amp, two hours in between, will be less accurate than the ToneX vs. NAM null-test. However, ToneX does tend to clean up the model by a significant amount, so the feel of ToneX is "the worst" and this difference does not reflect very good in the null test (by pushing up Presence and a tad of gain you can undo these differences though to a great extent). But, therefore ToneX is a commercial solution, so a lot of profile creators will jump on board at some point in time, and the ToneX Pedal has a great form factor which NAM does not offer.
It's just a matter of preference. I think NAM is so cool because of the open-source community aspect and it's accuracy.
At the end of the day, when everything is in the mix you would never hear the difference. This is like pixel peeping when comparing digital cameras.
That is absolutely true, even with POD FARM Joey Sturgis has mixed great album sounds - but what's your verdict? Should we go with ToneX, starting at 150$ with the amazing ToneX Pedal or with NAM which is free, but does not offer any hardware portability (at least when we discount taking your Laptop and an interface with you?)
In the end, it's just a matter of preference. while I am still in the honeymoon phase with NAM, I do like plugin suites alot, because they allow me to dial in my tone carefully - STL Tones Josh Middleton for example is amazing!
This is the future. I'm getting better sounds than my Gojira archetype and tinkering is so fun. I'm so happy foss is coming to guitar
humans are crazy .. in 1932 someone decided their solo was being lost under the squeal of horns and invented the electric guitar .. it didn’t sound much like a guitar but it had its own unique cool sound .. enough that nearly 100 years later people are still trying to clone it .. then along come a bunch of hippies who go “we need to amplify the signal of the signal going into the signal .. signalling the germanium transistor driving a valve sound we all know and love and here we are trying to clone that .. then in the seventies .. well we just turned everything up full .. and made transistor amps like HH and Radio Shack got in on the act .. and we want to clone that too .. the worst sounding amps have a place too right? and then someone went louder .. and louder and louder .. which has a certain feel to it .. a stack of 4x12s going off inches from your ear makes you see stars .. and we want to clone that IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT .. and here you are analysing which piece of code does the best job of analysing and recreating other human mistakes, bloody mindedness (I’m a guitarist and I want my girl to hear my part loud in the mix .. NO .. LOOK AT ME .. OVER HERE .. TILL YOUR EARS BLEED) she’s impressed .. and now I can sound like I’m making enough noise to shatter the foundations of the building I’m in and play it quietly enough on my phone and still sound good without waking up the grandchildren .. but wait .. all this tech .. does it actually sound that good? they wanted us to feel their angst and wrath .. to lay down with Satan and denounce the Church .. I mean Rev Smith down at the chapel was a bit fruity with his hands wasn’t he .. no wonder they were angry enough to tease more distortion out of that stack .. and as software .. as Ozzy draws his pension .. humans .. I mean HUMANS .. what on Earth are we doing? I want to be a dog!
okay I like the green one best .. now what happens when you time stretch them?
Hey dude, great video. can you tell me where is that IR from? STL MAR 30 something... Sounds great
It's derived out of the STL Tones Josh Middleton Tonality plugin, and with friendly courtesy of the fine folks at STL Tones allowed for staying uploaded! Shout-out to them! Awesome company, awesome plugins!
Great video. Is there a repository for models out there? I'd love to get some of the great variety out there.
Yes! www.tonehunt.org is a newly released platform with tons of models, a dedicated project by some NAM-enthusiasts!
Dude, you got some wicked thrashy riffs, do you have an album out ? any link ? spotify ? cheers. Ed
Thank you so much! Yes, I have a thrash metal band called TEMPEST -> tempest-thrash.bandcamp.com ! :-)
@@PippPriss fuck dude, took me a few tries to find it, but I found it, cause there's a few other unrelated bands , artists on there that use Tempest as well, but I found yours, killer album, love those riffs, cheers from Vancouver, Canada, hope to catch tempest around here at some point. Ed
great video but
why are models and ir's not showing after installation?
The models and IR have to be downloaded separately - link to the models and IR can be found in the link in the description! :-)
Very well done !!!
Hi, I don't speak English well, so I write with the help of a translator 😀 Please advise, I have installed the plugin, I can see the app and also the standalone plugin in daw.. Still it doesn't work for me... I have the input on the sound card set to audio, the cable is plugged in and I can't hear, no NAM sound... The input indicator on the NAM shows no signal..
But I can hear only clean sound from the monitors ... Is it necessary to install something else besides the plugin? Thanks for the advice 😀
Hi Vlado! Normally, if you hear "clean sound", then there should be input signal on the NAM plugin. Have you loaded models? You have to load models into the Neural Amp Modeler, so that it works.
Did my first NAM model today. I checked Tempest after... great songs and tone. Did you capture and upload your rig for Collateral Murder?
Thank you so much for checking out TEMPEST! Glad you liked it! Unfortunately, the rig was an Axe-FX preset of Widek, the engineer who mixed and mastered our album, and I have no access to this tone.
just watching this and thinking “I hope he’s sample aligned them to check on the null test or it’s not worth doing” ..
I did that mistake on my first version of the video and got torn to shreds by the ToneX user group 😂 so I remade that portion, threw away the old video since I had to completely reupload.
But it was worth it. A properly attempted analysis will always hold up against, and the view count and positive reception of this video shows this.
Thanks for watching!
I tried this and I didn't hear anything special, no matter how many .nam files I tried. And even with latency set as low as possible in my DAW, it sounded and felt exactly like every other guitar plugin in my DAW --- very processed and with a latency that makes playing through it impossible. How come I can sculpt fantastic tones with no discernible latency with my NuX MG-30, but I can't get anything better from this than the old Boogex plugin? I'm sure I'm missing something --- what is it?
Have you set the sample rate to 48 kHz? What is your buffer size? I have a roundtrip latency of under 5 ms - that's like standing 1,5m away from a guitar cabinet, which, let's face it, would be plain idiotic. So I assume you have something set up wrong, if you have perceivable latency.
Of course, the quality of the sounds given is highly dependent on the capture you are loading - did you like the tones I got in my video and tried these captures, or did you went for other captures?
In all fairness, NAM is hard to compete vs. full scale amplifiers and modelling amplifiers, because these have all these features to change the tone. But when it comes to pure capture-tech, NAM definitely is the most accurate solution, and yes, the price (=free) is the actual game-changer here. If you'd pay 30$ for this, it would have a hard time competing against ToneX SE on Sale for 50$ in value.
not gonna lie i love this than tonex
also..... support aax too?
Great video!! thank you! 1 question.. what causes that static sound?? And is it the original file that has it or the modelled file?Am I correct in assuming the null test doesn't tell you which stem has this sound missing... ORRR is it noise created by both stems being a little different.. hope this question makes sense.. basically I'm trying to find out whether the NAM sound introduces this noise or doesn't have it to begin with OR it doesn't exist in either and is noise created by the process... THANKYOU:))
Hi there! I hear no static sound, do ,out have a timestamp? If there is noise, most likely it's EMI interference from the PC. NAM in itself does not add any static noise or aliasing sounds, at least not in amp+boost.captures. when doing full rigs, my experience that s bit aliasing fizziness is added above 12kHz. But since speakers do not really efficiently operate in these frequencies anyways, you want to cut everything above 9-10kHz. IRs basically shave off that frequency range as Welly so it's no loss tone-wise.
Hope this helps :-)
@@PippPriss thanks for replying!!! I’m sorry!! I wasn’t specific at all lol!! My bad! At 21:50 when ur nulling the sounds the left over sound is what I’m referring too.. there seems to be low level guitar signal and also a static /distortion Type sound..
@@richiebranco Sorry for the late reply, life came inbetween. The static noise you hear are leftovers of the null-test. I would categorize them as "slight differences in the very complex thing that is distortion". So the static is not any noise in the regular sense of noise, but actually shows that frequency-wise most stuff has been cancelled out, but in regard of complexity of distortion, there is a small portion "inaccuarcy" to any method given.
@@PippPriss thank you!!:)) appreciate that:)
Can you upload the community profiles too? I would like to try the 5150. I do not have facebook. Thanks for the detailed review btw
Unfortunately I cannot upload other peoples work out of respect to their work, but I can share one link to Jon Arnolds and Petr Canovs captures, which are definitely among the best - posting all the links understandably is not possible for me, and we are discussing heavily in the group regarding some form of centralized repository system.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s6kfBa-dO_m2Uwa7q3bVP6FZxr0PMwbg?fbclid=IwAR0wlDW4EYuDi_Byp2o6NGdWDMQ5dbk7cTG8EiKzBc_rmoB1pT3s-AzYQVc
@@PippPriss Thanks, I understand and appreciate your effort. I'm going to test this tones right now.
@@SAMPRZZZ Awesome, let me know what you think of 'em! 🙂
Where does the crackling come from in the null test? Great video btw!
The crackling is basically the "leftover" after putting source and destination files in reverse phase relation to each other.
So everything perfectly "nulls out", except for some dynamic shifts in gain and compression, which is the crackling. This shows how super close both ToneX and NAM (more accurate than ToneX) are.
@@PippPriss Yes I know what 180° degree phase flip produces, but these crackles are a bit unusual... Like a camp fire 🔥. And thanks for replying!
The crackles are so unusual, because there is so much phased out, meaning NAM is so incredibly close. If there were more differences, like what I saw and heard on Kemper profiles, then it would sound less like a camp fire ;-)
Thanks for asking, glad to always help and engage!
It would be nice if there was documentation or a manual for this.
Check out the facebook group, or Jason Zdoras channel, as he has a few videos on using NAM/training your model. 🙂
@@PippPriss like I said, Too bad there isn't any documentation or manual...videos are not documentation.
Where do I find the community to try out some of the .NAM files? I've downloaded the plugin but not sure where to go from there just to try out some sounds. Thank you for making the video.
In the description, there should be a link to the Facebook group. One of the featured threads is the model thread.
As a starting point, in the video description there is also a link to my own models :-)
Enjoy!
@@PippPriss Thank you 🙏
Hi! wich amp sim do you recomend for clean and low gain? because there is a lot for high gain, but for playing blues, jazz, pop or rock...
Hi, check out my model pack in the video description, I have updated the entire model structure. I have some clean tones there, most noticably the clean channel of the Bugera 333, which I love for thick compressed cleans. Using the input to crank it you can get a nice edge of breakup/light Crunch tone which works great with single coils.
My tip: either use it the tone as is with your fav IR with a chorus for thick tones, or crank the input to max and add a delay for lead playing.
Also have a VOX AC15 capture and the clean channel of an Marshall JVM410 Joe Satriani Signature. :-)
Let me know if the tones suit you well and what you think about the captures I made. :-)
I'm experiencing big latency on Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. Any tips on reducing that?
If you haven't fixed it yet, or for anyone else with the issue -
If your computer can handle it, set the buffer lower. I've had good results at 192 which I believe is the lowest the amp software goes. Set this on the focusrite config software and the DAW/amp software.
Also, within the software settings if you're using the standalone amp software, make sure it's set to ASIO. DirectSound will have loads of latency.
How do I add models and stuff??
You can find models on tonehunt.org ! Check it out, there are thousands of models there! :-)
When are you putting it in a hardware format? 💪
Unfortunately, there very few hardwares which can host plugins. The MOD Dwarf can load plugins in the L2V format, which is currently under discussion on the github page for NAM. I think I also saw in the facebook group, that one user managed to get it working on his NeuralPi pedal, which is kind of a Raspberry Pi - based plugin hosting pedal or so.
I'd appreciate some non metal demos. Some clean, blues, and rock examples.
Pretty cool. Can these load into the tonex pedal?
Unfortunately not! But I will eventually make the same settings and profiles for ToneX and maybe make a video to ToneX as well.
Can’t simply say better than ToneX. You can say it might be slightly more accurate with capturing, if we want to be accurate and honest here.
Well, I personally do not care too much about the UI, Tone.NET and these things, but actually look at both products in their capturing accuracy, as this is the core foundation of both technologies. While you have a point, in the respect of what I just stated, NAM in fact is better than ToneX.
But that is of course a debatable take. Anyhow, thanks for watching :-)
Here's a question! Could a similar unit do Tape? 🙂
There are in the facebook group some models which try to replicate the coloring of tape machines! Go check it out 🙂
what is the win-pdbs zip file?
Tonex the best!
Nice Video... but why do you have music running THAT IS OUT OF TUNE?
I just searched some lofi Background music which was royalty free 😂 I will search for something more inviting for the next video. But it was easy to find and served it's purpose quite well 😂
@@PippPriss Your Audience are guitar player who want to noodle along... just dont do music, please!
The Video is great and thank you for introducing me to NAM :)
By the way I almost switched off because of the music though I was REALLY interested in the topic ;)
@@berndkiltz Thank you for the very kind words! I have seen a lot of videos of yours (fellow German here) and it's an honor that this video has appealed to you execution-wise (except for the music). 🙂
@@PippPriss Oh, thanks for watching - DANKE! :)