Posts by jzucker

Quote from where is christophe

I’m experiencing with NAM on another device at the moment.
I had the same experience with NAM on my desktop, however when paired to a proper hardware it takes pedals really well. I dare to say, in my humble opinion, better than the Kemper when talking about modern high gain stuff.
Adding +12db with a boost doesn’t clip but the snapshot needs to have the proper gain level, otherwise it degrades.
While it often felt flat with the Kemper and the low end never felt right, the feel and the way it add something on NAM paired with that hardware remind me of an a tube amp. I won’t go as far as saying that it’s indistinguishable (when playing it) from a tube amp.
My 2 cents, pure speculation, is that the Kemper tends to polish and normalize things a bit too much…

what do you mean on another device? You mean an external device that is able to load NAM A2 profiles? If so, that's not surprising because the device is taking care of the levels on input, presenting the guitar with a 1 megaohm load and dealing with an calibration issues internally

Quote from musicmad

To be fair only the last overdrive really affects the level

not sure what that means, lol.

Quote from G String

That's not a System Error - It reads "Syncing ...". And the overlay is your Stobe tuner.

Dude, it's a hang. I can't go into browser mode and use the device unless I reboot.

the biggest problem is lack of auto-calibration if you are using the plugin. Also, this lends itself to frequent overloading if using a boost or overdrive pedal in front of it. Instead of acting like a real amp with a hotter signal, it often distorts the modeled amp. This has never happened to me on the kemper or fractal. They need to fix this if it's truly going to be a panacea

Quote from DamianGreda

Are you sure ? you can overload kemper or fractal too with to hot signal.

I've never once overloaded it using humbuckers and 3 stacked overdrives.

Quote from DamianGreda

Have you checked calibration levels ?

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To calibrate input levels for Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) and use metadata-calibrated profiles accurately, make sure you are using Neural Amp Modeler Plugin version 0.7.12 or higher. [1, 2]

Steps to Calibrate NAM Input

• Turn down interface gain: Turn the instrument/input gain knob on your audio interface all the way down (or to a known baseline). [1, 2]
• Check interface specs: Look up the maximum input level (measured in dBu) before clipping for your specific audio interface in its manual (common interfaces are around 12 dBu, while pro units can be 18 dBu). [1, 2]
• Enter value in plugin: Open the NAM plugin, enable the "calibrate input" option, and enter your audio interface's maximum dBu input level. [1, 2]
• Adjust for A2 profiles: When using newer slimmable NAM A2 profiles (which support full and light execution modes), ensure your input headroom matches the metadata so clean profiles do not sound overly gained-up and distorted profiles do not sound weak.

yes, i know all that. It's still not deterministic and some manuals don't list the dbu for the line vs instrument vs mic inputs. Additionally, recording with the gain all the way down results in a teeny little wave form that has to be boosted which increases noise. Not only that but if you use an analog boost pedal or overdrive, your gain will be higher.

The point is there should be a calibration utility. Kemper, Fractal are plug-n-play. NAM A2 is fussy.

I've been using NAM A2 via NAM Gatewayfor about 2 weeks now. My recording setup is a kemper MK2 head (amp/cab only) going into track 1 of my daw, a direct guitar signal going into channel 2 of my daw.

Both the kemper and NAM2 are running tonejunkie captures of a 64 vibroverb amp and JBL 15" speaker IR.

On the tracks, I add Atlas Reverb and occasionally Fabfilter Timeless delay.

I think this is a fair comparison with both tracks having the same amp, cab, effects.

The bottom line is that when the input is properly calibrated and with the gain very low on both kemper and NAM A2, the two setups are virtually indistinguishable.

I've changed my recording setup to make this a permanent fixture. Recording in 2 tracks and capturing kemper but at the same time, capturing direct to use with NAM A2 to give a more flexible amplifier settings choice.

So far so good. But there are some negatives to the NAM A2 architecture.

- Input gain. The kemper's input gain works as you'd expect any amp to work. As you turn it up, it gets gradually more distorted but in a very natural way. So even if I have a capture that's totally clean, I can increase the gain and it sounds very natural and very much like turning up the real amp. Not so with NAM. The gain architecture does not work as well. Turning the gain up does give you more drive but the character of the amp changes in a way that I don't experience with the kemper unless i do something extreme like turn the gain up to 10.
- No presence control. On a tube amp, the presence control is not just a high treble control. It actually varies the negative feedback at the phase invertor level. Not sure how it's implemented on a normal (non-liquid) profile but even on the vibroverb, it feels really natural. It's a big miss on the NAM A2.
- Digital distortion. I have never driven the kemper into digital distortion. I have stacked 3 drive pedals in front of it and it handles it like a real amp. Not so with NAM A2. With NAM, it's super easy to get digital distortion, either at the input or output of the effect. This makes it tedious to use real analog pedals in front of the input unlike with the kemper. This is also huge to me.
- total disconnect from guitar impedance/pickup resistance/output. Since kemper presents a 1 MegaOHM input to the pickups, the pickups react to it like an amp. The DAW doesn't have this and by the time input processing happens on NAM A2, the input has already been converted to digital by the DAW and certain effects that rely on the guitar's input volume (i.e. turning down the guitar) don't feel the same.
- Latency, i don't hear any latency with the kemper. I'm sure it has some but it's virtually indistinguishable to my ear. Monitoring on the A2 results in audible latency. It's very noticable running my Motu M6 at 48k and 128 samples. I can reduce the samples to 64 or 32 at the risk of clicks and pops. This does improve things but potentially ruining any recordings. The NAM A2 processing itself is very fast but after you add reverb and delay and considering the DAW round trip, it ends up being more than 2x the kemper and very noticable.
- Requirement to reproduce analog pedals in my DAW negates some of the advantages of having a dry signal path. I have managed to find a great chorus, reverb and delay but so far, unable to replicate my TS808, vintage rat, simble pedal which means I need to turn them on prior to recording. That means the recorded signal is no longer dry.

I still feel like it's good enough to use and I plan on using it for my next album with the caveats above.

Quote from JedMckenna

I find odd all these forum posts trying to discredit NAM, it's everywhere on the guitar internet these days. Instead of celebrating this new process, which is not only the most accurate but also open source, people are trying to put it down left and right in a way you rarely see with other typical guitar products. It's almost like someone has a vested interest in discrediting this new process; open source means no more walled garden or magic voodoo algorithm sold at a premium. It's also not in the best interests of many hardware companies to make their product compatible with NAM; all these years of R&D by the manufacturers we know to figure out the best profiling algorithm or amp models we were told were tweaked to perfection are now being challenged by a few revolutionary lines of codes available to anyone. Whether or not the NAM hardware is there or not is another debate but you have to be blind to not see where this is going in terms of future product development and how it's just a matter of time until someone makes the perfect box for it.

it's not my sibling or child. It's tech and it's reasonable to compare it to other tech and criticize what's wrong with it.

Quote from V8guitar

?? The Darkglass anagram is circa £1000, way more expensive than a player.

The dimehead is £500...so none are " cheap"..

The d/g has way more i/o options than the player and much better routing

Quote from drog

From my perspective… NAM is great for studio players that rely on software.
For live playing Kemper and Fractal are still the best options, not only sound wise but how the physical hardware is geared for players. Easier to navigate without a computer and look at the foot spacing for the switches (hate that on the Quad Cortex).
There is more to music than just how close an amp profile can be. Kemper is already 99% there, is there a need to squeeze out that last 1% or is having a solid piece of kit that is made for guitarist the way to go.
I choose gear for players.

that's ignoring the fact that more and more outboard devices are supporting nam, It's just on the computer.

Also, have you ever imported a rig but wanted to keep all your effects, pre-and-post amplifier? You have to click on them all, one by one and lock them. To unlock you can click right click and unlock all or click individually on the lock padlock without going through the menu why is there not a lock all? It's also not intuitive that unlock all doesn't unlock the locked input. I wouldn't want it to but the menu item should be "Lock all effects" and "Unlock all effects".

As others have said it's a mess, err, disaster.

after more experimentation, i have changed my mind. I have the everything pack from tonejunkies on both platforms and I think in general they sound identical.

I think there are a few issues that bug me though.

• Calibration is a huge issue with the VST plugin. They need to have some sort of automatic calibration tool.
• tone controls seem to be layered after the fact. I don't see them affecting the gain in the same way that a real tube amp tone control does and it's not positioned correctly on the center frequency. Not sure of the details but the kemper version , the treble control works correctly.
• missing presence is a huge issue IMO
• is it really free? It seems that to make it work, you have to buy hardware and aftermarket profiles. The darkglass is $1200 and the effects are poor compared to kemper and it's missing the direct out.
• Playing/recording using the VST is problematic because of latency.

the biggest issue with RM (other than asio and various bugs) is that it differs from the norms of windows or mac behaviors.

I should be able to make changes and hit the save or Ctrl-S to save it. Things like duplicate, save in library could be handled with standard GUI behaviors. Also, if an item is dirty, you should get a prompt when you switch to a new rig. Duplicate is just Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V (copy/paste) on windows. Preferences determine whether it auto names the destination.

Much of this stuff could be easily fixed and would make the app more user friendly.

fixed it, sort of 🤣😂😆😈

Quote from V8guitar

Hmm not quite apples and apples though.

I get it, the costs will drop, what Im saying is right now its not quite there.

is it not? Darkglass anagram is compelling for less money and there are a bunch of other players too.

Quote from salmosa

Are you using Win or Mac? In my opinion, on Mac things are way better than on Win.

But I have to agree that RM is the weak spot. The profiler software works way better.

except ASIO is broken on the hardware for over 6 months. It's one of the reasons I'm looking more and more and NAM A2 players.

Quote from BayouTexan

Use the WASAPI driver in Windows.

i don't have a choice to do that. I wanted to get windows to play back through the kemper but there's no choice there for asio vs wasapi

I'm unable to get audio when I select my kemper ASIO as an output device in reaper or in windows. What am I doing wrong?

(trying to get windows to play back through the kemper's audio interface)

i know most of you aren't playing clean jazz but I just did this test. Not scientific by any means but enough to tell me it's not for me at this point.

NAM2 vs Kemper (jazz guitar tone) using tonejunkies '64 vibroverb

So many folks have been raving about the NAM2 tech and saying that it's a game changer.

I wanted to see for myself so I downloaded the '64 vibroverb in NAM2 format to compare it to my favorite jazz guitar profile in kemper.

Not really a scientific result because the captures were recorded at different times, possibly different settings but they are the same capture (in theory) with both techs.

Since NAM2 doesn't have a reverb, I addeded Audioscape spring reverb plugin to the NAM2 track.

The NAM2 captures seem to have too much gain so I almost aways turn the gain to zero. It's still slightly distorting. Also, the output is very low and if I turn the output up in NAM2 gateway, it yields digital distortion even though the level indicator does not show clipping.

Let me know your thoughts. Sorry about the extremely sloppy playing. I could blame my meds but you know how that goes! 😜

Quote from RickWillits

Okay listened quite a few times on repeat out shopping today. Undeniable vituosity.

Thought I had the meter figured out at 6 something or 12 something turned out its 4/4.

Outside of a dreary theme at the beginning and later, and having misplaced my doctorate in symmetrical and micro tonal scales I couldn't really identify anything approaching melody. Admitting my short stature and great heights not required to be way over my head. Is this Ornette Coleman on guitar?

kind of rude, bruh. I wasn't asking for opinions on whether you like his playing. Try sticking to the subject.