by Mat Dirjish
Claiming to be the world’s largest community-driven platform for sharing and discovering digital models of guitar/bass amps, pedals, outboard gear, full rigs, and signal chains, TONE3000 (T3K) unveils its Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) Architecture 2. Built on the open-source project Neural Amp Modeler (NAM), the company claims its new architecture is the most accurate and best sounding amp modeling technology in history.
Launching as an open-source project in 2019, the first iteration, Architecture 1 (A1), was ran in digital audio workstations (DAWs). The second version, A2, operates using far fewer computational resources. This reportedly opens the door for affordable multi-effects pedals to run A2 natively on board.
Stanley Vergilis, Co-Founder and CEO at TONE3000, explains, “Our mission is to make music creation universally accessible. A2 accelerates that mission by democratizing tone. Now, users can capture, share, and play a $5,000 vintage amp that’s inaccessible in a studio somewhere.”
NAM files work anywhere NAM support is available, just like IR or MIDI files. That includes a growing library of NAM-powered plugins, amps, and pedals. To accelerate this adoption, A2 can be run as two sizes:
- A2-Full is a maximum-accuracy model for pro audio. It delivers better quality than A1 and uses 30% to 40% less CPU power. This allows users to run three A2-Full models for the same CPU as two A1-Standard models.
- A2-Lite is for embedded devices like guitar and bass multi-effects pedals. It runs at 50% CPU on an ARM Cortex-M7 600-MHz chip, the same $3 chip used in some popular modeling pedals. A2-Lite makes TONE3000 possible on mass-market hardware.
A growing list of hardware and software companies are also integrating the TONE3000 API, which lets them offer the 350K tone library to their users directly in their products. Blackstar, Lava Music, Darkglass, HeadRush, Chaos Audio and Dimehead are all supporting A2. For deeper details and demos, get toned and tuned on the T3K website.
Mat Dirjish Online 