Hello all,

Gain Stage recently released six Virtual Amps (recreations of very famous high gain tube heads) based on modern Machine Learning / Neural Network approach with in my opinion very realistic tube sound.

The Virtual Amps are available as standalone and VST/AU plugins (one installer for Mac and Windows). The amps also have an Impulse Response Player for cabinet simulation and WAV recording capability in the stand-alone software.

In my option the sound is on par with all SW and HW amp simulations currently on the market (even better for my ears regarding HF digital artifacts, especially with head phones).

The Virtual Amps are free to test them out in demo mode (short interruption via dialog box after a couple of minutes).

More info and sound samples, under:

https://www.gain-stage.com/


Cheers,
Markus

PS:
If you like the sound of our Virtual Amps and send us a short audio clip (~1 min) with one of our amp models, that we can use as sound example / promotion, we will give you the amp license for free (until end of April).
Email: [email protected]

I checked the Eddie and Randolf. They sound good but you need to work over the high cpu load. Got nearly 80% with only one instance and without any other plugins in ableton using the au and the vst3.
in contrast - neuraldsp gojira only takes 17%.
Additionally a noise gate should be included. I think if you´ll work this out and others got the same impression regarding the load I´ll buy it!

Thanks a lot for the feedback! We just started a view months ago with our plugins, additional features will follow for sure, as long as people like the sound... that keeps us motivated :-)

The high CPU load of our plugins is due to the used core algorithm which is very CPU intense. We will have look into this topic in more detail, what is possible without special HW acceleration.

The Bolz Virtual Amp has a noise suppression included, maybe this could be something to try out too.

Lots of potential for sure! but the cpu load must be lower as there are alternatives which offer this. otherwise not that many will use it as you can´t use it in a session with lots of other tracks. hope you get this done!

may I ask which processor are you running it on and on which version of Mac or Windows? on all machines I tried them out the load was much smaller.

THX a lot for your feedback!

As the guy who usually complains about the lack of cleanish and edge of breakup options in the Neural threads, well, you can guess my very first thought....

But I tried out the Eddy and the Mark yesterday. The (real) Peavey 5150 is probably my favorite high gain amp. Not sure exactly which on this Gain Stage one is based on, but guessing a later EVH one?

Anyway - definitely sounds decent. I like Neural's Nolly more, but for less than $30 this is for sure a very useable amp sim (for high gain tones). The CPU issue is definitely real though. It's higher than any other amp sim I have. I demoed it on an empty project, but I'd be concerned trying to use it on a project with lots of other stuff going on.

I also tried the Mark, which also sounds decent. The two distortion channels sound very usable and definitely don't suffer from any of the dreaded fizziness. The clean channel was less impressive to me, I found it had that weird 'emptiness' that I complain about in Nembrini and TH-U (and others) amps. The same with the Eddy, though to be fair the clean on the real amps are not great either.

One thing I did find was odd (on both) was that the 'master' seems to just be a linear output trim. There doesn't seem to be a way independently gain up the power amp vs the preamp. So that's a bit of a limitation. If you're just going for a good heavy lead or rhythm distortion sound, that may not be a big issue, but it is a limitation vs some other products.

So, basically - if you play metal or some variety of high gain guitar music, these are definitely useable and sound pretty good especially for the price. If your CPU can keep up.

Edit: for the record, I am running on a 2012 Macbook Pro. So not brand new, but it handles Neural, Mercuriall, etc just fine.

Edit #2 : When I say these are decent for the price, I'm going on the intro price of 29. If they go up to 59 I'm thinking harder about it.

Ok, I tried a few of these out and so here are my thoughts. I'm just a hobbyist so you can take them with a pinch of salt if you like:

• CPU usage is high. On my PC using Reaper Eddie clocks in at 1.7% whereas Neural Nameless comes in at 0.6%, so Eddie is three times higher.
  
• The internal IRs didn't sound amazing but that's not an issue as a loader is provided or the cab section can be bypassed so that's ok.
  
• The price seems a little ambitious - the intro price of €29 (including VAT) is reasonably competitive but €59 puts you right up against more established players in this market.
  
• Sound-wise, I think these are pretty good, I need to play with them some more but there's definitely a sound there I like. The Eddie model is a little tamer than, say, the STL Tones Andy James 5150/6505s which have a little more bite and attack which I like very much, but still a very usable sound.
  
• Your website doesn't give much away - your About page just tells me you like high gain guitar tone, but who are you? Where are you based? The reason I ask is because...
  
• Your licensing system puts me right off. I dislike these systems that generate a code for my computer that I send to you so you can send me a license that works on that one, and only that one, computer. I bought a new PC recently and I had two plugins that worked this way:
  • ML Sound Lab (an almost identical system to yours) - I had to email them with my computer code, and then they wanted my order numbers, and then I emailed them some more and after a few hours, I got my new license
  • Naughty Seal with Perfect Drums, and that took about a day to get a new licence
  What frightens me is you are clearly a new company and if in six months or a year I need a replacement license because I've got a new computer or re-installed Windows and you've closed down, I'm SOL.
  
• Your demo nag is really annoying - I have to stop playing (because the sound cuts out) and click OK in your message box. That's just irritating, sorry.

Anyhow, that's my constructive feedback, it comes across as more negative than I intended, but there are things I like and things I don't. I'll be interested to read your thoughts.

Tested it on my main workhorse. Mac pro 5.1 - 64gb ram - mac os x 10.12
Everything else works very well on it. Got a m1 macbook pro too but didnt checked it there for now.

Oh I missed that the regular price was 59. I just saw 29.

So, for 29 these are definitely in the running. At 59 I'm paying more attention to the things like high CPU and no power amp tweakability.

As as shredder really liked the eddie amp despite downsides, it felt better than neural stuff feel-wise and the cab.s weren't too bad either.

Downsides;

-CPU usage too high, considering I'll add a noisegate and ts9 sort of pedal emu. before and a delay or reverb after... it will be unusable.
-Demo screen pop-up was very annoying and unnecessary.

I'll be following the progress but won't buy right now.

Thanks a lot for this detailed review.

Yes, you're right Eddie is modeled after a EVH 5153 50W Head.

It is also true that the master till now is only linear and is not saturating the sound (a very good hint! this could be included/improved in a future version).

Overall, I would like to say, that you should look at this amp as version 1.1 (future updates included in the price), really a lot things can be improved!

For now, what is really important for us, is to find out if someone really likes the sound and is it worth to spend the effort for further improvement.

I would also like to mention, that if you like the sound and send us a short audio clip (~1 min) with one of our amp models, that we can use as sound example / promotion, we will give you the amp license for free (until end of April).

Thanks a lot for your thoughts.
Your points are all valid and I love to hear that you like the sound!

- regarding IRs, the included ones are just a starting point for those how just want start shredding...

- regarding price and licensing, this are a bit complex topics. We have to find out what is the right strategy here. I agree ILok and established systems would be much more comfortable, but for indie developers the fees a way to high. We also thought about make the amps donationware, but in regards to an active development we need to have a certain commercial success.
We can generate key files that work on more than one machine. Also, a server-based solution with user accounts could be implemented in the future.

- the website is not finished yet, maybe we find some nice pictures and words for the About page 😊

- I know that the demo box is annoying, and we thought long about how to implement it. I think an artificial sound here and then could also be a solution but will also annoy the people. Thus, we could make the initial pop-up time longer….

No worries dude, I really like your feedback it is very useful for us. It shows that you have really intensively dealt and tried out our software. Thanks again for that!
If you would like to use our software, but don’t want to buy it due to the reasons above, please PM me.

Thanks a lot! I love to hear that you like the sound and how you phrased it :-). If you would like to use the Eddie, but don't want to buy yet, send me a PM.

Cheers!
Markus

Thanks for the info. If you would like to use the Eddie, but don't want to buy yet due to the CPU load, send me a PM.

Cheers!
Markus

Honestly, at this stage I feel this is the best way forwards. It's simple, it's portable and it gives reassurance that if the worst comes to the worst and you're no longer around, the software won't stop working.

This, of course, has the same drawbacks as your current system in that it relies on you guys being around in the future unless it's just a way of delivering the key-file that will work on current and future computers.

Fair enough, it's just nice to know who you are and where you are!

The way ML Sound Lab (and I'm not their biggest fan btw!) do it is to interrupt the audio for a second and pop up a box in the plugin, so it's obviously a demo but doesn't ruin the mojo of the moment!

I like to support new devs and am always happy to provide constructive feedback. I still think your prices are too high, especially the non-intro price. I know it's hard to value your work, there's a sweet-spot that works for you and the customer and right now, I think you're outside of that for a new dev. Maybe you can work up to your target pricing.

Change the licensing to a key-file method, keep the price at 29 euros and you can have my money! However, if you are happy for me to play with Eddie some more and give more feedback without the annoying popup putting me off, then maybe I'll take you up on the offer

Thanks for the generous offer but for now I'll pass

By the way I'm a PC user but do they work with new apple M1's with latest OS? a friend of mine bought one and got tired of waiting some other brands introduce an update, I think he'll be happy with these atleast till then.

regarding the M1/latest OS I could not test our SW on this platform yet. It could have some issues due to the FW we are using.

Thats ok, when you do please give a heads-up here.

I've been playing around with Eddie some more and I kinda like it quite a lot now. There's a bug I've found though - I've turned down the Master as the output is quite hot, but when I reload the plugin, it reverts to the default until I open the UI and then it changes back to my setting.

Other than that, yes, I'm having some fun with it. Still not convinced enough by the licensing to buy it so maybe I'll PM you.

yes, you're right there is a bug when the plugin is not visible and then activated the current EQ/Volume values are not loaded correctly. I have to look into this.

Thank you very much for your feedback, it means a lot to me.

Hey Thanks for this, but I´ll wait as there will be an update. Additionally I´d like to support you by buying it then.

Cool stuff. Neural Networks seem like a great option for modelling complex non-linearities; another small dev was doing something like that recently, and the results were quite promising. In fact now I've read that back to myself, I'm wondering could it be what NeuralDSP are doing?

I'm no DSP nor business guru, but if the dev(s?) are willing and able to train new neural networks and release new emulations quite regularly (I mean, they launched with 6), whilst maintaining and supporting the product line AND say they discussed launching as donationware, I would really suggest Patreon as the best way to go. The other Patreonware devs seem to be doing pretty well, and get lots of support from the community (no 6 pages of rants about copy protection, price etc) - it just requires fairly regular new content and a commitment to support and development.

Well, hey ho, what do I know. I'll be keeping my eye on these for mid-gain flavours, not being a shredder/metalero myself.

Good luck!

I'm pretty sure that NeuralDSP and Mercuriall (who happen to be IMO the top two in quality) both use neural networks and that it's a big part of their success at modeling. Definitely cool to see more. Does seem to work...

Good info, thanks! Interesting that I can run Murcuriall and Neural Cory Wong on an old dual-core Win 7 I take out with me to various jobs with absolutely reasonable CPU use.

Meanwhile, looks to me from the comments from users with undoubtedly far better spec, that the bottleneck to these being successful (in comparison to others) is the CPU (in comparison to others). That's why I think Patreon works - some of us would jump on for a while just to see how things develop while the devs take user feedback and iron out their framework/approach a little more.

Also, I'm really not fussy at all about GUI's and these don't seem bad at all, but I feel like there's tons of unnecesarily wasted space (wall, cab) that in some cases makes it harder to focus my eyes on the knobs/panel.

Well, I'm gonna stop literally sticking my nose into someone else's business, and sit back and watch what happens.

Thanks a lot for your feedback.
You made some fair points regarding the GUI and also the hint with Patreon sounds very interesting to the dev (right now one 😊).

Regarding ML, Neural Networks and increasing available computing power, I think we will see some crazy progress in the next years in a multitude of life areas… which leaves me a bit with mixed feelings...

But tube amp simulations will definitely get better and that’s the good thing about it.

Full disclosure - Markus gave me a license for Eddie so I could evaluate it properly, and also help fix the bug I noted above (now fixed!).

I actually like this a lot, and the internal IRs are decent enough to have fun with. I threw this little ditty together to show off Eddie, so please excuse the lack of talent and the atrocious (doubled) guitar playing.

Epiphone Les Paul in drop C with Seymour Duncan Distortion pickups -> IK Axe I/O -> Reaper -> Eddie (default settings using IR5) left / Eddie (default settings using IR 4) right -> Lo/Hi pass -> CLA Mixdown on the master with a little ERS 250 reverb, and that's it for the guitars.

If you can get past the terrible playing, I think Eddie sounds great. I've been having fun with it anyway!

Tone immediately reminded me of Mastodon, well done

Gosh, I saw that video a while back - must've lodged in my mind, which is a compliment to Mastodon and shows you how uncreative I probably am

Awesome recording cprompt, really cool!!! \m/ thanks a lot, also for your support and help with the bug fix.

I have now released a new version that should run without problems related to the recall of amp settings.

Also, some minor improvements are included! Now I have to find out how to send all people the download links again :-)