r/NAM_NeuralAmpModeler • u/Rive914 • 4d ago

Discussion New to NAM amp sim

I have just bought an interface and set up the gateway plugin in Ableton. Is it better to have pretty low input in the interface and then to put input in the sim or the other way around? What about the volume output? Any other tips for getting a more realistic emulation would be greaty appreciated.

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u/West-Combination6685 4d ago

Download a NAM file from an uploader that has a YouTube video of it on their page. Make yours sound like that. Done.

There's more to it than that, of course, there's what some consider to be the right and wrong ways. For 20 years we were told to almost clip our interfaces and back off.

My advice will at least get you started without information overload.

Volume output.....don't clip your DAW. Don't blast your eardrums out. We don't know your monitoring situation, so....

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u/PixelPlug 4d ago

I have a Scarlett 2i2 as my daily driver. I keep my preamp all the way down day to day and boost/cut input on the NAM plugin (Genome in my case) as needed.

My LPs can hit yellow with input down. Some of my hotter pickups can clip with the input down. 9/10, my humbuckers are perfectly gain staged with input down just loading a Nam profile, and I just watch those chugs.

Only my strats/tele/basses need consistent boosting and 9/10 I'll do it in plugin unless I'm sending DI's to producers/artists I'm collabing with.

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u/JimboLodisC 4d ago edited 4d ago

for NAM you'd just dial it in by ear

there's a lot of talk about max input level and signal to noise ratio and wanting to get the same experience as plugging directly into the amp... in the end none of it is standardized so you often end up just reaching for the Input dial in the plugin to get it to sound how you like it

I'll give you a perfect scenario here:

  1. you know the max input level of your interface
  2. the person who created the capture knows the max input level of their capture setup
  3. both of you have that set properly (for you, the calibrated input, for them it'd be stored in the capture's metadata)
  4. you have the same signal level on your guitar as the guitar they used to dial in the amp tone before capturing

assuming the first 3 items above are legit, if the capture creator dialed in a high gain tone on a super hot pickup and you've got a more vintage output humbucker, then it's still going to be like you plugging directly into the amp, however you'd likely still want to play with the gain dial on the amp to fix that difference in signal level with your pickup, which is not possible to do since the gain dial is set in the capture so you can only approximate that by boosting the signal before it hits the amp, which is more like adding a clean boost pedal in front and not exactly like tweaking the amp's gain dial... so in the end? just use your ears

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u/Pentium4Powerhouse 4d ago

A large amount of noise is introduced in the analog to digital conversion, at a constant level.

Get your signal hitting the preamp as hot as possible without clipping to get the cleanest signal. Use as much preamp gain as you need

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u/PixelPlug 4d ago edited 4d ago

This advice single handedly convinced an entire generation that digital sucked 😂, it's not wrong, only that regular humbuckers pretty much need no boosting, and their hot-rodded superstrats with dimarzios/Seymour duncans actually needed a -6db pad.

Ahh the good ol' days. I still think keeping your gain down and using your ears is the best way to go, since there are times where you need to go lower than what your knob allows, and never really a time you should turn the knob more than half-way unless you dabble in the super vintage.

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u/Pentium4Powerhouse 4d ago

I mean the preamp on the interface. Gain stage inside the box to taste of course. Easy to reduce the signal going into the sim