Neural Amp Modeler on iPhone and iPad
How does Neural Amp Modeler work on iPhone and iPad?
Neural Amp Modeler captures a real amplifier into a small file. An iOS player loads that file and runs it live, so a phone or tablet plus an audio interface replaces the amp. The files are an open format, mostly free, and the same ones work on desktop.
Written by the people who build iNAM, but these pages are about the format and the ecosystem rather than the app. Captures are open, and most of what is here applies whichever player you use.
Start here
- What is a NAM profile? — what a capture actually is, and how it differs from an impulse response or a modelled amp.
- How to play NAM profiles on an iPhone — the hardware you need, and the part most people miss.
- Choosing an audio interface — what makes one work with a phone, and what quietly does not.
Captures and where they come from
- What is TONE3000? — the community library that most captures live in.
- Using TONE3000 captures on iOS — downloading and loading them on the device.
- Capturing your own amp — what it takes, and why it still needs a computer.
Formats and standards
- NAM A2 explained — what the newer architecture changed, and why some players cannot load it.
- NAM, ToneX and Kemper compared — three ways of capturing an amp, and what you give up with each.
- iOS amp sims without a subscription — what the one-time-purchase end of the market looks like.
Where the real community is
iNAM is one app built on top of somebody else's open-source project, and these are the sources worth knowing about. We are not affiliated with any of them.
- Neural Amp Modeler — the project itself, by Steven Atkinson. This is the trainer: the thing that turns a recording of your amp into a capture file.
- The desktop plugin — free, open source, and the reference implementation. If you have a computer, start here rather than with anything anyone sells.
- TONE3000 — where the community's captures live. More about it here.
- r/NAM_NeuralAmpModeler — where people actually talk about this, including the developers of most of the apps. Worth reading before buying any of them.
- The ClonedTones wiki — the community's own list of NAM-compatible software across every platform, maintained by people with no product to sell.
Is any of this hard?
No, but there is one genuine hurdle and it is worth naming up front: you cannot plug a guitar into a phone. The signal is too weak and the impedance is wrong, so an audio interface has to sit between the two. Everyone who tries this hits that once, decides the whole idea does not work, and gives up. It is the only real obstacle in the entire process.