Show HN: SmartGuitarAmp – Guitar plugin made with deep learning

The tone similarity is quite impressive.

This is really cool, I’d love to try this out!

Neural DSP, developers of what are arguably the best amp sim plugins available right now, claim that their upcoming floor modeler uses what they describe as “unique biomimetic AI technology” to create its sounds. I wonder how different their work is from this. https://neuraldsp.com/products/quad-cortex

I’m personally kind of over lugging an amp around and if live music ever comes back, I’m likely to sell mine and go with a modeler + power amp. The technology has just come so far and the convenience can’t be beat, especially if you do a lot of studio work or need to travel with your gear. A lot of demanding metal bands have switched away from tube amps and I’m already using plugins for recording as much as possible, so this seems like the next step.

Just tried it out, I don't know if I would say it sounds like a $600 tube amp especially in high gain scenarios (it really didn't like my active pickups), for a free plugin it is definitely great. In comparison to the Archetype Nolly plugin from Neural DSP it doesn't really compare, but but for something thats free and can be trained at home on custom audio samples its pretty cool.

What a clickbait title.

Sounds (to whom?) like a $600 (which one?) amp using deep learning (why does it matter?).

To expand on this:

-$600 tube amp is not description of a sound. And a plug-in is not something you plug your guitar into to make enough noise for 300 people. "A plug-in sounds like a $600 speaker" makes almost as much sense as the title; by the sound of an amp people often mean the sound of the combo box which houses an amp and a speaker.

-If this emulates a particular amp, the title should say which one

-If it does a good job at emulating a particular amp, where's the side by side comparison? The video demo only shows the plug-in.

-There are plethora of guitar amp plugins. What makes this one any different or better?

-What's the significance of deep learning here? Plenty of ways to make this plug-in without deep learning. Why use deep learning?

Etc, etc, etc.

"An open-source guitar amp VST plug-in made with deep learning" would be a better title, even though the article leaves much to be desired.

When I click through I see a git repo with a descriptive title. Why are we seeing this title in the HN submission?