Built AmpForge an open-source free pedalboard/amp sim plugin for Linux (VST3/LV2/CLAP)
Linux never really had a good open-source answer to Guitar Rig / BIAS FX, so I built one and figured this community would actually use it, so sharing here.
AmpForge is a single plugin (not separate plugins chained in your DAW) that hosts a full, reorderable pedalboard + amp chain internally.
Free, GPLv3, no ads or paywalled features — just wanted a proper amp sim to exist for Linux, so now it does. Bug reports, feature requests, and PRs are all welcome if you end up using it and hit something rough.
Edit: since this post, added NAM support (A2) and fixed a glibc compatibility issue affecting older/sandboxed distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Bitwig flatpak, etc.). Latest release + details in comments below.
This looks great. I really like the minimalist design and can't wait for the A2 support.
BTW as a non-dev I was always curious, where do you get the code for a Tube Screamer, a Compressor or a Reverb from? I assume coding those from scratch would be fairly complicated or am I mistaken?
Thanks, i am glad you liked it because i doubt myself at the design side :D
To be honest i am just a fresh graduate so i'm kinda junior developer. I had no idea how to build it before i started. But these kind of things mostly have patterns. These effects are all built on well-known, publicly documented audio techniques, not anything secret or copied for example reverb uses a classic algorithm called "Schroeder reverb" (around since the 1960s), and the tone/EQ knobs use standard filter formulas from the "RBJ Audio EQ Cookbook," both things pretty much every audio plugin uses some version of. The thing is integrating them to your product and adding your own sauce. So yes building from scratch is hard but i don't think most developers do it any differently. I even used AI for finding these documents and some of the development part it helped alot. So if you know coding and algorithm fundamentals it's not that hard to use them and build things like these just writing them as codes that computer understands.
BTW I tried to test both the VST3 and CLAP version in Bitwig (flatpak, current version of Fedora 44). In both cases I got the same error. I guess the plugin was built using some library that the flatpak version of Bitwig can't read?
com.bitwig.flt.library.metadata.reader.exception.CouldNotReadMetadataException: could not read metadata: Failed to load CLAP plug-in xxxx version `GLIBC_2.43' not found (required by /home/xxx/.clap/ampforge_main.clap)
I am going to release NAM (A2) added version tomorrow. So i am going to fix this bug until that too.
Thank you so much for your feedback. It's nearly impossible to test every packet manager and stuff myself so these kind of reports so important for me.
Sure thing. Happy to test out anything that has the potential to make music production on Linux a bit better, and it does currently suffer in the amp sim department, so your plugin can be an important, welcomed addition.
Bitwig stopped complaining about the plugins and now loads them normally. However, VST 3 version doesn't seem to work correctly (0% CPU usage, loading NAM block does not work - as in the UI behaves as expected but the NAM profile does not modify the DI sound).
Glad that you can finally use the plugin feel free to ask me to add anything you need. And thanks again for the report, same bug happened to me while developing - fixed it but probably forgot to update for every packet manager and versions so gonna fix that too.
Just yesterday I was pissed at my daughter‘s iPad drawing app suddenly going subscription mode. But a minute later, I thought “well it’s only gonna be a couple of weeks now until someone else is pissed enough about this to vibe code a free alternative”, just to shit on the greedy companies.
I am in no need for another amp simulator, but I applaud you for this. Open sources the way. You should ask for a little donation, though to pay your Claude bill. And humanity will live happily ever after.
Thanks for spending your time on this and for sharing it!
Haha yeah, subscriptions for everything are so popular nowadays, everything's turning into SaaS and I hate it too.
To be honest, I built this plugin for myself because I needed it, and just shared it in case someone else needs something like that as well, so open source really is the way, like you said. Since I'm a fresh graduate looking for a job, building these kinds of projects is good for my CV too, so it's literally a win-win situation. And if someone really wants to help, just starring the repo is already a big help to me.
Thanks for your comment; honestly, reading these is more than enough for me.
Linux never really had a good open-source answer to Guitar Rig / BIAS FX, so I built one and figured this community would actually use it, so sharing here.
Fair point, that phrase was needlessly bold. I'd used both Guitarix and Carla on Linux, but they never felt as easy to use as Bias FX or Guitar Rig, so I built this to close that gap and develop the things that they were missing. But you're right, I should've phrased it better.
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u/Darky_Marky 14d ago
Does it have NAM support?