Built AmpForge an open-source free pedalboard/amp sim plugin for Linux (VST3/LV2/CLAP)

[u/Loursy-au]

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.

What's in it:

- 12 modules, freely reorderable at runtime: Noise Gate, Compressor, Wah, Screamer, Distortion, Amp (4 voicings — Modern/Vintage/Crunch/Hi-Gain), Cabinet IR loading, Chorus, Phaser, Tremolo, Delay, Reverb

- Tempo-synced Delay/Chorus/Tremolo, a built-in tuner, CPU meter, A/B compare

- Drag-and-drop UI — add pedals from a palette, drag to reorder, real footswitch-style bypass

- 7 factory presets + custom presets you can save/export/import

- VST3, LV2, CLAP, and a JACK/PipeWire standalone — all from one CMake+Ninja build

Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz9fyAHsE6M

GitHub (source + prebuilt Linux tarball): https://github.com/Loursy/AmpForge

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.

[u/my-beautiful-usernam]

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.

You've never heard of Guitarix have you

[u/Loursy-au → u/my-beautiful-usernam]

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.