Other people's plugins.
NAMper hosts the AUv3 effects you already own, anywhere in a chain — and NAMper itself turns up as an effect in other apps. Both directions have rules worth knowing before a gig.
03.1Adding an AU effect
Tap the dashed ADD chip on a chain to open the blocks palette. Right at the bottom of the list, past Utility, sits the Plugins section with a single entry: the AU Plugins submenu.
Open it and you get every Audio Unit effect installed on the device, listed as the plugin name followed by its manufacturer and sorted by manufacturer first, then by name. Nothing needs scanning or enabling — if an app on your phone ships an AUv3 effect, it is in that submenu.
If the submenu is empty it reads No Audio Unit effects installed. Apps that ship AUv3 plugins make them appear here. That is the normal state on a fresh device: AUv3 plugins arrive as ordinary App Store apps, so you install the app and its plugin shows up here on the next visit.
Pick a component and NAMper creates the block with that plugin already loaded, then opens straight into the plugin's own interface — no empty shell, no second step. The block's chip on the chain is named AU Plugin, and it behaves like every other block: tap the LED dot under the name to bypass it, drag it to move it along the chain, long-press it for Remove.
03.2The plugin interface
The block sheet puts a thin status row above the plugin: an hourglass while the component is being instantiated, a green check once it is live and passing audio, and the plugin's name beside it. Under the status row you also get the usual block IN and OUT meters, so you can see what the plugin is being fed and what it hands back.
Loading is not always instant. While a component starts up the sheet reads Loading the plugin… — larger plugins take a moment on first use, and the signal passes through untouched until the plugin is ready.
Swapping the plugin
The circular-arrows button in the sheet is Replace plugin. Its menu is the same component list, and picking a different one swaps the plugin inside the existing block, so the block keeps its place in the chain and its bypass state. Use it when you want a different delay in the same slot rather than tearing the chain apart.
When a plugin has no view of its own
Most plugins draw their own interface and NAMper embeds it inline, exactly as its author designed it. Some ship no view at all. For those, NAMper draws its own generic list — up to 24 parameters, each as a label and a slider. That is what the screenshot above shows: Apple's AUDelay has no custom panel, so you get named sliders instead.
iOS can improvise an editor for a viewless plugin, but some units crash inside it. NAMper draws the parameter list itself instead, which is plainer to look at and far more likely to survive a set.
03.3Limits worth knowing
| Limit | What it means |
|---|---|
| Effects only | Only effect components are listed. AU instruments are not hostable, so a synth or a drum machine will never appear in the submenu. |
| 16 plugins | Sixteen hosted plugins at once, counted across every rig and every branch. In practice you will run out of processor long before you run out of slots. |
| Stereo | Plugin input and output run in stereo, at whatever sample rate the engine is on. |
| Rig chains only | AU plugins go inside rig chains. The MASTER section takes NAMper's own blocks only. |
If a plugin fails to render, NAMper leaves the signal dry for that block rather than dropping out. You keep hearing your guitar, minus that one effect — which is the right failure on stage, but it also means a plugin can go quiet without an obvious alarm. If an effect stops doing anything, check the status row in its sheet.
Third-party plugins also cost processing power that NAMper cannot budget for. Watch the DSP load chip in the Rig header after you add one; if it moves into amber or red, step the buffer size up in Settings.
03.4Settings and presets
A hosted plugin's own settings — everything you changed inside its interface — are stored with the block and travel inside your NAMper preset. Save the rig, load it tomorrow, and the plugin comes back set the way you left it.
Plugin state is captured at the moment you close the block sheet. Tweak a plugin, leave its sheet open, save the preset from behind it, and the preset stores the state from before your edits. Make it a habit: close the plugin sheet first, then save.
The same applies to global snapshots and to sharing a preset with someone else — whatever was captured on the last sheet close is what goes into the file. Note that the preset carries the plugin's settings, not the plugin: whoever opens it needs the same Audio Unit installed on their device.
One more thing to expect: using Replace plugin clears the stored state. The settings belonged to the old component and mean nothing to the new one, so the swap starts you at the new plugin's defaults.
03.5NAMper as a plugin
NAMper also ships as an AUv3 effect, so you can load it inside GarageBand, AUM, Logic or any other AUv3 host and record it onto a track there. In a host's plugin browser it looks like this:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | retroaktive: NAMper |
| Manufacturer | retroaktive |
| Description | NAM amp & effects chain |
| Type | Audio effect — not an instrument |
It takes stereo in and gives stereo out, but the two input channels are summed to mono inside: a guitar-style mono front end feeding an amp. That is deliberate, and it is what you want for a DI'd guitar on a mono track.
The 18 parameters
The plugin's own panel is a small branded strip reading NAMper and Amp & FX chain — tweak the parameters in the host. All the actual controls are host-automatable parameters, and there are eighteen of them:
| Block | Parameters |
|---|---|
| Gate | Gate On, Gate Threshold |
| Compressor | Comp On, Comp Threshold, Comp Ratio |
| Drive | Drive On, Drive Gain, Drive Level |
| Tone | Bass, Mid, Treble |
| Delay | Delay On, Delay Time, Delay Feedback, Delay Mix |
| Reverb | Reverb On, Reverb Decay, Reverb Mix |
Every one of them can be automated from the host. The on/off parameters are floating-point values from 0 to 1, so most hosts draw them as sliders rather than switches — anything at or above the halfway mark is on. Three factory presets are exposed to the host as well: Clean, Crunch and Lead.
No NAM model. No cab IR. No modulation blocks. No rig document at all — the host saves those 18 parameter values and nothing else, so a rig you built in the app does not travel into the plugin. There is also no MIDI input in the plugin version.
Read that honestly: inside a host, NAMper is a compact amp-and-effects channel, not the whole app. If you want your NAM captures, your cabinets, the looper or the setlist, run the app itself and record from there.
You can run the full app and route its output into a DAW, or use the plugin for a quick guitar channel on a track you are already tracking in a host. The Perform tab's recorder and its DAWproject export exist for the first route — see Perform & lyrics.