Building the sound.

02.1The blocks palette

A chain starts empty and you fill it. Tap the dashed ADD chip at the end of a chain and the palette opens, grouped into sections. Pick a block and it drops into the chain at that point — and its editor opens straight away, so you land on the knobs rather than on an untouched chip.

Nothing stops you adding the same block twice. Duplicates are numbered as they arrive — GATE 1, GATE 2 — and block names are always drawn in capitals on the chips. Two drives in a row, a gate at the front and another after the amp: all fine.

Working with a block

A block that has no parameters of its own says so plainly when you open it: Nothing to tweak here. That is the block working normally, not a loading state.

02.2Models inside blocks

Several blocks are really a family of pedals or circuits behind one chip. Open the block and the row of chips at the top picks the flavour — the knobs stay the same, the character changes.

The Tube Amp block is NAMper's own amp simulation, and it carries the knobs you expect: Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Presence and Master, all running 0–10 with 5 as flat. It needs no download and no account, which is why it is the thing that carries the show when you are offline.

02.3The five EQ models

There is one EQ block, and inside it five completely different equalisers. Switching the model swaps the knob set as well as the sound, so pick the one that matches the job — a quick tone tweak, a surgical cut, or a mastering-style shelf.

Every block sheet, this one included, has horizontal IN and OUT meters. On an EQ they are worth watching: a few decibels of boost on three bands adds up fast, and the meters tell you whether the next block is being hit harder than you meant.

02.4NAM amp profiles

Two different blocks live under Amp & Cab and it is worth being clear about which is which. Tube Amp is NAMper's own amp simulation, with the seven models listed above. Amp is the Neural Amp Modeler player: it loads a .nam capture of a real amplifier and runs it.

The amp card

At the top of the Rig tab, between the IN and OUT meters, the amp card shows what the Amp block is currently playing: the cover art, the tone title, the @author, up to six metadata chips, a download count, a Browse TONE3000 button and a books icon (Open NAM library). With nothing loaded it reads Built-in tube amp. If a rig has more than one amp in it, chips AMP 1, AMP 2 and so on choose which one the card edits.

Input and Output

The Amp block sheet is deliberately short: the profile title (or No model loaded), a Browse TONE3000 button, and two knobs. Input and Output both run −20 to +20 dB and start at 0. Input pushes the capture harder, which is how you get more or less breakup out of a profile; Output trims the result afterwards.

NAM output is normalised automatically, using the loudness metadata inside the model, to a −18 dB target. That is why swapping between profiles does not throw your levels around, and it is not exposed as a control.

Three ways to load a profile

1. Browse TONE3000 — the online library, covered in the next section.
2. The books icon, which opens a sheet titled NAM Profiles. Tap any row to load it into the current amp.
3. Factory presets resolve their own profiles, so loading Crunch brings its amp with it.

The NAM Profiles sheet is your local library. Empty, it reads Profiles you download from TONE3000 collect here. Its toolbar menu has Import .nam files… — a multi-select file picker that accepts .nam files only — along with Export all (N files) and Update all. Each row carries Share .nam file, Delete and a refresh button (Refresh from TONE3000).

If a model cannot be read you get Could not load amp model {filename}. — usually a file that was moved or deleted out from under the rig.

02.5TONE3000

TONE3000 is a free library of amp captures, and NAMper pulls from it directly. There is no in-app browse screen: Browse TONE3000 opens tone3000.com inside a secure web sheet. You search and filter on the website itself, pick a tone, and the app takes it from there — while it fetches, the button reads Loading… and is disabled.

Signing in is an ordinary web sign-in, not a pasted API key, and if you are already logged in to tone3000.com in the browser the app reuses that session. The library is filtered server-side to A2-architecture NAM captures of amps, full rigs and pedals — that is fixed, not a setting you can change.

Picking a tone downloads the first model of that tone — there is no model picker — together with its cover art and metadata. Everything lands in the app's tones/ folder and appears in the NAM Profiles sheet.

The sign-in offer

A sheet titled Connect TONE3000 appears once per launch while you are signed out, explaining that factory presets stream real amp captures from the free library. It offers Sign in to TONE3000 and Play offline, with a Don't ask again toggle. You can also silence it for good in Settings → PROMPTS → Offer TONE3000 sign-in on launch.

Playing offline

Anything already downloaded keeps working with no network at all. A factory rig whose profile is not cached falls back to its bypassed built-in Tube Amp and a bundled cab, and the header reads Built-in tube amp so you know what you are hearing. Sign in later and those rigs resolve to the real captures in place — you do not have to rebuild anything.

When something goes wrong the app says which of the four things it is: TONE3000: sign in to load %@., TONE3000: the server had a problem (HTTP %lld) — try again later., TONE3000: unexpected reply for %@. and TONE3000: no connection — check the network.

02.6Cabs and IRs

The Cab block plays an impulse response — a speaker cabinet captured with a microphone. Its sheet shows the current IR name, a menu button labelled Cabinets, a Load file button, and one knob: Level, −12 to +12 dB. Once an IR is loaded, a Clear IR button appears alongside.

Load file opens a file picker for .wav and other audio; whatever you choose is copied into the app's irs/ folder, so it stays available even if you delete the original. The same block, used as an IR Verb, labels its menu Spaces instead and loads reverb impulses rather than cabinets.

IR problems show as IR file missing: {name}, Could not read IR {name}. or Could not import {name}.

02.7Presets

A rig preset stores the whole chain — blocks, models, knob positions, the amp profile, the cab. Save one from the + on the PRESETS card, or from the preset manager. The prompt is an alert titled Save preset whose message tells you what is about to happen: The current rig gets the next free MIDI PC slot. Type a name and tap Save. Leave the field empty and it saves as Preset.

Updating and managing

Overwriting is always confirmed. Update with current rig raises a dialog reading Overwrite “{name}” with the current rig? with Overwrite and Cancel. The manager itself has the nav title Presets and two sections: Rigs · MIDI PC slots, and Everything at once → Global snapshots, described as rig, looper, sampler, setlist and control map saved and restored together.

Each row's context menu offers Rename, Update with current rig, Share and Delete. Renaming lives in the manager only — the preset chip menu on the Rig tab does not have it. Once you have more than eight presets, a Search presets field appears at the top.

Import and export

The manager's import/export menu has Import preset / bank / backup…, Export rig presets (which writes NAMper Presets.namper) and Export EVERYTHING (full backup) (which writes NAMper Backup.namper). Note that a full backup carries parameters and references but not sampler kit audio.

The file extension is .namper. Tap one in Files, or receive one over AirDrop, and NAMper imports it and opens the preset manager. Every imported preset gets a fresh slot, so an import can never silently overwrite something you already had.

The factory four

NAMper ships with four rigs on PC 0–3, each built around a real capture: Clean (an American blackface combo), Crunch (a 1969 British 50-watt head), Lead (a modern high-gain amp+cab) and Ambient (a British class-A chime combo). The capture each one streams carries its uploader's own title, which is what the amp block shows. Each rig also carries a bypassed built-in Tube Amp and a bundled cab as its offline fallback, and each is marked FACTORY in the manager. Bring them all back from Settings → RESET → Reset to factory presets; the dialog warns Delete ALL user presets? The four factory rigs come back.

The other tabs have preset sheets of their own, reached from their PRESETS chip and all sharing the same design: Looper Presets, Sampler Kits, Perform Presets, Control Presets and Global Snapshots. Two of them cannot be shared, because they point at files on this device — sampler kits carry their audio, and global snapshots reference models, samples and backing tracks.

02.8Multiple rigs

NAMper runs up to four rigs at once — a guitar and a vocal, a guitar and a bass, or four players through one interface. Add one from the RIG + menu in the SIGNAL CHAIN header.

The menu's Templates section starts you somewhere sensible: Guitar (gate · tube amp · cab), Bass (gate · comp · bass amp · cab), Vocal (gate · de-esser · comp · eq · plate) and Empty rig. Below that, From preset lists your saved presets by name — or opens a searchable NEW RIG FROM PRESET sheet once there are more than eight of them.

Rigs are named GUITAR, BASS, VOCAL or RIG n depending on the template; a rig built from a preset takes the preset's name. Headers only appear once you have more than one rig.

Focus, pinning and removal

Tap a rig's header to give it MIDI focus — a badge marks which rig your controller is currently driving. The pin toggle (Pin rig / Unpin rig, captioned "presets keep this rig") makes a rig survive preset switches, which is how you keep a vocal chain intact while you change guitar sounds from a footswitch. A trash button (Remove rig) appears once there is more than one rig.

Layout follows the device: in landscape the rigs stack as rows with each chain running left to right; in portrait they sit side by side with the chains running top to bottom.

Each rig's input and output

The IN connector at the head of a chain is a menu. Its Sound-card input section lists your channels by name — In 1, In 2 and so on — and adds Sampler pads and Loop 1–Loop 4, so a rig can process a loop or the sampler rather than a live input.

The OUT connector opens a sheet headed RIG OUTPUT, with Level and Pan knobs, a Hardware output pair menu (Out 1-2, Out 3-4… — this needs Use all interface outputs switched on in Settings), and Record this rig into → Loop track 1–Loop track 4. The summary row underneath reads Looper: not assigned or, once you have picked some, Looper: track 1, 3.

02.9Parallel branches

A rig is not limited to one line. Each rig can hold up to four chains — the main one plus three branches — so you can split a signal, treat the halves differently and mix them back together. Create one with the branch-icon button under the chain (Add parallel chain).

Its menu has a single section, Branch from, listing each input channel, Sampler pads, Loop 1–Loop 4, and After {Block} for every block on the main chain. That last group is the interesting one: branching after the amp gives you two different reverbs on the same amp tone, branching before it gives you two different amps on the same guitar.

The two anchors

A branch draws as a parallel column with an entry anchor where it leaves the main chain and a merge anchor where it rejoins. The merge anchor shows that branch's level as a percentage, so you can read the balance without opening anything.

Dragging is the fast way to audition: hold the merge anchor, slide it earlier or later in the chain, and hear the branch land before or after the delay without opening a menu.

A branch can also skip the main mix entirely: point its output at Own output 1-2 and it goes straight to its own hardware pair, which needs Use all interface outputs enabled in Settings first.

02.10The master section

The MASTER card at the bottom of the Rig tab is where everything meets: every rig, the looper, the sampler pads and the backing track sum here before the hardware output. Whatever you do to the master, you do to all of it.

The FX + menu adds master processing — up to six blocks. You can choose from Volume, EQ, Comp, Tube Sat, Tape Sat, Limiter, FB Guard, De-Esser, Cloud, Hall, Plate, Room and Delay. They behave like chain blocks: tap a chip to edit it, long-press for Enable / Bypass and Remove.

There is no always-on master processor here. Saturation is a block you add — Tube Sat or Tape Sat, both with Drive, Tone, Mix and Level — and limiting is the Limiter block, with Gain, Ceiling (−12 to 0 dB, default −1) and Release. If you have not added them, they are not in the signal path.

Reading the master meters

Stereo peak bars L and R carry ticks at −12 and −6 dB. Beside them sits a BS.1770 loudness reading: a large momentary LUFS number with a smaller line below reading LUFS or LUFS · S <n> for the short-term value. Below −70 LUFS it shows -inf. The fader runs −60 to +12 dB.

Use the peak bars to stay out of clipping and the LUFS number to match your overall level to something else — a backing track, a previous take, another player on the same desk.