Plug in.
Find your sound.

Your first rig

1. Connect your guitar. In the Mac app, open Audio settings. Choose your interface, guitar input channel and headphones or speakers, then enable Hear yourself. In a DAW, choose the track input and enable input monitoring.
2. Choose a starter sound. Open Starter sounds and load one of 24 original Buffle rigs. Eight guitar/bass voices and four cabinet responses are included without an account. For other gear, open the hosted TONE3000 selector or import your own NAM and IR files. An amp-only model needs a cabinet IR.
3. Describe the sound. Try “Meshuggah rhythm” or “warm edge of breakup”. Built-in recipes use your saved captures offline. Open Assistant settings and set up the bundled offline model for more flexible planning. Ollama, LM Studio and compatible cloud providers remain optional.
4. Play, refine, save. Ask for less fizz or a tighter low end. Lock any block you want to keep, then save the complete rig. Saved models and settings recall without the assistant or internet.

Editing & comparison

Preset library. All 72 Volume 01 recipes are available inside the app, with the same gear histories and artist evidence as the website. Choose All six packs to search by artist, sound, gear or role. Filter by guitar/bass, sound role, Ready offline or Capture required. List and Grid offer different browsing densities; your search, filters, selection and locally saved favorites are remembered. Choose a sound; if its capture is missing, sign in and use Add capture. Then Load preset replaces the chain and applies the authored tone/output settings. The app verifies the exact capture fingerprint first. Your input and interface calibration remain under your control.

Gear shop

Search the captures on your Mac by name, hardware or creator, then filter by gear type, file format and instrument. List/Grid and favorites help keep frequently used gear close. Instrument filters use supplied metadata; unclassified captures stay under Unspecified. Ready offline indicates a locally available asset; the engine still verifies files when loading. Use Clear filters to recover an empty result list. Online discovery continues through Browse on TONE3000.

Hardware view

Double-click a block to open its control surface. Drag a dial vertically, hold Shift for fine adjustment, or click its value to type. Arrow keys also adjust the selected dial.

Tuner

Open Tuner in the main toolbar. The chromatic display shows the detected note, frequency and cents relative to A = 440 Hz. Play one string at a time; bass notes are supported.

Effects

Search 18 built-in effects by name or family. New options include fuzz, octave fuzz, octaver, pitch bend/drop, ring modulator, tremolo, flanger, phaser, wah and bit crusher. Pitch processing adds around 64 ms of wet-signal delay and is currently better suited to sound design and playback than live drop tuning.

Captured controls

A NAM capture records fixed hardware settings. Input drive, output trim, mix and level normalization remain editable. The hardware editor also exposes six bands of real EQ: frequency, gain and Q, low/high cuts, bypass and pre/post placement. This EQ shapes the capture; it does not reconstruct the original amp tone stack. Use Captured hardware setting to choose an actual model variant and load the author’s notes. A single capture does not expose hardware positions that were never recorded. Source photos are shown when available; other surfaces are representative.

A/B working copies

Store your rig in A, edit it, then Store B. Recall either copy to compare the entire chain. These copies save with the app or DAW session, including their models. They do not automatically match loudness. Save favourites as separate presets.

Undo & routing

Use Undo and Redo after edits. Drag a block’s grip to any position, or use the inspector’s move buttons. Choose Split signal to show paths A and B. Each can contain its own amps, cabinets and effects. Choose the guitar input or split after a block to share processing before the split. Connect into selects the destination block on the other path; earlier destination blocks are skipped and dimmed. Pan, balance, solo and polarity control their combined output. Move or duplicate blocks between paths; Use path A only preserves B for later. For nested splits and merges, open Routing graph. Connect OUT to IN or use the connection selectors, then set connection gain, pan and polarity. Changes stay in a draft until Apply. Invalid connections and feedback cycles are rejected. The current graph supports 16 processors and 64 connections. Existing lane routing is preserved until you explicitly change it. The assistant builds serial chains. Clean-tone and bass requests narrow the available capture choices before planning; seven common follow-up controls can be refined without replacing unrelated blocks. Provider failures are shown when local recipes are used.

Offline AI, ready on your Mac

The installer includes the planning helper and a private local model runtime. The standard installer downloads the verified Qwen3.5 4B model when you choose Set up offline AI in Assistant settings. The offline installer includes those model weights, so setup can verify the local copy without downloading it. The model occupies about 2.74 GB on disk. The current embedded configuration recommends at least 16 GB RAM; M1/8 GB remains an unqualified target. Factory sounds do not need the language model.

Setup shows progress and supports pause, resume and a connection test. The runtime starts when needed; you do not need a separate Ollama installation. Tone planning runs outside the audio callback. The assistant shows preparation, planning and validation progress. Cancel a pending build or send a new request to replace it; late replies cannot overwrite the newer request. A complete proposal is retained natively and checked against the rig revision before it is applied. If you edit the rig while planning, a stale result leaves it unchanged and you can build again. Built-in recipes remain available while setup finishes or if a model request fails.

The language model plans a chain; it does not generate amp captures. Use the included original Buffle sounds, import your NAM/IR files or select additional sounds through TONE3000. Downloading new captures and signing into the library require internet access.

Bring your old presets

Open Presets, then Import modeler presets to inspect POD HD and Line 6 L6T/X3 files. Review the original blocks and stored settings, search for corresponding captures, choose replacements, arrange their order and paths, then confirm the reconstruction. You can export the inspection report and save the resulting Tone Assist rig.

This is an assisted reconstruction. Source knob values are shown for reference; they are not mapped to unrelated NAM controls. Unknown models require a choice. Axe-Fx Standard/Ultra files currently expose inventory only, and their routing and amp parameters are not automatically converted. The GuitarGeek preset library remains in research.

Hear it inside the song

The listening room has 13 new guitar riffs with individual Tone Assist rigs. A plays the original DI; B plays the processed tone. They share a transport and matched integrated loudness. Try Swan Song for crunch and ambient clean, Irae for octave-fuzz chaos, and Eternal Machine for a high-gain solo.

The preset library uses rhythm riffs for rhythm presets, Eternal Machine Solo for leads, Swan Song and WAR.0.1 clean DIs for clean presets, and dedicated performances for textures. Bass retains CHUG.0.1, CHUG.0.2 and WAR.0.1. Choose a performance, load two sounds of the same role into A and B, then compare without restarting. Share comparison copies a link to your sounds and song position.

The session room gives you individual stems, four native metal rigs, mute/solo, pan and level. Select a channel to see the exact per-take chain used for its native render and adjust browser EQ, saturation, echo and room. Open Try real-time NAM and choose a Buffle starter voice to play the original DI immediately, or load your own compatible local 48 kHz NAM file. Starter voices include an original synthesized output cabinet; Restore starter chain returns to that voice’s recipe. Turn supported controls, bypass and move blocks, and compare with the native render on the same transport. Your capture stays on your device. Each song keeps your mix while you move between arrangements during the visit. Reset mix restores the starting sound.

The original mixes are native renders. Optional live NAM uses WebAssembly with a bounded WaveNet/A2 subset and serial effects; its room reverb approximates the native effect. It does not embed the complete AU/VST3 plugin or support every native processor. Match the live level by ear before comparing. Web channel effects run live. MIDI guitars are audio prints. Space plays or pauses when focus is outside a control; A and B switch the preset-library comparison.

Capture your hardware

1. Prepare. Use Quick capture in the standalone app. Choose a hardware and interface profile, or enter an unlisted device manually. Review its source notes, wiring diagram and measured calibration.
2. Record. Verify the official NAM stimulus and select a physical 48 kHz interface route. Arm only when the cabling and analog levels are correct. Recording checks identify clipping and file problems.
3. Training is paused. Current NAM 0.13 requires PyTorch Lightning 2.6.1 or earlier, while the security policy requires patched Lightning 2.6.6 or later. Managed setup stops before downloading packages, and unsafe or incompatible installed trainers are rejected before import. Existing recordings remain available. Training will need a supported dependency set before this workflow can be completed. NAM playback and offline AI are unaffected.
4. Compare. Record independent playing through the hardware, render the same DI through your model, then inspect the aligned, level-matched A/B. Adjust your capture and repeat.

Physical capture has not yet passed end-to-end hardware qualification. Profiles are curated, with manual entry for other equipment. Vendor mixer settings are configured by you. Correlation and residual error measure a recording comparison; they are not a percentage of perceptual identity or a guarantee of a perfect capture.

When something is quiet

Build & availability

0.4.1 development beta · Apple Silicon · macOS 14+
Standalone Mac app, AU and VST3, with a selectable installer. The website demos are available now.

The local installer uses development signatures. Public Developer ID signing, notarization, clean-machine installation and physical capture/live-play acceptance are still release gates. A public installer is not offered yet.

Capture files belong to their creators. Public pack downloads contain recipes and source links; they do not bundle licensed models. Artist names describe inspiration, with no endorsement or exact album recreation implied.