Guitarists like to listen with their eyes. They see a nice UI and *insert very famous guitarist* in the name of the product and go apeshit. Also probably the majority of their budget is spent on marketing. Everyone's favorite youtuber makes videos about them and their ads are everywhere on socials.

I can say it's relatively easy to make them sound good but from my experience they are not that accurate with respect to the original hardware. I've had wayyy more accurate recreations of amps with NAM>>STL Amphub>L6 Helix Native>Mercuriall>Overloud. Most of those also have a plethora of effects, which I can also rearrange in whatever order I want.

And I absolutely hate their piecemeal approach with plugins. It would be interesting though if they released a fully featured amp sim suite with like everything they released so far, kinda like a VST Quad Cortex...

 

Nothing special, NDSP makes good plugins, that's all. I don't think all of them are great either, but obviously we all have our own tastes. Plugins like Nolly (Nolly X is even better, I used it before the R2R release among other NDSP plugins), Nameless (I would still put it in the top 6-7 amp plugins, it gave a huge boost to the plugin scene back then), Gojira, or Soldano are the answer to why they are popular. I think their Mesa Mark IIC+ plugin is also excellent, although it is a divisive amp. I have been using these for years and they are solid tools in the box.

 

At one time they were but not anymore. Otto Audio 11 11 still reigns supreme and STL has evolved in all the right ways.

 

I know it isn't what they are really known for, but Mantra *looks* great. I will demo it on the next vocal I get loaded up in the daw, and hear what it really can do or not. As long as it sounds right, there are a lot of features in it that would a great tool for vocals. I think both UA and PA have a nice number of guitar related titles but then have many other offerings. If Neural continue to branch out into other plugins besides guitar-related stuff, it could be a good thing.

 

I'm not an Otto fan, but STL is indeed very good too. Let's be happy that we have so many options these days. It's like when someone writes/says why another Mesa OS 4x12 V30 IR pack? I haven't heard two Mesa IR packs in the last 10 years that sound the same. If you don't use the same SM57, or don't put the microphone exactly in the same place as another developer, or you use other equipment and/or methods, it will sound different. Yes, tons of plugins/IR etc. result in a kind of decision paralysis, which is a fact, but they say it's a first world problem.

 

Last edited: Dec 17, 2025 at 9:52 PM

have never heard of that one neither had a chance to try it, but will definitely consider it. Lately, i was totally impressed by the latest guitar amp plugin from UAD: the UAD Showtime '64 Tube Amp they were just giving away for free last week, i managed to grab one and tested quickly.. it was really impressive, worked as well on a bass.. it is last generation of guitar amp modeling by ua. It is a part of their new Guitar Paradise new suite. Highly recommend.

 

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YL8pwF7Mnc

 

@Balisani What do you disagree with? Explain it.

 

People financing all of this for a crazy bunch of distortion.

What a market!

 

anything is good it is not the VST it is YOU.

 

I just tested the new Soldano X on a metal track. I don't know if they improved anything sound-wise, but it's even more disappointing than I remember. It's still muddy, and lacks the punch of the real unit.

In my opinion, Mercuriall and STL Tones (both equally great, they sound like a real Soldano to me) > Nembrini > Amplitube > NeuralDSP > Tubular

 

Last edited: Dec 17, 2025 at 11:48 PM

When it comes to small nuances like pick attack, pick placement, dynamic playing, timbral perception of string thickness, harmonic extrapolations of intermodular off-beating binaural supersymmetry, or just existential musings such as whether I should have taken that sixth blotter of acid rectally... Neural DSP has given me the most "authentic" amp experience.

It might be of interest to note that I don't play metal with these plugins. I mainly dig clean-ish sounds, and if I go distortion, my approach is closer to that one guy from the late 70s No Wave music movement from New York who would trash his Marshall JCM800's tubes and replace them with a leather wallet containing the (of course anonymous) receipts of each and every one of Andy Warhol's penis enlargement operations.

The resulting tone was... I think Eric Clapton referred to it as "[insert drunk racist ramblings here]"

So yeah, for clean and a bit dirty tones, Neural DSP make some amazing plugins. People ejaculate in their pants all about the metal ones, but to me the Cory Wong and Tone King Imperial plugins are waaaaay above everything else.

 

Have you tried the Soldano SLO-100 amp head? I mean the real one. The real SLO-100 behaves similarly to this in my experience. It's perfectly okay if you don't like it, but the goal here was the faithful modeling and IMO it succeeded.

 

Yep I did. The Mercuriall one is slightly brighter and the STL Tones slightly darker than my hardware reference, but with some slight adjustments on the EQ, they sound just like the real deal. The Nembrini and Amplitude emulations are a bit off, in a way that their character is similar to the hardware, but their tonality is not there, and they need more work than the real one on a mix. The NeuralDSP is way too muddy. It lacks the brightness, the punchy transients, and there is some weird high-frequency clipping that isn't present on the original.

You can definitely hear the differences I'm talking about on these comparisons :

(at 15:00)

(at 3:30)

So either NeuralDSP measured a very weird unit that doesn't represent the average one, or their emulation simply isn't good.

 

In my own test, the plugin and the amp head sounded very similar with different settings. I tested with a similar method as Bea. Is it 100% the same as the amp head? Obviously not, but no one should expect that. I am not even blown away by the best ToneX profiles in terms of dynamics reproduction. By the way, I agree with what Rabea says at the end, I think there is no difference of opinion between me and him. (Edit: it wasn't my own amp. )

 

Last edited: Dec 18, 2025 at 12:59 AM

Even when boosting the treble or the presence on the Neural DSP plugin, I still can't get the same bite from the hardware that I can get with the Mercuriall or the STL Tones. And even when trying to match the frequency responses with an external EQ plugin, the Neural DSP sounds slightly more compressed and lacks transients. These are minute differences, and the plugin can still be very much useful in the proper hands, but they are asking the kind of prices that makes you expect an absolute best-in-class sound. And when I load a Soldano plugin, I expect its famous punchy mix-ready sound, right off the bat.

Of course it is very much possible that the guys over at Neural DSP simply had a muddy unit, this is not a critique of how accurate their technology is, it's simply that the end result isn't what I expect from a Soldano emulation.

 

In my experience, with some adjustments (meaning: a few knobs are not in the same position as on the real amp), I get a pretty close sound but hey: there are as many results as there are many test & people. In a world where if you put an another SM57 mic in the exact same speaker position as the previous SM57 was and the cabinet won't sound the same... I mean, there's probably never going to be a 100% match in these comparisons.

Regarding the price: in general, NDSP plugins are expensive, I agree, but you can buy them with a 50% discount during BF and I think once again during the year. If you have ever bought an NDSP plugin earlier, you get an extra 20% discount. (I think there is also some kind of discount on the first purchase if you buy more plugins.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not promoting them, but since Soldano was the topic, it can be bought for about 45-50 EUR/USD during BF with the extra discount. I think that with the discounted price they don't cost any more than other developers' stuff.

 

Last edited: Dec 18, 2025 at 1:57 AM

Man, that’s pure nostalgia right there.

 

Curious to know what you disagree about.

You linked to a 45min interview in which the guy almost verbatim says "people were profiling my amps and making money from it, so I figured I should too".

Tons of companies are doing this stuff and getting extremely similar results.

If I have to be honest, the cabinet IRs make almost more of a difference in terms of final sound quality than the actual developer of the amp sim.

I have never found Neural DSPs built in IRs to be as good as ML Sound Labs (Mikko) and apparently Neural DSP agrees because they started having Mikko do IR files for some of there recent releases.

There are some extremely good A B comparisons of real amps and IK Tonex profiles on YouTube (I remember watching an Italian guy?) that show the Tonex profiles are nearly identical in dynamic respone to a DI guitar recording reamped through the actual amp head.

STL, Mercuriall, ML Sound Labs, IK Tonex, NAM are absolutely on par woth Neural DSP in terms of Sound quality.

Edit: Here it is from Leo Gibson, Skip to 11:13 for A B shootout.

 

Last edited: Dec 18, 2025 at 2:44 AM