About TONE3000
TONE3000 (T3K) is the world's largest community for sharing and discovering digital models of amps, pedals, outboard gear, full rigs, signal chains, and more.
T3K is built on the open-source project Neural Amp Modeler (NAM), created by Steve Atkinson. TONE3000 has partnered closely with Steve on the development of NAM's latest architecture (A2). A huge thanks to Steve, Pablo, Dom, Ross, Scott, Jon, and the entire NAM community ♥️
FAQ
General
Yes. Browsing, downloading, capturing your gear, and sharing tones are all free. It's all free!
Digital models save you time and money while providing endless choices. Popular uses include:
- Create studio-quality recordings without expensive studio sessions
- Play live without lugging around expensive and heavy gear that's prone to damage
- An organized library of your favorite tones
- Experiment with tones without retracking, reamping or setting up gear
- Recreate tones (e.g. tonematch) even if you forgot your signal chain or settings
- Share your favorite tones with friends, family or lovers
- Play models of your gear through headphones/monitors instead of blasting through a wall of 4x12s and having your neighbors call the police
Amp modeling pedals cost $500 to $2,000+ and require you to use their hardware and software. With T3K, you can capture tones for free on your computer, and those tones work anywhere NAM or IR files are supported, just like WAV or MIDI files.
Sound quality is another difference. NAM A2 beats Neural DSP V2, IK Multimedia ToneX V2, and Line 6 Proxy by a wide margin in both quantitative and blind listening tests. Both the test code and raw data are open source.
Amp Modeler Blind Listening Test
Over 1,000 participants compared recordings of real gear to anonymized digital models using the MUSHRA blind listening methodology. Higher scores mean the model was rated as sounding closer to the original amp, pedal, or signal chain.
Amp Modeler Accuracy Test
Each model's output was compared against recordings of real gear using several error metrics (ESR, MAE, LOG_MEL, and MRSTFT). This chart shows Bayesian Elo ratings derived from ESR, where higher scores indicate lower measured error relative to the original amp, pedal, or signal chain.
Neural Amp Modeler is an open-source project created by Steve Atkinson that uses deep learning to create digital models of guitar amplifiers, pedals and signal chains with state-of-the-art accuracy.
NAM A2 is the current generation of Neural Amp Modeler, built by TONE3000 in partnership with Steve Atkinson. It's more accurate than any modeler that came before it, and efficient enough to run on a $3 chip. Full details are in NAM A2: The Complete Guide.
Yes, fully MIT-licensed. The architecture, training code, and inference engines are free to use, modify, and ship in commercial products with no license fees. Everything is on GitHub.
An Impulse Response (IR) is a digital model of a speaker cabinet, reverb, or room acoustics, captured as a waveform. Learn more on our guide: Impulse Response (IR)
Yes, two ways. The preview player lets you audition every tone with a variety of DIs and IR's. Live Input lets you plug your instrument into your audio interface and play through any tone in the library in real time, right in your browser.
Verified Profiles are official accounts for gear manufacturers, retailers, and top creators. Brands like Blackstar and Andertons share official captures of their gear directly with the community. You can also browse the creator leaderboard.
TONE3000 is for sharing captures of real analog gear. You can view the policy here: Tone Sharing Policy
Getting Started
Download the official TONE3000 Plugin. It's free, works in your DAW or as a standalone app, and the Plugin Guide walks you through it.
The official TONE3000 Plugin works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Tones also play in compatible plugins, pedals, and amps — the ecosystem is growing fast, so follow the blog for the latest.
You can always play tones in the official TONE3000 Plugin. For other hardware and software, ask the company directly. The more people who request it, the faster it gets prioritized. We've written a message you can copy, edit, and send, plus contact details for most major manufacturers: What if my hardware or software doesn't support A2?
Capturing Your Gear
We hope so! Here's why:
- Fast, free training on RTX-4090s (no need to use your own resources)
- A2 by default, with both A2-Full and A2-Lite in a single model
- Dead simple workflow
- Cloud-based: start training and close your computer
- Train multiple models concurrently, including batch training
- Organized library of your tones
- Easily share your models
- Preview models with a range of DIs, or play through them live in the browser
- Upload either a recording of the provided sweep signal through your gear or a dry/wet signal pair (DI and matching stem).
- T3K trains your tone model on cloud GPUs, no complex local setups or coding required.
- Download your model as an open source NAM file, which works anywhere NAM is supported.
New to this? Start with the capturing guide.
We have guides for capturing a speaker cabinet, an acoustic space, and an effects unit.
The following are direct quotes from our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service:
- You retain full ownership of all audio files, models, and related data you upload.
- TONE3000 does not claim ownership of your uploaded content and will not sell your data or models.
- By uploading files to TONE3000, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use the data for internal research purposes to develop and improve our services.
- This license is limited to internal purposes and does not grant us the right to share, sell, or distribute your data.
Two examples of that internal research: Best Fit, which delivers the same quality model faster, and the development of NAM A2.
If you would like to opt out of having your data used for research purposes, please email us at support@tone3000.com.
Absolutely! We have an entire category of experimental captures.
For Developers and Manufacturers
Yes. The TONE3000 API allows hardware and software makers to bring our huge library of NAM captures, IRs, and the TONE3000 account experience directly into their products.
At the time of this writing, NAM Rig, the Blackstar Beam Mini and Beam Solo, the HeadRush Prime, Core, and Flex Prime, the Darkglass Anagram, the LAVA STUDIO, the Chaos Audio Stratus, the Sonulab StompStation, the VTR Effects IGNIS, and many more have integrated the TONE3000 API.
If you're interested in bringing TONE3000 into your products, check out the API Docs.
Support
Please spam us with your ideas and feature requests! Email support@tone3000.com or join the Discord.
Email us at support@tone3000.com.