Amp Room vs AmpForge

Amp Room is Softube’s guitar and bass platform for building tones from modeled amplifiers, cabinets, pedals, microphones, and studio effects. Five suites cover ENGL Savage Mark II, Marshall, Vintage, Bass, and Metal, with different gear combinations in each. Officially licensed effects come from Tube-Tech, Empirical Labs, Trident, and other makers. Suite Mode presents selected gear sets, while Studio Mode allows further tone shaping. Suite listings include a custom impulse-response loader, eight IR Producer Packs, customizable signal chains, and cabinet captures with movable microphones. Suites can be expanded with other Amp Room Suites and Amp Room Ready products. The software runs as AU, VST, VST3, or AAX inside a compatible DAW on macOS or Windows; it is not standalone. Use requires Softube and iLok accounts plus internet access. Prices range from €99, paid once to €149, paid once, with a 20-day trial.

AmpForge is a free, open-source guitar amp simulator plugin that also includes vocal effects. Its pedalboard has 19 internal modules that can be reordered while the plugin is running. The NAM module loads Neural Amp Modeler capture files supplied by the user. Vocal tools include autotune pitch correction and a de-esser for sibilance. AmpForge is available as VST3, LV2, and CLAP plugins, plus a standalone app on supported platforms. It can run in compatible hosts such as Reaper, Carla, and Bitwig. Users can save, update, delete, import, and export custom presets, alongside the included factory presets. Hosts can automate every parameter, including pedal positions. An IR loader is included, but users need to provide cabinet impulse responses and NAM captures. AmpForge supports Linux, macOS, and Windows. The Windows installer offers VST3, CLAP, and LV2, but no standalone executable. The macOS build is not signed or notarized; the README describes a Gatekeeper workaround for installation.