Amplifikation 360 vs Rustortion

Amplifikation 360 is a modular host for building guitar rigs from Kuassa Amplifikations and Efektor plug-ins. It supports free routing with unlimited devices, plus serial, parallel, and crossover container setups. Live and Toggle modes let users switch sessions or individual modules with a hardware MIDI controller. Other tools include a looper/audio player, chromatic tuner, movable interface panels, and tap tempo that can sync to a DAW master tempo. The app can run standalone or as a VST, VST3, Audio Unit, or AAX plug-in on Windows and macOS. Compatible Amplifikations and Efektor plug-ins a user owns are registered as modules inside it. The free plan includes Amplifikation Lite, Efektor Silencer, Efektor G3607 EQ, seven utility modules, and cab IR loading. Individual compatible plug-ins start at $25 one-time; the Amplifikation 360 Bundle is $299 one-time, with taxes excluded. Amplifikation One modules are not available in the host because they use an older engine architecture. The listed minimums are 64-bit Windows 7 or later, or macOS 10.11 or later, with at least 4 GB RAM. The product page states native Apple Silicon support and macOS notarization with Hardened Runtime.

Rustortion is a free guitar and bass amp simulator written in Rust for Linux and Windows. It runs standalone with JACK or inside a DAW as a VST3 or CLAP plugin. The processing chain has 12 DSP stages, including preamp, compressor, tone stack, power amp, effects, graphic EQ, and NAM model loading. Oversampling can be set from 1x through 16x, and impulse-response cabinet simulation is available for guitar and bass. Users can save and load presets, switch them with keyboard hotkeys, record in real time, tune, shift pitch with FFT processing, and use MIDI controllers. Plugin bundles are listed for Linux x86_64, Linux aarch64, and Windows x86_64. The project is MIT-licensed, experimental, and under active development, with use at the user’s own risk. Linux requires PipeWire, JACK support, and a Rust toolchain. There is no macOS build. The interface supports English and Simplified Chinese.