Gjalla vs Soundshed Guitar

Gjalla is a free, open-source guitar amp simulator for black metal and other raw styles. Sognevo, a one-person project making dark-music audio plugins, provides it for Windows, macOS, and Linux as VST3, CLAP, and, on macOS, AU, plus a standalone application. The processing chain includes input trim, noise gate, pedal, preamp, tone stack, power section, presence, cabinet, frost, and output trim. Its pedal offers 90s distortion, HM-2-style chainsaw, and starved-transistor fuzz voicings. Three analytic cabinets are included; WAV or AIFF impulse responses up to two seconds can be loaded, or the cabinet can be disabled for an external loader. Six factory presets, meters, editable knob values, undo and redo, tooltips, and a resizable interface are provided. Host latency is reported as six samples, stated as 0.13 ms at 48 kHz. There is no packaged release yet, so users must build from source or follow GitHub releases. A build requires Git, CMake 3.22 or later, and a C++20 compiler. Gjalla is GPLv3-or-later and has no telemetry, network access, update checks, or accounts.

Soundshed Guitar is a free guitar and bass multi-effects app for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It runs standalone or in a DAW through VST3, AU, or CLAP. Neural Amp Modeler A2 supplies amp tones, with Tone3000 available inside the app. Effects can be arranged in any order, split into parallel paths, connected through graph-based routing, and combined with other plugins. Impulse-response cabinet simulation lets users load and blend their own cabinets. Community presets and tone packs can be browsed, complete setups imported, and preset assets transferred between systems or collaborators. Built-in tools include a tuner, metronome, jam backing tracks, quick riff capture, and a Practice Tool. Version 1.6.0 adds nine effects, fifteen drive pedal models, gapless preset switching, signal-chain undo, and A/B comparison. Minimums include Windows 10/11 x64 with AVX2, macOS 11+, 4GB RAM, and 500MB disk space. Listed audio rates are 44.1–96kHz with latency under 10ms at 48kHz.