NAMix

NAMix is a neural amp modeller plugin for Linux. It is based on NeuralAmpModelerPlugin by Steven Atkinson and all contributors to the Neural Amp Modeler project. All original copyright is retained by Steven Atkinson.

iPlug2, the framework used by the original plugin, has no working Linux backend. NAMix is therefore a raw VST3 plugin: it is written directly against the VST 3 SDK, embeds its editor into the host window through IPlugView, and paints that editor itself with Cairo and FreeType. There is no plugin framework and no GUI toolkit in the build, which lets NAMix keep the original project's MIT licence.

It also ships as an LV2 bundle. The LV2 is not a port: it is the same processor and the same panel behind an adapter that lets an LV2 host drive them, so both formats share one DSP path, one editor and one state format. See LICENSE and NOTICE for full details.

NAMix ships as three separate binaries:

Binary	Use
NAMix.vst3	VST3 plugin — load inside a DAW (REAPER, Ardour, Bitwig, Carla, …)
NAMix.lv2	LV2 plugin — the same plugin, for hosts that prefer LV2 (Ardour, Qtractor, Zrythm, Carla, …)
namix-standalone	Standalone application — runs without a DAW, connects directly to JACK

The VST3 and the LV2 are the same plugin twice and are interchangeable: same DSP, same panel, same state format, so a project saved with one opens with the other. Install whichever your host prefers, or both.

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System requirements

NAMix requires glibc 2.35 or later. This is present in:

Distro	Version
Ubuntu	22.04 LTS or newer
Debian	12 (Bookworm) or newer
Devuan	5 (Daedalus) or newer
Fedora	36 or newer
Linux Mint	21 or newer
Pop!_OS	22.04 or newer
MX Linux	23 or newer
Arch Linux	rolling
Manjaro	rolling
openSUSE Tumbleweed	rolling
Void	rolling

Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 11 (Bullseye), RHEL/CentOS 9, and openSUSE Leap 15.x ship glibc 2.31–2.34 and will not load these binaries. Users on those systems should build from source (see below).

Both plugins need Cairo, FreeType, fontconfig and libX11 at runtime — all are present on any desktop Linux install. Neither links JACK.

The standalone additionally needs the JACK client library (libjack.so.0) and a running JACK server — sudo apt install jackd2 on Debian/Devuan/Ubuntu, or pipewire-jack on a PipeWire desktop. Both ship the library, so if you already run JACK you already have it. No -dev packages are needed to run NAMix; those are only for building from source.

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Installing the pre-built release

Download the asset for your machine from the latest release:

Machine	Asset
Intel/AMD PC (uname -m says x86_64)	NAMix-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
64-bit ARM — Raspberry Pi 4/5, Orange Pi 5, arm64 laptops (uname -m says aarch64)	NAMix-<version>-linux-aarch64.tar.gz

Both are built against Debian 12 (glibc 2.36), so they run on Debian 12 / Devuan 5 or newer and equivalents. The aarch64 build is produced by CI on an ARM runner; it builds and passes the same gates as x86_64 but has not yet been tested on a board, so reports are welcome.

Extract it and enter the directory it creates — the version is part of both names, so let the shell fill it in:

tar -xzf NAMix-*-linux-$(uname -m).tar.gz
cd NAMix-*/

(If you keep several versions side by side, name the one you want instead of using the glob.) The directory holds all three binaries; install whichever you need.

VST3 plugin — copy into your user VST3 folder:

mkdir -p ~/.vst3
cp -r NAMix.vst3 ~/.vst3/

LV2 plugin — copy into your user LV2 folder:

mkdir -p ~/.lv2
cp -r NAMix.lv2 ~/.lv2/

Either way the plugin will appear as NAMix in any host that scans that folder. Both bundles carry their own icons and fonts, so nothing else needs installing.

If a host keeps showing an older version of the LV2, look for a copy shadowing this one — a bundle under /usr/lib/lv2 or /usr/local/lib/lv2 takes precedence over ~/.lv2 in most hosts:

ls -d /usr/lib/lv2/NAMix.lv2 /usr/local/lib/lv2/NAMix.lv2 2>/dev/null

Standalone application — run it from that same directory, with a JACK server already running:

./namix-standalone

To uninstall, remove the installed plugins and the directory you extracted:

rm -rf ~/.vst3/NAMix.vst3 ~/.lv2/NAMix.lv2

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Building from source

git clone https://github.com/rations/NAMix.git
cd NAMix
git submodule update --init --recursive

cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --parallel $(nproc)

Required system packages (Debian/Ubuntu):

build-essential cmake ninja-build pkg-config libcairo2-dev libfreetype-dev
libfontconfig-dev libx11-dev libjack-jackd2-dev lv2-dev liblilv-dev

lv2-dev is what builds the LV2 bundle; without it the build skips it and says so. liblilv-dev is needed only by namix_lv2check, the bundle's own test — nothing that ships links lilv.

The VST 3 SDK is included as a submodule. To build against a checkout you already have, pass -DVST3_SDK_DIR=/path/to/vst3sdk instead.

After building, install whichever format you want:

mkdir -p ~/.vst3 && cp -r build/VST3/Release/NAMix.vst3 ~/.vst3/
mkdir -p ~/.lv2  && cp -r build/lv2/NAMix.lv2          ~/.lv2/

Verify the VST3 with Steinberg's validator, which is built alongside it:

./build/bin/Release/validator build/VST3/Release/NAMix.vst3

Verify the LV2 bundle with its own gate. It checks what a host actually sees — the export surface, the port table read back through lilv, the ui:portNotification declarations the meters depend on — then installs to ~/.lv2, loads the binary, runs it and round-trips its state:

bash scripts/lv2-gate.sh --model ~/path/to/some-capture.nam

To render the editor panel to a PNG without a host or an X server — useful for checking the layout after changing src/namgeometry.h:

./build/panelrender /tmp/panel.png resources

To build and package a release archive:

bash scripts/makedist-linux.sh

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Usage

1. Load a .nam model file by clicking the model row; an in-plugin browser opens. The < and > arrows step through the other models in the same folder, and the ✕ clears the current one.
2. Optionally load an impulse response (.wav) on the IR row the same way.
3. Adjust Input, Output, and tone-stack knobs (Bass, Middle, Treble) by dragging vertically, or with the mouse wheel.
4. The EQ toggle enables or disables the tone stack.
5. The Noise Gate toggle enables the noise gate; the Threshold knob sets the gate level.
6. The ⚙ (gear) button opens the settings panel, where you can configure the input calibration level and output mode (Raw / Normalized / Calibrated). Options the loaded capture does not support are greyed out.
7. If the loaded model supports slimming, a small icon appears to the right of the model row. Click it to open the Slim overlay and reduce the model size.

Hosts without a GUI can still load models: the edit controller implements a small INamFileLoader interface, discoverable through queryInterface, that takes model and IR paths directly.

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Credits

• Steven Atkinson — Neural Amp Modeler, NeuralAmpModelerCore, AudioDSPTools, original plugin design and assets
• All contributors to NeuralAmpModelerPlugin
• Steinberg — VST 3 SDK
• Mikko Mononen — NanoSVG, which rasterises the plugin's icons

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Licence

NAMix is released under the MIT Licence, the same licence as the original Neural Amp Modeler plugin.

The Neural Amp Modeler DSP core, original plugin code, and graphical assets are copyright Steven Atkinson and used under the MIT Licence. The VST 3 SDK is MIT (Steinberg). NanoSVG is zlib-licensed. Eigen is MPL 2.0. The fonts Michroma (OFL 1.1) and Roboto (Apache 2.0) are bundled under their respective open licences. See NOTICE for full attribution and licence texts.

VST is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, registered in Europe and other countries.