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. See LICENSE and NOTICE for full details.

NAMix ships as two separate binaries:

Binary	Use
NAMix.vst3	VST3 plugin — load inside a DAW (REAPER, Ardour, Bitwig, Carla, …)
namix-standalone	Standalone application — runs without a DAW, connects directly to JACK

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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).

The plugin needs Cairo, FreeType, fontconfig and libX11 at runtime — all are present on any desktop Linux install. It does not link 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 NAMix-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz asset from the latest release.

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-x86_64.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 both binaries; install whichever you need.

VST3 plugin — copy into your user VST3 folder:

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

The plugin will appear as NAMix in any VST3-capable DAW.

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

./namix-standalone

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

rm -rf ~/.vst3/NAMix.vst3

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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

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 the VST3:

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

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

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

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.