Vector Amp
A guitar amplifier model that solves the amplifier and the speaker together, because in a real rig they are not two things in a row — they are arguing with each other.
The Idea
Static tone is a solved problem. Profiling, neural capture, and impulse responses all reproduce one amplifier at one knob setting well enough that a blind comparison is not reliable. Competing on that is a losing position, and the remaining differences are argued about more often than they are heard.
What no capture reproduces is the conversation. A speaker's impedance is not a resistor — it has a resonance peak in the low end and a rising slope up top, and it pushes back against the output transformer and power tubes in both directions. An impulse response captures what the speaker put out. It cannot capture the argument that produced it. That argument is where feel lives.
What It Models
- Reactive load interaction - Amplifier and speaker solved together, bidirectionally, rather than one after the other
- Power supply sag - Rectifier behavior and supply droop on time constants of tens to hundreds of milliseconds; the bloom and squish of a hard-pushed amp
- Bias excursion and blocking distortion - Grid conduction shifts the operating point and the stage then recovers, which is the sputter you hear when a power section is slammed. Almost nobody models it
- Presence and resonance as feedback phenomena - They change loop gain and damping, not just frequency response. Modeled as tone controls they are simply wrong
Licensing
Vector Amp will be commercial, proprietary software — licensed, not sold. Its source is not publicly available. Music you make with it will be yours, with no royalty owed on it.