HOTONE AMPERO STOMP / STAGE NOW " IMPORT " NAM FILES

[paisleywookiee]

Damn, they really put the “Ho” in “Hotone”.

 

[DLC86]

Damn, they really put the “Ho” in “Hotone”.

I would have preferred a hoe

 

[Dom Mcsweeney]

I would have preferred a hoe

Thanks.
I just watched this again for the first time in years:

 

[DLC86]

Thanks.
I just watched this again for the first time in years:

View attachment 41416

Cool video! But not the kind of hoe I'd "dig"

 

[laxu]

I tried more NAM captures. JVM, Ceriatone King Kong, 100 epoch BluGuitar etc.

They all exhibit the same bass phenomenon. Even if I turn the bass knob in the Clone block all the way down, there's more bass than with the NAM capture.

 

[laxu]

In other news, my already shit day just got shittier. The center encoder on the Hotone suddenly just got stuck, to the point that even pliers won't move it.

Has anyone encountered something like this before? I'd probably have to tear down the entire unit to replace the encoder.

 

[DLC86]

One test I would do to verify this would be to load a 44.1 kHz NAM model (it can be done quite easily with some trickery) and see if it sounds the same in that case.

@laxu regarding this, you can make an even quicker test... open the .nam file of your model in a text editor and change the sample rate line to 44100. This way it will sound wrong even in the nam plugin but, if the issue with the Ampero really is the sample rate, it should now sound pretty much identical to it.

 

[Dom Mcsweeney]

In other news, my already shit day just got shittier. The center encoder on the Hotone suddenly just got stuck, to the point that even pliers won't move it.

Has anyone encountered something like this before? I'd probably have to tear down the entire unit to replace the encoder.

I asked @Dirk Dimehead about this and he said he'd never experienced this happening with encoders before. Also said that normally there are standard parts that you should be able to buy from digikey/mouser.

Worth a look inside I guess and see if you can do it DIY style, or ask a local tech to fix it / or send it back if it's in warranty still.

 

[laxu]

I asked @Dirk Dimehead about this and he said he'd never experienced this happening with encoders before. Also said that normally there are standard parts that you should be able to buy from digikey/mouser.

Worth a look inside I guess and see if you can do it DIY style, or ask a local tech to fix it / or send it back if it's in warranty still.

Yeah I opened it up, it was actually really easy with only a few allen key screws on the top panel. I'll post pictures in another thread a bit later.

Apart from the failing encoder, the build quality even on the inside looks nice. It's very modular so almost any PCB could be replaced if Hotone can provide the parts. The touchscreen is its own module, so is the footswitch board. It seems the main processor is on small PCB with a small heatsink on the back of it. The boards are connected either with laptop style tape looking flat connectors or more regular multi-cable connectors on a case by case basis.

The encoder shouldn't be too hard to replace, seems to be 5 fairly easily accessible solder joints. It looks like one of those encoders with a green base that seem pretty common, just a long shaft model.

 

[laxu]

@laxu regarding this, you can make an even quicker test... open the .nam file of your model in a text editor and change the sample rate line to 44100. This way it will sound wrong even in the nam plugin but, if the issue with the Ampero really is the sample rate, it should now sound pretty much identical to it.

I tried this, just edited the capture file and changed "sample_rate" property to 44100. It still sounds alright in NAM plugin, maybe different from the original tho.

No change in the Hotone though, I don't feel the edited capture or the Hotone one are any closer.

I did an EQ match on my sound clips. This is the difference, NAM as reference:

After matching, the clips sound identical. As you can see, the rest of it looks more or less alright, but there's a big correction in the lows.

 

[DLC86]

I tried this, just edited the capture file and changed "sample_rate" property to 44100. It still sounds alright in NAM plugin, maybe different from the original tho.

No change in the Hotone though, I don't feel the edited capture or the Hotone one are any closer.

I did an EQ match on my sound clips. This is the difference, NAM as reference:

View attachment 41430

After matching, the clips sound identical. As you can see, the rest of it looks more or less alright, but there's a big correction in the lows.

Thanks for checking, it's not that then but probably something weird in their conversion... I suspected that cuz a wrong sample rate basically creates a sort of "formant shift" in the model that could have explained a different frequency response and maybe also a different feel due to some altered time constants.

PS: now I have a doubt about this test though... is it correct to type 44100 in the model metadata or should it be 48000*(48000/44100)=52245 ? Need to think a bit about it

 

[KingsXJJ]

Thanks for checking, it's not that then but probably something weird in their conversion... I suspected that cuz a wrong sample rate basically creates a sort of "formant shift" in the model that could have explained a different frequency response and maybe also a different feel due to some altered time constants.

PS: now I have a doubt about this test though... is it correct to type 44100 in the model metadata or should it be 48000*(48000/44100)=52245 ? Need to think a bit about it

Maybe setting it to 96K will fix the encoder…

 

[Mike Oliphant]

I think also, this really doesn't help anyone in the industry to move forward - it just undermines any company doing genuine work in this area (such as Dimehead, or anyone else who have added NAM support in their software/hardware).

I disagree. These less powerful units have no hope of running NAM files directly - they simply haven't got the processing power for it. This at least allows owners of these units to use the large library of NAM files to create captures that work on their device. I don't think it undermines anything - if anything, it helps establish NAM as a standard.

 

[riffy]

I don't see how. If they don't sound good, it would lessen the impact of NAM imho, of course.

 

[Dom Mcsweeney]

I disagree. These less powerful units have no hope of running NAM files directly - they simply haven't got the processing power for it. This at least allows owners of these units to use the large library of NAM files to create captures that work on their device. I don't think it undermines anything - if anything, it helps establish NAM as a standard.

Yeah, on the one hand there is growing popularity for NAM as a standard, this helps to put it on the map a little more.
On the other, the reality is that this is more akin to 'taping and sharing' .NAM files to .CLO files.

What I can see happening then is a lot of those will be uploaded back online to Hotone's version of a tone cloud server, where people can upload and exchange worse quality files (not NAM files). I don't like that. It feels wrong to me.
Especially if people see their own files being cloned and redistributed without reference or permission.

 

[laxu]

I disagree. These less powerful units have no hope of running NAM files directly - they simply haven't got the processing power for it. This at least allows owners of these units to use the large library of NAM files to create captures that work on their device. I don't think it undermines anything - if anything, it helps establish NAM as a standard.

Yeah I think apart from that low end issue, they do sound much like the NAM profile. The previous Hotone community profiles were just a much more limited selection compared to the vast library of amps NAM offers.

I assume they have some sort of conversion process for the weights in the NAM files to work with their capture system.

 

[laxu]

Thanks for checking, it's not that then but probably something weird in their conversion... I suspected that cuz a wrong sample rate basically creates a sort of "formant shift" in the model that could have explained a different frequency response and maybe also a different feel due to some altered time constants.

PS: now I have a doubt about this test though... is it correct to type 44100 in the model metadata or should it be 48000*(48000/44100)=52245 ? Need to think a bit about it

I think it's fine to just type 44100 in there. The NAM plugin does show the file as running at 44.1 KHz after that.

 

[laxu]

I also tried messing around with e.g gain on the capture, and feel like the Ampero 2 capture might add more gain at the default settings, though it's a bit hard to tell. Rolling gain from the default 50 -> 40 seemed to help a bit at least with the particular capture I was using. I'll need to try a parametric EQ after the block to see if correcting the low end gets me into happier places.

I tested that the Input 7 DI signal and the Ampero 2 grid with nothing enabled in it sound the same to my ears, so I think my testing method is sound.

 

[Los-D]

I'll need to try a parametric EQ after the block to see if correcting the low end gets me into happier places.

Could you find out if a (somewhat) fixed post-EQ work for different NAM files? Wondering how intricate their conversion/fit process is

 

[JiveTurkey]