Swanky Amp Pro manual

Installing

There is one installer for macOS and one for Windows. Each installs Swanky Amp Pro as a VST3 plug-in, a CLAP plug-in and a standalone application. There is no Audio Unit version, so a host that only loads Audio Units, such as Logic Pro or GarageBand, cannot run it.

The macOS installer runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 11 or later. The Windows installer is for 64-bit Windows 10 or later. On an Intel or AMD processor the plug-in needs AVX2, which most processors made since 2013 have.

Download the installer for your computer from the downloads page, run it and follow its prompts. If your host was open while you installed, ask it to rescan its plug-ins.

Alongside version 1.3

Version 2 is a separate plug-in, so it installs beside 1.3 rather than replacing it. Projects saved with 1.3 keep opening in 1.3. To move a song across, put version 2 on the track and dial the sound in again, or start from a factory preset.

The factory presets came across from version 1. Presets you saved yourself in version 1 do not appear in version 2, so keep 1.3 installed while you still need them.

A computer that is already activated for 1.3 needs nothing more: version 2 reads that licence and starts activated.

Mono and stereo tracks

The amp listens to one channel, the first input, which is the left one on a stereo track. Put Swanky Amp Pro on a mono track, or make sure your guitar arrives on the left input of a stereo one.

On a stereo track the signal splits into a left and a right amp after the pedals, which is what makes the stereo spread and the two cabinet paths possible. On a mono track it runs a single path: the right cabinet, Balance and Width are greyed out and the knobs have no stereo spread. Their settings are kept for when the track is stereo again.

The standalone application

The standalone application runs the same amp without a host. Its Settings menu chooses the input and output devices, their channels and the buffer size. Choose the device and the channel your guitar is plugged into; the output moves to the same interface unless you have chosen another. The buffer size sets how long the sound takes to come through: 128 samples unless you choose otherwise, and 64 or 32 if your interface keeps up without crackling. These choices are remembered on your computer. The input is on when the application opens, so turn your speakers down first if you use a built-in microphone.

On Windows the Audio Driver item chooses between your interface's ASIO driver, used whenever one is installed, and the Windows audio system, which adds about 10 ms of delay each way. ASIO is a trademark and software of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.

Activation and the demo

The first time Swanky Amp Pro opens on a computer it makes no sound, and a panel in the middle of the window asks for your product key. You can activate there, or choose DEMO MODE and start playing.

The Swanky Amp Pro window dimmed behind a panel titled Swanky Amp Pro 2.0.0, with a product key field, ACTIVATE and PASTE buttons, a DEMO MODE button, and links to the website, the manual and support — The panel a new installation opens with.

Activating

Copy the product key from your order email.
Paste it into the field with Command-V on macOS or Control-V on Windows. If your host keeps that shortcut for itself, press PASTE or right-click the field instead.
Press ACTIVATE.

A key is 32 letters and digits. Dashes and lower case are fine: the field turns whatever you paste into upper case. ACTIVATE stays dim until the field holds something shaped like a key, and pressing it early says what is wrong with the format.

Activation needs an internet connection once. After that the plug-in works offline on that computer. A licence covers up to three computers, with no dongle and no third-party licence manager.

The licence belongs to the computer, not to the project. Copies of the plug-in that were already open pick it up when you open their window.

Activating sends the product key and identifiers for this computer, and nothing else. The plug-in makes no other calls home.

If activation fails, the line under the buttons says why: the key was not recognised, it has reached its activation limit, or the server could not be reached. The support page says how to reach us if the message does not help.

Keys from version 1

Your version 1 product key activates version 2. On a computer where 1.3 is already activated there is nothing to do. On any other computer, paste your version 1 key as above.

Demo mode

The demo is the full plug-in. It goes silent for five seconds once a minute until you activate it. The silence is applied at the very end of the signal path, so the sound, the displays and your saved settings are exactly what a licence gives you.

Pressing DEMO MODE starts the demo, and so does closing the panel any other way: the close button, Escape, a click outside the panel, the key button in the header or a tab. The demo begins with one of its silences so you hear straight away what it does, and every later session starts the same way.

The activation panel during a demo silence, headed in orange: Sound paused for five seconds while in demo mode. It explains that the panel closes when the sound returns and that the key button in the header reopens it — During a demo silence the panel explains the gap.

During a silence the panel opens by itself and cannot be closed; it goes away when the sound comes back. If you start typing or pasting a key while it is open, it stays open so you can finish.

The line at the bottom of the window says the plug-in is in demo mode. Outside a silence, the key button at the right of the header opens the panel whenever you are ready to activate.

Once activated

The button at the right of the header shows a question mark once the computer is activated. It opens the About panel with the version, your key with all but its last four characters hidden, and links to the website, this manual and support. Change key goes back to the key field, to activate the computer with a different key.

The window

The window has four parts. The header along the top holds the tabs, the presets and three buttons. The main area shows the tab you pick: AMP, PEDALS or CAB. The narrower area on the right, with the scope, the meters, Input/Output and Gate, stays the same on every tab. The line along the bottom explains whatever the pointer is over.

The Swanky Amp Pro window on the AMP tab with the factory preset HB airy drive loaded: pre amp, power amp, tone stack and reverb knobs on the left, the scope, Input/Output meters and Gate on the right, and a help line along the bottom — The AMP tab with a factory preset. Knobs showing L and R readouts carry a stereo spread.

Knobs and gestures

Drag a knob up to turn it up and down to turn it down. Hold Shift while dragging for fine adjustment. Right-click a knob to put it back to its default.

The mouse wheel turns a knob too. Click a knob and the arrow keys step it, while Home and End jump to either end of its range. Shift makes the wheel and the keys finer as well.

Each knob shows its value under its name. The large knobs carry an orange ring that lights up as far as the knob is turned.

Every control is a host parameter, so your host can automate it. That includes each knob's stereo spread, which appears as its own parameter with Spread at the end of its name.

The help line

Hover over any control and the line at the bottom of the window says what it does. With nothing under the pointer it lists the knob gestures.

The header

Presets

The preset menu lists Init first, then the factory presets, then your own. The factory presets are in two groups: HB for humbucker pickups and SC for single coils. The buttons beside the menu work on the list:

Previous and next: Load the preset before or after the current one.
New: The plus button saves the current sound as a new preset. A file dialog asks for its name and where to put it.
Save: Saves your changes over the current preset. It lights up once one of your own presets has changed. Factory presets cannot be overwritten; save a copy with the plus button instead.
Folder: Opens your preset folder in Finder or Explorer. Rename or delete presets there.

A preset holds the tone: the amp, the pedals and the cabinet, including the impulse response files it uses. The Input level, the cabinet's Bypass and the oversampling setting stay with the project, because they depend on your guitar and your computer rather than on the sound.

Init puts every tone control back to its default and clears both impulse responses. There is no separate reset button.

Your presets are files ending in .trucepreset. On macOS they live in ~/Library/Audio/Presets/Resonant DSP/Swanky Amp Pro 2, and on Windows in %APPDATA%\Resonant DSP\Swanky Amp Pro 2.

Oversampling

Distortion creates harmonics above the range of hearing. At the host's own sample rate some of them fold back down as a harsh fizz that is out of tune with the note. Running the tube stages at a higher internal rate keeps those harmonics out of the way. That is oversampling.

The button left of the pulse button sets it. Click to cycle through Auto, 1×, 2× and 4×. Auto is the default: it runs the tube stages close to 96 kHz whatever the project rate, which means 2× at 44.1 and 48 kHz and 1× at 88.2 kHz and above. In listening tests 96 kHz was indistinguishable from 192 kHz, so Auto spends no processing power beyond it.

The button shows the factor in use, such as Auto 2×. A fixed setting never runs the tubes faster than about 192 kHz, so 4× in a 96 kHz project runs at 2× and says so. The outline dims when the tubes run at the host's own rate.

Each step up roughly doubles what the amp costs your processor. On a heavily loaded computer 1× saves the most, at the cost of some fizz on high-gain sounds at 44.1 or 48 kHz. Oversampling is saved with the project, not with presets.

Live displays

The pulse button shows or hides the scope and the meters together. Hidden, they go dark rather than freezing, and the window stops redrawing for the audio, which saves processing power. The sound does not change.

The displays also pause on their own while the window has lost the keyboard focus and the pointer is somewhere else. They are switched on every time you open the window; hiding them lasts until you close it.

The key and question-mark button

The last button opens the panel described under Activation and the demo. It shows a key until the computer is activated and a question mark after.

Scope, meters, Input/Output and Gate

The narrow area on the right stays in place on every tab, so the displays and the level controls are always within reach.

The scope

The scope draws nearly three seconds of playing, left and right combined. The blue fill is the input, after the Input knob and before the pedals. The orange trace is the output, with the Output knob taken back out so the two sit on the same scale.

Comparing them shows what the amp does to your dynamics. Where the blue rises above the orange on an attack, the amp is compressing and distorting it. Where the orange stays up after the blue falls away, the amp is adding sustain. Where the two follow each other, the amp is close to clean. Pedals change the picture, since they sit between the two.

An edge of breakup tone shows as a hard strum where the blue jumps above the orange, followed by the two settling together as the chord rings out.

The meters

Each meter has ten cells in a left and a right column: blue for the input and orange for the output. Each cell is 6 dB, and the top one lights above −6 dBFS. The input columns show the one channel the amp listens to, so they always match. The output meters follow the Output knob, Balance and Width.

Input and Output

Input: The level of your guitar into everything else, pedals included, from −35 to +35 dB. As with a real amp, the sound depends strongly on it. Strum lightly and watch the input meter. With a single-coil pickup, set Input so the meter reads in its bottom third. With a humbucker, set it to read in the top two thirds, short of the very top. Set it before you work on a tone, and again when you change guitars. It is not saved in presets.
Output: The overall output level, from −35 to +35 dB. It works like a fader after the amp and does not change the distortion.

The drive knobs compensate their own level, so you can set the tone first and the output level last.

Gate

The gate mutes the amp when you stop playing. It listens to your guitar before the pedals and turns down the amp's output before the reverb and cabinet, so their tails ring out rather than being cut off. The signal into the amp is never touched, so the tone stays the same while the gate opens and closes, and the gate closes when your guitar goes quiet rather than when the amp's sustain dies away.

Level: The input level below which the gate closes. At 0 the gate is off; at 10 only a hard strum gets through. With the guitar's volume up and nothing played, raise it until the hum goes, then a little further so the gate does not flutter at the edge.
Time: How smoothly the gate opens and closes. At 0 the gate acts at once. Turning it up smooths the gate's movement, from 5 ms just above 0 to a tenth of a second at 10, and the gate closes twice as slowly as it opens.

The amp

The AMP tab holds the two halves of a tube amplifier, the tone stack between them, and a reverb.

A tube amp has two sets of tubes that break up in different ways. The pre amp tubes break up abruptly: hit the strings hard and the attack crunches, then the note cleans up as it decays. The power amp tubes break up gradually, with compression, sag and note bloom, the swell of a note as its distortion eases.

Both Drive knobs compensate their own level, so turning one up changes how much the amp distorts rather than how loud it is.

Pre amp

Drive: How hard the pre amp tubes are driven. This is the amp's gain.
Tight: How quickly the tubes recover from a large signal. Turn it up for a tighter, more defined modern sound, down for more touch sensitivity.
Grit: How much headroom the tubes have. Turn it down to take harsh artefacts out of the distortion, up for a heavily overdriven sound.
Stage: The number of pre amp tubes, from 1 to 5, blending between them at the settings in between. Each tube is voiced differently, so the number of stages can bring out more low end or a tighter distortion. The last step, 5.1, biases a tube cold so it clips even quiet playing, for denser, more persistent high-gain sounds.
Filter: How much low end the pre amp cuts. Turn it down for a fuller tone, up for a vintage one.

Power amp

Drive: How hard the power tubes are driven. This is the amp's volume, with its level compensated.
Tight: How quickly the power stage recovers. Turn it up for a more defined attack.
Sag: How far the power supply sags under a big note: a compression with a character of its own. It is most audible with the power amp Drive high. Turn it down for a flatter, more modern response.

Tone stack

The tone stack sits between the pre amp and the power amp, so it shapes what the power tubes distort. With the power amp driven hard, these knobs change the character of the distortion as well as its balance.

Low: The bass going into the power amp. Up for a fuller sound, down for more definition and brightness.
Mid: The mids going into the power amp. Up for a punchier, more aggressive tone, and for more sustain with the power amp driven.
High: The top end going into the power amp. Up for a brighter tone, down to calm harsh distortion.
Presence: The upper mids. Up for more definition and detail, down to take away brittle harshness.
Mode: Blends between three tone stack circuits: 1 scoops the low mids, 2 emphasises the upper mids, and 3 is a bright circuit with a scoop. Settings in between blend neighbouring circuits.

Reverb

A stereo reverb after the amp and before the cabinet, so the distortion never muddies it and the cabinet shapes it along with the amp.

Mix: How much reverb to blend with the amp's dry signal.
Time: How long the reverb rings.

Stereo spread

On a stereo track Swanky Amp Pro runs two amps, one for each side, fed by the same guitar. Normally they are set alike. A stereo spread sets a knob differently on the left and on the right, which turns one amp into a wide, bigger-than-life pair.

Hold Option on macOS, or Alt on Windows, and drag a knob to spread it. Dragging up raises the right side and lowers the left by the same amount; dragging down does the opposite. The knob then shows a grey track between the two settings and its readout shows both, as L and R. Option-right-click or Alt-right-click clears the spread. The mouse wheel and the arrow keys spread a knob too while you hold the key.

The AMP tab with stereo spreads on several knobs: each shows a grey recessed track between its left and right settings and a readout such as L 2.7 R 6.3, and the help line explains the Option-drag gesture — Spread knobs show a grey track between the left and right settings.

While you hold the key over a knob that can spread, the help line says so. The pre amp, power amp and tone stack knobs can spread, apart from Stage and Mode, and so can the cabinet's Resonance and Highs. The pedals, the reverb, Input, Output, the gate, the microphone sliders and the stereo mix cannot.

A drag keeps working on whatever it started on, so pressing or letting go of the key halfway through a drag changes nothing.

Spreading a drive or tone knob can make one side louder than the other. Balance on the CAB tab evens it out.

A place to start

Spread Mid towards the left and Presence towards the right, for a gentle width that keeps the overall tone.
Add a little spread to the pre amp Drive, so one side breaks up before the other. This is the most obvious of the three.
Watch the two output meters and even out the sides with Balance on the CAB tab if one sits louder.

Pedals

Eight pedal slots sit between the Input knob and the amp, in order: slot 1 is nearest the guitar. The pedals run before the amp splits into left and right, so they treat both sides alike and have no stereo spread.

Moving along the chain

Three slots are on screen at a time. The strip under them has a dot for each slot in its pedal's colour, with a hollow ring for an empty slot, and an orange outline around the three on screen. Hover a dot to see what is in that slot.

Press a dot to bring its slot to the middle with its neighbours; slots 1 and 8 land at the edges. The arrows either side of the dots move one slot at a time.

When the view moves, the panel stays where it is and the knobs turn to the new slots' settings, the way a hardware unit recalls a preset. The slot number rolls like a counter: down as you move along the chain towards the amp, up as you move back.

A slot

The arrows beside SLOT: Swap this pedal with its neighbour, settings and all. Move a pedal past the edge of the view and the view follows it.
The effect menu: Chooses the pedal: Green, Orange, Rodent, Comp, Chorus or Boost, or None to leave the slot empty. The same pedal can sit in several slots. A slot remembers the settings of every pedal you have chosen in it, so switching back brings them back.
The tinted field: The pedal's own two controls, in its colour.
Mix: Blends the pedal's output with the untouched guitar signal, to set how much of the effect you hear.
Out: The pedal's output level. A louder pedal drives the amp harder. On Comp, Chorus and Boost, 5 leaves the level unchanged.
The power button: Switches the pedal on and off, and glows orange while it is on. Off bypasses the pedal and keeps its settings. A pedal's knobs are dimmed while it is off; switch it on to adjust them.

The pedals

Green: An overdrive. It adds a filtered, softly clipped copy of the signal to the clean one. Drive sets the amount; Tone darkens or brightens it.
Orange: A distortion: a transistor stage into an op-amp with diode clipping, then a tone circuit. Drive sets the amount. Tone darkens or brightens it and is usually best kept below 5.
Rodent: A fuzz: a high-gain op-amp that clips hard and slews, then diode clipping and a tone filter. Drive sets the amount; Tone darkens or brightens it.
Comp: A compressor. Sweep Thresh down until the level starts to drop, then make up the level with Out. Time sets the speed: lower settings catch sharp attacks, higher ones give a slower, pumping compression.
Chorus: A short delay swept by a triangle wave and blended with the direct signal. Rate sets the speed, from a slow drift to a fast wobble. Depth sets how far it sweeps; large settings sound metallic. Pick a sound with Depth, then set its strength with Mix.
Boost: A clean boost or cut with no saturation. Boost goes from −20 to +20 dB and is flat at 5. Freq sets where, from 100 Hz to 6.4 kHz, becoming a shelf towards either end of its range.

The cabinet

The cabinet turns the amp's raw, harsh output into the sound of a guitar speaker in front of a microphone. The CAB tab offers three ways to do that, chosen in the Mode section:

Model: The built-in cabinet: a speaker in a box with a microphone in front of it, set up separately for the left and the right.
IR: Your own impulse responses, one for each side.
Bypass: No cabinet, for when a cabinet plug-in or an impulse response loader follows Swanky Amp Pro. Bypass stays with the project and is not saved in presets.

Left and right

LEFT and RIGHT are two complete cabinet setups, one for each output channel. Set them alike for a plain stereo cabinet, or differently for two takes on one cabinet. On a mono track only LEFT is used.

Size: 1×12, 2×12 or 4×12, the number of 12-inch speakers.
Speaker: Green, Red, Vintage or Blue. The names follow typical British guitar speakers.
Back: Open back extends the low end; Closed back is tighter.
Microphone: Dyn. 57 and Dyn. 421 are dynamic microphones with a presence boost. Rib. 121 is a ribbon with a flat, figure-8 response. Cond. NT1A is a condenser with a flat response.

Placing the microphone

The drawing beside the menus shows the speaker from the side and the microphone in front of it. It follows the three sliders.

Position: How far from the centre of the speaker towards its edge the microphone sits, from 0 to 3. Nearer the centre is brighter; further out is darker and less even.
Distance: How far back from the speaker, from 0 to 3. Closer is brighter.
Tilt: The angle of the microphone to the speaker, from 0 to 1. More tilt gives a fuller tone.

Press anywhere on a slider and drag sideways. The value moves from where it was rather than jumping to the pointer. Shift is fine adjustment, right-click puts the slider back to its default, and the wheel and arrow keys work as they do on a knob. The sliders have no stereo spread: each side has its own row.

Shape

Resonance: The upper-mid resonance of the speaker cone. Turn it up for more of that boost.
Highs: The stiffness of the cone. Up for extended highs, down for a softer top end.

Both shape the built-in cabinet, so they are greyed out in IR and Bypass modes. Both can take a stereo spread.

Mix

Balance: Tilts the level between the sides. At 5 they are even; at 0 only the left plays and at 10 only the right.
Width: How far apart the two sides are. At 10 they stay fully separate and at 0 they are summed to mono. The default, 5, sits halfway.

Both work on the final output in every mode. With Width at 0, Balance mixes the two sides into one mono signal, which is a handy way to blend two different impulse responses.

Impulse responses

In IR mode each side loads its own WAV file. Press Browse… to choose one; cancelling keeps the file you had. Clear removes the file from that side only.

The CAB tab in IR mode: the LEFT row shows Cabinet response.wav, 48.0 kHz, stereo, 42.7 ms, with its waveform; the RIGHT row shows a missing file with the message File not found. Use Browse to locate the IR — One side loaded and one whose file has moved.

Each row shows the file's name, sample rate, whether it is mono or stereo and its length, with its waveform beside it. A stereo file gives the LEFT row its left channel and the RIGHT row its right channel. Files are level-matched when they load and converted to the project's sample rate, and only their first two seconds are used.

The project remembers each file by where it is on disk. If a file has moved, its row says so, and Browse finds it again. Presets you save remember their impulse responses too, and Init clears them.