Roomtone Amp Sim: Finally, an Amp Plugin That Doesn't Suck

I hate amp sims.

Not the idea of them - the idea is great. But every time I load one up, I run into the same problems: latency that makes it impossible to actually play in time, interfaces so complicated I spend an hour tweaking instead of recording, and presets that sound nothing like the indie/shoegaze tones I actually want.

Where's the Mac DeMarco preset? The dreamy Vacations indie sound? The jangly Arctic Monkeys crunch? Instead I get "METAL DESTRUCTION 5000" and "CLASSIC ROCK LEAD" which sounds like... I don't know, a bad Steve Vai cover?

So I built what I wanted.

What Roomtone Actually Does

Roomtone is an amp sim for bedroom pop, indie, shoegaze, and lo-fi. It's not trying to be everything to everyone. If you want to sound like Tame Impala, Beach House, or The Strokes, there's a preset for that. If you want 47 different metal amp models, this isn't for you (though we do have a few).

The interface has 6 knobs. Bass, Mid, Treble, Gain, Master, FX Mix. That's it. Load a preset, tweak if you want, play. No cabinet loader. No impulse response management. No signal chain you have to build from scratch.

Zero latency. You can actually play along with what you're hearing.

18 Amp Models with Realistic Tube Saturation

We didn't model every amp ever made. We picked the ones that matter for the genres we care about. And we modeled them properly—asymmetric tube clipping like real 12AX7 triodes, coupling caps between gain stages to prevent digital mud, and Miller capacitance filtering to tame harsh highs. Each amp has accurate clipping ratios, from smooth 6L6s to aggressive EL34s.

Amp	What It Sounds Like	Good For
Clean	Roland JC-120 crystalline cleans	Chorus-heavy shoegaze, jazz
Fender Clean	Twin Reverb warmth and chime	Indie pop, country, session work
Vox Chime	Jangly AC30 cleans with edge	The Smiths, early indie rock
Crunch	JCM800 British bite	80s rock, punk, alternative
Plexi	The "brown sound"	Classic rock, Van Halen territory
AC30 Top Boost	Touch-sensitive breakup	Radiohead, indie dynamics
High Gain	5150/Soldano modern gain	Metal leads, shred
Mesa IIC+	Tight thrash tones	Metallica rhythm sounds
Rectifier	Modern crushing saturation	Djent, progressive metal
Rockman	Layered 80s studio compression	Def Leppard, Boston
Dumble	Smooth, dynamic, expensive-sounding	Blues, fusion
Matchless	Boutique clarity and chime	Singer-songwriter, indie

The first six get used 90% of the time for the bedroom pop / indie sound.

The Room Tone Thing

Here's what actually makes this different.

Most amp sims give you a dry, clinical sound and expect you to chain a reverb plugin after. Which means more tweaking - pre-delay settings, damping, decay times, wet/dry mix. Then the reverb doesn't quite gel with the amp tone and you're adjusting EQ and suddenly it's 2am.

Roomtone bakes the room into the amp itself. It's not reverb tacked on at the end. The amp modeling includes how a real amp breathes in a real space. You get depth and dimension without touching a reverb plugin.

If you want more ambient stuff, there's a full reverb section with 9 modes (shimmer, modulated hall, reverse - the shoegaze essentials). But the base amp tones already sit in a mix without sounding like a DI box.

322 Presets, Actually Organized

Because I was tired of scrolling through presets called "Rock 1" and "Rock 2" with no idea what they actually sounded like.

All 322 presets are volume-normalized (no more ear-blasting when switching presets) and searchable by artist name. Presets are organized by genre:

• Bedroom Pop - Mac DeMarco, Beabadoobee, Steve Lacy, Current Joys
• Indie/Alternative - Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, Vampire Weekend
• The 1975 - dedicated category with Chocolate, The Sound, Somebody Else, etc.
• Lo-Fi - AM Radio Crackle, Cassette Boombox, VHS Demo Tape, Practice Amp Bedroom
• Dream Pop/Shoegaze - Beach House, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive
• Math Rock/Midwest Emo - American Football, TTNG, twinkle tones with pick attack

Click one, play. If it's close but not quite right, you've got 6 knobs.

26 Effects, All Preset-Controllable

You don't need to buy separate plugins. Every effect is wired into the preset system:

Reverb (9 modes) - Room, Plate, Hall, Spring, Gated, Shimmer, Modulated Hall, Ambient, Reverse

Delay (5 modes) - Digital, Tape Echo, Analog, Slapback, Ping Pong

Lo-Fi (7 modes) - Cassette (IEC Type I), VHS (NTSC SP), AM Radio (NRSC-1 broadcast EQ), Telephone (G.711 codec), Bitcrusher (4-16 bit), Vinyl crackle, Tape hiss

New Effects - Tape saturation, Rotary Leslie, Octave (sub-octave for fuzz presets), Transient shaper (pick attack for math rock), Exciter (harmonic sparkle), and more.

Boost Pedals (7 types) - Tube Screamer, Distortion+, Klon, RAT, Blues Driver, Transparent, EP Booster

5 Lo-Fi Cabinet Types

New cabinet types specifically for lo-fi and bedroom production:

• AM Radio - 100Hz-5kHz bandwidth with a tinny 500Hz mid bump. Vintage transistor radio sound.
• Telephone - 300Hz-3.4kHz PSTN bandwidth with nasal 1.5kHz peak. Authentic telephony tone.
• Boombox - 40Hz-15kHz with 180Hz plastic cone resonance. 80s portable cassette player warmth.
• Practice Amp (5W) - 80Hz-5kHz with tubby 135Hz resonance. The bedroom amp tone everyone secretly loves.
• VHS Tape - 80Hz-10kHz degraded warmth. Nostalgic camcorder/home video aesthetic.

5 Vintage Gear EQ Types

Stackable EQ with emulations of classic studio hardware:

• HiFi Tone Control - Baxandall bass/treble shelving. Great for lo-fi presets.
• 7-Band Graphic - Guitar pedal-style precision EQ.
• Proportional Q - American console-style where Q narrows as you boost more.
• Vintage Tube EQ - Pultec-style with the famous "low-end trick" (simultaneous boost AND cut).
• Console Channel EQ - Neve-inspired inductor EQ with "recorded through a classic desk" presence.

Hand-applied to 41 select presets where it genuinely adds character. Available but bypassed on all others.

How We Made the Artist Presets

I actually researched this stuff instead of guessing.

Cigarettes After Sex - Greg Gonzalez plays a Parker Fly into an Ampeg SVT (a bass amp) with a Neunaber Stereo Wet Reverb at 70-80% wet. That's why it sounds so cavernous and intimate at the same time. Our "Dream Pop" and "Ambient Swell" presets capture this.

Tame Impala - Kevin Parker runs a Fuzz Face and Boss BD-2 into a Fender Deluxe Reverb. The trick is he often puts overdrive after his reverb and delay, which gives that thick, almost synth-like quality. The "Psych Fuzz" presets nail this.

Arctic Monkeys - Alex Turner's early sound is trebly single-coils through Pro-Co Rat pedals into Orange and Vox amps. Raw, cutting, mid-forward. "Indie Crunch" lives here.

Mac DeMarco - Clean amp, heavy chorus, neck pickup, light touch. Often recorded direct to tape. "Lo-Fi Bedroom" is this.

Technical Stuff (If You Care)

• 4x oversampling for smooth distortion without aliasing
• Zero latency - actually playable in real-time
• Asymmetric tube clipping (even-order harmonics like real 12AX7 triodes)
• Inter-stage coupling caps (prevents muddy, fizzy sound)
• Miller capacitance filtering (tames harsh highs without dulling tone)
• Interactive tone stacks (Marshall, Fender, Vox, Mesa—knobs affect each other like real amps)
• 21 cabinet types (16 guitar + 5 lo-fi), 5 mic positions each
• 10-stage cabinet filter chains modeling cone breakup and null frequencies
• Transparent output limiter (no more digital clipping on loud presets)

If you don't know what any of that means, don't worry about it. It just sounds good.

Who This Is For

Roomtone makes sense if you:

• Want bedroom pop / indie / shoegaze tones without digging through menus
• Are tired of amp sims with latency
• Don't want to buy separate reverb, delay, and lo-fi plugins
• Actually want to play guitar instead of tweaking settings
• Are on a budget but still want something that sounds professional

Probably skip this if you:

• Need to model 47 specific vintage amps for historical accuracy
• Want to load your own impulse responses
• Only play extreme metal (we have some, but it's not our focus)
• Prefer dry, clinical amp sounds

FAQ