Amp for Mac 1.2.1

Download Amp-for-Mac-1.2.1.dmg (macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon)

Open the DMG, drag the app to Applications, open it. The first time, macOS says the app is from an unidentified developer: right-click the app, choose Open, then Open again. That is once.

Built and tested on macOS 27

Amp for Mac 1.2.1 is built with the macOS 27 SDK and tested on macOS 27: the self-test, the command line, the audio devices and the windows, in light and dark. On macOS 26 and later it now draws in the current macOS look.

Fixed in 1.2.1

The pedal board no longer spills out of its card. Two pedals side by side are wider than one column of the window, so the board ran over the Room card beside it and off the left edge. Now the pedals sit side by side when there is room and stack one above the other when there is not.

"Plugged in" on the Guitar card stays on one line. The newer segmented switch is wider, and in a narrow window the label broke in two; it now moves above the switch when there is no room beside it. And the Ear's "Nothing yet" line in an empty history wraps instead of being cut off.

Nothing else changed. Presets, pedals and saved sounds load exactly as they did in 1.2.0. Nothing leaves the Mac, nothing is recorded, and the app is still MIT licensed and free.

SHA-256 of the DMG: 7afb9a3b60bb3b7bc554d53388abed6a2f625ed825298353e8654a40361fb764

Amp for Mac 1.2.0

Download Amp-for-Mac-1.2.0.dmg (macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon)

Open the DMG, drag the app to Applications, open it. The first time, macOS says the app is from an unidentified developer: right-click the app, choose Open, then Open again. That is once.

Pedals

Two stomp boxes sit under the amp. Pedal 1 is in front of it, where a drive or a compressor goes; pedal 2 is after it, where a chorus, an echo or a tremolo goes. Six to choose from — Screamer, Fuzz, Squeeze, Chorus, Echo, Tremolo — three knobs each, and none of them click when stomped or turned while you play.

Every preset comes with the two pedals a player of that sound would most likely have on the floor, switched the way they would most likely leave them: a lead sound has its boost and echo on, a clean sound the compressor on and a chorus ready, a country sound the compressor and a slapback, a hip hop kit a crush, a reggae kit a dub echo. Every preset still lands at the loudness of what went in, pedals and all. ⌘⌥1 and ⌘⌥2 stomp them without looking.

The guitar you plugged in stays plugged in

Which guitar is plugged in, and where its pickup sits, used to be part of the preset, so choosing another preset put you back on "Work it out". They are yours now: they survive a preset change, a revert and a relaunch, and switching guitars is not an edit. A saved preset is a sound and no longer carries them.

Latency, and playing into Suno

A Latency menu under the devices runs from Fastest (32 frames) to Safe (256), with the measured round trip beside it. To play the amp into Suno, or record it in any other app, set Amp's output to a virtual device such as BlackHole, pick that as the microphone in the other app, and choose Fast. Help walks through it, including hearing yourself at the same time. Amp itself still records nothing.

Everything else

A preset saved in 1.0.0 or 1.1.0 still loads exactly as it did, with empty pedal slots. Nothing leaves the Mac, nothing is recorded, and the app is still MIT licensed and free.

SHA-256 of the DMG: 2c659c4ca507d4c66e56e52303cd43e7c201e6a25a192e77bcc91d7e1200f171

Amp for Mac 1.1.0

Download Amp-for-Mac-1.1.0.dmg (macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon)

Open the DMG, drag the app to Applications, open it. The first time, macOS says the app is from an unidentified developer: right-click the app, choose Open, then Open again. That is once.

A guitar amp

Switch the window to Guitar and it is an amp: gain, bass, middle, treble, presence, master, sag, a noise gate, a room, and a speaker to play it through. Twenty-four presets in seven kinds — Clean, Crunch, Lead, Metal, Blues, Country and Indie — named for the room, the town and the year.

The speaker is the part that matters. A distorted guitar with no cabinet is a wasp in a tin: it is all the energy above five kilohertz that a twelve-inch driver cannot make. Five cabinets are offered — 4×12, 2×12, 1×12, 1×8, and none at all — each built from a low cut, a resonance, the cone dip that gives a speaker its voice, a presence peak, and the fall a real driver has above about five kilohertz. Nothing here is a recording of a cabinet; it is filters shaped like one, so the app still ships with no assets in it.

Inside, two clipping stages with the bass cut before the dirt rather than after, which is what keeps a high gain sound tight instead of muddy; a tone stack whose controls pull against each other the way a passive one does, where scooping the middle takes the level with it; and a power amp that clips more softly than the preamp and sags under a big chord. The clipping runs at twice the sample rate, so the harmonics distortion makes above half the sample rate do not fold back down as tones nobody played.

An acoustic, played as an electric

Plug an acoustic in and the app can tell. A magnetic pickup is a coil, and a coil cannot make much above five kilohertz; a piezo under the saddle has real energy at eight and twelve. It decides by listening, only while you are playing, and slowly enough that it never changes its mind mid-bar. Set it by hand instead if you would rather.

When it hears an acoustic, it makes it look like a magnetic pickup before the amp sees it: the body boom under a hundred hertz comes off, the hard quack around three and a half kilohertz that turns to broken glass the moment you distort it is taken out, the air above five kilohertz goes, a coil's own resonance goes on in their place, and the spike of the pick is rounded into a swell. One knob moves that resonance from a neck pickup to a bridge. Everything after it is the ordinary amp.

Everything else

The drum amp is unchanged, and a preset saved in 1.0.0 still loads exactly as it did. Nothing leaves the Mac, nothing is recorded, and the app is still MIT licensed and free.

SHA-256 of the DMG: 804024f1e1411155ccacd5c7c4b94411a530f7f73c8e9bb8748eceb44bbe43ce

Amp for Mac 1.0.0

Download Amp-for-Mac-1.0.0.dmg (macOS 14 or later, Apple Silicon)

Open the DMG, drag the app to Applications, open it. The first time, macOS says the app is from an unidentified developer: right-click the app, choose Open, then Open again. That is once.

What it does. A drum amp for the input of your audio interface: plug a mic or a trigger in, press the button, play through a gate, an attack and sustain shaper, a compressor with a parallel mix knob, four-band tone, drive, a room with its own tone that can cut with the gate, and a limiter. Thirty-nine presets in twelve genres, every one trimmed to the loudness of what went in, and your own saved beside them. A level guide says which way to turn the interface's gain knob. The Ear tab, powered by chordmap, hears what the Mac plays and charts the key, tempo, chords and capo live.

What it asks for. The Microphone, once, which is how macOS describes an interface input; System Audio Recording, once, only for the Ear on the Mac's own sound. Nothing is recorded with either, and nothing leaves the Mac except the optional daily check of this page for a new version.

Honest limits. Not a plugin; it will not load in Logic. The delay is your interface's, a few milliseconds. Turn direct monitor off or you hear the kit twice. A mic in the same room as the monitors feeds back through any amp with gain; headphones fix that. Apple Silicon only in this build.

SHA-256 of the DMG: 27c2929c1f4122da42448bdb73cbe1d3aa5ae0b0a30cb8493597928409e1a211