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Comment by albutr | Hacker News Reader

wow, I was literally just about to download the trial for the archetype nolly (after being iffy on whether the fortin nameless was right for what I wanted), what are the chances it's being discussed on HN.

I'm hoping that the nolly plugin can cover both dirty and clean sounds well enough to not need a second plugin, fingers crossed

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Here’s my unscientific breakdown of how I view the Nolly, Cali, and Nameless plugins.

Nolly: most versatile thanks to its multiple amps, far and away my favorite for most things. I recently used it to mix an entire album of very polished black metal, replacing the real fuzzy mic signals captured in the studio. The band loved it. Extremely detailed. Got some gorgeous cleans out of it, too.

Cali: this one reminds me a lot of my own Marshall tube amp. It was the first one that really sold me on using Neural DSP plugins instead of amps in the studio. It’s a lot dirtier than the Nolly and I don’t find it appropriate for situations where I want a very polished sound. Recently chose this over the Nolly for a more organic sounding black metal project.

Nameless: this always sounds unnatural to me. It’s good and intense but I always come away feeling like it’s fizzy and flat. It’s a simulation of an amp Fortin made for Meshuggah, so I think it might have a very specific audience. Last year, I blended this with some live amp signals to get some added bite and it worked nicely but I haven’t reached for it since then.

You might also consider disabling the cab sim in the plugin and use a third party IR loader. I find GGD Zilla Cabs to be a complete game changer, a cheap and crucial upgrade to every one of Neural DSP’s plugins.

awesome, thanks for the breakdown!

Any experience with Plini? It seems to be the closest to Nolly, and from a cursory look it seems people generally like it better. I suppose I'll have to get the trials for both to compare

I had never heard of GGD's IR loader, seems awesome! Definitely on the list of things to buy now

Feel free to drop a link to the album you made with the nolly plugin, I'd love to take a listen

I haven’t used the Plini but only because I hit Nolly last and I’m thrilled with it. I’m pretty sure the Nolly rhythm amp is modeled after a 5150 or a 5150II, so it’s very familiar for me since I mostly work with extreme metal.

I seriously can’t say enough good things about Zilla Cabs. Just make sure to disable the cabs in the amp plugin or it’ll sound weird!

The album I did with the Nolly plugin isn’t something I can share yet, unfortunately.

I just spent a couple of hours playing with the nolly trial and it's awesome, lots of fun. Definitely getting some 5150 vibes from several of the presets, I believe it

If you are looking for a plugin with good cleans as well as dirty I would say the Nolly plugin is better when compared to the Fortin Nameless, but it was a while ago that I used the trial, however I don’t remember being as in love with it as the Nolly. I had a hard time choosing between it and the Abasi plugin but I felt like Nolly shined more in a wide range of scenarios. Overall I have been very happy with it, 10/10 would recommend especially since they recently added a build in tuner. I have had some issues but I think it’s just my $30 usb interface.

The Nolly is awesome, tons of options in there for both clean and dirty sounds. The awesome thing is you can try all their plugins before buying to make sure it’s what you need.

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