Your NAM collection,
finally playable.
Cool NAM Player is a free plugin and standalone app for playing Neural Amp Modeler captures. Chain up to eight slots across two parallel lanes, browse thousands of tones on TONE3000 without leaving the plugin, and keep your own library searchable. Built on the open NAM engine with full A1 and A2 support.
Play view · per-slot gate, tone stack and output calibration
Built for people with too many captures
Loading a .nam file from a folder works. It stops working around your two-hundredth capture. This is the part the stock player leaves to your file browser.
NAM A2 ready
Plays A1 as well as the new A2 / slimmable models. One player for everything NAM puts out.
8 slots, freely chainable
Pedal → amp → cab → IR in a single chain. NAM models and impulse responses mixed however you like.
Two parallel lanes
Every slot goes to lane A or B, with pan and volume per lane. Real dual-amp rigs and wide stereo sounds without DAW routing.
TONE3000 built right in
Login, trending feed, full search with every filter, detail page and download — all inside the plugin. No browser, no unzipping, no file chaos.
All at one place
A local library with search, filters, favourites and your own groups. Slots are filled from the library with one click.
Presets & recall
Save and load complete rigs, including every slot setting.
VST3 + standalone
In your DAW or on its own with ASIO support for minimal latency. Eco mode for weaker machines.
Free & open source
AGPLv3, no forced account, no paywall, no tracking.
And the small things
- Built-in tuner — one click in the footer bar, no extra plugin on the track.
- Per-slot CPU meter — see exactly which model in the chain is costing you.
- Noise gate, tone stack and trim per slot — shape each stage where it sits.
- dBu input calibration — set the level the capture was trained at and hear it right.
- Any session rate — 48 kHz models get resampled, latency is reported to the host.
- Drag & drop import — pull .nam files and WAV IRs straight into the window.
The amp modeling format nobody owns
Neural Amp Modeler is an open-source way to capture real gear — amps, pedals, outboard, whole signal chains — as a neural model. Instead of guessing at a circuit, it listens to the actual hardware and learns how it behaves. The technology is open source, so nothing you build lives in someone's walled garden.
Since June 2026 the standard architecture is A2, built by TONE3000 with NAM creator Steve Atkinson. It sounds closer to the hardware than A1 and costs less CPU doing it. Cool NAM Player supports A2 from day one — and your A1 captures still load.
Getting it running
Run the installer
Windows only for now. It drops the VST3 in Common Files\VST3 and the standalone app in Program Files. Unsigned build, so Windows SmartScreen will ask once.
Point it at your captures
Open the Library tab and hit Import. Pick the folders where your .nam files and IRs already live — nothing gets copied or renamed, the player just indexes them.
Connect TONE3000
Optional. Paste a free TONE3000 publishable key (t3k_pub_…) once, then sign in — your browser opens the TONE3000 page and hands the session straight back. From there you browse and download into your own library.
Play
Standalone: pick your interface in settings, tune up, go. VST3: load it on a guitar track and set the input trim so the meter sits near where your DI does.
Free, and staying free
Cool NAM Player is open source under the AGPLv3 and costs nothing. No account, no trial, no locked features, no tracking, no capture store taking a cut. If it earns a place in your rig and you feel like saying thanks, Ko-fi is there — a coffee's worth is genuinely fine, and it changes nothing about the software either way.
Windows · VST3 + Standalone · AGPLv3 · macOS not yet
Questions
Is it really free?
Yes. Released under the AGPLv3, with no paid tier and no feature gate. Donations on Ko-fi are a thank-you, not a licence.
Do my old A1 captures still work?
They do. A1 and A2 models load side by side in the same library, and A2 files carry both a full and a slimmed size you can switch between.
Where do I get captures?
The built-in TONE3000 browser is the fastest route — thousands of community captures, most of them free. Anything you already have on disk imports in the Library tab.
What do I need to run it?
64-bit Windows 10 or 11 and a VST3 host — or nothing at all, if you use the standalone. The interface runs on Microsoft's WebView2, which the installer fetches for you if it is missing.
Mac or Linux?
Not yet. Windows VST3 and standalone are what ship today. The source is on GitHub if you want to build it elsewhere.
Is this the official NAM plugin?
No. Cool NAM Player is an independent player built on the open NAM engine. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Neural Amp Modeler or TONE3000.
Found a bug?
Open an issue on GitHub. Pull requests welcome too.