OrbitCab
July 5, 2026 · View on GitHub
A free, open-source amp + cab for guitar and bass — built around captured real gear. VST3, AU, and CLAP. Plug in a DI and build the chain like a real rig: captured preamps, a tube power stage, and impulse-response cabinets — in your DAW.
The signal chain
OrbitCab runs the full path from DI to speaker — or bypass any stage and bring your own:
DI → PREAMP (NAM capture) → TONE → POWERAMP (tube captures | tube sim) → CAB (IR) → out
Preamps — captured amps up front
The preamp stage is the heart of OrbitCab. A NAM capture is a neural model trained from a real piece of gear — it learns how that amp gains up, cleans up, compresses, and answers your pick attack. OrbitCab ships captures of hardware the author owns:
- V4KRAK — Victory V4 The Kraken: modern British gain — tight low end, heavy saturation, and enough cut to keep fast riffs readable. Green (rhythm / crunch) and Red (high-gain lead) channels, captured across the full gain range (7h–17h).
- V4SHER — Victory V4 The Sheriff: classic British crunch and lead — open mids, bark, and sustain that doesn't slide into fizz. Two channels, full gain sweep.
- V4COPP — Victory V4 The Copper: lower-gain vintage voice — edge-of-breakup and pushed cleans. Two channels, full gain sweep.
- GtrVolt — Two Notes ReVolt Guitar: a versatile 3-channel hybrid (12AX7 tube + solid-state) — Green (clean), Orange (crunch), and Blue (high-gain), each with a footswitchable Boost, captured across the full gain range (7h–17h).
- ISA Studio Pre — Focusrite ISA Two: a transformer-coupled studio preamp — clean, balanced, and close to invisible when you want the rest of the chain to speak. The default front end.
- Bypass — no preamp: tone, poweramp, and cab only.
The captures are electrical — no mic, no room, no baked-in speaker: the amp's cab-sim is off and the
cabinet comes from your IR. You get the gain structure and feel of the hardware, then choose the tone
stack, power stage, and cab yourself. Drop in your own captures too — raw .nam or packed .namz.
Poweramp — tube captures or a tube sim
The power stage has two engines behind one switch:
- Captures — NAM captures of real tube power amps: 6L6, EL34, EL84, KT88.
- Simulator — a tube power amp modeled from the ground up: choose the tube type, push-pull or single-ended, and dial sag and bias bloom.
Reach for the captures when you want the behaviour of specific tube stages; reach for the simulator to shape the power section directly — tighter, softer, cleaner, more collapsed, or more pushed. Both are level-matched, so you A/B by tone, not by volume.
Cabinets — the IR loader
The speaker at the end of the chain, and where OrbitCab started:
- Two IR slots with A↔B blend
- Per-slot HPF, LPF, trim, head alignment, phase, and dry/wet
- File/folder browser and drag-and-drop loading; bundled cabinet packs
- Every IR normalized on load, so swapping a cab changes tone, not loudness
Tone & workflow
- A voiced tone stack (bass / mid / treble / presence + HPF/LPF) between preamp and poweramp, with a live response curve
- A/B/C/D snapshots, undo/redo, auto-level, live spectrum
- Presets that export/import with the IR embedded
- Session state is versioned, so updates don't break old projects
Install
Grab the latest build from the Releases page:
- macOS — open
OrbitCab-<ver>-macOS.pkg(signed + notarized — installs cleanly, no Gatekeeper prompt). Or take the.zipand copy the bundles into~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/(VST3/,Components/,CLAP/). - Windows — run
OrbitCab-<ver>-Windows-Setup.exe(x64). It isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen warns — click More info → Run anyway. On Arm (Snapdragon) machines useOrbitCab-<ver>-Windows-arm64.zipand copy the plugins into your VST3 / CLAP folders. - Linux — extract
OrbitCab-<ver>-Linux-<arch>.tar.gzand copyOrbitCab.vst3/OrbitCab.clapinto~/.vst3/~/.clap.
Then rescan in your DAW. A standalone app is included for use without a DAW.
Verify a download against SHA256SUMS
(attached to each release): shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS (macOS) or sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS (Linux).
| Format | Platforms |
|---|---|
| VST3 | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| CLAP | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| AU | macOS |
| Standalone | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| AAX (Pro Tools) | Not supported |
macOS builds are universal (Apple Silicon + Intel); Windows ships x64 and arm64; Linux ships x86_64 and arm64.
No AAX/Pro Tools build: the AAX SDK needs Avid approval and PACE/iLok signing, which can't be shipped with a free, open-source plugin.
Usage
Feed OrbitCab a DI (or a clean, low-gain signal) and dial the chain: pick a preamp — or Bypass — shape the tone, choose a power stage, and load a cabinet. Already have an amp sim or amp-head capture you love? Bypass the preamp and use OrbitCab as tone + cabinet. A standalone app is included for playing without a DAW.
Build from source
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release
The first configure fetches and builds JUCE (pinned). Artefacts are written to
build/OrbitCab_artefacts/. See docs/BUILD.md for validation and packaging.
License
AGPL-3.0-or-later. You may use, modify, and redistribute OrbitCab; if you distribute it, you must make the corresponding source available under the same license. Third-party notices are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. The "OrbitCab" and "Darwin's Cat" names and logos are trademarks, not covered by the code license.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
OrbitCab is part of the Felitronics line by Darwin's Cat.