"Heh." Cliff Chase Just Showed a NAM Block Running on the Axe-Fx III

Sometimes one word is enough. On September 17, Cliff Chase, founder of Fractal Audio Systems, started a thread on the official forum titled simply "Heh". No text, just a photo of an Axe-Fx III display. On the grid sits a block that does not exist in any current firmware: NAM. Within twenty-four hours the thread had over 170 reactions and thirteen pages of replies.

If the acronym means nothing to you: NAM is Neural Amp Modeler, an open-source capture technology that creates neural-network snapshots of real amps and pedals. It is free, it has a huge library on Tone3000, and over the past two years it has become the de facto standard that hardware makers are adopting one by one. Fractal was one of the last major brands without anything like it. That is changing right now.

What Is in the Photo

The photo is deliberately low-key, but the forum community dissected it down to the last pixel. Three things stand out:

• The block is called NAM and it has channels. Just like the Amp or Drive block, the NAM block has switchable channels A through D. You can load several captures into one block and switch between them with scenes or a footswitch.
• It is running on current hardware. Forum member yek pointed out that this is an Axe-Fx III, not the yet-to-be-announced next generation. Cliff replied with nothing but a winking emoji. For Axe-Fx III owners, this is the most important news in the whole thread.
• The CPU meter is suspiciously low. The display shows roughly seven percent. Cliff explained why on page one:

"The block is running on the other core so it doesn't count in the CPU calculation."

In other words, the NAM block runs on the second processor core, which today's CPU meter does not track at all. The number on the screen says nothing about the real cost. How many NAM blocks you will be able to run at once is still anyone's guess.

What Cliff Confirmed

Cliff posted only a handful of replies, but every one of them is dense with information. Here is everything that has been said officially so far.

1. Import goes through Axe-Edit and a new "NAM Manager"

"Yes, it's a JSON file which is a text file. In our implementation you import a .nam file into Axe-Edit's 'NAM Manager' and it converts it to a binary sysex file which then gets sent to the unit for storage."

A .nam file is plain-text JSON, around 290 KB for a full A2 model. Axe-Edit converts it to a compact binary format (forum estimates land around 50 KB) and sends it to the unit. Fractal has not said how many slots there will be. The community speculates they might share memory with user IRs.

2. It is a player only. There is no capturing on the unit

"It's just a player at this time. Capturing NAM models requires specialized hardware to do the training. Typically you train the model using a graphics card (nVidia)... Our next-generation hardware has the ability to train right on the hardware (it has a deep learning accelerator) but that's not something we're committed to at this time."

Training stays on your PC with a GPU or on Tone3000's servers. The interesting part is between the lines: the next-generation hardware has a deep learning accelerator and could, in theory, train on the device. Cliff only adds that they are not committed to it yet.

3. NAM cannot capture everything

"You can only capture things with 'short memory'. You can't capture delays, reverbs, etc. and things that vary slowly with time."

Amps, preamps, power amps, drive pedals, compressors: yes. Delays, reverbs, modulation: no. That is not a Fractal limitation, it is the technology itself.

4. Modeling is not going anywhere

When one user worried that Fractal might be abandoning component-level modeling in favor of "photographs" of amps, Cliff answered in a single sentence:

"The two things are not mutually exclusive."

NAM is an addition, not a replacement. The Amp block remains the heart of the unit.

What We Still Do Not Know

The most frequent question in the thread is always the same: FM9? FM3? AM4? VP4? Cliff did not answer it once, even though it was asked on practically every page. The photo shows an Axe-Fx III. Anything beyond that is speculation at this point.

Equally open:

• when the beta firmware will drop (it was not out at the time of writing),
• whether only full NAM A2 is supported or also the lighter variants (lite, feather, nano),
• how many NAM blocks can run simultaneously,
• how many models fit into the unit's memory.

Why This Matters

Fractal has the best modeling on the market and has long argued that it does not need captures. That is still true, as long as the amp you want is in the box. But plenty of players use amps Fractal never modeled. The thread repeatedly mentions the Matchless Clubman and Chief, channel one of the Diezel VH4, or a plain Boss Blues Driver. NAM fills that gap without Fractal having to develop and maintain its own capture technology.

The community is already dreaming up combinations you cannot get anywhere else:

• A preamp capture into the Amp block. A NAM snapshot of a real preamp followed by Fractal's virtual power amp with its impedance curve and speaker interaction.
• A pedal capture in front of the Amp block. A drive that Fractal never modeled, as a full block with channels.
• A power amp capture as a replacement for the "Tube Pre" method when running external preamps in the loop.
• Simplifying heavy presets. An entire rig (drive, amp, cab) in one block, with the CPU saved for effects.

And of course you wrap the whole thing in Fractal's effects, which are still in a different league from the competition.

The Axe-Fx as a Capture Interface

A practical note for anyone planning to make their own captures. The Axe-Fx III can serve as the audio interface for capture software. Forum member sprint described doing exactly this for ToneX captures for a long time without a reamp box, because the Axe-Fx can send the test signal at instrument level with unity gain. Capturing an amp still needs a load box or a microphone, and the actual training runs on Tone3000 or locally on a GPU.

Summary

Fractal Audio has shown a working NAM block on the Axe-Fx III. It runs on the previously unused second core, imports through Axe-Edit, has channels, and is strictly a player. Modeling stays. The release date, FM9 and FM3 support, and memory capacity are open questions.

As soon as the beta is out, we will be testing it and reporting on how NAM behaves alongside our presets.

Source: the "Heh" thread on the Fractal Audio forum. Quotes are from posts by user FractalAudio (Cliff Chase), September 17 to 18, 2026.