AmpSim Launcher

AmpSim Launcher boosts audio performance of standalone amp emulators on Windows by switching to the High Performance power plan as well as elevating the process priority. This means that the buffer size for the audio interface can be reduced significantly. Though this is its primary function, AmpSim Launcher can be used to boost other applications (e.g. games) as well. As soon as the application is closed the original power plan will be restored.

Usage

This tool offers an interactive as well as a CLI mode. If you are not familiar using consoles (e.g. powershell.exe, cmd.exe) you might be better off using the interactive mode.

Interactive

• Place the binary somewhere on your system (e.g. C:\Program Files\AmpSimLauncher\ampsim-launcher.exe).
• Start the binary via double click. A console window will open in order to guide you through the process of creating a shortcut. The shortcut will be configured to execute AmpSim Launcher with the correct parameters for your specific target program.
• Repeat the shortcut creation step for each program that should be launched via AmpSim Launcher.

Tips

• Dragging and dropping binaries into the console window will automatically enter their respective file path.
• If you decide to relocate the AmpSim Launcher binary you will have to re-generate all shortcuts.

CLI

Advanced users may also use this tool from a console window. Currently, there are two subcommands available:

• launch for executing a target process
• link for creating a shortcut

You can get a more detailed description by running ampsim-launcher.exe --help.

Building

• Install MSV C++ Build Tools and Rust
• Run cargo build

Caveats

• Since the released binary is not digitally signed Windows will display a warning upon executing it for the first time. If you have security concerns you can upload the binary to https://virustotal.com which will scan it with a multitude of different AV products. Of course it is also possible to simply compile the source code manually.
• On termination the power plan that was active when the application was started will be restored. This also means that launching multiple instances of AmpSim Launcher simultaneously will probably result in the wrong power plan being restored.