AeonGames Rakarrack Fork

"Rakarrack is a richly featured multi-effects processor emulating a guitar effects pedalboard. Effects include compressor, expander, noise gate, graphic equalizer, parametric equalizer, exciter, shuffle, convolotron, valve, flanger, dual flange, chorus, musicaldelay, arpie, echo with reverse playback, musical delay, reverb, digital phaser, analogic phaser, synthfilter, varyband, ring, wah-wah, alien-wah, mutromojo, harmonizer, looper and four flexible distortion modules including sub-octave modulation and dirty octave up. Most of the effects engine is built from modules found in the excellent software synthesizer ZynAddSubFX. Presets and user interface are optimized for guitar, but Rakarrack processes signals in stereo while it does not apply internal band-limiting filtering, and thus is well suited to all musical instruments and vocals. Rakarrack is designed for Linux distributions with Jack Audio Connection Kit."

Original development seems to have stalled and now modern compilers do not let pass some of the things they used to in the Rakarrack code, and even when those things are brought back to modern times, they don't always fix the program. That is why this fork exists.

Platform Support

CI builds currently run on:

Note: Windows and macOS support are currently experimental.

• Linux (Ubuntu)
• Windows (MSVC)
• Windows (MSYS2 / MinGW)
• macOS

Building From Source

Build using CMake:

cmake -B build -S .
cmake --build build
cmake --install build

Building For Linux (Arch, Manjaro)

Install dependencies:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel cmake pkgconf qt6-base jack fftw libsamplerate libsndfile nlohmann-json alsa-lib

Then configure and build:

cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build
cmake --install build

There is also a PKGBUILD at the AeonGames Arch Repo if you prefer packaging via makepkg.

Dependencies

• Qt6 (Widgets)
• JACK Audio Connection Kit
• FFTW3
• libsamplerate
• libsndfile
• nlohmann-json
• ALSA (optional, for MIDI support)

Building For Windows

Windows support is experimental.

MSVC (Visual Studio + vcpkg)

Install vcpkg, then configure using the vcpkg toolchain file:

cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="C:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake"
cmake --build build --config Release
cmake --install build --config Release

Dependencies are provided via vcpkg.json.

MSYS2 (MinGW)

Build and compilation must be done within an MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit environment.

Install dependencies:

pacman -S --needed --noconfirm mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-qt6-base mingw-w64-x86_64-dlfcn mingw-w64-x86_64-jack2 mingw-w64-x86_64-nlohmann-json mingw-w64-x86_64-fftw mingw-w64-x86_64-libsamplerate mingw-w64-x86_64-libsndfile

Then configure and build:

cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" -B build -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_MIDI=OFF
cmake --build build

Building For macOS

macOS support is experimental. MIDI support (ALSA) is not available on macOS and is automatically disabled.

Install dependencies via Homebrew:

brew install fftw jack libsamplerate libsndfile nlohmann-json pkg-config qt@6

Then build with CMake:

cmake -B build -S .
cmake --build build

Test Audio and Rakplay

For repeatable effect-testing input material, see:

• test-audio/ (dry guitar WAV clips and licensing notes in test-audio/README.md)

To play these files into JACK and feed Rakarrack inputs, use:

• rakplay (built from extra/rakplay/)

Typical quick test flow:

1. Start JACK and Rakarrack.
2. Run rakplay.
3. Load a WAV from test-audio/.
4. Use Connect to rakarrack in rakplay.
5. Play/loop while adjusting effects in Rakarrack.