About

guitarix is a virtual guitar amplifier for Linux running on Jack Audio Connection Kit. It is free as in speech and free as in beer. The available sourcecode allows to build it on other UNIX-like systems, too, namely for BSD and for MacOSX.

guitarix takes the signal from your guitar as any real amp would do: as a mono-signal from your sound card. The input is processed by a main amp and a rack-section. Both can be routed separately and deliver a processed stereo-signal via Jack. You may fill the rack with effects from more than 25 built-in modules including stuff from a simple noise gate to brain-slashing modulation f/x like flanger, phaser or auto-wah.

Your signal is processed with minimum latency. On any properly set-up Linux-system you don't have to wait more than 10ms until your sound is processed by guitarix.

The demos below are 100% guitarix without any other amps, cabinets or stompboxes in the chain.

guitarix Demo I

OGG MP3

guitarix Demo II

OGG MP3

guitarix Demo III

OGG MP3

And even more...

If you want to use more f/x than we provide built-in guitarix, you can also select plug-ins from the large list of LADSPA and LV2 plug-ins. Or just connect the Jack-out of guitarix with the Jack-in of Rackarrack or any other Jack-aware host. Of course you can record your playing in DAWs like Ardour. But guitarix comes as well as LV2 plugin suite, so you could load the amps and plugs directly in your favorite DAW. Though we design guitarix with guitar-signals in mind there is nothing wrong with connecting a synth or any other sound-generator to it.

Screenshots

Videos

This is a collection of videos in a youtube playlist demonstrating the sound of guitarix.

Install

guitarix is available in most todays Linux distributions. In 9 out of 10 cases there's no need to compile guitarix but to install it via software center or package management system of your preferred distribution. guitarix is supported by the following Linux flavours and all their derivates:

Logo arch Logo debian Logo fedora Logo frugalware Logo gentoo Logo mandriva Logo suse Logo ubuntu

If you don't have any Linux available...

...we recommend to get a copy of LibraZik which is a LiveDVD ISO image of a full-featured multimedia oriented Linux distribution. This means you can run it without installation and install it later if you decide to.

If you want to get the hottest shtuff...

...you have to download a package containing the source code and build it on your own. Get the latest packages here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/guitarix/files/

Development Repository

To get the bleeding edge development state of guitarix you have to clone our repository and build the source from there. Please note that this kind of installation isn't recommended for productive systems at all since this is the source code we're actually working on.

git clone http://git.code.sf.net/p/guitarix/git guitarix

Dependencies

For compiling guitarix on your machine you have to ensure that you have the following development packages installed:

Of course you need all packages for a properly set-up build system like build-essentials, make, gcc also installed on your machine.

Compiling

Change to the trunk directory of the source code and execute the following commands in a terminal:

./waf configure
./waf build
sudo ./waf install

Contribute

Creating free and open source software is fun on one hand but a huge amount of work on the other hand. Even though you're not a programmer perhaps you are willing to help this project in growing and getting better. In most cases FOSS is the success of a community, not a lonesome champion.

Documentation

One of the most essential parts of a successful program aside from the code is the documentation. One can never have enough from it, but first of all we need some basic work to be done. Contact us in the forums if you're willing to help us out in this topic.

Presets

Another very essential part are factory presets shipped with the product. They need to meet a specific standard in quality like an equal output volume - ask us in the forums if you want to contribute.

Demos

You are able to create high quality video and/or audio material? We're always deeply grateful for some cool demos presenting guitarix' capabilities and sound.

Bug Reports

Please file bug reports (Forum or Sourceforge) whenever you encounter a problem with our code. This helps a lot in providing something like quality management.

Patches

If you know how to handle code - we're always happy about Patches!