No Distortion/Drive in Rackarac/Ardour

[aeb105]

All the presets are there but they don't really change the sound . They actually cut it down into harmonics when i turn them up. All the other effects seem to work whenever I tool with them or select a preset. This is the same in Ardour with any distortion/overdrive/saturation effects. I just installed the new Tango Studio which is Debian based.
. Can someone assist?"

[ssj71]

I had this problem once, and several others did as well. IIRC just an update from the KXstudio ppa's resolved it for me. I know this has come up here before too.
http://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11072
http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11931
http://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic ... 6&start=30

[aeb105]

Okay I will try and real back my version later tonight when I'm home. Unfortunately that won't solve the problem with Ardour as well. Nobody I guess really knew how the Rackarrack issue was fixed for Anthony in those posts....but there has to be something he did. hmmm..... I read that Rackarrack uses ZynSubAddfx for the distortion. So I installed that with no improvement.

[bazsound]

Just tested the guitarix distortion plugin in ardour (not in guitarix standalone, whiuch definatly works) for me the guitarix plugin in ardour works. Its not the best distortion but it definatly works for me.

Invada tube distortion also works fine. infact the signal gets louder the more tube drive is added. It starts sound pretty nasty though but that could just be the guitar track im testing it on that is already been recorded through guitarix with some distortion.

The saturation plugin also works for me, however its subtle, its not meant to be like an actual distortion. Saturation emulates what happems when you run signals hot into pre-amps. The signal gets "soft" cliped making it warmer and slightly compressed. I just applied it to a guitar track and with some tweaking, turned a slightly thin guitar it a much louder fater sounding guitar

[bazsound]

aplogies i got that complelty wrong, it was just a change in my track. the saturation plugin is very subtle it eppears to not to anything but you have to listen carefull. its a subtle plguin

[tramp]

I read that Rackarrack uses ZynSubAddfx for the distortion

The Rackarrack project was started once to make the ZynSubAddfx fx section available for other instruments, therefor they extract the fx from ZynSubAdd and included it in the Rackarrack program code. Now, both programs be independent from each other.

Just tested the guitarix distortion plugin in ardour (not in guitarix standalone, whiuch definatly works) for me the guitarix plugin in ardour works. Its not the best distortion but it definatly works for me.

I guess you talk about the old LADSPA plugin, in the LV2 section you will find some newer distortion plugs, like the GxMultiBandDistortion (4 band cubic nonlinear distortion), the GxFuzz (4x oversampled wave sharper with 2 stages (big muff style)) and the GxTubeScreamer (ts9 emulation).

[aeb105]

None of the distortion plugins are creating distortion for me either in Rackarrack or Ardour. There has to be something more OS or kernel related here. I am not the best Linux troubleshooter. Whatever files make the distortion effects work with the applications seems like that is the problem. Can anyone assist from that standpoint?

[bazsound]

what distro are you using?

[aeb105]

The new Tango Studio where they switched to Debian is what I am using. I am trying currently to install an older version of Rackarrack as maybe that would remedy some have said. So I downloaded the 0.5.8 and untar the file. But when I ./configure, it tells me

user@audioserv:~/Downloads/rakarrack-0.5.8_Equinox$ ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for g++... no
checking for c++... no
checking for gpp... no
checking for aCC... no
checking for CC... no
checking for cxx... no
checking for cc++... no
checking for cl.exe... no
checking for FCC... no
checking for KCC... no
checking for RCC... no
checking for xlC_r... no
checking for xlC... no
checking whether the C++ compiler works... no
configure: error: in `/home/user/Downloads/rakarrack-0.5.8_Equinox':
configure: error: C++ compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details.

[tramp]

you need to install the build depends (names may be differ on your distribution)
automake
gawk
g++
libfltk1.1-dev
libxft-dev
libxpm-dev
libasound-dev
libjack-dev
jackd1| jackd2
libsndfile-dev
libsamplerate-dev
fftw3-dev


related to your problem with distortion in rakarrack may be this:
http://sourceforge.net/p/rakarrack/disc ... /e9559a34/

[aeb105]

As regards the solutions they put on that other forum from the link above and post below, how would I enter this and where?

"I think the problems comes from the GUI.
I have a work around:

diff --git a/src/Waveshaper.C b/src/Waveshaper.C
index f4d339c..1a5a4b7 100644
--- a/src/Waveshaper.C
+++ b/src/Waveshaper.C
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ Waveshaper::Waveshaper()
period_coeff = 8;
ncSAMPLE_RATE=cSAMPLE_RATE/8.0f;
break;
- case 4:
+ default:
period_coeff = 12;
ncSAMPLE_RATE=cSAMPLE_RATE/12.0f;
break;
YC"

[ssj71]

that snippet is showing the change to the source code. So where ever you put the downloaded source code, you go to that place, open the src folder, then open the file Waveshaper.C, and somewhere near line 49 change the line that says "case 4:" to say "default:"

Hopefully that helps and solves your problem. I'm pretty sure it won't fix your troubles in ardour. Make sure your inputs are high enough level that they start distorting, depending on the plugin you could sneak audio through pretty cleanly if its quiet enough. If it has an input gain, crank it. Good luck and keep at it! I'll help how I can.

[aeb105]

So my issue is this, I cannot locate that file in the version 0.6.1, if it is even there.

[ssj71]

Are you compiling from source? You will not find that file in a binary or .deb/rpm package.

You must download the source from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rakarrack/files/
Extract the files, open that folder, go into the src folder and make the changes noted in Waveshaper.C (its there I just checked). I think then you can just open a terminal to that extracted folder and run:

Code: Select all

./configure
make
sudo make install

But I could be wrong about that last part (I don't have time to try it right now sorry). You would probably benefit more from reading the README and INSTALL documents than my guessing.

[aeb105]

Thx will try that tonight when I get home around 930pm