Your tone lives on the track
Select a track and the plugin rack shows its effects as cards, in the order the signal passes through them — with artwork, an on/off switch and settings on every card. Drag a card to reorder the chain.
SIGNALFORGE
Linux Music Workstation
A recording studio and a guitar rig in one native Linux application. Put a pedal, an amp model and a cab on a track, play through them, and record — the take stays clean, so the tone can still change afterwards. SignalForge runs on PipeWire and hosts the LV2, VST3 and CLAP plugins you already have.
Why SignalForge
Built around the track you are playing
Most of the time you are working on one instrument: its input, its sound, its takes. SignalForge keeps all of that on the track, and keeps the track the same wherever you look at it.
Record clean, decide later
Playback effects are heard while you play and on every take, but the recording stays dry. Change the amp next week and the takes you already have play through the new one. When you do want the sound printed, choose Record effects instead.
One session, four views
Tracks, Mixer, Routing and Live Rig all look at the same session. Select a track in one and it is selected in all four; switching views never copies, converts or re-patches anything.
Plugins and tones
Find a sound, try it, keep it
Add plugin opens on the track you clicked it from. My plugins lists the built-in effects and the LV2, VST3 and CLAP effects installed on your computer, sorted into pedals, amps, cabs and other effects. TONE3000 searches its catalogue of amp models, pedals and cabs, signed in with your own account.
- Clicking a card only shows what it is. Nothing is downloaded and the track does not change until you add or try it.
- Try puts a plugin on the track on trial, so you can play your instrument through it before you decide to keep it.
- Saving the project copies downloaded models into its folder, so the session takes its tones with it.
- Every plugin opens in its own editor, or as a slider per parameter when it has none.
The tour
Four views of one session
Every view goes full screen with F11 when you want to play rather than set up, and Tracks and Mixer each have a compact setting that fits more of a large session on screen.
Tracks
Record, arrange and edit. Takes stack into lanes and comp by range. Clips move, trim and fade without touching the audio file, and the range tool splits, deletes or renders across tracks. The plugin rack docks under the timeline.
Mixer
Faders, peak meters, pan, mute and solo on every strip, with buses and sends behind them. The built-in noise gate keeps its controls on the strip; other plugins open from the strip that carries them.
Routing
The session as a graph: tracks, plugins, buses and your devices, joined by cables you drag between ports. Audio and MIDI ports are coloured apart, and ports that cannot connect dim while you drag.
Live Rig
The selected instrument, ready to play through: effect editor, tuner, bypass, model and cab IR, effect presets and the instrument level — the same chain the other views show.
What's in the box
Recording
Takes in lanes, comping by range, click with count-in and accent, and input monitoring through the track's effects.
Editing
Non-destructive trims, fades in five shapes, crossfades, clip gain, polarity, gain envelopes and normalise — with undo and redo across the session.
Amp modelling
NAM amp models and cab IRs through the NeuralRack plugin, TONE3000 browsing with your own account, and the x42 tuner on a parallel tap.
Plugin hosting
LV2, VST3 and CLAP effects, each in its own editor, plus a built-in noise gate.
MIDI
MIDI tracks driving instrument plugins, a note editor, automation with read, write, touch and latch, and MIDI learn for the controller you already have.
Mixing
Buses, sends, pan, mute and solo, and a peak meter on every strip.
Bake and export
Print a track through its chain, or render a mix or stems to WAV, FLAC or AIFF — or capture in real time when the path runs through outboard gear.
Projects
Templates to start from, autosave with recovery, and relinking when media has moved.
Room to work
Full screen for any view, and compact rows and strips for big sessions that stay the way you left them.
PipeWire native
Talks to the Linux audio graph directly, so your devices and other audio applications appear in Routing by name.
Early access
Everything on this page is in the application and works today. SignalForge is still young, though: it runs on Linux only, you build it from source, and it has not yet been qualified against a range of audio interfaces — so treat behaviour that depends on your particular device as unproven until you have tried it.
You can look around before connecting anything. Offline preview opens the whole interface with a simulated transport and no audio device.
Get SignalForge
Build it, open a project, play
# first time only: fetch the build toolchain
$ python3 prototypes/phase01/bootstrap.py
# build
$ ./tools/build.sh
# launch
$ ./tools/run-desktop.sh
# or look around with no audio device
$ ./tools/run-desktop.sh --offlineWhat you need
- A Linux desktop running PipeWire.
- X11 or XWayland, which plugin editors open in.
- For amp models and cab IRs, the NeuralRack LV2 plugin; for the Tuner button, the x42 tuner.
- For the TONE3000 catalogue, your own TONE3000 account. SignalForge does not include or redistribute its models.
Run the commands from the top of the source folder. The user guide takes you from the first launch to a finished render; Run locally lists every launch option.