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+---
+title: Dead simple digital guitar pedals in C
+keywords: guitar pedal c simple
+---
+
+There's something I hate about the entire "professional digital audio workstation ecosystem", it's the complexity.
+
+Now I get why its so complex, it's for user simplicity. But I'm a programmer, I love tinkering, and I especially like simplicity in developing.
+
+Simplicity kind of fights the whole idea of VST plugins (or similar things). They have big SDKs that require you to conform to it's philosophies and all that bullshit.
+
+So I just replaced the entire workflow with this:
+
+`arecord | weird little C pedal programs | aplay`
+
+And somehow it just works. It just builds on Unix philosophies of making simple and transparent software, as well as using pipes and simple Linux tools (`aplay`, `arecord`)
+
+Each little pedal works something like this: (C pseudocode)
+
+```c
+int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
+    init_arg(argc,argv); // Sets CLI arguments for a pedal once.
+    while (1) {
+        size_t n = fread(in_i16, sizeof(int16_t), BLOCK_SIZE, stdin); // read raw data from arecord or previous pedal
+        if (n == 0) break; // abort if no data received
+        /* Convert i16 to float */
+        effect(in_f, out_f, n); // run the effect for the current block of data
+        /* Make sure output isn't too loud and convert back to i16 */
+        fwrite(out_i16, sizeof(int16_t), n, stdout); // write raw data to next pedal or aplay
+    }
+}
+```
+
+And a pedal looks something like this:
+
+```c
+static float gain;
+
+void init_arg(int argc, char **argv) {
+  if (argc != 1) // Validate argument count
+    error("Invalid arguments", "Usage: boost <gain>");
+  gain = atof(argv[0]); // Store argument once (arguments starts at 0, check the source code i dare you)
+}
+
+// Very simple gain pedal
+void effect(const float *in, float *out, int n) {
+  for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
+    out[i] = in[i] * gain; // this is where math is done, most pedals should be a little more complex than this.
+  }
+}
+```
+
+That's it. Just a small set of small programs to be chained together to produce cool guitar effects.
+
+There's also a little helper CLI which keeps you from entering the wrong parameters into arecord and aplay.
+
+Anyways that's basically it for this post. E-mail me patches [Guide](https://git.spelis.li/#patches) for new cool pedals or bugfixes.
+
+Some of the code is admittedly a little cursed, but honestly if the signal goes in and comes back out sounding cooler, I consider that a success.