What is Resonance?

Resonance is a system-wide equalizer and audio-effects engine for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It captures your system audio, runs it through a high-precision (f64) DSP chain — a full parametric EQ plus a suite of FxSound-style effects — and plays the processed result back on your output device. One daemon, three front-ends: a desktop GUI, a terminal UI, and a scriptable CLI.

It loads FxSound .fac presets and EqualizerAPO .txt configs, downloads AutoEq / squig.link correction profiles, and overlays a live reference-target measurement so you can EQ by eye. No virtual cables, no kernel drivers — each platform hooks system audio the native way (PipeWire on Linux, a Core Audio process tap on macOS, an in-graph APO on Windows).

Features

• Parametric EQ — unlimited bands, 14 biquad filter types (Audio EQ Cookbook), per-band slope (12/24/48 dB/oct), and per-band scope (Stereo / Mid / Side).
• FxSound-matched effects — Fidelity, Ambience, Surround, Dynamic Boost, Bass, tuned to sound like FxSound so imported presets translate faithfully.
• Advanced DSP — dynamic EQ, optional linear-phase EQ, headphone crossfeed, ISO 226:2023 loudness compensation, convolution / impulse-response loader, and output dithering.
• Reference & Auto-EQ — overlay a target curve + a headphone/IEM measurement, shade the listener-preference bounds, and one-click Auto-EQ toward the target; browse measurements straight from squig.link.
• Preset interop — FxSound .fac, EqualizerAPO .txt, REW imports, AutoEq downloads, and .toml preset metadata.
• Per-app & per-output control — independent volume/mute per application and per output sink, two-way synced with the system mixer.
• N-channel + routing — per-channel EQ and an N×N routing matrix, not just stereo.
• Three clients — desktop GUI (resonance-gui), terminal TUI (resonance-tui), and CLI (resonance), plus an optional system tray.
• Cross-platform, one codebase — Linux/PipeWire, macOS/Core Audio, and Windows/APO, all driven by the same commands.
• Lock-free real-time path — tokio IPC thread → rtrb SPSC ring → audio thread, no allocations on the hot path.

Screenshots

Reference target + Auto-EQ

Overlay a target curve and a real measurement, keep the result inside the listener-preference bounds, or let Auto-EQ fit the bands for you.

Terminal UI  ·  CLI

System tray

An optional standalone tray controller (resonance-tray) toggles power, swaps presets, opens or quits a UI, and manages the daemon — without embedding any of that in the daemon itself.

Themes

The GUI ships several built-in themes (plus a matugen/pywal auto theme).

Gruvbox	Nord
Matrix	Light

Install

Full, per-platform instructions live in the Installation wiki page.

Linux — one-liner (any distro)

Downloads the latest release, verifies its checksum, and installs the binaries (handles immutable distros like SteamOS/Silverblue by installing into ~/.local):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ealtun21/resonance/master/install.sh | bash

On an Arch checkout the same script builds a real pacman package via the shipped PKGBUILD (resonance-eq).

macOS

Requires macOS 14.2+ (Core Audio process-tap API — no BlackHole/kext needed):

git clone https://github.com/ealtun21/resonance && cd resonance
contrib/macos/build-app.sh && mv Resonance.app ~/Applications/

Then grant Screen Recording to Resonance.app and launch it via Launch Services. See the macOS guide.

Windows

Download resonance-setup-x.y.z.exe from the releases page and run it. It attaches an in-graph Audio Processing Object to your playback device — no virtual cable or kernel driver. See the Windows guide.

From source

sudo pacman -S pipewire pkgconf   # Arch/CachyOS deps
cargo build --release --all       # -> target/release/{resonanced,resonance,resonance-tui,resonance-gui}

Usage

Start the daemon, then drive it from any client:

RUST_LOG=info resonanced          # start the daemon (autostart: resonance daemon enable)

resonance status                  # power, preset, effects, EQ, meters
resonance load preset.fac         # load a .fac / EqualizerAPO .txt
resonance set fidelity 70         # effect intensity 0-100
resonance autoeq "HD 600"         # download + apply an AutoEq correction
resonance preamp -3.5             # preamp gain in dB

resonance-tui                     # interactive terminal UI
resonance-gui                     # desktop UI

The full command reference (presets, profiles, output mappings, A/B, service control, completions) is on the Usage wiki page.

Status & roadmap

Resonance is in active development and used daily on Linux/PipeWire. The cross-platform backends, all three clients, preset interop, reference/Auto-EQ, per-app/per-output control, and the advanced DSP features above are shipped. See the roadmap for what's next.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Before committing:

make check    # rustfmt --check + clippy -D warnings + tests

Commits follow Conventional Commits. More detail in the Architecture wiki page.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later.