⬇ Download for Windows · ⬇ Download for Mac (beta) · Get your songs in · Report a bug · ☕ Support it

quickRS is a practice player for the Rocksmith 2014 songs you already own. It reads your .psarc files (or feedpaks, an open one-file-per-song format), shows the chart as scrolling tab or as a 3D note highway, and listens to your guitar through a Real Tone Cable, an audio interface or a microphone. You can loop a passage, slow it down without changing the pitch, shift the pitch, make the song wait for each note, record a take and see what you got wrong, play through a pedalboard or an amp room, and record what you hear. It doesn't change your Rocksmith install.

quickRS is free and MIT licensed. It is a hobby project made by one person with a lot of help from an AI coding assistant, and it has had few testers beyond me and the people who tried 0.1.0. Bug reports are very welcome: Settings > Updates > Report a bug in the app, or GitHub Issues.

Loop a stretch, press Ctrl+R, play it once, and a second later quickRS shows how it went: each note and chord right, wrong (and what you played instead), missed or extra, your timing (rushing or dragging, and by how many milliseconds), bar by bar, the problems in plain words, and your own tab drawn over the song's. B plays the take back over the song.

It's signal processing checked against the chart, done on your computer: no AI model, no upload, and the same take always gets the same answer. See Takes.

• Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit): quickRS-0.3.0-windows-x64.zip from the latest release. There is no installer: unzip it and run quickrs.exe.
• macOS 11 or later (beta): quickRS-0.3.0-macos-universal.dmg (or the .zip) from the same page. One app for Apple silicon and Intel Macs. It is tested on one Mac so far and not notarised by Apple, so the first start takes an extra step. See docs/INSTALL.md. On a Mac, the keys written Ctrl in these docs are Cmd (a take is Cmd+R).

No songs and no Rocksmith keys are included.

Have 0.1.0? It can't update itself, so download the 0.3.0 zip by hand this once and unzip it over your old folder or beside it; your settings and scores carry over. From 0.3.0 on, quickRS updates itself. See UPDATING.

• Installing, including the Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper warnings, and where your data is kept.
• Getting your songs in: song folders, feedpaks, psarcs and the keys, the converter.
• Audio setup: the guided guitar setup, Real Tone Cable, interfaces, ASIO and WASAPI, calibrating your input, the pedalboard and the amp room.
• Playing: tab, highway, loops, slow-down, note by note, ear mode, takes, recording, scoring, pitch and stems.
• Updating, including coming from 0.1.0.
• Troubleshooting, and how to report a bug.

Easy to miss, and some of the best parts. F1 in a song lists every key.

• Ctrl+drag over the tab (or Ctrl+click a bar) to select a passage. A small bar appears under it: Play it on the synth guitar or from the song itself (the shell key switches), Loop it, Slow it down, or Save lick to keep it on the Saved licks page.
• Take review (Ctrl+R): loop a few bars, play them once, and a second later you see what was right, wrong (and what you played instead), missed or rushed, bar by bar, with your own tab drawn over the song's. B plays your take back over the song. All on your computer, no AI.
• The RS Highway (V, or the green RS Highway key on the tab's toolbar): the 3D Rocksmith-style note highway with a camera that follows the frets. I turns it upside down.
• Note by note (W): the song stops at each note and waits until you play it.
• Ear mode (H): the notes are hidden until you've played them, for learning by ear.
• Synth or real guitar (G): hear exactly what the tab says, played by the synth in place of the recording's guitar.
• The amp room (A on Home, or the AMP ROOM meter at the foot of the sidebar): play through a rig with no song, save sounds, switch them with 1-4. In a song, Shift+T loads those sounds on the Pedalboard tile.
• Every song's own tone: the Pedalboard tile builds the song's Rocksmith tone as amps and pedals for you to play through and tweak.
• The lamps above the play key are buttons: click loop, ear, take, synth / real or rec instead of remembering the keys.
• The guitar pick at the top of the sidebar switches the look: Midnight, Graphite, Daylight.
• Drop a folder on the window to add it to your library.
• Sounds late? , and . nudge the sync, Ctrl+, and Ctrl+. your guitar's timing.

0.1.0 (14 October 2026) was the first release; 0.3.0 is the next one. In short:

Setting up

• A first-time setup opens over the app on a new install: Look, Your guitar, Low latency, Note widget, Keys and folders, Done. Run the first-time setup again at the top of Settings (F2) opens it any time.
• Your guitar is a guided setup: the input and its channel, the output, a level check that says what to turn, what's plugged in (guitar, amp modeller or microphone), calibration the Rocksmith way (knobs up, hands off, then strum as hard as you can), and a check of the open strings.
• Keys pasted in Settings > Directories, keys.json.txt read too, and songs read as soon as the keys arrive: no restart, no F5.
• Song folders listed with Add folder... and Remove; a switch to read only your feedpaks; each song marked feedpak, psarc or both.
• quickRS updates itself (it asks first), and Settings > Updates > Report a bug opens a GitHub issue with your version and system filled in.
• Settings sections renamed: Audio input / output, Raw guitar tone, Directories.
• A Mac version (beta).

Practising

• Note by note (W): the song waits at each note until you play it.
• Ear mode (H): the notes stay hidden until you play them.
• Takes (Ctrl+R): the loop recorded and checked bar by bar (above).
• Recording what you hear (R): the song and your guitar, to a WAV named after the song, in your recordings folder as soon as you stop.
• Synth or real guitar (G): the synth plays the part in place of the song's guitar.
• Chords score like Rocksmith's (half the notes are enough), and strums are found through distorted or clipping inputs.
• Pitch shift (Shift+↑ / Shift+↓, or TRANSPOSE in the header), every stem of a stemmed feedpak with its own level, saved licks (Ctrl+S).
• Every key on one sheet (F1 or ?), and what's switched on shown in red or amber.

Sound

• The pedalboard: 54 models drawn after the units they model, a detailed editor, and Rocksmith songs' own rigs.
• The amp room: play through your rig with no song.

Views

• The 3D note highway (V).
• Tab shape: bar width, string spacing, compact rows, full-screen tab.
• Tiles fold; a new look in three themes.

The full list is in the 0.3.0 release notes.

The numbers on each picture are explained under it.

The whole part as pages of tab with rhythm notation, the current bar lit and the next notes ringed. Lead, Rhythm and Bass are a key apart.

[ and ] set a loop on the beat, L loops the section, and the speed goes from 25% to 150% without changing the pitch. The Controls key opens all of it.

A Rocksmith-style 3D note highway, in place of the tab (V).

The song waits at each note until you play it.

Ctrl+R records the loop and checks it against the chart, bar by bar (the picture at the top). R records what you hear, song and guitar, to a WAV file named after the song; it appears in your recordings folder when you stop.

The song up or down in semitones, and, for a feedpak split into stems, each stem's level. This picture is from a small example pack with guitar, drums, vocals and click stems.

Pedals, amp, cab and effects for a dry guitar input, each drawn after the kind of unit it models.

Your rig on a stage, with no song: scenes, saved sounds, and every song's own tone to try.

A first-time setup on the first start (the look, your guitar, low latency, the note widget, keys and folders), and the song folders and keys in Settings > Directories.

Scoring with your best three runs per part, a tuner set to the song's tuning, lyrics, a difficulty slider with level-up after a clean loop, three themes (Midnight, Graphite, Daylight), guitar tones (As is, Clean, Crunch, Lead, Bass, Acoustic, Pedalboard, and your own), and a converter from psarc to feedpak.

1. Download and unzip quickRS. (INSTALL)
2. Plug in your guitar. A Real Tone Cable is picked by itself. (AUDIO-SETUP)
3. Start quickrs.exe. It finds Rocksmith's dlc folder in your Steam libraries, and the first-time setup opens: pick a look, set up your guitar (a couple of minutes), and add keys and folders. Every page can be skipped. (INSTALL)
4. If songs say needs keys, paste Rocksmith's two keys into the setup's Keys and folders page, or Settings (F2) > Directories, and press Save keys. Feedpaks need no keys. (GETTING-SONGS)
5. Pick a song, press Space, and play. (PLAYING)

Every button shows its key on it, and F1 (or ?) in the player shows them all on one sheet. On a Mac, Ctrl in these keys is Cmd. The full list:

In the player:

The stem mixer has no keys; it is in Controls > PITCH & STEMS.

In the amp room:

In the library:

Anywhere: F2 settings, F11 full screen. On Home, A opens the amp room.

You can also drop a .psarc or .feedpak file, or a folder, on the window.

The source in this repository is the same code as the release, minus the parts for one particular USB pedal that only I use.

On Windows you need Rust (stable, MSVC toolchain) with the Visual Studio Build Tools ("Desktop development with C++"), and LLVM for ASIO support and the time-stretcher: set LIBCLANG_PATH to LLVM's bin folder. The build downloads the ASIO SDK.

cargo build --release -p qrs-app -p qrs-cli -p qrs-convert
cargo test --workspace

The programs are in target/release: quickrs.exe (the player), quickrs-cli.exe (song info, tabs, conversion, devices, take checks) and quickrs-convert.exe (the converter window, shipped as quickRS Converter.exe).

On macOS you need Rust (rustup) and Xcode or its Command Line Tools. bash tools/mac/bundle.sh builds the universal quickRS.app and its zip and .dmg into dist/mac/; step by step in docs/BUILDING-macOS.md. .github/workflows/release-mac.yml builds the same on GitHub's Macs.

quickRS is not made by or affiliated with Ubisoft. Rocksmith is a trademark of Ubisoft Entertainment. quickRS includes no songs and no decryption keys. It plays songs you own and custom songs (CDLC); please don't share what you extract. quickRS is MIT licensed; the Manrope font is SIL OFL and ww2ogg's codebooks are BSD.

In quickRS: Settings (F2) > Updates > Report a bug. It opens a new issue on GitHub Issues in your browser with your quickRS version and system filled in; say what happened and what you did just before. Show the log file finds the log to attach if quickRS crashed or showed an error. You need a GitHub account. See TROUBLESHOOTING.

quickRS is free. If it helps your practice, you can buy me a coffee at ko-fi.com/arpanmitra.