PPsVaultTracker

A modern VSTi tracker — by The Unborn / RetroVault

A pattern-based tracker in the FastTracker 2 / ProTracker lineage, hosting VST3 instruments and effects, designed to compose full songs whose deliverables (MIDI + WAV stems) import cleanly into Ableton Live for final arrangement and mastering.

Windows + Linux (Ubuntu 24.04 reference). Built with JUCE 8 (fetched at configure time, pinned). License: AGPLv3.

Features

• VST3 hosting — one instrument per track (up to 16), insert FX chains per channel plus a master bus
• FT2-style pattern editor — hex rows, keyboard navigation, transpose, interpolation, block copy/paste, unlimited undo/redo; AZERTY/QWERTY and FT2/ProTracker keymap presets
• Sample-accurate sequencer — BPM + speed (ticks/row) clock, swing, song mode with order list
• Live MIDI recording — from the virtual keyboard or a hardware MIDI controller, quantized to the nearest row, with metronome and pre-count
• Effect column = native MIDI — Axx–Hxx send the CC mapped to that per-track slot (defaults: cutoff, resonance, mod wheel, volume, pan, reverb, chorus, sustain — editable from the mixer's CC button), Pxx pitch bend, Nxx note delay and Kxx note cut in ticks. No internal DSP: automation is portable, it exports as plain CC in the .mid
• Mixer — faders, mute/solo, VU meters per channel and master
• Track identity & reordering — rename any track (double-click its header or mixer title), give it one of 8 neon accent colours, and move tracks left/right (right-click menu or Ctrl+Shift+←/→) to group drums, bass, pads… — the VSTi, inserts, mixer settings, CC slots and pattern data all move together, even during playback. Custom names become the track names in the MIDI export (visible when importing into Ableton)
• Arrangement view (F12) — the order list as a horizontal timeline: one block per entry with the pattern's name and a per-track note-density mini-map in the track colours. Drag to reorder (Ctrl+drag duplicates), right-click to insert/duplicate/remove/rename patterns, click a track lane to mute that track for that block (the arrangement matrix — ideal for intro/breakdown variants of the same pattern), and playback starts from the selected block
• CC lane — a drawable curve editor over the effect column: pick a track and a CC slot (or pitch bend) and draw your sweeps with the mouse instead of typing hex. Both views edit the same data, strokes are undoable in the grid, and drawing sends the CC live to the plugin — so its MIDI Learn catches the controller instantly. Toggle smooth (~) to ramp a lane at tick resolution between your points — no more zipper on filter sweeps, and it exports that way too
• Projects — human-readable .ubt folder format (JSON + plugin states) with rotating autosave backups
• Export for the studio — multitrack MIDI (SMF type 1), per-channel WAV stems, master WAV/MP3 (LAME), and a tracklist of every plugin used — everything imports cleanly into Ableton Live
• Module import — MOD/XM/S3M/IT note data via libopenmpt (level 1: notes, no samples)
• RetroVault synthwave theme — Orbitron, cyan/magenta on deep blue

✨ Status: v1.1.0-beta. The engine and workflow are feature-complete. On the roadmap for later releases: a bundled demo song, the OUTRUN/LATENT visualizers from the RetroVault MOD player, and host-parameter automation for MIDI-less FX plugins.

Download

Grab the portable Windows build from the latest release — unzip and run, nothing to install. MP3 export needs a lame.exe (e.g. winget install LAME.LAME); the app asks for its location once.

Building

Requirements: CMake 3.22+, a C++20 toolchain (MSVC 2022 / GCC 13+), and on Linux the usual JUCE dev packages (see .github/workflows/ci.yml).

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release --parallel
ctest --test-dir build -C Release

JUCE 8.0.14 is downloaded automatically by CMake FetchContent on first configure — nothing to install manually.

⚠️ Plugins load in-process with no sandbox (documented v1 trade-off, like Renoise). A misbehaving plugin can take the app down — only load plugins you trust. Autosave has your back.

License

GNU AGPLv3 — see LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md. VST® is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.