RSModsPlus

If RSModsPlus has saved you time or made Rocksmith more enjoyable, consider buying me a beer. Your support helps me keep improving the mod.

A fork of RSMods that adds pitch routing to Rocksmith 2014: a Drop Pedal that shifts the guitar to the song, and a Speaker Mode that shifts the song to the guitar.

F7 cycles between the two modes and Off. Range is -24 to +24 semitones. Supported game versions: Rocksmith 2014 Remastered (September 2022 update) and Learn & Play (December 2024 update). Drop Pedal multiplayer is supported on both versions.

RSModsPlus-demo.mp4

Quick start

1. Make sure this is in RSMods.ini next to Rocksmith2014.exe:

   [Drop Pedal]
   EnableDropPedal = on
   Engine = automatic

2. Start Rocksmith and press F7 once. The top-left readout changes from Pitch: Off to Drop: E.

3. Match the readout to the song. Press , to move down one semitone or . to move up one semitone. For example, with a guitar in E standard and an Eb song, press , once until the readout says Drop: E -> Eb (-1).

Other controls:

Action	Player 1	Player 2
Cycle Drop Pedal / Speaker Mode / Off for everyone	F7	-
Move the target down / up	, / .	Control+, / Control+.
Tell the mod the guitar's physical tuning	F9	Control+F9

Settings are read when the game starts, and every session starts at Pitch: Off. If the keys do nothing or the mod seems missing, the Quick Start guide walks through the install gotchas and the extra controls.

---

Drop Pedal

Shifts the guitar so a song in any uniform tuning can be played without touching a tuning peg. To play an Eb song on an E-standard guitar, set the pedal to -1. Audio and note detection move together, so the tuner and scoring follow the shift.

Two engines realise the shift, selected at launch and announced on screen:

• ASIO engine: with RS_ASIO, the raw input is shifted before Rocksmith receives it. No tone setup: every tone, stock or custom, receives the shifted signal.
• Cable engine: without RS_ASIO, such as a plain Real Tone cable, the shift is applied through a MultiPitch pedal in the tone and the game's tuning reference is transposed to match.

Multiplayer is supported by both engines: each player has an independent target and base tuning (Control + the pedal keys addresses Player 2), with [Asio.Input.0] as Player 1 and [Asio.Input.1] as Player 2 under ASIO.

Setup and usage: the ASIO Drop Pedal guide for RS_ASIO interfaces, or the Cable Drop Pedal guide for Real Tone cable setups.

---

Speaker Mode

Shifts the song instead of the guitar. Intended for playing through speakers, where the acoustic guitar is audible in the room: the music comes to your tuning, and the guitar stays physically untouched.

• Requires no RS_ASIO, no audio interface, and no MultiPitch tone; a Real Tone cable alone is enough.
• Gameplay audio carries zero added latency: the full song is pitch-rendered ahead of playback into temporary audio and read by exact song position.
• The chart tuning is read automatically at the pre-song tuner, and any chart shape works: uniform, drop and open tunings. For non-uniform shapes, the tuner guides the physical retune string by string (a Drop Db chart with an E-standard guitar asks for one string down to D, then raises the song a semitone: Speaker: Eb Drop Db -> Drop D (+1)).
• Prepared audio is session-temporary and deleted on close; nothing persists between launches.

Setup and usage: the Speaker Mode guide.

---

What this fork adds

• The Drop Pedal, -24 to +24 semitones, with ASIO and Cable engines and full multiplayer support: independent per-player targets, base tunings and overlay rows.
• Speaker Mode, temporary full-song pitch rendering with zero added gameplay latency and automatic chart synchronization for any tuning shape.
• A base tuning setting, so shifts are named from whatever the guitar is physically in rather than from E.
• An on-screen readout of the current mode, route and per-player state, plus settings and rebindable keys in the settings app (Tuning tab).

Everything else comes from RSMods 1.2.8.2 and behaves as upstream documents it: extended range mode, custom song list titles, toggle loft, force re-enumeration, GuitarSpeak, and the rest. See upstream's README for that list and for the full RSMods.ini reference.

---

Installing

This is built from RSMods 1.2.8.2 and uses the same filename, so it replaces RSMods' own xinput1_3.dll rather than sitting beside it. Only one of the two can be loaded at a time.

Install upstream RSMods 1.2.8.2 first. RSModsPlus uses its existing settings, libraries and decode tools.

Back up xinput1_3.dll and RSMods\RSMods.exe if you want to restore plain RSMods later. Then download the ZIP from the latest release and extract its complete contents into the Rocksmith 2014 folder. Allow it to replace xinput1_3.dll and RSMods\RSMods.exe.

The updated settings executable also runs invisibly when Speaker Mode prepares full-song audio. The rest of the existing RSMods folder and RSMods.ini remain untouched.

To uninstall, restore those two files, or reinstall upstream RSMods.

Requirements are upstream's: Steam Rocksmith 2014 Remastered on Windows, and the MS Visual C++ 2015-2019 redistributable. The ASIO engine additionally needs RS_ASIO and an ASIO audio interface; the Cable engine and Speaker Mode need neither.

---

How it works

ASIO Drop Pedal. With RS_ASIO installed, the mod hooks the ASIO driver below RS_ASIO and gives each configured Rocksmith input its own persistent pitch shifter, so note detection, the tuner and tone processing all consume the same shifted signal. The shifter uses period-synchronous splicing. At 48 kHz with 128-frame callbacks, the production-shifter harness measures roughly 6-20 ms of observable content delay depending on the note and shift. This is added to the interface's normal round-trip latency. For comparison, DigiTech does not publish a latency specification for its well-regarded Drop pedal, but independent waveform tests report roughly 12-17 ms, including a detailed burst test measuring about 16 ms. The methods are not identical, but they put this mod's measured delay in the same broad range as dedicated hardware. End-to-end feel also depends on the interface's round trip, so a low ASIO buffer remains important. Input formats Float32, Int32, Int24 and Int16 and buffer sizes from 1 to 4096 frames are accepted, so common interfaces work out of the box.

Cable Drop Pedal. Without RS_ASIO, detection reads the raw signal upstream of the tone chain, so the mod shifts inside the game instead: it retunes a MultiPitch pedal in the player's tone and transposes the reference frequency the game derives its expected pitch from. In multiplayer, each tone's pitch pedal and each player's detection reference are attributed to their owning player. This engine needs the MultiPitch pedal in the tone and covers uniform tunings.

Speaker Mode. The mod hooks the game's Wwise music decoding. Menu previews are shifted live; for gameplay, the selected song is decoded and pitch-rendered in full into a temporary delete-on-close file, which playback reads by exact song position, with zero added latency and no change to the song's duration. The chart tuning is synchronized automatically, the game's tuning reference is adjusted so the chart is playable in the physical tuning, and any preparation failure turns the mode off rather than play at a wrong pitch.

---

Documentation

User guides

Document	Covers
docs/asio-drop-pedal.md	ASIO Drop Pedal: requirements, controls, multiplayer, bass, troubleshooting
docs/cable-drop-pedal.md	Cable Drop Pedal: tone setup, constraints, multiplayer, troubleshooting
docs/speaker-mode.md	Speaker Mode: setup, choosing tunings, chart shapes, troubleshooting

Designs

Document	Covers
docs/designs/drop-pedal-multiplayer.md	Drop Pedal multiplayer architecture, lifecycle and performance data
docs/designs/speaker-mode.md	Speaker Mode engine internals

Investigation records

Document	Covers
docs/investigations/drop-pedal-multiplayer.md	Earlier findings behind multiplayer pitch processing
docs/investigations/speaker-mode.md	The investigation that led to the Speaker Mode design

Technical reference

Document	Covers
docs/wwise-plugin-internals.md	Reverse-engineered Wwise plugin structures used by the Cable engine

---

Support

If RSModsPlus has saved you time or made Rocksmith more enjoyable, consider buying me a beer. Your support helps me keep improving the mod.

---

Issues

Drop Pedal and Speaker Mode problems go on this repository, not on upstream's tracker. These features aren't theirs to support.

A bug in an inherited RSMods feature that reproduces on a stock upstream build belongs upstream.

A debug log is written to RSMods_debug.txt beside Rocksmith2014.exe. It is overwritten on every launch and locked while the game runs, so quit before copying it. Attaching it makes a bug report far easier to act on.

---

Credits

RSMods is the work of Lovrom8 and ffio1, with contributions from ZagatoZee, Kokolihapihvi and L0fka. This fork is the pitch routing on top of their project. If you find the rest of the mod suite useful, thank them.

RS_ASIO by mdias is what makes the ASIO engine possible; the ASIO Drop Pedal lives underneath it.

Signalsmith Stretch by Signalsmith Audio performs Speaker Mode's pitch shifting.

The reference-frequency technique the Cable Drop Pedal relies on is the same one CDLC charters have long used to move a chart's expected notes by setting an arrangement's tuning pitch.