Year: 2025

Overview of Granular Synthesis

For most, granular synthesis is a mysterious yet versatile technique. While some may find it fathomable, it remains an inexhaustible tool that yields complex timbres, textures and rhythms. Although it has been around for decades, people have found new ways to use it doing real-time effects and sound design.

This talk will review its history, delve into intricate details of its implementations and applications in simple pitch-shifting and time-stretching algorithms. The talk will serve as a survey of topics related to granular synthesis and, hopefully, provide a comprehensive resource on the topic for people trying to use or build granular tools.

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The Practices of Audio Programming

How diverse are the ways that programming is done more generally, and audio programming specifically?

I’m sure all developers reading this can relate to the feeling that, for this particular moment in their work, they should approach the task in a particular way. There is a time for experimenting with code, for writing a throwaway sketch, tinkering, and of course, for meticulously engineering the best possible solution for a well-defined problem.

In this talk, I will discuss how there are distinct practices to employ for each of these mentioned contexts, and that there is not one right way to approach writing code. Instead, there is the right way, or even combination of ways, for the particular context at hand.

While a variety of accounts exist, each appears in isolation, neither framed in terms of a distinct practice, nor as one of many such practices.

Here I explore accounts spanning software engineering, bricolage/tinkering, sketching, live coding, code-bending, and hacking.

These practices of programming are analyzed, and related to concrete examples of Audio programming.

The conceptualization of practice helps to interpret recent interest in program code as craft material, and to inform programming education, tools, and creating software for work and for pleasure!

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Peeking Inside Audio Units

As audio developers, we often rely on plugins and APIs that act as black boxes — until they don’t behave as expected. This talk is a practical reverse engineering journey into Apple’s AUSampler plugin, showing how reverse engineering skills can help navigate undocumented and confusing behavior in Audio Units.

We’ll begin with a real-world scenario: AUSampler silently ignoring MIDI notes under specific conditions, with no errors and no documentation to guide the investigation.

Step by step, we’ll walk through how the issue was traced and analyzed, uncovering internal behavior and ultimately revealing how the voice count metric is implemented inside the AUSampler plugin.

Along the way, the talk highlights strategies for investigating opaque systems and emphasizes how reverse engineering can be a valuable skill in the modern audio developer’s toolkit.

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Converting Source Separation Models to ONNX for Real Time Usage in DJ Software

Demucs v4 is a state-of-the-art open-source music source separation model developed by Alexandre Défossez. While it provides exceptional quality in separating audio into stems, it is currently implemented in PyTorch and therefore cannot be used directly in C++ applications or run efficiently on hardware accelerators through ONNX Runtime. Exporting the model to ONNX allows developers to integrate stem separation directly into their platforms, opening up use cases like live stem manipulation, AI-assisted mixing, and educational visualization tools. Through this talk where I demonstrate exporting, deploying and evaluating the exported model, I want to provide a reference for further integration into audio applications.

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Why Do People Actually Buy Music Software, Anyway?

Every DAW today comes packed with enough instruments and effects to create just about any kind of music. So why does a thriving market for third-party plugins still exist?

Developers tend to be aware of the technical differences between a DAW’s stock plugins and most third-party plugins, but the average music producer is far less likely to be making decisions with these in mind. Few plugins offer a clear, measurable return on investment, yet people continue to buy them. Why?

This talk explores the deeper, often non-rational motivations behind why producers buy music software, beyond mere Gear Acquisition Syndrome. It offers to reframe product concepts from a buyer-centric perspective, challenging assumptions that developers might have about what drives plugin sales.

Attendees will leave with practical insights that can inform product design, messaging, and long-term strategy, and perhaps a renewed understanding of why they make music software in the first place.

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Bridging Audio Analysis and Interaction

In modern audio applications, from music production and interactive installations to scientific analysis, there is growing demand for real-time insight into the characteristics of sound. The Informer is a comprehensive open-source solution for real-time audio feature extraction and distribution. The system consists of a VST3/AU/LV2 plugin, a standalone application and a VCV Rack module that compute a wide range of time-domain and frequency-domain sound descriptors, broadcasting results via Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol. This makes it ideal for driving visual systems, lighting, generative graphics, or responsive environments in real time.

An accompanying C++ header-only library (with Python bindings) makes the underlying algorithms easily accessible to developers, allowing them to embed its analysis engine directly into custom software, interactive installations, or multimedia frameworks. Moreover, a Max for Live device facilitates its usage within Ableton Live, enabling sound-driven modulation, generative setups, and beyond.

Built on open source frameworks and distributed under free software licenses, The Informer bridges technical audio analysis with creative applications in music production, audiovisual performance, interactive installations, and scientific research.

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Should Audio Plugins Have “Everything Everywhere All at Once”?

Modern plugin development often faces a central dilemma: how much feature commonality is too much? What began as a highly specific tool inside one instrument—designed to solve a particular creative need—unexpectedly gained traction among users. The overwhelmingly positive feedback raised an important question for the team: could this feature be abstracted into a flexible, reusable component across multiple instruments? This led to a deeper architectural shift.

By elevating the original feature into a generic, SDK-level module—complete with modulation systems, advanced sequencing, effects, and routing—we enable a consistent user experience across diverse plugins, while reducing development overhead. However, this raises new design questions: when does standardization enhance creativity, and when might it flatten the unique identities of individual instruments? This talk explores the balance between shared modules, features/frameworks, and product specificity in modern audio software.

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PSD to DAW

Designers hand off beautiful mockups—but somewhere between Photoshop and the final build, subtle inconsistencies emerge. Assets shift slightly, edges lose sharpness, and layering doesn’t always behave as intended. Why does translating static visuals into production-ready UIs remain so challenging?

This session outlines a practical approach to building native UIs in audio software, with a focus on automating asset export and layout implementation. We’ll look at techniques for maintaining visual fidelity across a range of display types, including strategies for intelligent image resampling. The session also addresses common challenges in component ordering and layering, offering tips that help ensure interfaces are rendered exactly as intended.

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A Sine By Any Other Language

To paraphrase Shakespeare, "That which we call a sine / By any other language would sound just as sweet". As a de facto "Hello, World!" of audio programming, the sine wave as implemented through various programming languages can serve as a fruitful lens through which we're able to look at the tools and technologies we use.

This talk describes a journey through implementing sine wave playback using 50 different programming languages, ranging from general-purpose programming languages (such as C++, JavaScript, and Python) to audio-specific environments (such as Max/MSP, Pure Data, and SuperCollider) to, yes, even SQL. We'll use each language's built-in types and functions as well as standard libraries wherever we can, avoiding the use of external libraries as much as possible.

Along the way we'll look at some of the commonalities and differences among the languages, comparing our implementations along axes such as programming paradigms, audio abstraction, real-time vs. offline, and performance (with a grain of salt). Through this process we'll get a sense of the history, motivation, and current landscape of audio programming languages.

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Creative Coding

This talk explores the intersection of creative coding, geometry, and computational sonics, demonstrating how geometric concepts and algorithms not often seen in DSP can be used as a modulation source or for audio playback. We'll cover general relationships and practical methods for translating shapes, patterns, and spatial relationships into dynamic audio processes.

Building on these experimental approaches we'll discuss strategies to create standalone creative applications as well as commercial plugins. Examples will transform geometric concepts and visuals into performant DSP with C++ and OpenGL. Attendees will leave with insights for generative audio, modulation systems, and experimental GUI design, bridging the gap between abstract experimentation and market-ready tools.

Whether you're a DSP engineer, sound designer, or toolmaker, this talk offers fresh perspectives on turning mathematical beauty into functional audio products.

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