Don’t Break the Session
Modernizing a Plugin Back-Catalogue Without Wrecking Saved Projects
We shipped a whole suite of plugin products over the last 4 years, and built a strong platform for efficient product development.
Yet, we like to tinker, and there's always more stuff to improve. So we update our stack from one product launch to the next one. The old products fall behind when we don't have the time to update them as we rather focus on new releases.
Eventually, breaking OS or DRM changes force us to update them and we face the decision: do we backport some minimal updates to keep them alive, or rebuild them on top of the current stack? Updating the dependencies is the easy, mechanical half. The expensive half is proving the rebuild didn't break anything for the people who already own the plugin and have it loaded in old sessions. A full regression pass, by hand, across the whole catalogue, is outrageously time consuming.
This talk is about automating that difficult half. We treat the shipped build as the spec: capture its UI and audio, make a carbon copy of its manifest and parameter list, then check the rebuild still honours it, exactly where it must and within tolerance everywhere else. And once that oracle exists, we can hand the modernization itself to an LLM, because for the first time it has a way to verify its own work against the build customers are actually running.
Bence Kovács
Audio Software Developer
Bogren Digital
Bence is a software developer specializing in audio and game development, with a focus on creating efficient, scalable solutions. Over the years, he has contributed to diverse projects, including audio plugins, games, and VR experiences. Bence is particularly interested in optimizing both runtime performance and development workflows. His work often involves designing modular architectures that enhance code reusability and facilitate the rapid development of complex audio software.