pluginval
How I Accidentally Built an Industry Standard(ish) Tool
Eight years ago, I wanted a reliable way to catch non-obvious problems in audio plugins before letting users host them. That need became pluginval, a validation tool now used daily by hundreds of developers across the industry.
This talk revisits the original motivation behind pluginval and the problems it set out to solve, then asks a fair question: has it actually met those goals? Where it has, we’ll look at why. Where it hasn’t, we’ll look at what got in the way.
From there, we’ll trace how the project grew from a personal utility into a widely adopted open-source tool, and what that journey reveals about building and sustaining a collaborative project: the benefits, the responsibilities, and the occasional surprises along the way.
Finally, we’ll look ahead to pluginval 2.0 and its new capabilities for validating, testing, and building confidence in plugin development. By the end, we’ll be better placed to answer the question the title raises: is pluginval really a standard, and does that label even matter?
Dave Rowland
CTO
Tracktion/Prism
Dave Rowland is the CTO at Audio Squadron (owning brands such as Tracktion and Prism Sound), working primarily on the digital audio workstation Waveform, and the engine it runs on. David focuses on the architecture and real-time elements of the software.
In academia, David has taught on several modules at the University of the West of England on programming for audio. David has a passion for modern C++ standards and their use to improve code safety and brevity, has spoken at Meeting C++, C++ on Sea, C++ Online and is a regular speaker at the Audio Developer Conference and related monthly meetup. Past presentations: https://github.com/drowaudio/presentations/