James Hallowell

Senior Software Developer

Focusrite

About Me

James is a Senior Software Developer at Focusrite. He originally joined in 2017 to work on control software in the Pro Audio segment and currently leads a team developing internal tools and libraries. A longtime C++ developer and keen Rustacean, he is interested in exploring ways to bridge the two languages to leverage the strengths of each.

Sessions

  • Workshop 4: From Paper to Plugin
    09:00 - 12:30 UTC | Monday 10th November 2025 | Conservatory
    Beginner
    Intermediate

    Academic papers are a great resource for audio developers but can often appear intimidating with many equations and limited explanation. In this workshop we will unpack one paper and show how you can extract key elements needed to implement a novel filter function from the paper and put this to creative use in a JUCE plugin. In the course of the workshop, we will cover: - Theory of digital filters, how to analyse and implement a range of filters - Building prototypes in python using Jupyter notebook - Implementing a C++ version and verifying that it matches the prototype - […]

  • Safe and Sound

    Using C++ Audio Libraries from Rust
    15:00 - 15:50 UTC | Wednesday 12th November 2025 | Bristol 2
    Intermediate
    Advanced

    Rust is a systems programming language that offers strong safety guarantees, fearless concurrency, and real-time performance. It's a great fit for writing audio applications, but many of the mature libraries in this space are written in C++. How can we bridge that gap and make use of these C++ audio libraries in Rust? In this talk, we will explore techniques for integrating C++ libraries into Rust applications without sacrificing performance or ergonomics. We'll use Rust's Foreign Function Interface (FFI) to build low-level bindings to C++ libraries, and show how tools like cxx can streamline the process. We'll then layer on […]