Ryan Wardell

About Me

Ryan Wardell is an audio enthusiast who somehow survived years of navigating corporate cubicles, zoom calls and boardroom slide decks without completely losing his soul. With an extensive background in product development, QA, product design, and product management, Ryan managed to help deliver game-changing releases of Pro Tools at Avid and even helped Universal Audio embrace native plugins (yeah, you're welcome). He also had the privilege (or curse, depending on the day) of bringing LUNA to market. He loves turning concepts into real-world tools musicians actually use.
These days, Ryan splits his time between PACE and his own audio plugin and app startup, Storybored. When he is not buried in his laptop you'll find Ryan creating music, making espresso and practicing his latte art or looking for someone to talk kpop with him. 🙂

Sessions

  • Beyond iLok: Advanced Code Protection and Cryptography for the Next Generation

    Protecting the next generation of applications, plug-ins, and AI models.
    12:20 - 12:50 UTC | Tuesday 11th November 2025 | Conservatory

    You may know PACE Anti-Piracy as “the iLok company,” as well as the parent company of JUCE and ADC, but behind iLok lies four decades of world-class software security. Celebrating our 40th anniversary, PACE continues to evolve its mission: building trust between developers and users through advanced cryptography, anti-reverse engineering technology, and white-box protection. In this session, we’ll take you behind the scenes of PACE’s security architecture — from the foundations of White-Box Works and Fusion to the upcoming Fusion 6 release. We’ll explore new advancements in native code hardening, obfuscation, and anti-tamper defenses, along with a look at Fusion […]

  • Continuous QA Testing for Plugins using Python and AI

    Leveraging Context with Python, DawDreamer, and AI for Continuous Plugin QA
    20:10 - 20:30 UTC | Friday 26th September 2025 | ADCx Gather
    Beginner
    Intermediate

    In audio‑plugin development, correctness and performance drift in different ways—and both can ship regressions. This talk shows how to build a deterministic, headless QA rig with Python + DawDreamer to verify bit‑exact (or thresholded) outputs for VST3/AU plugins, and how to pair it with our pluginperf profiler to track cycles/block, cycles/sample, and CPU‑hot parameter regions across sample rate, block size, and oversampling. We’ll cover practical metrics (phase‑cancel residual, RMS/peak, spectral centroid), repeatability tactics (state resets, RNG seeding), and performance guardrails. Key Points: Why continuous QA matters in audio plugin development. How to focus on the right tests Setting up python […]

  • Continuous QA Testing for Plugins Using AI and Python
    15:00 - 15:50 UTC | Tuesday 11th November 2025 | Bristol 1
    Beginner
    Intermediate

    In the fast-paced world of plugin development, maintaining audio quality and consistency can be challenging. This talk explores the integration of Python, AI, and scriptable plugin hosts to embed rigorous quality assurance into your developement workflow. Participants will learn practical strategies for setting up continuous QA processes, automating sonic tests, and verifying deterministic behaviors such as preset recall, parameter automation, and real-time audio analysis. Key Points: Why continuous QA matters in audio plugin development. Setting up python hosts for automated audio plugin testing. Deterministic vs. non-deterministic audio measurements and analysis. Leveraging Python and AI techniques for automated detection of audio […]