How to Write Scalable, Deterministic Audio Engines - Janus Lynggaard Thorborg - ADCx Copenhagen 2026
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Does it sound familiar to have the UI responsiveness drop as audio load increases, or have audio stuttering under intensive UI operations?
That an audio track sounds different every time it’s rendered?
And that you end up with a system that seems very hard to test without instabilities or generous timeouts and tolerance?
In this talk we’ll take a brief look at the technology, approaches and architecture you can employ to improve the lives of your own engineering department and build better software for your users!
We’ll identify common pitfalls like atomic variables (!), performance mitigation strategies that may end up hurting and why it could make sense to take a page from graphics architecture in terms of how you may want to structure your interprocess communication. A suggested approach will be evaluated for benefits and tradeoffs.
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Janus Lynggaard Thorborg
Janus Thorborg is a musician, sound designer and audio programmer developing open source audio plugins primarily catering to engineering analysis and experimental R&D.
As a long-tenured staff engineer at Unity, he oversees R&D and architecture of the audio engine in authoring- and realtime contexts.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
Workshop: Programming Music and Synthesizers on-the-fly with Pharo - Domenico Cipriani - ADC 2025
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This creative coding workshop introduces participants to live music programming with Pharo Smalltalk, using two integrated libraries:
Coypu is a domain-specific language for real-time music programming. It allows expressive live coding of rhythms, melodies, and musical structures.
Phausto provides a flexible library of synthesisers and audio effects. It embeds the Faust DSP language into Pharo, offering high-quality sound synthesis through a clean and approachable syntax.
Together, these tools leverage Pharo's unique strengths, its live development environment, immediate feedback, and system introspection, enabling participants to create and manipulate instruments in real-time. No prior experience with Pharo or Faust is required. This workshop is ideal for anyone curious about the intersection of programming, sound, and live performance. Every tool used in this workshop is free to use and fully open source.
● Prerequisites:
○ Basic understanding of synthesisers and audio effects
○ No prior experience with Pharo or Smalltalk required
Hardware & Software Requirements
● Computer running macOS or Windows recommended - Installation of Phausto on Linux machines may require advanced skills. If you are running Windows, please install [ASIO4ALL drivers to enjoy Phausto!
● Pharo 13
● Coypu and Phausto libraries (also provided on local storage media during the workshop)
● TurboPhausto samples can be downloaded separately here.
Workshop Structure
Part 1: Foundations (45 minutes)
● Introduction to live coding: history, philosophy, and the TOPLAP manifesto
● Overview of Pharo and its IDE: browsers, inspectors, live feedback
● Pharo syntax essentials for musical expression
● Installing Coypu and Phausto and testing the environment
Part 2: Rhythms and Melodies (75 minutes)
● Understanding Coypu's architecture: performers, sequencers, and patterns
● Connecting to audio backends and MIDI devices
● Creating rhythmic patterns with Hexbeat notation
● Exploring stochastic and algorithmic composition techniques
● Using Coypu's string notation for musical structures
● Hands-on exercise: building a live-coded rhythm section
Part 3: Sound Design with Phausto (75 minutes)
● Introduction to Phausto’s synthesis components: oscillators, filters, envelopes
● Understanding signal routing and chaining effects
● Building a custom synthesiser from scratch
● Creating and applying audio effects
● Connecting Phausto instruments to Coypu sequences
● Assembling a personal instrument library
Part 4: Performance Preparation (20 minutes)
● Organising instruments into performance-ready classes
● Assigning instruments to Coypu performers
● Performance workflow tips and best practices
● Real-time parameter modulation and group improvisation
Part 5: Visual Interface and Control (25 minutes)
● Introduction to Bloc for creating user interfaces in Pharo
● Building control interfaces for instruments
● Adding mixer controls and visual feedback
● Linking UI elements to musical parameters
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Domenico Cipriani (aka Lucretio) is a minimalist dance music producer and sound researcher with over 100 vinyl releases and performances at iconic clubs including Berghain, Tresor, Rex, and Fabric. He is co-founder of the influential label Restoration, a key player in the vinyl resurgence of the late 2000s.
Domenico is also the creator of Coypu and Phausto. With Coypu, he has performed at the International Live Coding Conference in Shanghai (2024) and Barcelona (2025).
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
Workshop: Audio Plugin DSP in Practice - Jan Wilczek & Linus Corneliusson - ADC 2025
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In this workshop, you will learn the complete process of designing and implementing an audio effect plugin, specifically a flanger.
You will connect the dots between theory and practice: how to reason about musical features of your plugin before implementing it and how to translate a block diagram into a working implementation.
This workshop covers all the essential steps in professional audio effect development.
You will learn:
- the basics of digital signal processing: samples, sample rate, and delay,
- how DSP engineers represent and analyze signal flow,
- how to reason about delay-based effects,
- how to quickly prototype your effects in Python,
- how to set up a C++ audio plugin project using JUCE and CMake,
- how to create reusable DSP “building blocks” and combine them to create more advanced effects from your diagrams,
- how to create user interface controls for your plugin and connect them to your effect,
- how to code, build & test your plugin.
The workshop will include both theoretical and practical components.
Before attending the workshop, please clone the workshop repository and go through the "Getting Started" section.python,
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I am an audio programming consultant and educator, the creator of TheWolfSound.com blog and YouTube channel dedicated to audio programming.
I am the author of ""DSP Pro,"" an online course on digital audio signal processing, and a co-author of the official JUCE audio plugin development course.
I offer coaching and software development services related to audio plugins and audio software.
I work from home in Katowice, Poland.
Linus Corneliusson
With a background in heavy metal production, mixing and editing at Fascination Street Studios, I have recently transitioned to plugin and instrument development at Bogren Digital.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
Driving Chaos - Virtual Analog Modelling of a Chaotic Circuit with Wave Digital Filters - Francisco Bernardo - ADC 2025
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What happens when analog circuits behave unpredictably, or even chaotically? This talk dives into the fascinating world of non-linear dynamical systems and their applications in audio circuit modelling. You'll be introduced to key concepts like chaos, bifurcations, and attractors through intuitive explanations and classic examples such as the Lorenz attractor and the Chua circuit—the simplest known circuit to exhibit chaotic behaviour.
We'll then explore how to apply Wave Digital Filters (WDFs)—a technique for virtual analog modelling of analog circuits—to the real-time simulation of the Chua circuit, and make it a valuable tool for creating unique sonic textures and virtual analog effects.
No background in chaos theory or advanced maths is required, just curiosity and an interest in audio DSP modelling. Whether you're into experimental sound design or exploring modelling techniques, this session offers a practical starting point to the chaotic side of audio circuits.
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Francisco Bernardo
Hi, I'm Francisco Bernardo, and I'm interested in computational audio and music systems, acoustics, and human-computer interaction design:
I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Digital Musical Instrument Design at the Augmented Instrument Lab, part of the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London.
Previously, I worked at the Multi-Sensory-Devices Lab at University College London, where I developed acoustic metamaterials and ultrasonic phased arrays for futuristic haptic interfaces.
At the Experimental Music Technologies Lab at University of Sussex, I developed Web-based audio engines and a compiler for livecoding environments for music and machine learning.
My PhD in Computer Science from Goldsmiths, University of London, focused on the design of interactive machine learning toolkits for music technologists and audio developers.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
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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Avrosh Kumar
Avrosh is a Research Engineer and a fledgling audio plugin developer based in New York, currently working at Pindrop. He has over eight years of experience in speech processing, deepfake detection and voice-biometrics with focus on analyzing challenging, noise-addled real world voice interactions. He earned his Master's in Music Technology from Georgia Tech in 2017, building on a strong foundation in digital signal processing and machine learning. His current interests include sound synthesis techniques and electronic music history. Outside of work, he enjoys playing cricket on Sundays and making pizzas in his wood fired oven.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
Linux as the Conductor - Driving Pre-Compiled Audio DSP Kernels on C7x for Real-Time Processing - Vishnu Pratap Singh - ADCx India 2026
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This talk is about how Linux can efficiently offload real-time audio processing to TI’s C7x DSP cores without rewriting DSP algorithms. The C7x runs pre-compiled audio DSP kernels, while Linux acts as the controller—streaming audio buffers, triggering DSP execution, and retrieving processed data through RPMsg and shared memory. Using TI Sitara SoC , we talk about two example workflows: audio frame processing offload and 2D-FFT acceleration. Attendees will learn the buffer-exchange model, IPC setup, latency considerations, and deployment steps needed to enable reliable heterogeneous compute where ARM orchestrates and DSP executes.
Agile Engineering leader at Texas Instruments driving AI-powered pro-audio and embedded Linux innovation on next-gen SoCs
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
https://audio.dev/ -- @audiodevcon
ADCx Copenhagen - 28th April
ADC Bristol - 9th - 11th November
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From Paper to Plugin - A Guided Tour of Digital Filters - Ross Chisholm, Joel Ross & James Hallowell - ADC 2025
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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
- Using this filter in a plugin you design.
Workshop Requirements
Due to time constraints and the possibility of issues with Wifi at the conference we ask that you install some requirements ahead of the workshop.
Please navigate to this repository https://github.com/FocusriteGroup/paper-2-plugin-adc25/ and clone or download it, then follow the instructions there.
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Ross is currently the Head of Embedded Software at Focusrite, responsible for the teams developing embedded software, automation, and DSP for Focusrite and Novation brands.
Ross graduated from the Music and Sound Recording Course at the University of Surrey back in 2011, initially focusing on hardware and firmware development of both MIDI Controllers and Audio Interfaces before eventually moving solely to focus on embedded software development. He now focuses on helping to develop engineering teams to deliver amazing products as well as volunteering as a mentor for The Access Project to help promote STEM subjects for the next generation.
Outside of work, Ross is a keen runner completing several half marathons and marathons as well as a musician.
Joel Ross
Joel is a Senior Embedded DSP Engineer at Focusrite where he develops and implements DSP algorithms for hardware products. His excitement for all things audio DSP began over 20 years ago when he first encountered a Moog modular soft-synth in a music shop in Manitoba and his mind was blown. In the past he's worked on wireless communications systems (modems) and in pro video before finding his way back to audio with his current role at Focusrite.
James Hallowell
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.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
https://audio.dev/ -- @audiodevcon
ADCx India - 29th March
ADC Bristol - 9th - 11th November
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Channel Agnosticism in MetaSounds - Simplifying Audio Formats for Reusable Graph Topologies - Aaron McLeran - ADC 2025
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This talk introduces Channel Agnostic Types (CAT), a new approach to decoupling digital audio processing from fixed channel configurations and spatial audio formats, developed as part of Unreal Engine’s MetaSounds system. While traditional audio engines usually tie DSP graphs and audio rendering to rigid spatial audio pipelines, CATs introduce a flexible, extensible buffer type capable of supporting arbitrary channel layouts—including conventional multichannel, sound-field formats, and object-based systems.
Combined with the new MetaSound Node Configuration API, this work enables reconfigurable MetaSounds to support any audio format, dramatically reducing asset duplication and complexity. More broadly, it presents a model for designing format-agnostic audio systems that promote scalability, modularity, and future-proofing.
Whether you're building tools for games, spatial media, installations, or interactive audio platforms, this talk will offer insights into how to rethink the role of channels and audio formats in DSP architecture.
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Aaron McLeran is the Director of Audio Engine Development at Epic Games, where he leads the design and implementation of real-time audio systems for Unreal Engine. With a background in both physics and music, Aaron has worked at the intersection of procedural sound, DSP, and interactive media for over 15 years. He played a key role in developing MetaSounds, Unreal Engine’s next-generation audio system, and continues to push the boundaries of scalable, programmable audio for games and new media.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
https://audio.dev/ -- @audiodevcon
ADCx India - 29th March
ADC Bristol - 9th - 11th November
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Channel Agnosticism in MetaSounds - Simplifying Audio Formats for Reusable Graph Topologies - Aaron McLeran - ADC 2025
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This talk introduces Channel Agnostic Types (CAT), a new approach to decoupling digital audio processing from fixed channel configurations and spatial audio formats, developed as part of Unreal Engine’s MetaSounds system. While traditional audio engines usually tie DSP graphs and audio rendering to rigid spatial audio pipelines, CATs introduce a flexible, extensible buffer type capable of supporting arbitrary channel layouts—including conventional multichannel, sound-field formats, and object-based systems.
Combined with the new MetaSound Node Configuration API, this work enables reconfigurable MetaSounds to support any audio format, dramatically reducing asset duplication and complexity. More broadly, it presents a model for designing format-agnostic audio systems that promote scalability, modularity, and future-proofing.
Whether you're building tools for games, spatial media, installations, or interactive audio platforms, this talk will offer insights into how to rethink the role of channels and audio formats in DSP architecture.
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Aaron McLeran is the Director of Audio Engine Development at Epic Games, where he leads the design and implementation of real-time audio systems for Unreal Engine. With a background in both physics and music, Aaron has worked at the intersection of procedural sound, DSP, and interactive media for over 15 years. He played a key role in developing MetaSounds, Unreal Engine’s next-generation audio system, and continues to push the boundaries of scalable, programmable audio for games and new media.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
Real-Time Inference of Neural Networks: A Guide for DSP Engineers - Part II - Fares Schulz & Valentin Ackva - ADC 2024
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Continuing our exploration of implementing neural network inference for real-time audio applications, we have expanded from our initial plugin example to a comprehensive library that simplifies the deployment and integration of neural networks in audio applications.
In this talk, we discuss various aspects of our implementation. Since it is crucial to know whether inference engines exhibit real-time violations, we first quantify real-time violations within inference executions. Subsequently, we explore the integration of these engines in real-time audio environments, specifically addressing the challenges of running multiple instances simultaneously. To accomplish this, we use a static thread pool and, when available, host-provided threads. We also focus on strategies for achieving the lowest possible latency, presenting techniques we have implemented, and open a dialogue on a controversial approach to further reduce latency. Moreover, we share our findings on the performance impact of various factors on inference runtimes. To this end, we have extensively benchmarked different neural network architectures across different inference engines, and can show how differences in input buffer size and model size, as well as previously executed inferences, affect the overall performance.
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I am a researcher in the Computer Music and Sound Synthesis Team, part of the Audio Communication Group at the Technische Universität Berlin. At present, my particular interest lies in the exploration of novel applications of neural networks for creative audio effects and synthesis, especially in the real-time and mixed-signal domains. Considering neural networks as a tool rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, I am researching how to make them available alongside long-established methods such as DSP algorithms and analog circuitry. I am also working on spatial audio (multi) systems, which require clustered audio servers due to their high computational cost.
Currently in the final stages of my Master's degree in Audio Communication and Technology, my educational background includes two Bachelor's degrees in Physics and Audio Engineering. Throughout this time, it is my passion for electronic music production that has taken me from theoretical mathematical equations and abstract artistic concepts to their development as algorithms and analog circuits. I am always looking for new ways to combine my interests in music, technology, and science, and love to chat with others who share these passions.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
Annual ADC Conference - https://audio.dev/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/audiodevcon
