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How would you recommend someone wanting to get into creating audio plugins (with very basic c++ and close to no experience in DSP) start? Also another thing I w

How would you recommend someone wanting to get into creating audio plugins (with very basic c++ and close to no experience in DSP) start? Also another thing I was wondering, does the math used in audio processing also come in useful for other broader applications like video?

fit2rule 5y ago
Learn JUCE, watch some tutorials... http://juce.org http://juce.org
loxias 5y ago
> Also another thing I was wondering, does the math used in audio processing also come in useful for other broader applications like video? Dear lord yes. YES. They're all signals (audio, images, video, radio waves, EEG readings, &c). Just in different dimensions and timebases. The math used to tease meaning from the signals is pretty universal. Understanding fundamentals like convolutions, filters, frequency domain, bandwidth, sampling limits, &c are just as critical if you want to do video processing as audio. A Wiener Filter will clean up audio, as well as an image. To a very crude approximation, the math that lets us compress audio to MP3s is the same that lets us compress images to JPEGs. That first question though, is hard. I've been doing it for too long to have any useful advice.. (sorry) I would say, the best way to get into it is to... well... just start. Don't worry about the programming language, try things out in a high level tool, like MATLAB. With a foundation of simple diffeq and some stats, you'll be able to do stuff :)
- udbhavs 5y ago
  Thanks, usually questions on the internet about learning VST programming are in the context of producers wanting finer control over their sound so the answer is always "it's not worth it, just use Max/PD/Reaktor". But as a CS student who's into making music I was curious about how these tools are made and also how much the theory overlaps with other fields (which by your answer it does to a large extent). So its exciting to know the knowledge will come in handy in other areas and that its not a futile time sink :)
  - gavinray 5y ago
    There is a massive online community (~10,000 people) of audio devs that will help you here: https://theaudioprogrammer.com/discord/ https://theaudioprogrammer.com/discord/ There are some devs from some well-known companies, as well as maintainers of a few popular frameworks there. They're (probably) going to tell you to use JUCE, use "Projucer" as a build tool, and C++ as a language. That's what most people do. I don't particularly love C++, and I prefer the CMake build, instead of their custom build tool, but potato-puhtahto. There's also a Rust Audio development community: https://github.com/RustAudio https://github.com/RustAudio https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw And it may be a bit niche, but there is an (in my opinion) fantastic framework for writing audio plugins in D: https://github.com/AuburnSounds/Dplug https://github.com/AuburnSounds/Dplug It uses Physically-Based Rendering for the UI (PBR), which is generally used for 3D game stuff I think? It's a neat approach and the UI's it produces can look very realistic -- only framework that does this AFAIK. The author Guillaume is a nice person and will answer questions in the #audio-dev channel of the D-lang Discord that is linked in the Dplug repo.
    - p0nce 5y ago
      We welcome people that want to make a plugin business foremost (or already are in the market). https://dplug.org/ https://dplug.org/

fit2rule 5y ago

Learn JUCE, watch some tutorials... http://juce.org http://juce.org

loxias 5y ago

> Also another thing I was wondering, does the math used in audio processing also come in useful for other broader applications like video? Dear lord yes. YES. They're all signals (audio, images, video, radio waves, EEG readings, &c). Just in different dimensions and timebases. The math used to tease meaning from the signals is pretty universal. Understanding fundamentals like convolutions, filters, frequency domain, bandwidth, sampling limits, &c are just as critical if you want to do video processing as audio. A Wiener Filter will clean up audio, as well as an image. To a very crude approximation, the math that lets us compress audio to MP3s is the same that lets us compress images to JPEGs. That first question though, is hard. I've been doing it for too long to have any useful advice.. (sorry) I would say, the best way to get into it is to... well... just start. Don't worry about the programming language, try things out in a high level tool, like MATLAB. With a foundation of simple diffeq and some stats, you'll be able to do stuff :)

udbhavs 5y ago
Thanks, usually questions on the internet about learning VST programming are in the context of producers wanting finer control over their sound so the answer is always "it's not worth it, just use Max/PD/Reaktor". But as a CS student who's into making music I was curious about how these tools are made and also how much the theory overlaps with other fields (which by your answer it does to a large extent). So its exciting to know the knowledge will come in handy in other areas and that its not a futile time sink :)
- gavinray 5y ago
  There is a massive online community (~10,000 people) of audio devs that will help you here: https://theaudioprogrammer.com/discord/ https://theaudioprogrammer.com/discord/ There are some devs from some well-known companies, as well as maintainers of a few popular frameworks there. They're (probably) going to tell you to use JUCE, use "Projucer" as a build tool, and C++ as a language. That's what most people do. I don't particularly love C++, and I prefer the CMake build, instead of their custom build tool, but potato-puhtahto. There's also a Rust Audio development community: https://github.com/RustAudio https://github.com/RustAudio https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw And it may be a bit niche, but there is an (in my opinion) fantastic framework for writing audio plugins in D: https://github.com/AuburnSounds/Dplug https://github.com/AuburnSounds/Dplug It uses Physically-Based Rendering for the UI (PBR), which is generally used for 3D game stuff I think? It's a neat approach and the UI's it produces can look very realistic -- only framework that does this AFAIK. The author Guillaume is a nice person and will answer questions in the #audio-dev channel of the D-lang Discord that is linked in the Dplug repo.
  - p0nce 5y ago
    We welcome people that want to make a plugin business foremost (or already are in the market). https://dplug.org/ https://dplug.org/