29/03/2018 Making Audio Plugins Part 1: Introduction - Martin Finke's Blog

Making Audio Plugins Part 1: Introduction

MAKING AUDIO PLUGINS

Welcome! In this tutorial series we will be learning how to create audio plugins that run as VST,
VST3, AU, RTAS, AAX or as a standalone application.

Audio plugins are programs that are loaded into a host software (such as Ableton Live, Logic or
REAPER). They process Audio and/or MIDI data and can have a graphical user interface. Here
are three examples (U-He Zebra, Sonalksis FreeG and D16 Decimort):

As you can see, the GUI usually contains some controls (the knob being the most common) that
change how the plugin processes incoming data. A plugin has presets (in the screenshot
they’re called Combo and Emulator) that store all knob positions and other values.

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We’ll start with a simple distortion plugin. After that, we’ll create this subtractive synthesizer
plugin step by step:

SpaceBass Demo

We will use C++ and the WDL-OL library. It is based on Cockos WDL (pronounced whittle). It
basically does a lot of work for us, most importantly:

Ready-made Xcode / Visual Studio Projects

Create VST, AudioUnit, VST3 and RTAS formats from one codebase: Just choose the
plugin format and click run!
Create 32/64-Bit executables
Make your plugin run as a standalone Win/Mac application
Most GUI controls used in audio plugins

It also gives you most GUI controls used in audio plugins, and some commonly used audio
algorithms like for example resampling. This forum thread has screenshots of a lot of plugins that
were done using WDL.

The different plugin formats all do more or less the same, so normally there would be a lot of
copy & paste in your code. As a programmer you want to stay DRY, so sooner or later you’d write
an abstraction layer over the different formats. This work has already been done in the form of
IPlug, which is a part of WDL. These are the annoying parts of audio plugin development, so we
can now focus on the fun stuff, such as:

How the plugin processes incoming Audio/MIDI

What the plugin looks like
How it integrates with the host (automation, presets, etc.)
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Another good thing about WDL is its permissive license: You can use it freely for commercial
applications. See the links above for details.

How we will do this

»The chase is better than the catch.«
— Hans Peter Geerdes

In programming, the result is rewarding, but the journey is where we learn. In this tutorial series,
I won’t just give you long code listings with the perfect solution. We will start with something that
works and improve it as soon as we face problems.
The disadvantage is that you will write code that you’ll later replace with something better. As a
programmer, you’re probably used to that. The first advantage: It won’t be as overwhelming
because we will approach the solution step by step instead of just jumping there. The second
advantage is that we might learn valueable programming lessons along the way.

This series isn’t about calculating complex math by hand. It’s about creating awesome software
that you can give to your music producer friends so they can make a fatter bassline.

What you will need

A Mac running Xcode 4 or later or a Windows system with Visual C++ 2010 or later.
I’ll use a Mac, but you can use almost all information on Windows as well.
Some understanding of C++ (Syntax, Pointers, Basic OOP, Memory). You may have
heard that C++ is very hard, but we’re not going to use too much of the
advanced stuff.

Some knowledge about (digital) audio in general: What amplitude and frequency
means, what a filter does, how audio is stored at a sample rate and bit depth. If
you’ve recorded or produced music before, you are probably well set.
Interest for Digital Signal Processing and GUI Programming: Those will be the two
main topics of this series. If you have no prior DSP knowledge at all, you may have to
read up on a few topics at some point. I’ll try to provide further reading type links
whenever that’s the case.

Helpful resources
Here are a few links that may be helpful later:

Stack Overflow: Search for things like obscure compiler warnings and find out what
they mean.

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DSP Guide: Very good free book, covers probably more than we’ll use. Refer to it if
somewhere on the way you don’t understand a DSP concept.

Sounds exciting? Next time we’ll set up everything we need to get started!

If you found this useful, please feel free to !

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David • 5 years ago

This is David, from Itlay!! I was looking for a guide like yours for a long time!! GREAT JOB!!!
Thank you very much!
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problembarnet • 4 years ago

Oh man. Thank you for these tutorials !!
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JB • 4 years ago
This is a fantastic series of tutorials. Every one so far has taught me loads and I'm constantly
hoping for the next one in the series and checking the KVR thread for new announcements!
Would love for you to expand on the aliasing mentioned at the end of the oscillator tutorial
with examples of how to mitigate this.
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Martin Finke Mod > JB • 4 years ago

Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad these tutorials have helped you.
You're lucky: Getting rid of the oscillator aliasing will be done in the next post. It'll be
up soon :)
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Viat Sat • 4 years ago

Hi Martin, greetings from Argentina (South America).
I am looking for information while developing plugins vst, rtas and aax.
I have a question, plugins developed for this tutorial can be incorporated into pro tools and
VENUE SC48 aax plugins?.
Thank you very much for tutorial
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