Linux Audio Plugin Development (LAPD)
TAL Software
Linux Audio developer interview with Patrick Kunz from TAL Software
This interview was conducted by Amadeus Paulussen in 2024 and first published to his blog.
Dear Patrick, for many of us, your company TAL is synonymous with a plugin legend, a plugin hero even. Nevertheless, for those who don't yet know TAL and/or the man behind it, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Haha, legend and hero, :) I never felt like that. I'm just a guy who likes sounds and isn't talented enough to play a real instrument :)
When I was younger, I used to skateboard and snowboard. Today I like mountain biking, hiking and enjoying the outdoors. I started early to make music with synthesizers and computers. My first music setup was a x486 Windows computer with Cubasis, a MIDI keyboard, an Alesis QSR synth, and a tape recorder.
I started plugin development around the year 2000 while studying computer science here in Switzerland. I created VST plugins for my own electronic hobby music projects and showcased them on my website. I received more and more requests for new features, and the support work increased. For this reason, I decided to start selling plugins, and I still do.
How does a typical day in your life look as a one-man show with an impressive portfolio of 15 well-maintained, cross-platform plugins?
A typical day starts with answering support emails. Then I fix important bugs or add minor feature requests. Then the morning is
usually over.
The rest of the day I work on new products, product improvements, code refactoring, the website, the backend API, training, prototypes or marketing work. There's always something to do.
I try to keep processes and code as simple as possible. This helps to maintain products over a long period of time.
How do you deal with the challenge of staying visible in the highly competitive plugin/music production market?
Not much. I try to continue to develop good products with a unique sound at a fair price and licensing model. I prefer to have low prices for our users instead of spending a lot of money on marketing.
I think you supported Linux long before I switched to it for music production in 2020. What motivated you to do so?
From time to time, users have asked for Linux support. The basic framework we use (JUCE) already supports Linux. It wasn't much work to add it. I think with Reaper, Waveform and Bitwig, Linux is a good alternative to the commercial operating systems.
Is there one particular platform (Linux, macOS or Windows) that generates the most support effort for you?
macOS had the most changes. They have already changed the CPU architecture two times, since we started to release plugins for that platform. When they moved from 32 to 64 bit, they even changed the entire UI library.
What do you think about the idea of using GPUs to process audio, especially for plugins?
I think it could be a good choice for things that can be parallelized, such as convolution. I'm not seeing huge advantages for synth plugins at the moment. But I don't know enough about this.
In terms of plugin copy protection, what do you think is the best approach?
It's always a compromise, I think. I'm personally trying to avoid 3rd party protection systems with dongles or cloud access that need additional software installed. We also don't have any subscription support.
Our key-based system is simple. We track all valid licenses in our system and can always verify whether the user has a valid license or not.
What can we look forward to from you in the future?
Nothing I can make public at the moment. I hope some more good products. :)