Linux Audio Development (LAD)

Wasted Audio

Linux Audio developer interview with Alexander Chalikiopoulos from Wasted Audio

This interview was conducted by Amadeus Paulussen in 2025.

Alexander Chalikiopoulos from Wasted Audio

Dear Alexander, I am delighted to be able to interview you. 🥰

First of all, I'd like to say that, in my humble opinion, the aesthetics of your Wasted Audio plugins (and their ergonomic UIs) are great. 😎 And they are memorable from a visual standpoint as well. How important do you think UI and UX is in plugin development and did you design the brand and the plugin UIs yourself?

Thank you so much! Most of the UI and UX choices of my plugins are actually a result of dealing with the limitations of the UI framework that we currently use (Dear ImGui) and frankly my lack of experience! While I didn't have too many ready made elements to work with I did try to implement some useful features given the limitations of the setup. Keeping the interface clear without too many obstructive or confusing elements is definitely a challenge though. In the end the current style was mainly a result of form-from-function with some color and font choices along the way.

Personally I like a more clean style, but it also depends on how many controls and information you want to give to the user at any time. It's good if different vendors stand out with their own style and I do hope that my plugins are an example of doing that (even though ImGui can be very unforgiving).

Could you tell us a little bit about how you got into developing plugins and what kind of products you're currently working on?

During the pandemic I was playing with some embedded audio hardware and got really enthusiastic that it was possible to create your own plugins for it. After some trials with proprietary software I ended up finding the Heavy Compiler (HVCC) which at the time was abandoned. It uses Pure Data as a prototyping and programming interface to generate audio DSP C/C++ code. Together with some friends we had used PD for many years to create interactive video and 3D projections and installations, but I had never really used it for audio.

Then I started updating and expanding HVCC with new features and a couple years later I am now the official maintainer. Of course we also needed some examples for users to see what was possible. This made me start creating some building-blocks and experiment with UI/UX and so my plugin collection started to grow.

This year the project got a small grant from NLNet to work on a new GUI exporter, so this will likely result in some new example plugins as well ;)

Some of the Wasted Audio plugins are Open Source (https://github.com/Wasted-Audio). Could you tell us a little bit about your motivation for sharing your work with the audio world the Open Source way?

All of them (currently) are! As I mentioned above, the collection started as examples for other users of the Heavy Compiler to learn how to make their own plugins. For me that is one of the great virtues of Open Source, to be able to inspect, learn, change, and give back to the ecosystem. I do hope that others will also see this value and will continue by adding their own variations etc.

For me there are different levels to doing Open Source. You can have fundamental building blocks that are almost "infrastructure" to the development process that in my opinion should be very liberally licensed (MIT/ISC/BSD/etc). However for some projects that are "public" facing (like finished products) a more strict license like (A)GPL makes sense for me.

In our setup the internal Heavy, DISTRHO Plugin Framework and ImGui C/C++ libraries are all very liberally licensed. But the HVCC tool and the plugins are GPL.

I'm not entirely against proprietary software either, as long as for me the common tools are open and then for products it's up to the developer or company to decide.

What are your thoughts on subscription-based or rent-to-own distribution models for plugins?

I am not a fan of subscription-based models, but rent-to-own seems like a fair solution for users that don't have a high income and in the end will still own the product. Personally I'd prefer more pay-what-you-want and user supported development models.

Is Itch your chosen plugin distribution method for specific reasons?

When I wanted to distribute the plugins I saw quite some barriers to even get started. While Itch is mostly known for indie games there are actually quite some other plugin devs on there. I really appreciate both the platform and its creator. My website actually uses the same framework as Itch! They also make it relatively easy to set up payments, sales campaigns and they even have a pay-what-you-want revenue sharing program. This is very nice if you are just getting started and can't afford to split with 30–50% of your revenue as many of the typical plugin stores require.

How do you feel about the climate in the audio developer community, and in the Linux Audio developer community in particular?

It likely depends where you are. Most of the places where I am people are very collaborative and there is a focus on information sharing. Of course sometimes people disagree, but hopefully this won't have any toxic side effects.

Do you contribute to other Open Source projects?

Because of hanging out in the Linux Audio Developers (LAD) chat during the pandemic I also got involved with the Cardinal project. Mainly building, testing, supporting users and adding module collections. It's really cool to see that project grow and also be useful to others. Another project that got started around the same time is plugdata. Coincidentally the main developer lives only a few towns over! So we ended up meeting a couple times and working together to integrate HVCC into the program with a special "Compiled Mode". This has also allowed a lot more users easier access to the whole "Pure Data to C/C++" setup which required a lot more technical skills previously.

Because HVCC integrates with many other platforms these sometimes require additional work as well, but luckily we also have community members that step in for some of these. Sending issues and patches upstream to other projects we depend on is of course part of the game.

Can you tell us a little about your development setup? Distribution, DE/WM, IDE, framework, build pipeline, etc.? 🤓

Oh I have a somewhat austere setup. Years ago I gave up on the "distro wars" and settled on Debian Stable together with the Fluxbox Window Manager, but I do pull in some tools from "backports" now and then. For the rest I mainly switch between vim and vscode, depending on the needs. For plugins I use DPF which is very minimal compared to JUCE, but just right for me and it is mostly liberally licensed. For building I'm still using relatively plain Makefiles, and on GitHub we have dedicated "actions" for DPF which can target just about every OS and architecture that you might want. JACK Audio (on my laptop PipeWire, but still the JACK API) is always essential in my setup as I use it for quick test-builds and routing everything to everything.

Is there one particular desktop operating system that is close to your heart?

Definitely Linux! Whenever I'm on Windows or macOS everything feels very foreign and none of my expected UX works. Although in some of the modern Linux DE's that is also the case these days ..

And, is there one particular desktop operating system that gives you headaches?

Probably Windows, I haven't used it as a daily driver in nearly 18 years now and any time I have to do anything on it it still feels as bad as it ever was. I can't imagine using it for development, although I suppose that the latest version basically ships with a Linux kernel so you can do a lot of the usual things, but dealing with the OS would still be very painful for me. macOS on the other hand is like an alien/alternate universe twin of Linux. Everything is just as integrated, but instead of total freedom for the user it's total control for Apple.

Do you protect your plugins against "theft", and what are your thoughts on copy protection mechanisms in general?

While I understand why companies implement it I am not a fan of Digital Rights Management (DRM). If it has to be there then preferably as simple as possible and always with an offline option. We don't use DRM or gatekeeping using installers etc.

What are three things you particularly appreciate about Linux Audio?

Hmm, probably the flexibility, the developer community and the crazy hacks that you can do :D

And, what are three things you would like to see improved in relation to Linux Audio?

And while we're on the subject of “name three things,” what are three plugins from other developers that you find fascinating at the moment?

I'd mainly like to send a shout out to some of the lesser known indie plugin devs:

These really have their own unique products and style and have very nice quality. And they have all been supporting Linux for years! (And two of them release as Open Source too :D)

You offer your plugins as VST2, VST3, LV2, and CLAP. Is there one format you prefer to work with over others?

While I don't deal with plugin formats directly, because DPF mostly takes care of this, I'd probably say LV2. Mainly because that was the reason I started this whole journey as that is what MOD uses as well. It has some features that you don't find in other formats. CLAP seems promising, but until there is feature parity with LV2 I don't see any major specific advantages for our audio plugins.

What are the biggest challenges involved in developing plugins in general, and are there any particular challenges associated with developing plugins for Linux?

I'd say the biggest challenges are giving users a consistent experience across operating systems, plugin formats and plugin hosts. For Linux it's probably dealing with Wayland, as there is still no good solution there (some proposals are brewing, but nothing definitive or good as a generalized solution yet).

I think there is drama in every subculture, but from my perspective, some of the most prominent in the Linux environment revolves around Wayland, X11, PipeWire, and Flatpak. 🫣 Do any of the aforementioned technologies play a special role in your everyday life that you can tell us about, or do they all more or less pass you by?

No comment.

What advice can you give to developers who already offer their plugins for macOS and/or Windows, when they are considering whether to support Linux?

This will depend on how custom their specific setup is (particularly UI and/or plugin frameworks). At least make sure you statically compile your plugins and try to find a lowest common denominator system with a glibc version that covers enough production systems. We still build our Linux plugins on Ubuntu 20.04, but 22.04 is probably good enough as well. If you use iLok or other DRM (custom plugin manager, etc.) you'll probably want to give up unless you can convince the right people to help you make it happen. Look at how others are approaching the platform and don't be shy to reach out to any other devs/companies for advice and perhaps support.

You make music yourself. Do you use Linux and what DAW do you use?

During my student years (over 15 years ago) I dabbled a little in early versions of Ardour, which was fun but at the time I wasn't very knowledgeable or deeply interested in music. Then over the past decade I've been lucky enough to collect a wide variety of synthesizers and drum computers. I just love playing with instruments and physical gear. Slowly a DIY modular system is taking over part of the studio, although ultimately my philosophy is that "everything is modular" when it comes to audio and music. Some of my gear runs Linux under the hood though and I run my (experimental) plugins on several of these.

For years I mainly used Qtractor for MIDI sequencing and stereo recording straight from the mixer. However the past couple years I've picked up Bitwig and I think it's a great creative workspace and has a really nice flow. Most often I use a mix of technologies and experiments though. I just wish Bitwig had better MIDI integration with Linux, on the same level as its JACK Audio support. But generally I switch DAWs or workflows depending on what I'm trying to test or figure out.

And what three of your songs should we listen to in order to understand what kind of music you make?

The last couple of years I haven't made too much new music, mostly DJ mixes to be honest. But you could check this EP and maybe my SoundCloud for what I've made over the years.

What are your thoughts on AI and music production?

Personally I have no interest in it, but recently a friend explained their case which for me was one of the more sensible uses. They had some ~decade old live recordings, very rough mix and only a half-baked composition. They then used an AI stem splitting software to get the individual instruments out and were able to then edit this jam into a track and bring new life into something that was almost lost.

And (almost) last but not least, can you give us some insight into your plans for the future?

As I mentioned previously we are working on a whole new UI system with the HVCC plugin exports. In the meantime I want to continue the tutorial video series on how to use our tools to build your own projects and products.

Next to that we are now experimenting with a "Try Before You Buy" setup by running plugins in the browser. It's not perfect but already quite usable. I think it could really change how users get a preview of new audio tools (although I'm not yet convinced of browser based DAWs).

Would you like to add anything else?

I really appreciate your efforts trying to bring more attention to Linux as an audio platform! Things are (and have been) really much more mature and usable than most people think. There are a lot of exciting and unique things happening in this ecosystem!

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