This guy designed the software architecture of 2 DAWs
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Introduction
Ilias Bergström is a software engineer, researcher, and musician from Sweden. For most of his professional career, spanning over 20 years, he has been working on, as he describes it, “time-based media software.”
In the audio programming world, this means digital audio workstations, video editors, and live audio-visual performance software.
He generously shared his experience in Audio Developer Conference talks, two of which discuss the much underrepresented topic of the software architecture of digital audio workstations.
Software architecture and software design are fascinating topics to me, so I naturally devoured both of these talks 😉
In this interview, we explore not only Ilias’s journey but also go into the details of what makes audio software design hard. He discusses how he connects the dots between different types of media software through his long-running personal project, TWO, which is best described as a Media Control Workstation. It enables the simultaneous interactive combination of digital media control signals (such as OSC and MIDI) from multiple sources.
Finally, we don’t shy away from discussing our favorite books on audio software development! Given that Ilias shares a ton of valuable tips and resources, you don’t want to miss this one!
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Episode Contents
From this episode, you will learn:
- How Ilias’s interest in media creation software led to a career in audio, across both research and industry.
- How he combines music and audio with interaction design, Human Computer Interaction, and even topics such as neuroscience and psychology, and how audio development can be seen as a form of creative coding.
- How different media creation software tools (like DAWs) share the same core characteristics and core architecture.
- Insights into his personal software project, TWO.
- What does a PhD give you? What can a university education offer?
- The importance of software architecture, testing, and documentation.
- A lot of audio development book recommendations.
- Practical advice on how to get started with audio development and audio software architecture.
This episode was recorded on January 15, 2025.
References
People
- Ilias Bergström
- LinkedIn Profile
- TWO: Media Control Workstation
- Publications
- [PhD Thesis] Soma: live performance where congruent musical, visual, and proprioceptive stimuli fuse to form a combined aesthetic narrative
- Influence of Music on Anxiety Induced by Fear of Heights in Virtual Reality
- First-Person Perspective Virtual Body Posture Influences Stress
- The Practices of Programming (with Alan Blackwell)
- Conference Talks
- Prof. Alan Blackwell
- Gustav Andersson (WolfTalk episode 22 guest)
- Stefano Zambon
- Ruben Svensson
- Laurie Anderson (Musician)
- King Tubby (dub pioneer and producer)
- Lee Perry (dub pioneer and producer)
- Daito Manabe (media artist)
- Giles Peterson (broadcaster, DJ)
Universities & Research Labs
- Linnaeus University (previously Växjö University)
- University College London
- Event Lab (University of Barcelona)
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Companies and Places
- Computer Control Systems SA (C.C.S.)
- Sciss
- Zeiss
- Meta
- Elk Audio
- The Sphere (Venue)
Software
- Windows NT
- Softimage 3D
- Autodesk Maya
- Unreal Engine
- Unity
- TouchDesigner
- Notch
- Max/MSP
- Ableton Live
- Max for Live
- Resolume (VJ Software)
- Elk Audio OS
- Elk Live
- Elk Audio Sushi
- TWO: Media Control Workstation
- Toontrack Superior Drummer
- xln audio Addcitive Drummer
Software Development
- Frameworks / Libraries
- Media Communication Protocols
- Programming and Scripting
- Software Tools
Topics & Concepts
- Virtual Reality (VR)
- Computer Vision (CV)
- Interaction design
- Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
- Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
- Demoscene (Demoscene culture)
Books
- Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software – Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides
- Software Architecture in Practice – Len Bass, Paul Clements, Rick Kazman
- Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach – George Fairbanks
- A Tour of C++ – Bjarne Stroustrup
- C++ Software Design – Klaus Iglberger
- Working Effectively with Legacy Code – Michael C. Feathers
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code – Martin Fowler
- The Clean Code Series – Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)
- Code Complete (2nd Edition)– Steve McConnell
- Software Architecture: The Hard Parts – Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage, Zhamak Dehghani
- Fundamentals of Software Architecture – Mark Richards, Neal Ford
And books on Culture, History & Music…
- The “Age of…” Series – Eric Hobsbawm
- Books by Mark Mazower
- Global Magic: Technologies of Appropriation from Ancient Rome to Wall Street – Alf Hornborg
- The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do Without It – Philip Ball
Thank you for listening!
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