Phil Burk: PortAudio, Android Audio, MIDI 2.0, HMSL, PlayStation Audio, JSyn & More!

From Z80 assembly to Android, and the web.

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Introduction

Phil Burk has had an amazing career as an audio developer: from writing DSP code on Z80, through creating a music language, writing code for mobile phones, PlayStation audio support, and Android, up to MIDI 2.0 contributions. He’s also a co-creator of the PortAudio library, which is one of the most popular OS-agnostic audio libraries (and it’s used not just from C/C++ but from Python as well).

He’s been there from the 80s up until today; he’s seen it all!

What I love about Phil is his purely interest-driven approach. He was able to make his hobby his work and, thus, live a life of passion. Even today, as a retiree, he still codes 8 hours a day just for fun.

After listening to this episode, you will not only learn a ton of useful audio programming knowledge and feel inspired, but you will also feel thankful that the world has audio developers such as Phil; they’re a real blessing, making our lives easier and more pleasant to the ear!

Note: If you like the podcast so far, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review there. You can do so on Spotify as well. It will benefit both sides: more reviews mean a broader reach on Apple Podcasts, and feedback can help me to improve the show and deliver better-quality content to you. You can also subscribe and give a like on YouTube. Thank you for doing this 🙏

Episode Contents

From this episode, you will learn:

how Phil created his first analog synth and started programming on Z80
what challenges did early music programming face
how HSML music programming language came to be
the challenges of programming digital signal processors (DSPs) and designing audio hardware
how mobile phone audio worked in the late 90s/early 2000s
Phil’s awesome audio projects: PortAudio, JSyn, WebDrum, and more (see below)
the story of MIDI 2.0
how the Android team fixed the latency problem
which languages Phil has used throughout these 4 decades of audio programming
what are his work habits for maximum programmer productivity

This episode was recorded on February 4, 2026.

Audio post-production, mixing & mastering by Menno Klijn. Video editing by Vadzim Vezhnavets.

References

People

Phil Burk
At Mills College
- Larry Polansky
- David Rosenboom
- Nick Didkovsky
- Chris Brown
- John Bischoff
At 3DO
- RJ Mical
- Robert Marsanyi
- Steve Kittrell
- Mike Haas
At Google
- Joe Britt
- Robert Wu
Ross Bencina
Chuck Moore
Dave Smith
John Bowen
David Zicarelli
James McCartney
Max Neuhaus
Hal Chamberlin
Julius Smith
Jordan Rudess
Pat Scandalis
Douglas Repetto
Todd Telford

Phil’s Projects

Software & Libraries

Web & Platforms

Companies, Organizations & Institutions

Game & Console

Mobile & Tech

Music & Audio

Technology & Computing

Standards Bodies

Venues & Installations

Universities & Research Labs

Hardware & Platforms

Programming Languages

Software & Developer Tools

Technical Concepts & Standards

Protocols & Standards

MIDI 1.0
MIDI 2.0
General MIDI
RS-232
OpenSL ES
DirectSound
WASAPI
OSS
ALSA
Core Audio

DSP & Synthesis

Software synthesis
FM synthesis
Band-limited oscillators
Recursive filters
Resonant filters
Phase-locked loop
Sample-and-hold
White noise / red noise / Brownian noise
Granular synthesis
Numeric underflow (denormals)
Just intonation
Modular synthesis
Sample rate conversion
Portamento

System Architecture

Callback-based audio
Shared memory FIFO
Round-trip latency
Speaker protection
CPU throttling
Seamless music streaming
Distributed compilation

Hardware & Chip Design

Wire-wrapping
Saturation arithmetic
Fixed-point math
RISC architecture
DMA
Verilog simulation
Dynamic registers

Programming Concepts

Stack-based languages
Reverse Polish notation
Cross-platform development
Object-oriented Forth
Live coding

Books & Resources

Musical Applications of Microprocessors — Hal Chamberlin
Audio EQ Cookbook — Robert Bristow-Johnson
Music-DSP Mailing List
Electro Notes magazine
National Semiconductor Data Books

Conferences & Communities

Music, Culture, and Other References

Heroes of Might and Magic III
The Greatful Dead
David Bowie
Star Wars (Movie)
The Matrix (Movie)
Fluxus movement

Thank you for listening! 🙏

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