ADC2 – Paul Davis & Ryan Challinor (Bespoke)


I never planned to wait this long to do the second episode of “Audio Developer Chats”, but busy-ness in my own life and that of my wished for next guest conspired to make it almost a year since episode one. Hopefully things will speed up a little now … we’ll see.

Back in the fall of 2021, the audio software world was greeted by the announcement of a new modular audio environment called Bespoke Synth. Not just new, but also libre, free and open source. Typically when such announcements show up, they describe alpha or barely alpha state projects that are just looking for some very (very) early testers. But Bespoke was different: it was … done! It worked! It was polished! It was powerful. Turns out that Ryan had spent roughly 10 years on the project, not hiding but not exactly in public view.

I wanted to understand more about what led Ryan to develop Bespoke his experiences doing so, and where the project might go. Along the way we talked about UI implementation, web audio, making music, release and payment strategies and lots more. I really enjoyed hearing Ryan’s perspective on all this (even as I’m a little bored listening to my own voice.

The above player uses Ogg/Vorbis, which Safari and iOS users can’t play by default, thanks to choices made by Apple. Below is an MP3 version for the poor souls left behind by their platform makers.


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