Podcast
Working at an Indie Plug-in Company w/ Chris Santoro (Soundtoys) | Ep 14
Soundtoys' Engineering Lead discusses building industry-defining audio effects with legacy code, analog modeling, and a sustainable approach to plugin development.
Chris Santoro, Engineering Lead at Soundtoys, shares his journey from classical violinist to audio plugin developer in this illuminating conversation about working at one of the industry's pioneering indie plugin companies. Starting with his early fascination with Reason and multimedia technology, Santoro pursued computer hardware engineering at the University of Florida before specializing in music engineering technology at the University of Miami. His path led him to Soundtoys in 2009, where he's spent over a decade crafting the company's renowned effects plugins.
Soundtoys operates differently than most modern plugin companies. With just 14 employees and a codebase dating back to the mid-1990s, the company maintains its own proprietary cross-platform framework rather than using modern solutions like JUCE. This vertical integration approach, rooted in the company's origins developing for Pro Tools TDM hardware, allows complete control over every aspect of their plugins but requires managing legacy systems built primarily in pre-C++11 code. Despite these technical challenges, Soundtoys maintains an impressive collection of vintage gear and takes a sustainable, quality-focused approach to product development, sometimes spending years perfecting a single plugin like Echo Boy, which took four years to complete.
The company's philosophy centers on creating plugins that are simultaneously easy to use and deeply tweakable, achieving that balance where it's hard to make a bad sound while offering extensive creative possibilities for those who want to dig deeper. Rather than chasing growth or cranking out products yearly, Soundtoys prioritizes sustainability and meaningful work, often developing features that never see release if they don't meet the company's high standards. This boutique approach, combined with founder Ken Bogdanowicz's encyclopedic effects knowledge and the team's collaborative culture where everyone contributes to sound design, has established Soundtoys as a unique voice in an increasingly crowded plugin market.
Originally recorded on Feb 14, 2021
