PhD physicist Simon Weis builds the synthwave plugin label Dark Palace Studios at night: on EUR20 pricing, no DRM, where LLMs fail at DSP, and why the joy of creation isn't going anywhere.
Show Notes
Simon Weis builds audio plugins at night. By day he's a PhD physicist writing automotive and CAD software; after hours he runs Dark Palace Studios, the synthwave-flavoured plugin label behind Sloth (a physics-inspired slew-rate limiter), an all-pass filter suite, a multiband clipper, and Parrot — the multimodal delay that took 3rd place in the KVR Developer Challenge.
Simon joins Josh to talk about building a plugin company as a side business and loving it: €20 "democratized" pricing with no Black Friday discounts, shipping with no DRM and full Linux builds, newsletter-first marketing, and a refreshingly candid take on where LLMs actually help (renaming, CI scripts, slide decks) and where they fall apart (C++/JUCE/DSP, where he reckons there just isn't enough training data). Along the way: why he rewrote JUCE's graphics in OpenGL for high-refresh UIs, how Signalsmith's permissive DSP libraries ended up inside Parrot, and why the joy of creation isn't going anywhere — "it's not the end, it's the beginning."
Chapters
00:00 Intro — "Dr. Laguna" & Dark Palace Studios
02:19 Origins: synthwave, COVID & meeting the Vital UI designer
06:43 Building the team & marketing with Maxime
08:12 Why running a plugin label as a side business is an advantage
09:04 Choosing plugin ideas: Sloth, the all-pass suite & Parrot
14:35 Pricing philosophy: €20 and no Black Friday
18:50 Why Dark Palace ships no DRM
23:35 Breaking through the noise: UI & owning your newsletter
27:21 Do AI plugin-builders threaten indie devs?
30:45 LLMs for audio DSP: 80% miss, 20% hit
40:02 Parrot & the KVR Developer Challenge (3rd place)
46:01 Signalsmith, permissive licensing & API design
52:05 JUCE, CLAP in v9 & custom OpenGL graphics
58:04 Moonlighting: balancing a day job and a plugin label
1:01:41 Iterative updates & valuing customer feedback
1:07:17 The joy of creation AI can't reproduce
1:15:25 Not the end — the beginning
1:16:12 Wrap-up & Moonbase shout-out
Links
• Dark Palace Studios — find Simon's plugins on Moonbase
• Moonbase (episode sponsor, e-commerce for plugin sellers) — https://moonbase.sh
• The Audio Programmer & our Discord community — https://www.theaudioprogrammer.com
Guests: Simon Weis (Dark Palace Studios)
What is The Audio Programmer Podcast?
Real conversations with the engineers, entrepreneurs, and creators building the future of music technology. From VST development and DSP to AI in audio, game sound, and the business of plugins, we go deep on the craft, the code, and the careers that make it all happen. Whether you're writing your first JUCE project or running an audio software company, this is your inside track. Hosted by Joshua Hodge, Founder of The Audio Programmer.