Why Conformal?

If you want to make audio plug-ins, you’ve probably been told you need to learn C++. While that’s been the standard advice for a long time, we don’t think it’s the best way.

Conformal lets you build plug-ins using TypeScript  and Rust , two languages that are safer and more approachable, with far better tooling.

What Building With Conformal Feels Like

Before getting into the reasoning, here’s what the developer experience actually looks like:

• Start fast. bun create conformal scaffolds a complete project (signal processing, UI, build config) ready to load in a DAW in minutes.
• Iterate instantly. While developing your UI, changes appear in the running plug-in immediately via hot reloading. No rebuild, or even a relaunch.
• Develop in a browser. You can build and test your entire UI in a browser, no DAW required. Debug with your browser’s built-in dev tools.
• Simple wiring. Connecting your UI to plug-in parameters is a single React hook: useNumericParam("rate") is all you need.
• Test easily. bun run rust-test runs your signal processing tests. bun run web-test runs your UI tests.

Why TypeScript?

In Conformal, plug-in user interfaces are written in TypeScript and run on the web platform. You’ll build UIs with the same technologies behind most modern desktop apps, and taught in every web development course and bootcamp.

The npm  package registry has over 3 million packages. Whatever problem you run into, someone has almost certainly solved it before. The skills transfer, too. TypeScript, React , and web development are in demand across the software industry, so time spent learning them pays off well beyond audio.

React fits audio UI development well. Plug-in interfaces need to react to parameter changes and handle rich user interactions. That’s React’s whole model: reusable components that update automatically when data changes.

Why Rust?

Signal processing code in Conformal is written in Rust.

The Rust you need for basic audio processing is approachable. The compiler’s detailed error messages guide you toward fixes rather than leaving you puzzled, unlike the pages of cryptic template errors that C++ is known for. Rust’s tooling further improves the experience: cargo provides a unified build system and dependency manager, and clippy, the built-in linter, catches common mistakes and suggests idiomatic improvements.

Rust is also well suited for audio signal processing specifically. This code runs in real-time: audio buffers must be processed within a fixed time budget. Most modern languages rely on automatic memory management  that can pause unpredictably, and in audio, those pauses become audible glitches. Rust gives you the control to avoid this while remaining memory safe.

In C and C++, the price of low-level control is that bugs like use-after-free and data races are easy to introduce and notoriously hard to track down. Rust, though, is memory safe : the compiler catches these categories of bugs before your code ever runs.

In the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey , 72% of Rust users wanted to continue using it, making it the most admired language.

Are Two Languages Better Than One?

Two languages can sound daunting, but using a high-level language for UI and a systems language for performance-critical code is how most modern software is built. Game engines pair C++ with scripting languages; machine learning frameworks pair Python with C++ and CUDA. It’s just not common in audio plug-in development yet.

The split makes each half of your project simpler. Building interfaces and writing signal processing are different tasks. Even in a single-language framework, there’s little overlap in the patterns and techniques you use. With two languages, each side only does one thing. You can build and test your UI entirely in a browser, without touching Rust or running a DAW.

Wondering what you’ll actually need to learn? See our learning resources page for a roadmap and starting points.

How Does Conformal Compare to JUCE?

JUCE  is a well-established framework for audio plug-in development, with a broad feature set, a large community, and years of production use behind it.

When JUCE was created in 2004, C++ was the right choice. There simply weren’t better alternatives for audio. Two decades later, better alternatives do exist. Yet JUCE remains based entirely on C++, and that foundation shapes the entire experience. The usual C++ memory safety problems apply. JUCE also has its own UI system with ownership semantics that can lead to hard-to-diagnose crashes. Build tooling and dependency management lag far behind modern standards.

Conformal takes a different approach: choose the strongest available tool for each task, and prioritize correctness, clear APIs, and developer comfort. That said, Conformal is a young framework with a narrow focus on VST3 plug-ins for macOS and Windows, and it is missing features like metering support. Improvements in these areas are planned, but it does not yet come close to matching the breadth of JUCE’s platform support.

Ready to Start?

Build your first plug-in: you’ll go from zero to a working tremolo effect loaded in your DAW.