JUCE 8 Adds Important New Features and Enhancements for Audio Application and Plugin Development

As promised, JUCE 8 is now available and represents a significant advancement in audio application and plug-in development. This release showcases highly anticipated updates, including substantial low-level improvements to text rendering, lightning-fast Direct2D rendering on Windows, and the introduction of a new animation framework. In addition to bolstering traditional UI capabilities, JUCE pioneers a new era in audio software interfaces by unlocking the potential of WebViews, offering developers a modern foundation for next-generation applications.
 

JUCE is a widely recognized platform in the audio application and plug-in development field, allowing software developers to have a single project deployed across all major desktop and mobile operating systems, and all popular plug-in formats like VST, VST3, AU, AUv3, AAX, ARA, and LV2. Its open-source C++ codebase streamlines development, allowing creators to focus on the core elements of their software. As a key player in the audio software developer community, JUCE, alongside PACE Anti-Piracy, Inc., hosts the annual Audio Developer Conference (ADC), fostering skill development and collaboration.

“JUCE 8 is an important milestone,” states Tom Poole, Director of JUCE. “The improvements to UI design workflows, rendering performance, and text handling are foundational, and will transform people’s audio software. Whether you’re updating an existing project or creating something new, JUCE 8 will enable you to deliver higher-performance software in a shorter amount of time.”

JUCE 8 highlights include:

WebView UI: JUCE 8 comes stocked with all the cross-platform glue code and tooling needed to build UIs with favorite web frameworks. Iterate plugin UIs faster than thought possible with web tooling developers already know and love. Developers can now onboard frontend web devs onto their C++ audio projects. They can also gain instant access to cross-platform hardware accelerated graphics via WebGL.

Direct2D Renderer: Windows gets a major upgrade. Built on modern native platform APIs and taking advantage of hardware acceleration and GPU-backed images, a brand new Direct2D renderer brings dramatic rendering and performance improvements. Users can expect everything to be both better and faster. 

New Animation Framework: JUCE 8 sports a brand new, fully-featured animation module. Whether developers want to add sprinkles of delight to their UIs or build complex graphs of intersecting animations, an expressive API makes it easy to get started. Sync to hardware refresh rates and pick from a familiar set of standard easings. They’ll be cooking up buttery smooth animations in no time.

 

Improved Unicode Support: Months of research. Alignment with current industry best practices. A new custom renderer. Consistent text rendering across platforms. Pain-staking attention to backwards compatibility. More than 2 person-years of time were invested into re-plumbing the depths of low-level text rendering.

Faster JS Interpreter: Developers can script their JUCE applications using modern JS features and a new, much faster, interpreter.

Avid AAX Plug-in SDK: JUCE 8 now includes the AAX plug-in SDK making it much easier to get started on plug-in development for Avid Pro Tools and Avid Live Sound products.

Developers can join an active community of audio developers on the JUCE Forum (forum.juce.com) and influence the future direction of JUCE.

These developments will be explored and featured in many presentations during the Audio Developer Conference 2024, November 11-13, 2024, in Bristol, UK. ADC24 will be a hybrid conference, offering both in-person and online experiences. The ADC24 Talk Submissions Portal accepts presentation proposals until June 28.

www.juce.com