TrebleMaker

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The TREBLEMAKERS.

A simple high-shelf filter plugin built with JUCE.

I built TrebleMaker to properly learn C++ and JUCE. While the DSP is a standard high-shelf filter, the real challenge of the project was the architecture and the UI system. I wanted to see if I could build a resolution-independent interface entirely from code, no image assets allowed.

I learned a ton building it.

Technical Overview

UI Inspired by Dieter Rams, the interface is purely algorithmic. Every knob, texture, and bezel is drawn in real-time using juce::Graphics. It scales perfectly to any size.	State Management I used AudioProcessorValueTreeState (APVTS) for the parameters. It was a learning curve, but it handles thread-safe automation and state saving/loading reliably.
Real-time Safety The audio thread is completely lock-free. No memory allocations or blocking operations during processing.	The DSP It's a topology-preserving transform (TPT) state-variable filter. I added a small amount of parameter drift to the cutoff to give it a slightly more "analog" behavior than a perfect digital filter.

Roadmap

• Real-time FFT frequency analyzer
• Optimize drawing performance (caching complex paths)
• General code cleanup and refactoring

How to Build

Prerequisites:

• CMake (3.22 or higher)

  brew install cmake

• C++ Compiler (Xcode on macOS, Visual Studio on Windows)

Build:

# 1. Configure
cmake -B Builds/CMake -S .

# 2. Build (Debug)
cmake --build Builds/CMake --config Debug

# Or

# 2. Build (Release)
cmake --build Builds/CMake --config Release

Artifacts: After building, find the plugins in Builds/CMake/TrebleMaker_artefacts/:

• VST3: VST3/TrebleMaker.vst3
• CLAP: CLAP/TrebleMaker.clap
• AU: AU/TrebleMaker.component
• Standalone: Standalone/TrebleMaker.app