Writing Your First TBD Plugin¶

One of the best things about TBD is that it is fully open-source — and that includes the plugin system. In this post we walk through creating a simple sine oscillator plugin from scratch.

The plugin architecture¶

Every TBD plugin is a C++ class that inherits from ctagSoundProcessor. The framework handles audio I/O, parameter management, and the web UI — you just implement the DSP.

The key method to override is Process(), which is called once per audio block with input/output buffer pointers.

Scaffold a new plugin¶

Use the generator script to create the boilerplate:

cd generators
node generator.js --name MySineOsc

This creates:

ctagSoundProcessorMySineOsc.cpp — your DSP code
ctagSoundProcessorMySineOsc.hpp — class declaration
mui-MySineOsc.json — web UI layout definition

Implement the oscillator¶

The core DSP is surprisingly simple:

void ctagSoundProcessorMySineOsc::Process(
    const ProcessData &data
) {
    float freq = params->GetFloat("frequency");
    float amp = params->GetFloat("amplitude");

    for (int i = 0; i < data.buf_size; i++) {
        phase += freq / 44100.f;
        if (phase >= 1.f) phase -= 1.f;
        data.buf[i * 2] = data.buf[i * 2 + 1] =
            amp * sinf(phase * 2.f * M_PI);
    }
}

Next steps¶

Check out the Plugins section for the full API reference and more advanced examples.

Happy coding!