Keynotes

Keynote Speakers

Stéphane Letz

Head of Computer Music Research Laboratory, GRAME – Centre National de Création Musicale (Lyon, France)
Researcher, Emeraude Research Team · Core member of the Faust development team

The Faust Ecosystem Onion: Exploring the Layers of an Audio DSP Language in the Age of AI

Abstract

This keynote explores Faust as more than a programming language for audio DSP. It presents Faust as a layered ecosystem that connects audio signal processing, efficient compilation, cross-platform deployment, rich libraries, and real-world applications.

Starting from its functional and declarative core, the talk shows how Faust enables developers, artists, and researchers to describe DSP at a high level and deploy it across applications, plugins, web, mobile, and embedded systems.

Finally, in the context of today’s AI revolution, the keynote discusses how the Faust ecosystem can be expanded through coding agents, and how integrated tools (such as MCP-based components) and hybrid approaches, including differentiable DSP and AI-assisted audio systems, can further extend its role as a foundation for the next generation of sound technologies.

Biography

Stéphane Letz is the Head of the Computer Music Research Laboratory at GRAME – Centre National de Création Musicale in Lyon (France) and a researcher in the Emeraude research team.

He is a co-author of the Faust programming language, created by Yann Orlarey in 2002, and a core member of the Faust development team.

He has previously been involved in the development of the JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK), particularly on the jack2 version, which introduced multi-processor scalability and support for operating systems other than Linux.

Stéphane’s research interests include formal languages for musical composition, language design, compilation and architecture for musical systems, as well as audio and DSP programming for real-time systems.