Phil Burk: PortAudio, Android Audio, MIDI 2.0, HMSL, PlayStation Audio, JSyn & More!

Phil Burk: PortAudio, Android Audio, MIDI 2.0, HMSL, PlayStation Audio, JSyn & More!

June 26, 2026 · 2h 43m · Season 1 · Episode 33

About this episode

Phil Burk shares his extensive experience in audio development, discussing various projects and contributions throughout his career.

Phil Burk has had an amazing career as an audio developer: from writing DSP code on Z80, through creating a music language, writing code for mobile phones, PlayStation audio support, and Android, up to MIDI 2.0 contributions. He’s also a co-creator of the PortAudio library, which is one of the most popular OS-agnostic audio libraries (and it’s used not just from C/C++ but from Python as well). He’s been there from the 80s up until today; he’s seen it all! What I love about Phil is his purely interest-driven approach. He was able to make his hobby his work and thus live a life of passion. Even today, as a retiree, he still codes 8 hours a day just for fun. After listening to this episode, you will not only learn a ton of useful audio programming knowledge and feel inspired, but you will also feel thankful that the world has audio developers such as Phil; they’re a real blessing, making our lives easier and more pleasant to the ear! Episode Contents From this episode, you will learn: how Phil created his first analog synth and started programming on Z80 what challenges did early music programming face how HSML music programming language came to be the challenges of programming…

People in this episode

Host: Jan Wilczek

Guest: Phil Burk

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: PortAudio, Android, PlayStation, JSyn

Books & works: MIDI 2.0, HSML

More episodes of WolfTalk: Podcast About Audio Programming (People, Careers, Learning)

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the WolfTalk: Podcast About Audio Programming (People, Careers, Learning) podcast page.