Futureboard Studio

Futureboard Studio is a professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) built around a modern, hybrid web-native stack. It is designed to start directly in the browser, scale into Electron, and share its layout and core engine workflows with a native Rust GPUI application.

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🚀 Architectural Overview

Futureboard Studio is split into active modular directories targeting different runtime environments:

📱 Applications (apps/)

• Web Version (apps/web)
  • An interactive React + TypeScript + Vite single-page application.
  • Leverages the high-performance WASM AudioWorklet fallback for audio processing in sandboxed web environments.
• Native Version (apps/native)
  • A high-performance desktop shell built on Rust using the GPUI framework (the layout/rendering engine behind the Zed editor).
  • Integrates natively with our Rust direct audio engine without Electron or browser-engine overhead.
• Electron Version (apps/electron) — Discontinued
  • A desktop wrapper linking the React-based frontend with native audio components via an N-API control bridge.
  • Maintained as legacy reference code.
• Server Module (apps/server)
  • Collaboration stream sync and file hosting server.

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⚙️ Core Engines & Frameworks (crates/)

The core DAW logic, DSP, and user interface kit are written in modular Rust and C++ crates:

• SphereWebAudioCore
  • Purpose: Web WASM Audio core.
  • Details: Provides the web-compatible implementation of the DAW’s transport, flat audio graph (tracks → master), mixer, and meters, compiled to WebAssembly for browser runs.
• SphereDirectAudioEngine
  • Purpose: Native DAUx engine.
  • Details: Low-latency direct audio engine for desktop builds. Interfaces directly with cpal and system-level API targets (WASAPI with exclusive mode + MMCSS on Windows, CoreAudio on macOS, ALSA on Linux). Exposes a C/Rust native API as well as an N-API/Node wrapper for JavaScript IPC.
• SphereUIComponents
  • Purpose: Native UI Kit & CoreUI.
  • Details: Futureboard Studio's shared desktop components and styling system built in Rust utilizing GPUI and Skia.
• SpherePluginHost
  • Purpose: Plugin hosting wrapper.
  • Details: Connects raw SDK interfaces in C++ (external/vst3sdk, external/clap) with the Rust ecosystem to allow scanning and hosting of native VST3 and CLAP plugins.
• SphereAudioPlugins
  • Purpose: Built-in audio plugin DSP.
  • Details: Contains the realtime-safe DSP code and parameters for stock insert effects (EQ, compression, delay).

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🛠️ Additional Packages & Extensions

• plugins/ — Web/React UI and DSP editors for stock plugins (e.g., Equz8, FB2AComp, UltraVerb).
• modules/ — High-level companion processors (e.g., NoiseRemover, StemExtractor).
• extentions/ — Extension templates (template, template-react, template-vue) for building customizable DAW extensions.
• packages/shared/ — Shared fonts, icons, menus, and layout manifests.

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📦 Getting Started

Prerequisites

You need the following installed:

• Bun (fast package manager and bundler for JS/TS)
• Rust (1.75+ with WebAssembly target wasm32-unknown-unknown)
• CMake (required to compile native plugin wrappers and the VST3 SDK)

Quick Start Commands

Install JS workspace dependencies:

bun install

Run Web Version

To run the React web application locally:

bun run dev:web

Run Native GPUI Client

To compile and run the native desktop shell:

cargo run -p futureboard_native

Build Built-in Audio Plugins Crate

bun run build:audio:plugins

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📄 License

MIT License. See LICENSE for the full license text.