Name: JUCE Tutorial 00 - What is the JUCE Framework?
Uploaded: 2025-03-21T21:46:42.000Z
Duration: 6 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'd like to welcome you to another audio programmer tutorial.

And in this tutorial, we're going to do an update on a video I did way back in 2017, where I introduced you to the JUICE framework.

We're going to talk about what JUICE actually is, why it's so popular, and ways you can get the JUICE framework.

Before we get started, I wanted to let you know about our audio programmer community on Discord.

So right now we have over 10,000 members of audio programmers of all different backgrounds from throughout the world, and we would love for you to join us.

Be sure to check out the link in the description below.

We also offer development, recruitment, and educational services through the audio programmer as well.

For more information about that, be sure to check us out on our website, theaudioprogrammer.com.

So without further delay, let's get started.

Okay, so the first question that we're going to answer is, what is JUICE?

For people who are just getting started, a framework is roughly a set of libraries and tools that are built on top of a core programming language.

So you have different programming languages like Python, JavaScript, C++, and so on.

And this particular framework is built on top of the programming language C++.

And what it does is it provides a number of different ways that you can get started with creating audio apps and plugins very quickly without needing to do a whole bunch of setup beforehand.

So to help give you an idea of just a few of the many things that JUICE can do, I'm here in JUICE's modules folder.

Modules is the name that they use for their libraries.

And as you can see, there are quite a few of them here.

And in here you have, once again, some of the things that you would typically need to build some type of audio application or plugin.

So things like audio buffers, MIDI, synthesizer classes.

And in here you have things like file handling, math functions.

Another thing that is a great advantage of using JUICE is that you also have a native user interface library.

So you can actually use JUICE graphics to create your plugin.

So if we go in here into the widgets folder, you have some things like the slider class, you have combo box classes, you have text editors, toolbars.

So that's just to help give you an idea of just a few of the many things that JUICE can actually do.

So JUICE is really designed to be an all-encompassing, sprawling library that's able to help you create your application in C++ from start to finish.

Another thing that's great about JUICE is that it's designed to be cross-platform, not only for operating systems, but also for plugin formats as well.

So before you had JUICE, if you wanted to write a audio plugin that you wanted to deliver for both Windows and Mac operating systems, you would need to have knowledge about both the Windows and Mac native audio APIs.

And you would need to write a whole bunch of infrastructural code in order to be able to take your plugin and be able to deliver those, not only for those operating systems, but also for different plugin formats.

So you have VST audio unit, which is only for Mac OS, and AAX plugins that are for Pro Tools.

And so you would need to have multiple levels of abstraction code that would need to be able to deploy your product across all of these different operating systems and all of these different plugin formats.

JUICE is able to abstract all of this complexity out, so you don't have to worry about if you're creating a VST3 for Windows or an AU for Mac.

You can actually just check in boxes of what platforms you want to deploy to and hit build, and you're good to go for the most part.

So one of my favorite aspects about JUICE is how quickly you can actually get up and running without little need for expertise or experience with C++.

So normally when you're working in a C++ environment, you have to interact with a complex build system like CMake in order to get a project going.

But the JUICE framework actually has a project creator called the ProJuicer that is able to template out a couple different types of audio applications that you would be able to create and be able to click in options, be able to import libraries, and things like that.

And it's a really good way for people who are just getting into code to just get started and get a project up and running.

Another thing that's awesome about JUICE is that once you start getting to a point where you need to use more complex build systems, that it also has CMake support as well.

Getting set up and running with the ProJuicer is an area that we're going to cover in our next tutorial.

And as you can see, JUICE is a solution for quite a few audio software companies around the world, including Adobe, Korg, Lander, Spitfire Audio, Serato, Pioneer DJ, Netflix, and even more.

Especially if you're an independent software developer who doesn't have a lot of time to set up your own infrastructural code to solve all the problems I was discussing before, it feels like JUICE is a natural solution.

So there are two different ways that you can get JUICE.

They have a couple different tiers, whether you're in the educational sector or whether you're using it for commercial use.

And you can actually just download that just by hitting that download button right there.

And that downloads a zip file that you can put in your applications folder.

And that's a quick and easy way to get up and running.

Another way, if you're on the more advanced or experienced side, is you can go to their GitHub repository and you can clone their repo from here.

Okay, so that's a quick overview of the JUICE framework.

And if you found that video helpful, be sure to give us a like and subscribe if you're not already.

And in the next tutorial, we'll talk about how to get up and running and creating your own projects and an overview of a JUICE project structure for both Windows and Mac operating systems.