In this Pro Tools Expert Podcast Extra interview, Technical Editor James Ivey talks to Colin McDowell from McDSP.  They start off by talking about how Colin got started in the music industry as a keyboard playing in High School then local bands, then discovering that programming keyboards was much more fun than being on stage playing them. Next the conversation moves onto his company McDSP, how they got started and the current team. McDSP have always tried to support as many plug-in formats as possible and the pair talk about McDSP's reasons for supporting DSP formats such as AAX DSP for HDX and the possibilities for supporting the Universal Audio UAD2 format. Colin tells us how a small team such as McDSP can react to changes beyond their control, such as changes in OS, be that PC or Mac and issues that arise through software updates and how the McDSP team try to take all feature requests onboard, even if from time to time some user provided feature requests  might at first appear a little off beat. James brings up the perennial topic of software piracy and Colin spends some time explaining what he feels about this and just how this can affect not only his company, but small and large software providers alike. Getting back to the McDSP products James and Colin talk about which plug-ins came first, which plug-ins in their portfolio have been most successful and which ones haven't. Colin tells us about some of the technologies that have been developed and continue to be used in some of their latest developments. They also talk about modern plug-in styles, like the trend to make plug-ins look like hardware.  To end, he offers us a sneak peak into what might be coming next from the team at McDSP.Chapters And Questions00:00 Intro01:24 How did you get started in this crazy world of audio and plug-ins?05:20 How many of you are there at McDSP?06:55 Do you think that  there is still life in dedicated DSP platforms or do you think that native processing will win the day?10:11 Do you ever see a time when we might see McDSP on UAD?11:20 Do you have a plan set out for as and when a new OS or DAW update is announced and things don't work as they should?15:03 How do you handle it when someone says "Can you just do X,Y,Z update or feature request?18:06 What are your thoughts and feelings about software piracy? 29:00 Which plug-in came first?30:33 Which was the most fun and most challenging plug-in to develop? 36:44 Were McDSP the first to recreate the 500 series style in plug-ins? 39:20 Is there anything on the horizon you can give us a preview to? 42:10 Sign off and close.