Windows 11 is quickly becoming as sour as Waves Audio was...

[aleo]

Many thanks, Mark.  So, if I'm understanding things correctly both Cakewalk Next and Sonar will run fine on Win. 10.

[Jim Roseberry]

Aside from the CPU Core parking issue in later versions of Win10, there's no significant performance difference between Win10/Win11.

For those running 12th/13th Gen Intel CPUs, it's that "compelling" reason we've been waiting for.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Jim Roseberry

[57Gregy]

7 hours ago, msmcleod said:

1. You have a stable system running in Windows 10 - if it's not broken, why fix it?... but some day you'll stop getting updates.
2. Upgrading to Windows 11 gives you the latest features/fixes, but at the risk of upsetting your current setup (e.g. audio interface driver incompatibilities).

I'd like to add: Upgrading to Windows 11 gives you the latest features/fixes, but at the risk of upsetting your current setup (e.g. audio interface driver incompatibilities)
... but some day you'll stop getting updates. 😁Much further in the future, I hope.

[craigb]

I'm waiting for Windows 12...

[telecode 101]

I am running win 11 ent. I have to for work. It’s fine. Just needs some getting used to. They made it like Apple Mac a bit. But you can still go in and turn off all the silly extra features. 

[pwal³]

On 6/12/2023 at 6:48 PM, msmcleod said:

some day you'll stop getting updates

mean

[El Diablo]

1 minute ago, pwalpwal said:

mean

I think it's better to stop getting updates, reason: You never know if the next update will give you the dreaded BSOD!

[pwal³]

1 minute ago, El Diablo said:

I think it's better to stop getting updates, reason: You never know if the next update will give you the dreaded BSOD!

jeez if they made other products like they do software...

[Shane_B.]

4 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

I think it's better to stop getting updates, reason: You never know if the next update will give you the dreaded BSOD!

I wouldn't worry about that. I read they are planning on changing it to a different color.

[El Diablo]

Just now, Shane_B. said:

I wouldn't worry about that. I read they are planning on changing it to a different color.

RED?

[Shane_B.]

Just now, El Diablo said:

RED?

Probably something multicolored and more inclusive, so no other colors feel left out.

[craigb]

4 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

Probably something multicolored and more inclusive, so no other colors feel left out.

LGBTIQA+BSOD? 🤣

[TheSteven]

On 6/9/2023 at 8:31 AM, El Diablo said:

Windows 11 is doing the same, but I don't think they know how badly it's going to hurt their customer base, because they are so big.  At least Waves Audio was quicker to fix issues than Microsoft.  I foresee the end days of Microsoft coming soon...

Please cite some credible sources re Windows going SAAS. 

Regarding Microsoft fixing issues - Microsoft is constantly fixing issues, but how soon or whether your issue is addressed really depends on the issue and what priority they place on it. If it's a Windows 10 issue that was fixed in Windows 11 the priority may be zero. Security issues or Issues that affect corporate customers - those rank pretty high.  
A number of people turn off receiving Windows updates - for them issues will never get fixed as they'll never receive the fixes.

Also if there is a hardware factor in your issue it may not be entirely a Microsoft issue to fix (it may take either a Windows update, a driver update or both to resolve some issues).
Dell for example is constantly pushing updates (seems like weekly updates come out on their higher end models).

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by TheSteven

[iNate]

On 6/9/2023 at 10:39 PM, El Diablo said:

Microsoft ended support for Windows 7... I wonder if any gamers still use it to play any games online?

I believe Steam also ended support for Windows 7 too...

So, if Microsoft and Gaming software companies end support for certain windows OS, that could force many to upgrade or just be left out.

I wonder if Microsoft is the reason Steam no longer supports windows 7?

Windows 7 is not a viable gaming platform, unless you only play legacy titles from GOG or something.  It's dead for AAA gaming as those are increasingly web-connected and it is negligent to support a dead platform when your users accounts/data/etc. are put at risk due to unpatched exploits racking up on that platform.  It makes no sense.  Microsoft is not going to go back and patch Windows 7... not for consumer gaming.  That would be one step forward and two steps back.  Besides, new hardware increasingly requires newer Windows OSes, so the people still on Windows 7 likely aren't really in the target market of any new games being released.

-----

Also not sure what the OP is referring to.  Sounds like a conspiracy theory.

 

[iNate]

On 6/12/2023 at 7:52 PM, 57Gregy said:

audio interface driver incompatibilities

I have personally not seen this.

Usually it is less "audio interface driver incompatibilities" and more along the lines of "your interface's ASIO driver is crap, and is being exposed."

But frankly I think Microsoft needs to put more work into Pro Audio so that we can divorce ourselves from dependence on ASIO drivers - or at least start to.

ASIO driver bugs can masquerade as DAW bugs or even OS bugs, and can be incredibly hard to troubleshoot (moreso when it looks like something other than it is - like if only specific software is crashing with the driver selected).

Edited June 15, 2023 by iNate

[msmcleod]

On 6/15/2023 at 7:54 AM, iNate said:

I have personally not seen this.

Usually it is less "audio interface driver incompatibilities" and more along the lines of "your interface's ASIO driver is crap, and is being exposed."

But frankly I think Microsoft needs to put more work into Pro Audio so that we can divorce ourselves from dependence on ASIO drivers - or at least start to.

ASIO driver bugs can masquerade as DAW bugs or even OS bugs, and can be incredibly hard to troubleshoot (moreso when it looks like something other than it is - like if only specific software is crashing with the driver selected).

You've obviously not been in the game long enough.  Microsoft has changed their underlying driver model several times over the past 25 - 30 years.

My Yamaha DS2416 cards were released with 16 bit drivers for Windows 95/98, but they later released 32 bit drivers for Windows NT/2000.  These cards continued to work with the NT drivers up to and including Windows 7 32 bit.  No 64 bit drivers were ever released, so I'm stuck with a Win 7 32 bit boot (with SONAR Platinum) if I want to load older projects.  I did get 20 years use out of them though, which is pretty good.

My 01X / i88x however didn't last as well.  These had Windows XP 32 bit/64 bit drivers, which stopped working properly in Windows 7 64 bit.  You can get it working on Windows 10, if it's running in test-mode and with a few driver hacks... not the best solution though.

I have a bunch of Roland/Korg equipment that simply doesn't work in anything later than Windows XP 32 bit.

As far as ASIO... it's not been my experience that custom ASIO drivers have been buggy - Realtek being the notable exception.   The ASIO standard is more efficient than any of the other driver models, however WASAPI in exclusive mode does come pretty close (which is Microsoft's answer to Apple's CoreAudio).

Ironically, the more pro the equipment, the less stable the WASAPI drivers are.  RME for example has (IMO) the most solid ASIO drivers out there, with an incredibly low latency.  Their WASAPI drivers are not good though.

Focusrite have been pretty stable for me for the most part, with good WASAPI support.

 

[57Gregy]

On 6/15/2023 at 2:54 AM, iNate said:

I have personally not seen this.

Usually it is less "audio interface driver incompatibilities" and more along the lines of "your interface's ASIO driver is crap, and is being exposed."

But frankly I think Microsoft needs to put more work into Pro Audio so that we can divorce ourselves from dependence on ASIO drivers - or at least start to.

ASIO driver bugs can masquerade as DAW bugs or even OS bugs, and can be incredibly hard to troubleshoot (moreso when it looks like something other than it is - like if only specific software is crashing with the driver selected).

I just want to point out that that is a quote from the quote above by msmcleod I don't even know what those words mean! 😄

[iNate]

12 hours ago, msmcleod said:

You've obviously not been in the game long enough.  Microsoft has changed their underlying driver model several times over the past 25 - 30 years.

My Yamaha DS2416 cards were released with 16 bit drivers for Windows 95/98, but they later released 32 bit drivers for Windows NT/2000.  These cards continued to work with the NT drivers up to and including Windows 7 32 bit.  No 64 bit drivers were ever released, so I'm stuck with a Win 7 32 bit boot (with SONAR Platinum) if I want to load older projects.  I did get 20 years use out of them though, which is pretty good.

My 01X / i88x however didn't last as well.  These had Windows XP 32 bit/64 bit drivers, which stopped working properly in Windows 7 64 bit.  You can get it working on Windows 10, if it's running in test-mode and with a few driver hacks... not the best solution though.

I have a bunch of Roland/Korg equipment that simply doesn't work in anything later than Windows XP 32 bit.

As far as ASIO... it's not been my experience that custom ASIO drivers have been buggy - Realtek being the notable exception.   The ASIO standard is more efficient than any of the other driver models, however WASAPI in exclusive mode does come pretty close (which is Microsoft's answer to Apple's CoreAudio).

Ironically, the more pro the equipment, the less stable the WASAPI drivers are.  RME for example has (IMO) the most solid ASIO drivers out there, with an incredibly low latency.  Their WASAPI drivers are not good though.

Focusrite have been pretty stable for me for the most part, with good WASAPI support.

 

Windows has nothing to do with bad ASIO drivers, though... 

Higher end equipment will have less stable WASAPI drivers because less effort will be put into them. The users buying that hardware also won't be focusing on testing the WASAPI support, so any issues there tend to be underreported (if reported at all). It has nothing to offer them. Most of the lower end audio interfaces are class compliant, anyways. 

WASAPI is nice on laptops for mobile use, but I've found lots of laptops have speakers tuned for multimedia use and are terrible when used for this, and the headphone jacks aren't shielded that well. 

I have 5 consumer interfaces here and none of them actually need a driver for Windows Audio support. They're all class compliant. You plug them in and they just work. The ASIO drivers are where the problems tend to crop up. 

Focusrite Scarlett had chronic buffer underrun issues that they didn't fix for a long time until they finally implemented a safe mode in their driver, which increases RT Latency. 

Ancient hardware has a habit of not working on platforms they are literally decades newer than it. 

And some audio software only supports ASIO, so there's no way to avoid it on Windows unless you severely limit yourself there. Others only support legacy audio support (as Windows applications tend to lag the platform - on average - due to the existence of ASIO).