#13

yeah, as I said, I’m only going this route to support (open source) cross platform software that runs on windows… which lots of users use, I cant convert them all to macOS (and don’t get me started on Linux ;)) , and my main platform will still be macOS.

anyway, initial impressions are that Win 10, is best version Ive seen for quite awhile , albeit with more ‘suggesions’, but macOS is going that way too…

#14

Only thing keeping me using Windows 8.1 on my desktop is the weird tracking/ad business. Supposedly https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking will disable/delete a bunch of that garbage. Has anyone used the surface book with ableton? The though of just using the touch screen with it is very intriguing, curious how it works out in practice.

#15

Same here! After many happy years working on OSX, I was disappointed about the new Macbook Pro (which I had been waiting for). So I bought the best Windows 10 laptop I could find in terms of specs. An MSI 17", which has a GeForce GTX 1080 display adapter. Granted it doesn’t feel like a Macbook Pro (more like an overpowered toy), but it blows me away in terms of performance. I use it to mix in Pro Tools HD and create music with Ableton Live. Best machine ever. I just uninstalled the stuff I don’t need. I have the Windows Defender thingie on, but that’s not a real concern really. As for an interface: my Focusrite Scarlett 6x6 was behaving very badly, so I switched to a UAD Apollo Twin USB, which is super fine, albeit a bit expensive. But then again, I make my living mixing for television so I need something stable and good.

Hens Zimmerman

http://henszimmerman.audio

#22

Windows seems to be rather more common for music making than it used to be.

Have to say I’ve used it for years (couldn’t afford a Mac!) for better or for worse.

I’ve found Molten Music quite useful for optimisation tips. He uses a Surface…

To be honest I’m not asking much of my laptop nowdays due to a hardware addiction. It plods on though…!

1 Like
#26

Figured out my issue with Chrome not playing sound through the Kmix (which I thought I mentioned in my thread above but now I realize I wasn’t specific about the Kmix issue). After I turned off “exclusive use of this device” I still had to uninstall / reinstall Chrome to get it to show up in the app sound mixer. Once I did that, everything worked.

1 Like
#27

I’ve been using Windows for my studio rig forever. One of my biggest frustrations is that the UI is exactly the same as the Mac version for most apps…

I love touch screens for music making, and I wish that the audio tool makers would better enable touch in their Windows UI. But it’s clear that with notable exceptions (like Bitwig) developers only will deal with touch on the iOS platform leaving Surface users in the cold.

Touch and music apps are meant for each other. I went all in on the iPad Pro based on those possibilities. Wish I had the same on a proper computer like my Surface.

2 Likes
#38

@disquiet audulus should run on win see here https://forum.audulus.com/t/audulus-3-6-for-windows/1598

1 Like
#39

Wow! Thanks. I’d read a post from them about how it was no longer going to be on Windows because it was too much work. That may have been about Audulus 4, which I guess is still in the works? In any case, thanks!

PS: That works well. Just got it running. Thanks again.

#77

This thread made me think of something. I do not have a dedicated music computer anymore, and I’m not sure how things are currently set up is really working for me. One possible solution to this problem is digging out an old (but not that old) PC I build some time ago.

Now here’s a little question to all of you people who use or have used Windows for making music, especially with USB audio interfaces.
I used to make music with Ableton on Windows7 and that worked fine for me, except I kept having issued with drop outs. I went through a long list of audio interfaces, even tried firewire, did some fresh installs, tweaked the hell out of the system, etc.
The problem I kept having was always the same, initially things were working fine, but with time (we’re taliking something between 2 weeks and a couple of months) audio glitches and dropouts would appear and become more and more.

In my troubleshooting I noticed that Windows doesn’t like it when you plug in USB devices in a different port than where they previously were. And my suspicion is that somehow the USB related part of the OS would become “clogged” after some time. But that’s just my guess.

Now I’m wondering if this kind of thing maybe was a Windows7 thing, and 10 solved the problem.
Anybody ever had that sort of problem?

#78

God there are so many possible answers to Ableton audio dropouts… As I mentionned, Ableton prefers integrated graphic cards than it does dedicated ones, but that’s more of a common issue on laptop (where the two side by side can cause conflicts). It can also be related to some battery efficiency parameters that unnecessarily throttle CPU (for that you’ve got to tweek some parameters in the windows performance page), it can also be an issue caused by some intel settings that you’ve got to take care of in bios (which similarly keeps ableton from using the full extent of your CPU by dynamically reducing its capabilities). Some people reported problems with multithreading although I never encountered any. It can also be the network causing problems (for live use on my laptop I disable all network cards, graphic cards and anything I don’t need in the device manager). Ableton is such a complicated thing to get the right settings for, in ways I never encountered on any other softwares (Cubase, Protools, Reason for what I use).

Having said all that I’m running Ableton on a daily basis with very complicated sessions and it’s been a glitch free universe since 2 years now (I changed computers around that time), it just took a few weeks to make sure everything was smooth, but since then no windows or ableton update caused any trouble, I never ran into any new issue, and I’m yet to ran into CPU / RAM limits.

#79

I’m too early on in the process to say, but I’ll report as I get a sense of it.

#80

I never have audio dropouts on Windows 10. Never had them on 7 or 8 either. I’m using a MOTU AVB Ultralite.

Make sure that you’re using ASIO drivers when using Windows. All of the other options do lead to dropouts.

1 Like
#81

staff notice:

to keep this thread specifically focused on making music with windows 10, extensive unrelated general discussion on Win10 apps, tips, migration from other operating systems, and so on, was moved to a new thread:

4 Likes
#82

The only thing, besides a RME usb interface and not to much stuff on the Mainboard (EG WiFi) , is I use a program called “fullthrottle override” which switches the pc to full power mode as soon as one instance of ableton is running. Without it: dropouts very early, with it: smooth sailing plus still power saving when no ableton of running.

#83

It’s worth mentioning that I was getting those dropout with every audio application not just Ableton.
And I was getting those both on the desktop as on the laptop.

I’ve always used the latest official ASIO driver.

Anyway, not really asking for a solution, since that would be a bit pointless, since I haven’t got a Windows machine right now. I was mostly curious to know if it might perhaps have been a Win7-related problem.

#84

how are people getting along with win10?

my macbook air screen died so the music studio has it propper on top of an external monitor and keyboard, which is, uhm, not so ergonomic.

i’m considering a thinkstation or something tiny running win10. i’m not planning to do dev or real “work” on win10 because i’m beyond passionate about ubuntu— but wondering what might be missing in terms of audio software when switching from mac to win10.

ie, madronlabs, c74, and izotope make the move no problem. is there much anyone has missed when switching? thinking of renewing my vows to reaper as well.

2 Likes
#85

My uses are pretty minimal, so I’m not a great test case. I’ll keep an eye on how others reply.

#86

I was doing a lot of research into it a few weeks ago contemplating a switch.

The biggest difference it seems is that system audio is routed through windows, whereas it seems universally recommended to use asio drivers for daw work. Where this might be a problem is for loopback applications (where you want to route system audio back into a daw)…I couldn’t tell if there were solutions out there for this kind of thing, or the kind of routing you can do with sound flower, blackhole, or jack. I also don’t believe there are ways to do aggregate audio devices like in the audio midi setup application. I’m not sure if either is super important to you, curious if people have found windows solutions for these things.

The other thing that came up is thunderbolt compatibility…it seems thunderbolt 1 devices generally do not work with the windows motherboards out there, where as thunderbolt 3 (and thunderbolt 2 with adapter) is fine. There were some mention of noises leaking over tb ports into the outs of interfaces I found but it seemed like that might have been ground loop related.

But in general people seem to be happy with the switch. With adequate interface and cpu it seems you can run DAWs at the lowest buffer sizes and stuff with no issues.

1 Like
#87

Asio4All is a solution to the aggregate audio thing. Some people have had difficulty with it, while it works well for other people. The few times I’ve used it it worked, but I haven’t pushed it hard.

I know people that love the touch screen interface to Bitwig. A touchscreen laptop like the Surface works with all Windows software, but it’s exceptional when the application has a UI that’s been optimized for touch.

3 Likes
#88

It’s annoying that many externals are compiled mac only, is all…

3 Likes