![\"Music](\"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/SONAR-Win-10.png\" "\\"Music")
<\/a><\/p>\nOn July 29, at 12 AM EST, Microsoft started rolling out Windows 10 upgrades. If you signed up for the upgrade earlier, you may have already received a notification. If not and you absolutely can\u2019t wait, Tech savvy users can use the\u00a0Media Creation Tool<\/a>\u00a0to install immediately on one or multiple devices.<\/p>\n Fortunately this time around, we have much more mature release compared to Windows 8\u2014there\u2019s no missing start menu, and the confusing divide between \u201cMetro\u201d and desktop apps is history. According to Microsoft, Windows 10 will be the last \u201cversion\u201d of Windows. Subsequent updates will be delivered periodically to users, so we won\u2019t need to wait two or three years to see improvements. This isn\u2019t all that different from what we at Cakewalk have adopted with our \u201crolling updates\u201d model; we\u2019ve seen how this has led to a proliferation of new features and enhancements along with ever-improving stability, and we hope Windows users will see similar benefits. To make Windows 10 more attractive to customers and get them onto the new platform, it\u2019s even being offered free to existing Windows 7 and 8 users.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s new management under Satya Nadella has led to some positive changes in how Microsoft communicates with its partners. Over the last few years we\u2019ve seen a renewed interest in our audio domain compared to prior years. It\u2019s encouraging to see some additions to Windows 10 that were influenced directly by industry feedback, including concerns about low latency audio and MIDI problems such as jitter and multiclient support. Even at trade shows and other industry events there has been a renewed presence from Microsoft. These are positive steps\u2014it looks like Microsoft has put Windows 8 behind them, and are making a fresh start that\u2019s more responsive to consumer needs.<\/p>\n Cakewalk SONAR<\/a> has always been one of the leading digital audio workstation (DAW) vendors at the forefront of Windows development, and we\u2019ve been following the music production for Windows 10 development cycle from very early on. I spoke to some Microsoft contacts, and got some under the hood details on some of the Windows 10 features that are relevant to music production applications like SONAR, as well as a few areas of general interest.<\/p>\n There have been many significant improvements toward improving low latency performance in the Windows stack when using WASAPI (shared mode). The Windows audio stack now has as much as 15 msec lower round trip latency by default in WASAPI. Additionally, applications using WASAPI shared mode can now explicitly specify a lower buffer size to be used instead of the default system buffer size. Drivers can also now report a minimum buffer size to allow the applications to select a suitable buffer size.<\/p>\n Microsoft claims that one can now expect \u201cnear ASIO performance\u201d when using WASAPI shared mode. This is a big accomplishment since in the past WASAPI shared mode had very high latencies, close to 50 ms (similar to MME drivers). Applications like SONAR that use kernel streaming or ASIO already communicate at a lower level that bypasses the Windows audio engine, so in theory the lower latency advancements in Windows 10 will not allow for lower latencies than previous versions unless you were using the Windows audio engine.<\/p>\n However, I asked Microsoft if there had been any changes to the Windows kernel (the lowest level in the audio stack, which can make or break low latency audio processing) that affect audio processing and received this response:<\/p>\n \u201cYes. There have been changes in the multimedia scheduler service and kernel components to minimize DPC spikes (particularly when in lowlatency mode).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n This is great news, because it could make a big difference to low-latency streaming apps like SONAR.<\/p>\n Drivers and applications can \u201copt in\u201d to isolate and dedicate low latency audio processing to a single CPU core, which can minimize the effect of DPC latency spiking from networking, Bluetooth, or other DPC spiking processes by preventing interruptions to audio processing.\u00a0Behind the scenes this is done using interrupt steering and thread affinity. This is an opt-in feature at the WASAPI level where an app has to identify the threads that need to belong to this isolated core.<\/p>\n This feature looks promising, particularly because Microsoft says they\u2019re looking to expand this to multi-core scenarios that relate to DAWs like SONAR.<\/p>\n Prior to Windows 10, MIDI was primarily accessible via the older MME MIDI APIs or the less common DirectMusic APIs. These APIs were desktop-only and not available to universal apps, which is Microsoft\u2019s new programming model. Music production for Windows 10 has new MIDI APIs<\/a> that are suitable to universal applications, so they\u2019re applicable to Windows 10-based desktops, phones, tablets, etc.<\/p>\n The API also allows for multi-client access to MIDI devices, and has improved jitter-free performance.<\/p>\n AudioGraph<\/a> is a high level API that sits on top of WASAPI and allows simplified building of audio applications without getting into all the complexity of WASAPI. Windows 10 now has a hardware latency measurement tool that\u2019s part of the Windows HLK package, and which you can download<\/a> to measure round-trip latency.<\/p>\n Windows 10 has native support for these two codecs. ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) should allow better interoperability with Apple devices, while FLAC uses a lossless compression algorithm to provide a better quality (and free) alternative to MP3. Hopefully, native support in Windows might steer more people into using FLAC instead of MP3.<\/p>\n Unlike Windows 8 where Windows Store applications always ran full screen, in Win 10 they can now run as windows side-by-side along desktop applications.<\/p>\n This is a much smoother experience to the end user when you want to use both application types simultaneously\u2014if this was Apple, it would be like running iOS apps alongside your desktop apps.<\/p>\n Ported over from Windows Phone, Windows 10 now has built-in voice search capabilities\u2014a first for a desktop OS\u2014that lets you perform (for example) web or desktop searches using you, voice. Its impressive how good the voice recognition in Cortana is. I’ve had very few problems with even long sentences from across the room. And yes it does understand “Hi Cortana, open SONAR”!<\/p>\n (Cortana search is optional and can be disabled if you don\u2019t want to use it.)<\/p>\n One of lesser known but great improvements in music production for Windows 10 is its smaller memory footprint compared to earlier OS’s and the fact that it does smart compression.\u00a0This reclaimed memory is now available to other applications. Check out\u00a0this link from the windows team<\/a> to see how this was achieved.\u00a0Its interesting that Microsoft’s their work on making Windows 10 scale to mobile platforms benefits the desktop OS as well.<\/p>\n Additionally Windows 10 boots much faster due to a combination of optimization techniques. These improvements can make Windows 10 actually work better on even older PC’s as reported in this article<\/a>\u00a0that recommends Windows 10.<\/p>\n There is a somewhat controversial change to how Windows update works in Windows 10.<\/p>\n For Windows 10 Home users, there is no way to turn off automatic updates and they will be mandatory. This will give some control over when updates are deployed.<\/p>\n While the CBB will essentially track the consumer release, it will allow feature updates to be held back for some amount of time so you can prepare for the update.<\/p>\n Windows 10 Enterprise is the only OS for which users will be able to actually turn off Windows updates. By opting for the Long Term Servicing (LTS) branch, Enterprise users will be able to defer feature updates for years, electing to receive only security fixes during that time.<\/p>\n Many of our users have been running Windows 10 preview builds with SONAR Platinum<\/a> for some time now and have reported no problems.<\/p>\n At Cakewalk, the Gloucester release of SONAR is the build that we have validated officially with Windows 10.<\/p>\n We ran several of our validation tests and tested all our installers and inbox plug-ins for this release. We have also run the Windows 10 App certification on SONAR. We\u2019re happy to report that everything works great, and SONAR passes Windows 10 certification with flying colors. Additionally, we noted some performance gains when running SONAR with Windows 10.<\/p>\n The common impression from those doing the evaluations felt that in general, Windows 10 felt snappier compared to Windows 8. The user interface, spotlight searches, opening menus, loading programs and other common operations all appeared to be faster and more fluid. Switching among desktop applications and Windows Store apps was also much more natural.<\/p>\n In addition to testing Windows 10 compatibility with SONAR, we ran some simple benchmarks to compare performance of SONAR Platinum Foxboro on the same system running Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.<\/p>\n It\u2019s always interesting to look at benchmarks since you sometimes see results you wouldn\u2019t expect. The next article has benchmarks done by Dean Capper<\/a>, but independent PC integrators PC Audio Labs, one of the major custom DAW integrators with a lot of experience building and testing DAW hardware, has done a pretty thorough Windows 10 benchmark.<\/p>\n Their benchmark was done using SONAR Platinum as well as other DAWs. One of the reasons SONAR was featured in their benchmark was because according to them \u201cSONAR was used because it is very friendly to the WDM standard, and is a well-known and very efficient DAW.\u201d<\/p>\n The PCAudioLabs benchmark results can be found here: Windows 10 For Pro Audio<\/a>. PCAudioLabs test was even featured in Microsoft\u2019s Future of Audio Keynote on Windows 10<\/a>, presented by Pete Brown of Microsoft. You can see the benchmark presentation starting around 22:16. It\u2019s notable Microsoft is now listening to DAW system builders for feedback on Windows 10 performance.<\/p>\n Their benchmarks found notable improvements in low latency performance when running SONAR Platinum on Windows 10. Their test also mentioned improvements in CPU performance as well as well as disk performance in music production for Windows 10.<\/p>\n Although SONAR has tested 100% compatible with Windows 10, it\u2019s important to check whether your audio interfaces and other hardware are compatible with Windows 10 before upgrading. Microsoft has a good track record of supporting older applications and drivers, and this continues with Windows 10. Their upgrade process will even point out any known incompatibilities.<\/p>\n However, we highly recommend that you ensure your system is up to date with the latest drivers for all your hardware. Many audio interface vendors have already published Windows 10 validated drivers in advance; if available, you should use those. Many drivers may work without modification, but it\u2019s a good idea to check with the vendor first before taking the plunge and updating to Windows 10.<\/p>\n Perhaps even more exciting than what\u2019s in Windows 10 today involve plans for its future. In the Windows 10 presentation at A3E, Microsoft tantalized us with other features under considertion: Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, Bluetooth MIDI, MIDI routing, audio aggregation, and more.<\/p>\n With the continuous integration model it\u2019s likely that we will see these features rolled out sooner rather than later. For example, USB2 audio class driver support didn\u2019t make the Windows 10 release, but hopefully we\u2019ll see this soon.<\/p>\n Microsoft has shown that it\u2019s taking user feedback seriously with Windows 10.<\/p>\n There\u2019s even a portal where you can submit and vote on feature requests for Windows so if you have a suggestion to improve Windows for Audio Production, go to the Uservoice Feedback Site<\/a> to submit your request.<\/p>\n Paul Thurrott\u2019s site compiles a list of the top 10 feature requests<\/a>.<\/p>\n Windows 10 is a mature version of Windows that might just be the best OS release from Microsoft,\u00a0building on the performance of Windows 8.1 while addressing many of its limitations. The new continuous integration model, Microsoft\u2019s renewed attention to the audio industry and the fact that it\u2019s a free update from Windows 7 and 8, should make this a great update for most DAW users.<\/p>\n A3E Microsoft Keynote Whitepaper: Audio Latency Changes in Windows 10 MIDI API AudioGraph API Windows Hardware Lab Kit (With Latency checker) Windows 10 Download site Cakewalk Windows 10 Benchmark PCAudioLabs Windows 10 Benchmark Windows 8 \u2013 A Benchmark for Music Production Applications<\/a>
(photo courtesy Harmony Central)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAudio Stack Low Latency Optimization<\/h2>\n
Audio Core Isolation<\/h2>\n
New WinRT MIDI APIS<\/h2>\n
New Audiograph API\u2019s<\/h2>\n
\nWhile not necessarily applicable to DAW\u2019s which require more fine grained control, this can be useful to build simpler applications that require low latency audio support in Windows 10.<\/p>\nLatency Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
FLAC and ALAC Support<\/h2>\n
Desktop and Windows Store Apps Run Side by Side<\/h2>\n
Cortana Search – Integrated Voice Support<\/h2>\n
Faster Boot – Smaller Memory Footprint<\/h2>\n
Windows 10 Auto Updates<\/h2>\n
\nWindows 10 Pro users will have a little flexibility; they’ll be able to switch from the mainstream release to the \u201cCurrent Branch for Business (CBB).\u201d<\/p>\nTesting Windows 10 With SONAR<\/h2>\n
SONAR Benchmarks with Windows 10<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nCompatibility: It\u2019s Not Just About SONAR<\/h2>\n
The Future Of Windows 10<\/h2>\n
Windows Feedback?<\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
\nIt\u2019s great to see features in there that benefit both audio professionals and consumers.
\nThe overall user experience is smoother and initial benchmarks show that it performs equally or better than Windows 8.<\/p>\nWindows 10 References<\/h2>\n
\nhttp:\/\/video.namm.org\/general\/A3E_Microsoft_Keynote.mp4<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/windows\/hardware\/mt298187(v=vs.85).aspx<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/
\nhttps:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-
\nhttps:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/library\/windows\/hardware\/dn930814(v=vs.85).aspx<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/software-download\/windows10<\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/22415<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/pcaudiolabs.com\/windows-10-for-pro-audio\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications<\/a><\/p>\n