Windows working ok for those who use it for recording ?

[WarwickE36]

My windows 10 PC runs Repear just fine. Occassionaly if I have wiundows media player open doing work and Chrome at the same time Repear will go into this slow-mo mode where playback is at like 1/8th and I have to reboot it... but it will always let me save my work first, it never crashes.

 

[Tosh]

People who claim you can't use Windows effectively for recording are Apple/Mac zealots and shouldn't be listened to.

right.

very apropos

 

[pfschim]

People who claim you can't use Windows effectively for recording are Apple/Mac zealots and shouldn't be listened to.

well, the "conversation" that sparked this thread was actually from a Windows 10 user here on TB who was clearly very unhappy with it, and insisted that Windows/Windows Audio support was specifically the cause of his problems. Its what made me wonder if my pretty positive experience was unique. From the responses so far, it does not seem like I'm alone though

FWIW, I am currently running Reaper with a Focusrite Scarlet 18i20 interface. I have also used Ableton and Cakewalk on this and several prior Windows based systems without issue.

 

[pfschim]

As a dedicated Mac user I will happily say that Windows machines are just fine for recording, production and engineering tasks as long as you don't need any Apple software such as Logic.

thanks for your input Silky, your one of the more experienced and visible guys on TB and the recording forum.

I have an old friend who is running a pro studio in the Boston area who runs a full Windows based system. He swears by the custom config shops who optimize his boxes for pure audio application.

 

[TigerInATrance]

I use Windows 10 with Sonar and a Presonus interface and everything runs well as long as I disconnect from the network and shut down defender and I've made a few tweaks to the system as well like shutting down search and prefetch among others... I do this because I've had instances where Windows will start doing something that causes dropouts. I was able to narrow it down to those and things run fairly well now. I use Windows for audio professionally and have a dedicated machine that is never connected to the internet and runs only a bare bones configuration in the studio, mostly because I have amassed a huge collection of plugins and programs over the years that would be hard to replicate starting over from scratch on a Mac. If I were starting with nothing I would go Apple without hesitating though.

Caveat... Don't shut down your antivirus or tweak your system without knowing what you're getting into.

 

[hooky_marr]

I've been researching this extensively over the past year. Mac user for daily driver (design work etc) and usually use Macs to record, but Windows machines are now perfectly capable.

Here's the main points I have gleaned:

• Most DAW software is not multithreaded. As we are now seeing an increasing number of consumer and workstation CPUs with more than 8 cores, this may change, but right now, realtime audio processing tends to be linear - it cannot effectively be parallel processed. Mixdowns may be a different story. (This matters for Windows if you plan on using a high-core-count / high speed workstation chip like the new Threadripper Pro, as you might need a Windows for Workstations license.)
• So, that means individual core speed is more important than number of cores, at least for now.
• Higher core speeds usually means a bigger processor with a higher TDP so you need a larger physical enclosure with better ventilation and cooling. (You may not need liquid cooling, but a big heatsink / fan combo helps.)
• Disk and memory access is crucial. The faster the bus you can use, and the faster the SSD, the better; and the more channels of RAM, the faster the CPU can read/write.
• Until very recently, AMD Ryzen and Threadripper chips based on the Zen 2 architecture had issues with running well at low audio buffer sizes, due to the way the cache was split between the core groups. It could be ameliorated by using 'AMD approved' high speed RAM and higher clock speeds. The Zen 3 architecture which debuted on the newest Ryzens solves this problem with a new unified cache, so that's probably a good choice if you're building a new computer.
• Consumer CPUs have limited numbers of PCIe lanes. If you are building from scratch and want more PCIe slots for things like extra USB, PCIe SSD carrier cards, FireWire etc, be sure to see how many lanes you really require. Nowadays motherboards come with 2-3 M.2 SSD slots (usually PCIe) so you can split your boot drive, scratch disk and storage between those, then add more storage on a PCIe card or traditional SATA SSDs for backups etc. If you want more PCIe slots/lanes, you have to look at workstation processors and motherboards like Intel Xeon, AMD Threadripper Pro and/or EPYC.
• If you use Universal Audio UAD-2 cards, be advised that most of their PCIe cards don't work in AMD systems except the Octo. AMD systems generally don't support Thunderbolt (though there are one or two motherboards that support it via an add-in card), but USB 3 / C is well supported, if you are looking at UAD external DSP modules or Apollo interfaces.
• As others have said, building from scratch or buying from a specialist audio workstation maker is probably a better way to make sure the system is optimized. (The weirdest things can happen, like your Windows Audio sample rate not matching your ASIO driver's...) There are tweaky things that can be done at the BIOS level to adjust memory timing and the like to eke out better performance, which I would leave to a trained professional to do. But eliminating bundleware / bloatware and disabling memory-hogging things that launch silently at startup is important.
• If it's a dedicated audio PC, you probably don't need a massive graphics card intended for gaming, certainly not one with big noisy fans onboard. Look at smaller, single-slot workstation graphics cards like the AMD Radeon Pro series. What you probably need is something that can drive larger displays but not at insanely high refresh rates. The WX 2100 can drive 2x 4K displays or 1x 5K display and it is very compact.
• If you want to drive extra-wide "5K2K" pro displays, you may need a higher-powered card like the WX4100 (which can support two of them!) and certified DisplayPort 1.4 cables.

 

[pfschim]

I've been researching this extensively over the past year. Mac user for daily driver (design work etc) and usually use Macs to record, but Windows machines are now perfectly capable.

Here's the main points I have gleaned:

• Most DAW software is not multithreaded. As we are now seeing an increasing number of consumer and workstation CPUs with more than 8 cores, this may change, but right now, realtime audio processing tends to be linear - it cannot effectively be parallel processed. Mixdowns may be a different story. (This matters for Windows if you plan on using a high-core-count / high speed workstation chip like the new Threadripper Pro, as you might need a Windows for Workstations license.)
• So, that means individual core speed is more important than number of cores, at least for now.
• Higher core speeds usually means a bigger processor with a higher TDP so you need a larger physical enclosure with better ventilation and cooling. (You may not need liquid cooling, but a big heatsink / fan combo helps.)
• Disk and memory access is crucial. The faster the bus you can use, and the faster the SSD, the better; and the more channels of RAM, the faster the CPU can read/write.
• Until very recently, AMD Ryzen and Threadripper chips based on the Zen 2 architecture had issues with running well at low audio buffer sizes, due to the way the cache was split between the core groups. It could be ameliorated by using 'AMD approved' high speed RAM and higher clock speeds. The Zen 3 architecture which debuted on the newest Ryzens solves this problem with a new unified cache, so that's probably a good choice if you're building a new computer.
• Consumer CPUs have limited numbers of PCIe lanes. If you are building from scratch and want more PCIe slots for things like extra USB, PCIe SSD carrier cards, FireWire etc, be sure to see how many lanes you really require. Nowadays motherboards come with 2-3 M.2 SSD slots (usually PCIe) so you can split your boot drive, scratch disk and storage between those, then add more storage on a PCIe card or traditional SATA SSDs for backups etc. If you want more PCIe slots/lanes, you have to look at workstation processors and motherboards like Intel Xeon, AMD Threadripper Pro and/or EPYC.
• If you use Universal Audio UAD-2 cards, be advised that most of their PCIe cards don't work in AMD systems except the Octo. AMD systems generally don't support Thunderbolt (though there are one or two motherboards that support it via an add-in card), but USB 3 / C is well supported, if you are looking at UAD external DSP modules or Apollo interfaces.
• As others have said, building from scratch or buying from a specialist audio workstation maker is probably a better way to make sure the system is optimized. (The weirdest things can happen, like your Windows Audio sample rate not matching your ASIO driver's...) There are tweaky things that can be done at the BIOS level to adjust memory timing and the like to eke out better performance, which I would leave to a trained professional to do. But eliminating bundleware / bloatware and disabling memory-hogging things that launch silently at startup is important.
• If it's a dedicated audio PC, you probably don't need a massive graphics card intended for gaming, certainly not one with big noisy fans onboard. Look at smaller, single-slot workstation graphics cards like the AMD Radeon Pro series. What you probably need is something that can drive larger displays but not at insanely high refresh rates. The WX 2100 can drive 2x 4K displays or 1x 5K display and it is very compact.
• If you want to drive extra-wide "5K2K" pro displays, you may need a higher-powered card like the WX4100 (which can support two of them!) and certified DisplayPort 1.4 cables.

great insights, thanks

 

[40Hz]

I've had a windows 7 machine with a now-ancient version of protools (perpetual license) for about ten years now. besides recently maxing out ram and adding an ssd to record to (had some issues recording multiple tracks), i believe in the philosophy of "if your daw works, LEAVE IT ALONE"

Would that everyone had your brains. People wouldn't get stampeded into unnecessary upgrades and forced obsolescence situations if more people thought like you. I've recently retired from close to four decades in enterprise level IT. And if I had a nickle for the number of times a client's upper management insisted on making expensive and unnecessary changes and "upgrades" (and ended up breaking perfectly perfectly good, well vetted-out systems in the process) I could've retired three years earlier than I did.

So yeah...unless you have a clear goal in mind, or you need to fix something because it broke, leave any working system you own alone and just use it.

 

[Joe Nerve]

FWIW, I never had any issues until recently. Been recording with a PC since the 80s, on a 386 Computer. I still have an original version of Cubase, when it was only midi.

 

[seamonkey]

Windows 10, Mac Big Sur, IOS, no problems with any of them.
Audio nulls out to the same on all of them.

There are many sites that have advise on how to tune OS's for Audio or Video recording and editing.

 

[silky smoove]

Mac Big Sur,

The caveat to this one being that many third party developers’ products are not yet Big Sur compatible. MOTU and Softube are the big ones for me at this point and are what keep me using Catalina for the time being. To that point, Catalina and even back to Yosemite and further have all bee very stable for me.

 

[N4860]

I've only ever used windows for tracking and editing and never had any issues. Currently running Windows 10 using reaper as my DAW and my interface is an Antelope Audio Studio.

 

[Geri O]

I use both Windows and a Mac platforms for recording. I'm a Mac guy, but both platforms are working just fine for my recording work. There's a PC at the studio and I use a MacBook Pro at home and for remote recording. I had Logic on my computer, but the studio was running Presonus Studio One, so I mirrored my Mac to the studio's PC and I have them both running very well. Each one has a quirk or two that are completely minor and don't hinder anything. And I like Studio One very well as well as the fact that I can run identical configurations on both the studio PC and my Mac. It makes bringing work home soooo easy.

A lot of the time, I find that problematic Win10 recording rigs are in need of optimization for recording, either as recommended by the DAW maker or some of the general very good Windows optimization suggestions and videos. When, I went to work for the studio, it would have been a poster child for switching to Mac and in fact the owner asked me about doing just that. But being the adult that I am (who doesn't like to call enthusiasts for certain computer platforms "Zealots" or other names used by 10-year-olds, even if they do get on my nerves), I decided to investigate and sure enough, I found a page full of optimization procedures for PCs by Presonus, as well as a ton of general stuff online. Once I had gone through the PC with these recommendations, the studio PC was like a brand new machine. This procedure is very important. There's also tips for Mac machines as well.

And as with anything computer-related, there's as many computer/DAW set-up configurations out there as there are people walking on the face of the earth. Some configurations will work better or worse than others.

 

[40Hz]

Most DAW software is not multithreaded. As we are now seeing an increasing number of consumer and workstation CPUs with more than 8 cores, this may change, but right now, realtime audio processing tends to be linear - it cannot effectively be parallel processed. Mixdowns may be a different story.

Several major DAWs support multicore/multithreading. Mixbus, Reaper, and Cubase all do. With Reaper and Mixbus it's enabled by default.

That said, the biggest benefits are mostly going to be felt when your DAW is under heavy load conditions, as in: running with lots of plug-ins and VSTs loaded. Or if you're running a resource hungry standalone softsynth or sampler at the same time you're running your DAW. But a lot also depends on the DAW you're running even if it is optimized for multicore platforms. Because it's a balancing act between the number of cores and the clock speed depending on what you're running. This is what Harrison Consoles has to say about Mixbus 32c when it comes to multicores:

We often receive the question: should I get a faster CPU, or a system with more CPUs? It is probably better to get the slower 6-core machine than the 4-core. Mixbus can assign each 'track' to a separate cpu; and by doing so it can even the load across your cpu's. The only caveat would be: if you are planning to use some -very- cpu intensive plugins, but not many tracks, you might get better performance from a faster clock and fewer processors.

So it behooves you to dig into the tech specs of whatever DAW you're using - or intend to use - and plan your hardware accordingly.

FWIW, from what I've seen, the current biggest villains when it comes to hyperthreading issues are: (a) ASIO driver induced bottlenecks; and (b) some VSTs which seem to have major problems running in a hyperthreaded environment.

 

[40Hz]

Older machine with 2 cores and 8GB ram would seem to be right on the edge for anything very demanding. Hopefully your new machine will be better.

Very true. Especially if you're thinking of a new machine. Because it will come with Win10 - or you'll by Win10 for it since that's all Microsoft will sell you. And no matter what Microsoft wants to tell you, 8Gb worth of RAM and 4 cores is the effective minimum you'll need just to run Windows itself and get anything resembling acceptable performance out of it. And that's not taking any apps you've got running into consideration.

Fortunately it's almost impossible to get less than 4 cores anymore, and most machine will ship with at least 8Gb RAM these days. DAWs aren't usually that demanding when it comes to CPU and RAM resources. It's mostly the plug-ins and VSTs you've got loaded with it that will clobber you with their demands on your hardware.

 

[Dominic D]

When I upgraded to Windows 10, I had cracklings issues with my Gen. 1 Scarlett 2i2 that I was never able to fix. I replaced it with the current Gen. 3 model and haven’t had any issues since. It’s been very solid.

 

[SidNitzerglobin]

I'll add Samplitude as one that would spin up as many threads as I had virtual CPUs available as of at least 5 or 6 years ago.

 

[Deleted member 165050]

I was using Windows for recording with CuBase back as far as '97 i.e W95.
However I am now a confirmed Mac/Logic Pro X user and wouldn't go back.
Both work fine, one is just better.

 

[hooky_marr]

Several major DAWs support multicore/multithreading. Mixbus, Reaper, and Cubase all do. With Reaper and Mixbus it's enabled by default. ... So it behooves you to dig into the tech specs of whatever DAW you're using - or intend to use - and plan your hardware accordingly.

FWIW, from what I've seen, the current biggest villains when it comes to hyperthreading issues are: (a) ASIO driver induced bottlenecks; and (b) some VSTs which seem to have major problems running in a hyperthreaded environment.

Absolutely. Mixbus is a commercial fork of Ardour so it inherits a lot of multithreading-aware code, Reaper has always been very resource-efficient. Ableton's philosophy was to be able to run well on laptops in a live environment (hence, Live). I would be interested to see how well Tracktion Waveform performs in that context.

It may really be a moot point for a home studio if you're just doing demos, in which case nearly any good Intel or AMD 4 or 8 core machine with decent RAM + storage will work. My old band used to get pretty complex Reason demos done on comparatively weak machines by today's standards!

I suspect sometimes I want to spec something out that is overkill because it'll last longer or because I foresee needing more lanes/slots for expansion cards that I may never need... as some people have noted, the need for DSP has waned, modern CPUs and well-written native plugins perform very well. With PCIe 4.0 doubling bandwidth over the previous generation do you really need more than a graphics card and some fast SSDs, besides fast/wide I/O?

 

[pfschim]

Windows 10, Mac Big Sur, IOS, no problems with any of them.
Audio nulls out to the same on all of them.

There are many sites that have advise on how to tune OS's for Audio or Video recording and editing.

yes, when I got my latest laptop I found a lot of help with tuning options by checking out some suggested sites ... and using some suggestions from folks here on the ever helpful TB recording forum.