Compatibility with previous Windows versions no longer maintained

1000 % agree! I was a real Mac fan, but each year, when a new version of macOS was released, I noticed that more and more apps and plugins I invested real money on… simply stop working! A non-negligible number of them was not updated at all to fit with the new system versions…

Are You kidding, Apple? Can a real professional composer rely on, trust you anymore? I realized the answer is NO.

So last year I said stop. Now I’m windows-only, because it’s a system I can trust, which always preserves compatibility with old versions, so your investment is durable, you can be assured that your precious and expansive plugins and apps will keep on working next year, so you can have the peace of mind and not be afraid to update anymore.


P.S.: For me it’s too late, but though I would like to suggest a solution to Apple to satisfy real pros and businesses: make Long-Term Servicing (LTS) versions of macOS, so that subscribers could have regular security updates and bugs corrections, even 10 Years After (RIP Alvin, luv u) the release date.


Mac Coreaudio smashes windows audio architecture though.

i.e. Why no-one can even get aggregation working correctly across audio devices on windows is really poor, really wish MS would do something about it at low level in the OS. It would be a great opportunity to steal audio hearts with the uncertainty for mac users.


It’s not a question of benchmarking, coreaudio is low level (OS) implementation, ASIO is a layer that sits above the OS. This is why multi-client, and/or multi-device support differs so much between audio interfaces on windows machines. On a Mac, you plug in to it’s headphone port and you’re getting low latency, multi-client support without the need for ASIO4All style drivers.

You then want to use the headphone on your Mac with an external soundcard within your DAW?, then you create an aggregate device and it works. Because it’s low level implementation.

The difference is well known, and it’s been in MacOS makeup for many years. Y’know, back when they cared for audio users. :wink:

All I know is that RME ASIO is all kinds of awesome on PC, and my Cu/Mac colleagues usually get really quiet and contemplative at my studio …

Why’s that then? RME runs great on Mac, plus Cubase requires the ASIO layer whether you’re running Mac or Win, as it’s Steinberg standard. I run across both platforms and never felt that using Cubase on windows is ‘all kinds of awesome’ vs on mac.

Please explain the difference.

those who value brand over function will always have Logic

That’s such an ignorant thing to say, you really believe that those running Logic for decades do so because of ‘brand’? Most pro studios historically run primarily with with Pro Tools setup, and Logic as a secondary machine/install due to the amount of songwriters who come in with Logic projects. These are musicians/songwriters - not ‘in it for the brand’ types.

Really, such a strange thing to say.

None of my Mac colleagues is anywhere near happy with the Apple hardware situation, most still hang on to their pre-toilet brush Power Macs for dear life, as anything newer is either nonsense (no PCIe / HDD slots inside, poor USB if any), or obscenely overpriced like the new generation.

I jumped from Mac to Windows and feel like an outcast as no-one else i know has made that move and are very happy with using the new Mac Minis for audio. If you have friends that dislike Macs so much, then why are they still using them when it’s cheaper to switch to a windows machine? I could understand if it was the reverse situation due to the price in investing in Macs.

ARM will only alienate them more, it’s a consumer architecture only aimed at closing their phoney ecosystem even tighter, crippling the users’ options.

It’s also a radical move that could transform computing as a whole, Intel have been a thorn for Apple due to the thermal issues which prompted Apple into throttling back the CPUs further than recommended in order to build and maintain the hardware they wanted to market.

Many Mac users feel safe and secure in the Apple ecosystem so being ‘locked in’ isn’t even a concern for them as they feel the alternative move to windows is selling your soul (personal data). I think the more secure Apple make their OS/Hardware the vast majority of it’s users welcome change.

Personally for me, the cost of Apple ownership has just got ridiculous, i’m old-school, so like to be able to upgrade my machine when budget or needs dictates (And not at point of initial purchase), and i can appreciate ‘security’ decisions whereby you can’t change an SSD, but when they prevent you from aftermarket RAM expansions - nah, it’s getting too much and i don’t like those restrictions UNLESS it meant hardware was cheaper due to being ‘locked’ in place.

And that’s the main reason i got out. So i can live in Cheapsville for a bit and watch how things pan out. :slight_smile:

I feel that Apple will come out of this with some of the most efficient hardware available within a few years. It’s whether i’ll be willing to pay their asking prices that will be the biggest factor for me.

Coreaudio has higher latency than asio on PC. Asio is not on top of windows audio but talks directly to the hardware using asio drivers.
Just to be pedantic :slight_smile:

I love pedantic! :slight_smile:

But seriously, If that is the case then why is the blame pointed at Microsoft as to why we can’t create aggregate ASIO devices then? I’ve got a Yamaha workstation and it has 8 audio outs as part of it’s audio interface, it’d be great to utilise that in conjunction with my main interface as is possible on MacOS.

I’ve only been on Win 10 for audio since last year, and i have still hold the impression that Coreaudio is far better overall due to being baked into the OS. But that could just be a ‘thing’ that Mac users think is the case, rather than being fact. Because i’ve had great latency with Win 10 / Cubase, however, i have struggled with multiple apps using the same ASIO device, sometimes even sticking youtube on while in the DAW can knock my sound out, and a complete inability to aggregate devices (ASIO4ALL tries, but it just breaks) - just puts coreaudio up the top in comparison.

Also, referring to latency - there is a difference between lowest achievable latency and useable latency. So it’s not always a good barometer when i hear people say x has less latency than y.

Aggregating ASIO has nothing to do with Microsoft agreed.
ASIO was invented to be used instead of Windows audio, for low latency performance.
CoreAudio is a much better OS Audio, than what MS has to offer.
CoreAudio uses a small buffer to be able to sync. the output of different devices.
RME make great multi-client devices. Although I have had issues running both windows and ASIO on the same audio device with low buffer setting (32 samples)
To be safe I always disable any windows audio on my ASIO devices.
I then run a cable from my windows audio interface to my ASIO audio interface.
This is a nice setup on a stationary system that has enough inputs, but not a viable option for many laptop users.
ASIO performance is greatly dependent on the ASIO driver, and you might very well get better performance using CoreAudio, if the ASIO driver is poorly written.
If only MS had made something more ambitious than WASAPI

Gosh…here is again this sterile debate: ASIO vs Core Audio!
(Why not a “PC vs Mac” zero-level-false-debate, while you’re there?)

If you take a look at wikipedia, and do a little googling you could realize that these two solutions have exactly the same goal: stream audio directly to the hardware, with zero intermediary between the hardware and the kernel.

There is no superiority of one above another, because they work exactly the same. They both depends closely on the CPU, faster it is, better it is.
In this article from the “Support” section of this site, you learn that:

  • Processors with faster cores are preferable to a higher core count for real-time audio performance.
  • The more cores are available, the more thread synchronization is required. This can lead to a reduced processing power and slow down the system after all.
  • A higher core count might require a different RAM configuration (dual channel, quad channel) for optimal performance.
  • A higher amount of CPU cache (L2, L3) can have a positive impact on the real-time processing.

In fact it seems that Steinberg’s ASIO is anterior to Apple Core Audio, which was introduced with Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther” in 2003, long after ASIO’s birth.

Last but not least: you don’t need to aggregate audio cards in Windows!

You can have as many interfaces as you want, and addresses them directly with your DAW. For example in Cubase (menu “Studio” > “Audio Connections” you can create as many inputs / outputs / monitor busses as you want, each one corresponding to a real hardware in/out.

You can really work with several ASIO interfaces at the same time in WIndows, even if they’re not of the same brand / model, if you have of course installed the corresponding ASIO drivers.

But you can not use multiple ASIO drivers in Cubase.
Not that I ever want to, that’s why ADAT, MADI etc. are a thing.
This is not a CoreAudio vs. ASIO, both work very well, ASIO has a slight advantage in low latency performance, CoreAudio is more convenient/flexible.

No, it’s with coreaudio you CAN do that, with ASIO you cannot. You are limited to one driver at once. That’s literally what’s being discussed here, not a vs battle.

Example:- If you have a digital workstation such as a Yamaha Montage you can send and receive audio via it’s built-in audio interface (6 Chans in, 16/32 chans out), with coreaudio you can aggregate those together with your main audio interface. With Windows you’re out of luck.

Sorry, you’re wrong. Do as I’ve done: plug several USB interfaces to a Windows box, install their ASIO drivers, reboot. Then launch Cubase, and go to the Studio menu > Audio Connections. Then add as many Inputs / outputs as you can, or select those you want.

For example if you wanna use only the Inputs of the interface A, and only the outputs of the interface B, you can. Same if you wanna use interface A only for monitoring, B only for recording, and a third C interface for mixing. Or anything you want. You don’t have to aggregate anything on Windows, it just works!

Instead of writing, just try. Really try. Then if you wanna talk about it again, you’re welcome. But don’t write anything until you have actually tried.

Yes you can, it’s called Asio4All and most have it working flawless.

Asio4all is a hack, it is not something you should use for anything mission critical / professional.

I’ve tried numerous times, even using ASIO4ALL which makes it ‘achievable’ but too unstable and kills performance. Outside of that, You are limited to one ASIO driver at a time.

What interfaces are you using? It’s possible you are using 2 from the same manufacturer and thus using a single driver, which is linking for you in the background. For example i have 2 Focusrite Saffires that run via firewire and they link together due to focusrites own linking ability - again, this is because it’s all going through a single driver.

As a real world example of what someone would like to do, i couldn’t use a Yamaha Montage’s audio interface with my primary firewire interface, other than within MacOS. This is due to being on seperate ASIO Drivers.

So please follow your own logic and read what i posted previously:-

With ASIO you cannot. You are limited to one driver at once. That’s literally what’s being discussed here.

My experience was years ago with (olds) Lexicon Lambda USB + a Presonus (don’t remember the exact model, but it had two inputs and outputs). Both do had (and still have?) good manufacturer’s ASIO drivers, I don’t talk about ASIO4ALL here, which is no use in this case.

The project was to record our amateur group live, so that listeners (possible contractors) could have a good idea of what it gives in reality.So no re-recordings / overdubs and no punch ins / outs, no cheating, the record has to be as authentic as possible.

So we mixed (with an analog mixtable) the bass in mono and drums in stereo on a mixtable subgroup directly connected to input channels 1 and 2 of the Lambda, and voice and guitars was mixed the same and connected to the 2 inputs of the Presonus.

We recorded the four tracks simultaneously on Cubase 6 on Windows 7 without any problem.

I remember though that we has little synchro issues during the final mix (always on Cubase 6), but nothing unsolvable, thanks to the possibility to finely offset tracks individually. The final result was engraved on an audio CD and served as our main demo during years, and no one ever complained about it. On the contrario, we had many positive returns concerning the quality of the recording.

While that’s a lovely story, it’s never been possible to record with two different ASIO drivers into Cubase on a windows system, i’m afraid. So you’ve either missed something critical from this recount, or it never happened how you remembered. The Lexi doesn’t even have ADAT so that wouldn’t explain the confusion you may have.

Have I ever talked about ADAT? Why do you think about it? It was years ago, we had a very low budget, so we used cheap USB interfaces and cheap analog gear.

All was mixed in - analog -, with an - analog - mixtable, as I said we used the mixtable - analog - sub-groups direct (line) outs, there was 4, connected to the individual line inputs of the interfaces (the main stereo - analog - out of the mixtable was connected to our monitoring system, so we had - sort of - “direct monitoring”).

(Slight correction: I just remembered that secondary (not main) outputs of a mixtable was also called “sub-groups”, and you could address exclusively the output of individual mix slices to one or several of them, and each of these sub-groups have an individual line output, which was connected to the interfaces. In this special case the sum of the four subs was addressed to the main stereo output for monitoring.)

(Sorry if my explanations seems unclear, my English is very poor, I do what I can with this difficult language).

Because you are providing incorrect information, and i was trying to think of what may have confused you into thinking this worked.

I talked ADAT because the interfaces you used ‘may’ have featured ADAT connections and thus, confused your memory - but that’s not the case here, as i specified previously.

So, What you’re saying happened, did NOT happen - It is technically impossible to have ever happened, and you couldn’t have confused it with an ADAT style connection either.

You cannot today, or yesterday, select more than one ASIO driver within Cubase. If you have found a way, then people will PAY you for the solution, so go ahead and prove it please!

The option to set multiple ASIO driver inputs on your audio connections is an impossibility, without first running something like ASIO4ALL to place them multiple hardware interfaces into a single ASIO Driver, which is not recommended, and neither does it work for me personally.

I’ve managed to reach the bassist (who owned the computer and one of the interfaces), and he said he used something like that.