Enabling Great Audio Experiences in Windows 10

Interesting. I've been increasingly looking forward to Windows 10, and it's great to see they're finally addressing this at a core level.

I believe it is something like Core Audio. They haven't detailed too much about it yet. They are supposed to reveal more at the Build Conference in April. 

Deja vu is all I'm experiencing. /snark
 
Seriously, that was an interesting read. Thanks.

Nice. Hoping that 10 turns out to be one of the great ones and not a dud. Microsoft is offering 10 for free for the first year, even if you have a pirate copy, and then it's 30.00 a year. If this fails, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people. I'm still on 7, and will only make the jump when 10 gets a good report.

Resonant Serpent
Microsoft is offering 10 for free for the first year, even if you have a pirate copy, and then it's 30.00 a year. If this fails, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people. I'm still on 7, and will only make the jump when 10 gets a good report.

Where did you get the 30$/year info ?  That made my heart skip a beat.
 
Microsoft says :
 
"We will offer a free upgrade to Windows 10 for qualified new or existing Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices that upgrade in the first year!  And even better: once a qualified Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it up to date for the supported lifetime of the device, keeping it more secure, and introducing new features and functionality over time – for no additional charge. Sign up with your email today, and we will send you more information about Windows 10 and the upgrade offer in the coming months."
 
In the fine print :
 
"Devices must be connected to the internet and have Windows Update enabled."
 
I hope that's for the upgrade and not always.  Otherwise I'll be sticking with 7 forever...
 

FidelityMusic

Resonant Serpent
Nice. Hoping that 10 turns out to be one of the great ones and not a dud. Microsoft is offering 10 for free for the first year, even if you have a pirate copy, and then it's 30.00 a year. If this fails, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people. I'm still on 7, and will only make the jump when 10 gets a good report.

Windows 8 wasn't a dud, people just can't get over change and rather cry about it. I admit I was one of the people who jumped on the bandwagon of complainers, but Windows 8/8.1 turned out to be my favorite Windows OS to date. It's stable, better on resources than Windows 7, and the Windows 8 features are a nice touch.

Same here. I approached it with an open mind, watched a couple of orientation videos to get up to speed, and it's been plain sailing on both my desktop and touch screen laptop. I've loved 8.1. I frequently talk to people who whine about how awful it is, and it turns out they don't know the first thing about how to use the new features properly. 

Some more info from Build.
 
Midi
- New MIDI API now baked into Windows 10. To take advantage of these features, app developers need to write to new API.
- My Launchpad app demo, showing MIDI running just as well on a Raspberry Pi 2 as it does on full PC
- Allows shared device access (multiple apps using same MIDI device)
- Increased perf and lowered latency in the built-in wavetable synth (same synth for now)
- Improved/Updated device naming. Device can specify name and we use that first, if available.

Audio
- New AudioGraph latency-optimized API rolled into Windows 10
- Redesigned audio stack to provide a minimum of 15ms latency improvement, much more if drivers opt in to small buffers
- Surface Pro 3 round-trip latency example: 50ms in Windows 8.1, 10ms in Windows 10, using WASAPI or AudioGraph.

"...a minimum of 15ms latency improvement".
 
Wow. I've got 5.8 ms latency now, so that means sounds will come out 9.2 milliseconds before I play them! At this rate, by Windows 12 I'll just come in in the morning and listen to what I'll record later in the day.
 
Joking aside, I'm glad to see Microsoft addressing audio needs. Native FLAC support could be huge, perhaps providing a boost to the fledgling lossless music business.