New Cakewalk Blog entry: WINDOWS 8 – A BENCHMARK FOR MUSIC PRODUCTION APPLICATIONS

http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications/

I actually run it exclusively myself, I rarely see the start screen.

I do have some issues running X1 on 8, not sure what is causing them yet. Side-chaining is borked in exported mixdowns, and some projects go into a seizure when loading, but all is well after completing the load. 

Most of the issues only manifested after installing the Release Preview after using Developer and Consumer Previews without issue.

I can attest to being able to work at lower latencys, with more tracks and effects. Cant wait until Win 8 and X2 are done!

I want to test Win 8, but  I just  can't get the OCTA CAPTURE drivers to install correctly under x64. Can anyone give me some hints? I'd be very gratefull

That was extremely interesting. I want that analytic  (SONAR Performance Monitor) tool Noel used!!!!  Anyway for us long time users to get our hands on that Noel?????  

Yeah its a little rough. Once we clean it up we'll probably release it as a powertoy. Its been very useful to us for all kinds of benchmarking. It even has a copy paste mode so you can take a snapshot and paste it into Excel. Thats how all the reports were done. Keith did a nice job on it!

BTW if anyone is running Win8 and encounters a problem that they think is specific to Win8/SONAR please log a bug with Win8 in the title and also send me a message. Its pretty unlikely that it would be Win8 specific but anythingis possible. We did have a few issues that ended up being OS specific in the past but its very rare.

The sidechain issue listed is pretty unlikely to be Win8 specific however. Nothing OS specific about exporting.

Noel, thanks for that article. I, and I'm sure many other SONAR/Cakewalk customers, appreciate your various detailed write ups over the last several years. 

Anyway… a couple of thoughts on the content, not necessarily directed at Noel/Cakewalk:

1.) RE: performance results themselves... If those sorts of performance gains -- disk I/O, memory overhead, kernel throughput/latencies etc. etc. -- apply to apps in general, I have to ask @Microsoft: why have you been knowingly peddling your bloated, unoptimized OS's on us all these years? 

Think about it: the requirement to support small form factor on effectively the same kernel has forced MS to come to grips with inherent inefficiencies in the WinNT legacy core. It would stand to reason that to run the next gen WinNT core on smaller footprint device, that core would have to be optimized as much as possible. Which further implies: those cores from NT3 through Win7 have not been optimized. Once again, why all of a sudden these huge performance gains? Oh, I see, because it benefits MS now to optimize to be able to run on their tablet… nothing to do with what's best for the customer, esp. us customers who rely on absolute raw disk/memory/cpu throughput. 

I am a happy Win7 user, but if those performance numbers apply in general to high throughput apps, perhaps we should look at Win7 as a bloated pig in comparison? If so, disappointing. Boo.

2.) RE: Metro apps… MS is missing the boat here. The lack of compatibility between the desktop and Metro sides of the kernel means Metro will be useless for all but the most basic of standalone music apps… similar to the limited stuff you can get today for iPad, android, etc. No VST, ASIO, etc. support? Stupidity. Unless all you want to do is keep up with the Jones' and have your Me Too Fingerpaint By Numbers apps and web browser running on a multi-touch tablet device… *yawn*.

3.) RE: "based on reports from Microsoft it would appear that low latency audio applications were not considered in the Metro application model". Again, enjoy your Me Too Fingerpaint By Numbers apps and web browsing, everybody! MS is showing where their head is at here, despite, dare I say, music tech weenies falling over themselves to integrate tablets and devices into their workflow over the last few years. People want to run synths and mashup apps and controller apps and etc. etc. … besides rich media/multimedia/etc. what are we left with? Email, web browsing, Me Too Fingerpaint By Numbers, and Fart Buttons. Yay. 

Clearly, MS' priority is first and foremost to get their mobile OS running on their tablet to market as quickly as possible to try to make up ground on iPad (which I personally don't think they will do, but that's another thread). Otherwise the guy that decided that 100ms audio latency is "good enough" would have been laughed out of the conference room. 

I can see it now: strategy fail, MS. You got your iThing out there, but nobody knew what to do with it. Remember, your customers are the millions of software developers out there writing windows apps, not uncle Bob reading his email and aunt Millie futzing with some family photos.

4.) Maybe it doesn't reflect practical reality, but here's my legitimate concern and a prediction: the Win OS core team has been fractured, and Desktop stability will suffer because of it. You have the WinRT/Metro group requiring the bulk of the attention now, while the Desktop side takes lower priority. Desktop wil inherit general kernel fixes and improvements from the core team, but the bulk of engineering attention will be on "what's best for mobile at this particular moment". 

Remember, MS is not trying to put Windows up against OSX… it's trying to use Metro to pull market share from iOS (and perhaps Android to an extent, but primarily iOS). Unless MS has doubled the size of their OS engineering team, which I doubt is the case, I predict that Desktop will suffer as a consequence of their strategic direction… i.e., i7 desktops is sooooo 2010...

I haven't seen anything like that - where did you see that reference?
Audio is handled exactly the same way as in Win7 but only though WASAPI when using metro. There is no low level audio support via kernel streaming etc available in Metro. As far as desktop goes its identical to Win7 as far as I can see for the audio API's.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]

I haven't seen anything like that - where did you see that reference?
Audio is handled exactly the same way as in Win7 but only though WASAPI when using metro. There is no low level audio support via kernel streaming etc available in Metro. As far as desktop goes its identical to Win7 as far as I can see for the audio API's.

Noel one huge advantage of being on this forum is having you post. You have a talent for taking very obscure technical writing  and make it accessible to non tech people. 

>>1.) I have to ask @Microsoft: why have you been knowingly peddling your bloated, unoptimized OS's on us all these years?  

I don't think its fair to assume that. That argument could be applied to any piece of software that gets optimized. i.e. why did the developer ship the version that was slow in the first place. Developers don't typically intentionally write things to be bloated or slow :) Sometimes evolution in design change architectures and results in a more optimized access to certain operations. Windows is obviously enormously complex so its not far fetched to imagine that changes made to certain components to make them run better on tablets (ie for Metro) could have improved other areas in Windows. The amount of work in refactoring the code must have been enormous so you wouldn't have got that in a prior version necessarily.

>>Which further implies: those cores from NT3 through Win7 have not been optimized. Once again, why all of a sudden these huge
>>performance gains? Oh, I see, because it benefits MS now to optimize to be able to run on their tablet… nothing to do with >>what's best for the customer, esp. us customers who rely on absolute raw disk/memory/cpu throughput.  

For the same reasons above I doubt this is the case. Although its pretty obvious to me that MS doesn't really consciously care about streamlining areas of the OS that matter to real time audio. Im sure if they actually spent some time on it we'd see huge gains - much bigger than the incremental ones in Win8. But as I said in the article - we're groundfeeders so I'll take what we get :)

>>2.) RE: Metro apps… MS is missing the boat here. The lack of compatibility between the desktop and Metro sides of the kernel
>> means Metro will be useless for all but the most basic of standalone music apps… similar to the limited stuff you can get today for
>> iPad, android, etc. No VST, ASIO, etc. support? Stupidity. Unless all you want to do is keep up with the Jones' and have your Me Too
>> Fingerpaint By Numbers apps and web browser running on a multi-touch tablet device… *yawn*. 

Yeah I agree. Its pretty obvious that all Metro was designed to cater to was the lowest common denominator. Content consumption apps like news aggregators, email, messaging, maps etc, not creation apps especially in the high performance category. Its following the trend of the IPad there. Although the IPad is definitely the leader as far as audio performance goes in IOS. Android is even worse than Metro with horrendous latency in their audio stack.

>>4.) Maybe it doesn't reflect practical reality, but here's my legitimate concern and a prediction: the Win OS core team has been
>> fractured, and Desktop stability will suffer because of it. You have the WinRT/Metro group requiring the bulk of the attention
>> now, while the Desktop side takes lower priority. Desktop wil inherit general kernel fixes and improvements from the core team,
>> but the bulk of engineering attention will be on "what's best for mobile at this particular moment".  

Its possible and a legit concern. This is part of the reason we did the benchmark - to satisfy ourselves that Win8 didn't break anything fundamental that we rely on. Fortunately for now it seems good. Its ironic that MS doesn't seem to see the most compelling value in their own platform which is the humongous base of high value desktop applications. If metro had been designed to integrate with rather than exclude the desktop I think it would have been a win win situation for them. Instead its this either/or situation

To their credit they did a bunch of optimizations in Win7 as well to the kernel. Generally speaking in most companies optimizations are not things that make sexy marketing bullets so in general most companies don't sponsor engineering to go and spend all their time making things faster without new features to show for it. So its not that unusual for features to drive improvements in this area.

Interesting stuff. Personally, post NT4 I never consider a new MS OS until service pack 1 (at least) is out - SP1 improved XP loads, and Vista's SP1 turned it into a well-functioning and solid OS, which it certainly wasn't until that point.

In fact I've not used Win7 at all - largely because I regard whatever small gains it may give me over Vista as being of less value than the price of two copies of Win7 plus the hassle of getting it to dual-boot (Win7 has a different approach to booting to prior MS OSs) then optimising it.

The plugins side of things under Metro, and the lack of interaction between Metro and the "old-style" desktop is a little concerning.

He may be wrong (and I haven't researched this in any depth myself) but a mate who spends many hours a day in front of Photoshop is concerned about Photoshop plugins and Metro/desktop data sharing. Photoshop is an industry standard if ever there was one, and just as ridiculously overpriced and under-equipped out of the box as as Pro Tools HD. Without third party plugins it's much less useable, and essential plugins tend to be remarkably expensive.

If Win8 does compromise Photoshop's ability to use plugins and seamlessly share data with Office/Web authoring apps the resulting screams will be loud and long indeed.

I don't get the (Noel) lowest common denominator,  (Keith) uncle Bob reading his email and aunt Millie futzing with some family photos,  Me Too Fingerpaint By Numbers apps comments. Seems to simplified and a little negative. For instance I was able to watch the Cakewalk Sonar Webinar yesterday on my iPod while at my friends house sitting on his porch. No computer needed. Maybe I fit into the category of people listed in in those comments but I don't think so. I've found that I can do most everything I use a computer for on the ipod/iPad. Obviously we rant going to try and complete a professional video/audio project on a mobile device at this point. That's still left to the computer. Off the top of my head here is a list of things I use an iPod/iPad for:

• FaceTime(Video calls) to friends and family. Someone saw me using FaceTime on my iPod in a resteraunt and made the comment thier phone doesn't even do that. 
• Pay my bills. 
• Manage eBay and PayPal. 
• Post on forums like right now. 
• Manage email conveniently anytime quickly and ad free (get so tired of yahoo web mail ads. 
• See where family and friends are located. 
• Use as a GPS. 
• Text messaging including sending pictures / video. 
• Control surface for Sonar
• Remote desktop. 
• Make and post videos directly to YouTube. 
• Write songs. I've found the iPod an extremely convenient tool for writing music. Always ready to go. There are a number of sufficiently capable apps whether you want audio or midi such as GarageBand, DAW Multitrack, BeatMaker, NanoStudio. These all have piano roll level manipulation of notes and automation parameters. 
• Read books. 
• Play games
• Create spreadsheet and forms for budget management, auto logs etc. 
• Web browsing for enjoyment, buying things such as renewing my liscense plates etc. 

You get the idea. That can all be done without needing to be tethered to a computer which I find very convenient. 

And it's fun to do. For example here is a stupid video I did on iPad just sitting around board during recording. All audio/video was done on the iPad just messing around and posted directly to YouTube from the iPad. Whether your a professional or aunt Milly or whatever I find it fun and creative. 

http://www.youtube.com/wa...e=youtube_gdata_player

These things aren't a replacement for the computer but an extension. 

I think Microsoft is keeping metro completely seperate from the desktop to they can sell cloud space like Apple. I bet there is concise table amount of money in that if done right. I've found Apples cloud to be very convenient. I love the fact everything stays synced or that I can access my entire iTunes library without needing a computer. There's a reason Apple has such a large share of the mobile market.

I dont get all the antagonism over win8.. mobile devices are here to stay, their use will increase and so will their level of integration between phone/tablet & desktop.. this is something we all simply have to accept and move on.

I like the fact that win8 is desktop+metro.. i dont really see a use for metro on my PC but hey, the desktop is one click away, and performance gains in Sonar?, then thats all and good.

Now, a Cakewalk control surface app for ios and android.. now we are talking! :)

WDI


I don't get the (Noel) lowest common denominator,  (Keith) uncle Bob reading his email and aunt Millie futzing with some family photos,  Me Too Fingerpaint By Numbers apps comments. Seems to simplified and a little negative. For instance I was able to watch the Cakewalk Sonar Webinar yesterday on my iPod while at my friends house sitting on his porch. No computer needed. Maybe I fit into the category of people listed in in those comments but I don't think so. I've found that I can do most everything I use a computer for on the ipod/iPad. Obviously we rant going to try and complete a professional video/audio project on a mobile device at this point. That's still left to the computer. Off the top of my head here is a list of things I use an iPod/iPad for:

• FaceTime(Video calls) to friends and family. Someone saw me using FaceTime on my iPod in a resteraunt and made the comment thier phone doesn't even do that. 
• Pay my bills. 
• Manage eBay and PayPal. 
• Post on forums like right now. 
• Manage email conveniently anytime quickly and ad free (get so tired of yahoo web mail ads. 
• See where family and friends are located. 
• Use as a GPS. 
• Text messaging including sending pictures / video. 
• Control surface for Sonar
• Remote desktop. 
• Make and post videos directly to YouTube. 
• Write songs. I've found the iPod an extremely convenient tool for writing music. Always ready to go. There are a number of sufficiently capable apps whether you want audio or midi such as GarageBand, DAW Multitrack, BeatMaker, NanoStudio. These all have piano roll level manipulation of notes and automation parameters. 
• Read books. 
• Play games
• Create spreadsheet and forms for budget management, auto logs etc. 
• Web browsing for enjoyment, buying things such as renewing my liscense plates etc. 

You get the idea. That can all be done without needing to be tethered to a computer which I find very convenient. 

And it's fun to do. For example here is a stupid video I did on iPad just sitting around board during recording. All audio/video was done on the iPad just messing around and posted directly to YouTube from the iPad. Whether your a professional or aunt Milly or whatever I find it fun and creative. 

http://www.youtube.com/wa...e=youtube_gdata_player

These things aren't a replacement for the computer but an extension. 

I think Microsoft is keeping metro completely seperate from the desktop to they can sell cloud space like Apple. I bet there is concise table amount of money in that if done right. I've found Apples cloud to be very convenient. I love the fact everything stays synced or that I can access my entire iTunes library without needing a computer. There's a reason Apple has such a large share of the mobile market.

+1


In simplistic terms here are the advantages of each as I see them:
- raw processing power and performance:  advantage PC/computer 
- expressiveness through tactile interface:  advantage iPad/tablet


you can often be far more expressive 'in real time' with a tablet, and from an artistic perspective I find that very appealing.  I think it's inevitable that the two forms will converge and then we'll get the best of both worlds.  Hopefully all this will happen without having to forego something that still might have its uses or advantages (for example, there are still times when a mouse movement is preferable to touch so I would like to have both options).


I didn't quite get the iPad thing until I got one.  And it wasn't until I really began using it and delving deep into some of the creative apps out there that I realized how much can be done that's simply not possible, or as easy in my opinion, on a regular PC.  I can understand why someone peering over my shoulder might not get it, but give it time...

So what exactly will I be able to do on a Win8 tablet that I can't already do on an iPad 1, 2, 3? Uh, that would be nothing. 

Except plug in a USB midi controller and soundcard. Not that big of a deal huh.

soundtweaker

So what exactly will I be able to do on a Win8 tablet that I can't already do on an iPad 1, 2, 3? Uh, that would be nothing. 

Except plug in a USB midi controller and soundcard. Not that big of a deal huh.

And do exactly what with those in the Metro environment? No Midi. 100ms audio. Your USB audio and MIDI devices are useless in Metro.
 
We're talking about Metro here, people, not Win8. Metro Metro Metro. Oh, useless Metro, whatfore art thou, Metro?