Which certainly leads to an important point; there is surely a big gap in the market for a custom made OS purely designed for Multi-media purposes that can be used as the bedrock on which to build a DAW platform (amongst other purposes).

There are several such. Unfortunately for those who want to buy enormous feature heavy applications like Sonar, supported by the income from hundreds of thousands of paying (or overpaying) customers, they are linux distros. Windows and OS whatever will never open up or tweak their proprietary code for the small market of real time audio developers. And application development and support under linux is pretty hit and miss. And audio developers who want to make a lot of money are more likely to move their apps to tablets and cell phones than to take a chance on linux. Guitar Hero is a more attractive business model than Sonar on Linux.


http://sound.condorow.net/distro.html

slartabartfast

Guitar Hero is a more attractive business model than Sonar on Linux.

Thanks for the links and just flicking through all of those Linux distros gave me a sore head, because you're right, it emphasises just how disjointed the whole Linux thing is.  That amount of disparity can not hope to really gain credibility and gather momentum.  Unless...   ...ok how about a few of the BIG hardware/software houses all got together and worked as a steering group in order to agree on a set of standards.   A specific distro could be developed/maintained as the new specialist OS for Audio production. 
 
Think MIDI standards ratification back in the day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Manufacturers_Association
 
You may indeed be correct about the attractiveness of business models, but when I see some of the leading hardware synth workstations now being built on derivatives of the Linux OS, I do ask myself why is this viable for hardware audio solutions but not for our desktop, which is what it was initially designed for?
 
I think it's an interesting debate - Serious competition would be good for Microsoft.
 
For reference:
 http://www.harmonycentral.com/t5/Keys-Synths-amp-Samplers/Yamaha-Motifs-run-on-Linux-what-about-Korg-Kronos/td-p/30915459

I don't think we can talk about desktops going away until computers are so fast that Sonar no longer feels it necessary to show a progress bar when bouncing. :-)

In other words, as long as we have to wait, why wouldn't we want to wait less? By using a larger machine like a desktop, it's easy to reduce the impact of heat in the system and do more audio processing in less time.

Mobile is handy. I love my phone! But it doesn't have screen real-estate necessary for audio mixing and where I sometimes wait 5 minutes to bounce a track on my PC, I'd wait hours if it had to be done on the phone!!

gswitz


I don't think we can talk about desktops going away until computers are so fast that Sonar no longer feels it necessary to show a progress bar when bouncing. :-)

Hey gswitz, agree with your points, but the main thrust of this thread is not so much the disappearance of the PC Desktop in hardware form, it's more about the gradual stripping away of the conventional 'Windows' Desktop within the Windows Operating System software.
 
Microsoft is pushing desktop users more towards the mobile 'tiled' environment.  We've had some good posts on here, even a response directly from Cakewalk with regards to the perceived Windows OS strategy/road map.
 
So it's highly likely that desktops and laptops will be around for a very long time in hardware form; the question is more about how the windows OS is morphing from an open, dynamic desktop with applications running within 'windows', into this 'Modern' constrained 'walled-garden' were everything is presented as 'Tiles' and applications run in fixed full-screen, unless you’re prepared to customise the Windows GUI with 3rd party Apps to make it look more like 'Old' windows. 
 
A lot of us desktop users are having difficulty getting out heads around Microsoft's vision for the future.  It may be making perfect sense, but I'm just not grasping the 'Big Picture'.  Either way, it's good to talk about.  



 

I'm not sure where you are getting your information. It is clear to me Northern that what MS is doing and it in no way resembles your assumptions about it.

All they have done to date is integrate a tablet friendly OS with their standard desktop OS. What has resulted is an OS that can run on many machines and feel familiar on any of them. Win32 apps are not going anywhere. So don't panic.

What I see is a huge opportunity for developers that CW has already jumped on. We the end users will be able to use large touch screens in working with our DAW of choice. This for many will open up whole new ways to approach a project. 

If you view the new Modern UI  AKA the Start Screen as just that a start screen that starts all apps the notions you have been touting in this badly titled thread will go away.

There is nothing here of any real substance that should concern anyone.  

John



There is nothing here of any real substance that should concern anyone.  

Thanks for your absolute confirmation, I do hope you're correct, as of course you're also basing you opinion on assumptions right?


I guess the issue I'm struggling with is why there's a rapidly emerging market of 3rd party apps that serve no other purpose than to 'customise' the 'Modern' Windows OS in order for users to restore features and functionality that has been stripped away by Microsoft?   See, here's the rub; I still want my desktop to look like a desktop, not a tablet. Perhaps there's some happy middle ground to be reached here.  Perhaps there's some customisations that Microsoft can bake into their OS to give the user a degree of choice in how their Desktop PC looks?  Sound reasonable? 


Could it be possible that through talking about this in open forum, we will help to provide enough feedback to Microsoft, so that they can build an accurate picture about what their users need and want?


Just to be clear, I'm not trying to attack microsoft here.  I've certainly invested heavily in their products over the years and continue to do so.  I like Microsoft.  The same applies for Cakewalk.  My intention is stay as an ongoing customer as long as the products serve my purposes, that's where my concerns begin.


It's good to talk as they say and I appreciate your reply.

My posts is based on using and studying MS's OSs going back to the DOS days. 

I find it weird that you should be struggling with anything when all the information is fully available to you. Nor do I understand your requirement that MS provide the old start menu for you. You make it sound as if MS can't change their OS to make it better for more than just desktops.

You project into the future about what could happen when there is really no way to know what the future will bring. We can be sure that the need for the sort of app that CW develops is not going to disappear. Mobile apps as such will find a place but this does not mean the sort of app pros need and use will be rare.

I look at the situation with MS not including a start menu as givening me more control.  I can now choose just how I want my system to startup and what screen I want to show first.  I now have the ability to use third party add ons that will customize my desktop just the way I like it. 

I'm no longer stuck with what MS offered if I choose to use those add ons. Its no different than its always been really.  We have always had the ability to use all sorts of third party add ons as well as tweaking the OS itself.

As to this tread getting back to MS so they know what the members are posting, that seems a bit hopeful with no possibility of MS caring one wit what is said here. This is a forum about Sonar not about the OS.

What I would really like to do is put your mind at ease that you wont be forced to adopt anything you don't wish to. Nor will Sonar go away anytime soon. You can work with Windows 8 just as you have with past MS OSs.

 

Which certainly leads to an important point; there is surely a big gap in the market for a custom made OS purely designed for Multi-media purposes that can be used as the bedrock on which to build a DAW platform (amongst other purposes).

I agree that it would be great...
Unfortunately, there's just not enough "audio" end-users to support the development of such a niche' OS.
BeOS was a great example of this...


We (as audio users) are a tiny segment of the overall PC market.

I just posted a link on another thread just yesterday about benchmark tests done using sonar and widows 8
the tests don't lie, sonar x2 uses less resources on windows 8.
I like it, I don't mind clicking a metro app to get to my desktop and once im in there, im in there for good mostly.

funny thing, once I learned to set up those metro apps the way I wanted. I like them now.
what some call ugly, I call useful, even on a desktop.
my metro is set up so when I click news block, my local news, boston herald, local sports, is all right there.
my people app has all my facebook and twitter photos all at my finger tips without even having to log in.
my sport block- has all my favorite teams news and all my favorite news links.

there is a lot to like about windows 8- including performance.
people don't like change, but once they're forced in to it, they look at it totally different, when they have a choice, they don't like it.

its like say my wife made something for dinner, I didn't like it.
now say if my wife made the only food we had. I think I would like it.

give it a chance that's all.

here's the bench test results recorded last year on sonar x1 using windows 8:
http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications/#more-8777

and here is a little piece of that article,

SONAR CPU load at low latency

SONAR CPU gains were observed when using Windows 8 for Low latency performance tests. These gains mean you can run bigger loads in Win8 at low latency without audio glitching.
low latency plugins… 15.5% CPU reduction
input monitoring… 8% CPU reduction
high track count… 23% CPU reduction
High bandwidth audio …6.2% CPU reduction 

SONAR multi-core CPU load balancing at low latency

Workloads for cores are more evenly balanced at low latencies on Windows 8. Better balanced core workloads translate to more efficient use of multiple CPU core hardware and thereby better workload scaling for large projects.
low latency plugins… 23% improvement
input monitoring… 31.7% improvement
high track count… 30.6% improvement
High bandwidth audio …17.5% improvement 

Memory usage

A 7.9% reduction in memory use under Win8 was observed when loading a large real world SONAR project (Cori Yarkin project from SONAR sample content) under identical system configuration. Reduced memory load can be observed in most of the tests.

Disk Performance

A 78% improvement under Win8 was observed in disk read/write performance while reading large buffer sizes. Improvements were more moderate at smaller buffer sizes. 

System calls per second

An 85% reduction in system calls was observed under Windows 8 in the input monitoring case and more moderate gains in the other cases. Fewer system calls translate to improved CPU load as well as fewer user mode to kernel transitions which mean fewer audio glitches. 

Kernel use

25 – 50% reduction in kernel use can be observed in some of the tests with Win8. Lower kernel use results in fewer audio glitches since it leaves more headroom for audio drivers.

Conclusion

All the tests above were done running the current shipping version of SONAR X1 with no special Win8 tweaks. The tests ran very smoothly with no problems noted under Win8 using SONAR X1. In fact you could push the system harder under Win8 without getting glitches in audio as compared to Win7. The tests show that despite the controversial changes to Windows, there are some significant benefits even for standard Windows desktop apps running Windows 8. This is great news for existing Windows 7 users who are considering an upgrade to Windows 8.
 
 
 
now this isn't like a pretty decent improvement, this is huge.