Swiller sort of agree, check out my previous comments. The only big thing is hardware and drivers will be moving more and more towards this platform (i.e. you end up being forced), but that won't really happen fully for at least a year (and right Win7 has far better support). As far as performance improvements I think it's pretty trivial. I aim to be running my DAW production on Win 7 for a while yet whilst "playing" with Win 8. Users of earlier OS's will have to upgrade to Win8 if they want to use X2 and save some $$$.

Windows 8 runs noticeably faster on my PC than Windows 7. I also like how you can add hard drives in a transparent way. I also like the file history feature.

I like the new modern UI. I really like how apps scroll right to left instead of bottom to top. I find it is much easier and more pleasant to read that way.

In my opinion Windows 8 is not needed if you have Windows 7 but I do prefer Windows 8.

> Windows 8 runs noticeably faster on my PC than Windows 7.
Not for me (I'm not talking about metro, couldn't care less about this in relation to DAWs). Faster can be mean a number of things but in all instances it's about the same for me, well the max performance benefit might be something like 5% faster.

Cake did an article about Win8 and benchmarks recently but it wasn't very meaningful as it was a release candidate and they used tables rather than graphs. I hope they revisit and rework the article, I think they bigged it up rather a little too much:
http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications/

Just an update... I was able to get SSL Duende Native plugins working.  First, SSL updated their online licensing system that commuicates with Codekey (they use the WIBU Codekey software for anti-piracy).   Second... decided to run the utility in Firefox (NOT IE) and updated to the latest and greatest Java version :)  All is good. 

The only issue now is that jBridge chokes out for every plugin it is attached to.  I am receiving errors with respect to permission rights to the .jbridge files created for each 32-bit plugin.  Checked the permissions and forced off the read only... still... same error... oh well.  any ideas?

Other than that, my reason for upgrading to Windows 8 was 2-fold.  First, I'm beta testing some software that needs testing on Win 8.  Second, Noel's technical report on Windows 8 / Sonar X2 performance sold me.  My system boots in half the time, and everything seems to respond faster.  I've had absolutely no crashes (knock on wood). 

Anyone have to do anything special to get jbridge to work with Windows 8?

Dr. Mac




Sonar X2 works Perfectly on Win 8!  So do most of the plugins I have (Waves, Sonnox, etc.).

Just curious how's the Fireface 800 with Win 8 ??... (Not that I'm on a rush to upgrade, but...)

Fireface 800 and babyface work fine with win 8 here!  Vs700 set does not.

I'm using m-audio fast track ultra with x2 prod and alpha track on win 8. Everything working together happily.

Dr. Mac


Anyone have to do anything special to get jbridge to work with Windows 8?

I let the Sonar plugin manager decide which plugs are set up in JBridge and which by Bitbridge. I don't do the wrapper BS. That said I haven't tried to set up a plug in Win8 under JBridge - anything that is running in JBridge was set up previously in Win 7. I'll give that a try.

Swiller


What exactly is the benefit of windows 8 over windows 7.
Having been buggered with a transition from xp to windows 7, with a Yamaha 01x and mlan becoming redundant , once bitten ...
But win 7 offered more than 4gb rAm and 64 bit so kinda worth it.
I don't see windows 8 offering anything like that milestone.
Kinda wondering whether it is real daft to upgrade to win 8. I mean why are people bothering??

Some Win 8 improvements.

Native USB 3.0 stack, reduced boot time, Significantly lower memory footprint, ability to boot from USB Flash drives, Storage Spaces (virtualized storage pools), a new files system (ReFS), improved SSD support and performance, Touchscreen support, built-in antivirus and spyware protection, improved automatic updating system (less frequent reboot required updates), built in support for creating system images and full system restore, Improved multi-monitor support, built-in ISO mounting, Instant-On and Improved Power Settings, built-in VHD mounting, built-in PDF support, automatic cloud based backup of system settings, personal files, and Metro applications, a new Apple Time Capsule like interface for Shadow Copy, drastically improved task manager, drastically improved file management allowing you to pause file copying jobs and finish them later, Secure Boot rootkit proof when combined with UEFI, Hyper-V, various reviews of the beta candidate builds confirm noticeably improved performance over Windows 7 SP1. And that's just a small sample of the various desktop related improvements.

@soundtweaker

I attempted to install Win8 on a Bootable USB Flashdrive. I was not successful to install it on a removable drive and then boot to that drive. Can you give links or information about how to do this?

I boot my work laptop to Linux this way, but I have not been successful at doing this with Windows.
 
I have found the 'Improved Power Settings' kinda a pain personally. It's strange to not know how to force a full shutdown. Either doing it using the shutdown command or calling restart do the trick, but it's a bit odd.
BTW, the ability to make an iso on a bootable flash drive I don't care about at all. You can just mount the iso. I don't care about that a jot. If I could install windows and x2 on a portable drive and plug it in to any computer I want and boot to it, that would be a whole different story.