Yes, I read the blog by Noel that showed the impressive numbers, but never wanted to install Windows 8 until it was released to manufacturing.

As we are a Microsoft partner, we now have the release version of Windows 8, so I installed it a couple of days ago and have been putting Sonar X1 (64-bit) through its paces.

All I can say is WOW!!!.  Windows 7 was the best platform yet for audio, but Windows 8 absolutely blows it out of the water.  I am going down to 32 buffers in my audio drivers and getting absolutely rock solid performance in large projects - this is unbelievable!  In Windows 7, I could go as low as 128 buffers.  I could use 64 buffers for very minimalist projects, but anything bigger and I had to go back to 128.

This is with the exact same MOTU drivers, using a PCIe-424 card and a MOTU 2408 Mk3 and 24I/O.  It's like I just upgraded my PC and sound cards with something much more powerful.

My rig is a modest AMD Phenom II 1100t (six cores), but it feels like I just upgraded to the latest i7.  I have so much more power up my sleeve and can go down to insanely low latencies.  With Windows 8 and PCs just getting more powerful, I think we are nearing a par with hardware-based solutions like ProTools HD.

I don't know what Microsoft did under the hood, but they deserve a lot of kudos for optimising it so very much for audio.  I'm in PC audio heaven.

Thanks for the update SiAudio. Very encouraging, especially given the low upgrade price. Cheers

wow...i have a pcie 424 card as well. with 2 2408 units and 2 24io. cant wait to try it. keep us posted sir! how can i get windows 8 now?

When you say the same drivers, do you mean the drivers you were using with Win7? I have and Edirol UA 101 and an M Audio 2496 and want to try Win 8 but not sure which drivers to use because it's doubtful Win 8 drivers are out yet for those devices.

Well that's good to hear but what about that horrid UI? Did you switch it to the "classic" view or whatever it's called? If Win8 has an option to switch to a Win7 style interface then I'll take a look at it. The weird default set up looks unusable to me. I'm old and dumb and easily confused. Extra performance would possibly entice me away from my beloved Win7 though.

This excites me, as I am a 2408 user as well! I usually don't upgrade Windows until WAY after release, but you might be getting me to change protocol! David

Well that's good to hear but what about that horrid UI?

 
Just put Sonar in the "Start Up" folder, and voila!  You never have to see the UI!
 
Brian

@Brian... lol, well I still need to do maintenance and I do like to be somewhat familiar with my OS. One of my biggest problems with Vista was I couldn't bloody find anything. With 7 everything was right where I expected it to be (more like XP). If Win8 is gonna have a God Mode like 7 does that would make things a lot easier even if the UI sucks. I would still prefer the UI not suck though. ;-)

emwhy


When you say the same drivers, do you mean the drivers you were using with Win7? I have and Edirol UA 101 and an M Audio 2496 and want to try Win 8 but not sure which drivers to use because it's doubtful Win 8 drivers are out yet for those devices.

Yes, I am using the same Win7 drivers in Windows 8, no problemo.  I think you will find that most drivers that work in Win7 will work in Win8.

Beepster


Well that's good to hear but what about that horrid UI? Did you switch it to the "classic" view or whatever it's called? If Win8 has an option to switch to a Win7 style interface then I'll take a look at it. The weird default set up looks unusable to me. I'm old and dumb and easily confused. Extra performance would possibly entice me away from my beloved Win7 though.

Believe me - when you see how well Sonar runs in Windows 8, you won't care what the GUI looks like.  I find the whole Metro UI strange in the desktop version of Windows 8.  It just feels like two OS's clunked together, not a nice user experience at all.  That said, I only see it when I start up, but then go to the desktop.


I don't like having to revisit Metro to do other things, but as I said, the performance boost is worth the pain and I haven't had enough time with Metro to fully decide, but as of right now, I don't much like it.