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At the 2015 Summer NAMM Show‘s Advanced Audio & Application Exchange (A3E) session, Pete Brown of Microsoft gave a keynote that offers a preview of their new Windows 10 OS.

In the video Brown discusses:

• Audio and MIDI in Windows 10;
• The new AKAI MPC, which runs a version of Windows 10 Embedded;
• Xi-Machines custom Windows workstations for audio;
• Obedia high-performance audio workstations;
• DAWs that are working on Windows 10;
• Windows 10 audio performance statistics;
• Propellerhead Reason on Windows 10;
• The Windows Mobile port of Propellerhead Figure;
• Image-Line FL Studio and Windows 10;
• Bitwig Studio working on Windows 10; and
• A preview of Microsoft Hololens augmented reality system and virtual reality music software.

Brown says that, with Windows 10, Microsoft is ‘back in the game for pro audio and music’.

Video link: http://video.namm.org/general/A3E_Microsoft_Keynote.mp4

Key Features of Windows 10 for Musicians and Music Apps:

• Greater emphasis on traditional laptop/desktop users
• Universal app development – features & API’s available across all devices, promising more music app development for more devices
• New MIDI API – available across all devices (desktop, tablet, phone, etc), multi-client support, reduce jitter
• Improved audio stack performance – promises to shave approx 15ms off of audio latency, ‘opt-in’ to lower buffers for even lower latency
• ‘Opt-in’ dedicated audio core – option to move audio processing to dedicated processor core for improved performance
• WASAPI enhancements
• AudioGraph – new API, built on WASAPI, offers ‘higher-level constructs’ for working with audio
• New Codecs – FLAC, ALAC
• Web Audio – included in Microsoft Edge, lets you use browser-based music apps

Microsoft is also looking at adding support for some other features, some of which will be familiar to OS X users, in future versions of the OS:

• USB-C
• Thunderbolt 3
• Bluetooth MIDI
• Lower audio latency
• Audio aggregation and routing
• USB Audio 2 Class
• USB 3/3.1
• MIDI routing

 

That is in comparison to windows 8/8.1, I think.

 

That's really exciting news. Thanks for the info sideshowbob.

 

Nice one for the info Sideshow, fingers crossed Windows 10 is actually deliver on the promises.

 

Thank you for sharing. They have really paid attention to the music software this time

 

Damn, I've been missing Sideshowbob'!
Thanks for the news, brother! (replying from my Win10, lol)

 

Thanks A Lot sideshowbob very useful information indeed , by the way even the directx12 is really cool thing in win 10 pro

 

Hmmm...

 

actually I liked Windows 10 so much! works good! and no need for Asio4all or any extranal hardware for audio

 

Just wondering if all new performance are taken from the exactly same clock speed...

How do you compare the Windows versione when it comes to audio? There is a sort of benchmark app??

 

Beginning of the end for Macs...lol...

edit: before I get in trouble I'm just breaking balls

 

For detailed benchmarks:
http://pcaudiolabs.com/windows-10-for-pro-audio/

 

For me the promise is not hold at the moment... I get dropouts with W10

 

do people really use WDM for DAW audio? lastime i tried ASIOforAll it was a blubbering mess, and more so when it defaulted to WDM when my Ultralite wasn't plugged in or on.

 

When you're using ASIO/MIDI drivers from the manufacturer of the audio interface you use, all what MS says doesn't matter because they improved Windows [WDM/WASAPI] audio/midi side of things. They cannot improve the performance of drivers that you use, but they can make them partially or completely incompatible, or just perform worse than under older Windows. So there's nothing to be really happy about, unless you use WDM/WASAPI a lot.

 

Exactly. I also tried to force CPU at lower state with K10stat (amd) and it worked for just 30 seconds and then back on higher state without doing nothing. Fan always on, good luck W10 users...