I have similar findings, here's the latency performance for my Audiobox 1818VSL (an older interface to be fair) on Windows 10 and 10.14.6 Mojave, on the same machine, both running Studio One 4:



So you're losing in terms of both performance, and latency.

 

I have a hackintosh with proper kernel power management including 30% cpu overclock, so I can do pretty much direct comparison (High Sierra 10.13.6 vs Windows 10 1909)
- just tell me how exactly, and I can try some proper comparison
I prefer Reaper (least resource-heavy multiplatform DAW), don't have many Kontakt libraries or instruments though..

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in here. @Strychnine Yes I am aware about the fact, that both OS are tasking their CPU management differently. I was just curious which one would perform better in an average DAW scenario. But it seems to depend a lot on what you're doing.

It's funny, I always thought OSX would give the better latency and Windows the stability in bigger projects, but it seems to be the opposite (which is fine for my purpose :D).

@tzzsmk That would be great! I did run a MIDI file through DIVA and Serum in each OS (in a Loop, at 140bpm) and duplicated the instrument until I realized any audio crackles. I did this on 512 buffer size. Of course this is not a complete testing, just to get some impressions. But we could than compare our results with each other. And also post screenshots of Intel Power Gadget to see what's going on with the machine. For some BIOS reasons, my power consumption wasn't displayed when I made the screenshots, but it's just in relation to the core usage.

The MIDI file is attached to this post.
DIVA preset: 4 Dream Synth - MM Cosmic Bliss (Multicore mode enabled)
Serum preset: Pads - PD Serenity
Loop, 140bpm, 512 buffer size

If I remember correctly, my results were 7 Diva tracks on OSX and 14 on Windows. And something about 360 Serum tracks on OSX, have to check back the number of Serums I got to work with Windows. Will also do some tests for different buffer sizes to observe changes in CPU power consumption behavior.

As I said, this was tested on an i9-10940X.

 

Because they are Italian and they don't care if it is legal or not. Their only aim is to make (or to steal) money.
I'm Italian too, so I know quite well the culture.

In the 80s here in Italy, tabacco shops and also Italian companies (Armati) sold officially pirated Commodore 64 videogame collections on cassette and floppy disk for a very cheap price, just to make an example.

 

Last edited: Sep 8, 2020

auwmiigod~* thanks for bringing up this thread.. reminds me to pursue my little wish wanting to hands on logic pro (on windows 10).. used to live with amd zacate.. upon web research, i think my new budget range build can hackintosh now (i hope).. wish mew lux guis <3 #keepthespiwwrit #mekmusik

https://amp.reddit.com/r/hackintosh...n_3_3200g_catalina_windows_10_dualboot_using/

 

I have and use both systems for years. Windows and Mac.

macOS wins in usability, stability, OS speed, default features, memory usage, filesystem, multitasking, virus/malware protection and user-friendliness.
Hackintoshes work like a charm, and you easily get a better performance than the original ones for 1/5 of the price, if you have Apple compatible hardware inside your machine. The configuration is long and painful, but afterwards it is very stable and you don't have troubles for years.

Windows wins in pirated stuff, videogames and 3d-/video works.
Windows 10 is full of bloatware, incoherent and very ugly UI, Windows 10 Start menu is such a crap, the OS is really user unfriendly and a lot of stupid and non-logic things, very vulnerable, so many things you have to change manually in the registry to get it right, the file explorer is full of unneeded buttons and options, spywares (Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry service), fake multitasking, too frequent and sometimes dangerous updates...

For working with sound I think, Windows is better.

 

Last edited: Sep 8, 2020

I'm yet to use any virus/malware protection on Windows. User-friendliness is measured by what you know better. In terms of memory usage, I actually see macOS (10.14.6 Mojave) using 20-30GB on my machine with 32GB of RAM on a daily basis (we're talking ~150 tabs in Vivaldi/Chrome). They use all of your memory so it isn't wasted by not being used. As soon as you need the memory for something else, it's freed up. The same goes for all mobile platforms (which is why task killers for Android make no sense), and it's the same for Windows since Vista or 7, can't remember - it's called prefetch and caches programs you used recently in RAM so they open faster.

This is accurate, provided you triple-check the hardware before purchasing and spend the time to learn to do it properly. Any premade installer from a random youtube video or facebook group is only a recipe for disaster later on.

This is kind of puzzling to me. Windows 10's start menu is widely considered to be a great move forward, it's faster and more efficient than Windows 7 (most notably in terms of being able to search instantly, as well as not having to click "show all programs" every single time you need to run something). The OS is really user friendly to anyone who uses Windows on a daily basis, and pretty much everything is straight up copied from Windows 8, which was straight up copied from Windows 7, which was straight up copied from Windows Vista... you see the point. It hasn't changed anywhere for decades for the most part. Most of the system tools are really unchanged back from Windows 2000 days. Apart from the dual control panel clusterfuck, you get improved task manager with way more details than before, it's now easier to check the spec of a computer you're given to troubleshoot, etc.

File Explorer is improved a lot in Windows 8/10, too. Lots of important options that were hidden are now easily accessible, including item checkboxes (for selecting things without holding ctrl), file extensions and hidden files (which used to require alt to show menu, options > folder options, some tab, scrolling to the option to show file extensions clicking it, then applying). They also removed the Organize/Include in library/Share with/New folder nonsense from the toolbar, freeing up valuable space. You can also easily copy the path to an item. And finally, you can hide the toolbar if you know your keyboard shortcuts and prefer to not have any junk shown at all times and cluttering the screen - which you couldn't do in Windows 7. The "unneeded buttons and options" can be hidden, which was not the case with Windows 7.

I don't understand the part with "fake multitasking", since the only fake multitasking I know of in Windows was in Windows 95, which was due to DOS compatibility. It was the same in macOS system versions before macOS X came about. The NT kernel supports full, "real" multitasking, just as valid as anything else.

I'm also yet to have a problem due to "spyware" (which can be disabled by using a group policy IIRC), which is also present on macOS every time you get a crash. People don't seem to complain about spyware in their Nvidia drivers, Skype, Google Chrome, Office, Discord, Android phone, Facebook, YouTube, pretty much every mobile game and app ever, and tons of other software they use. Analytics is a common thing and even people like your bank mobile app do it. It's what allows people who develop the software have any clue if there are bugs and how they might have happened.

Updates are a hit or miss thing, personally I have never had any problems, the only issues I had were while using Insider Preview builds on Fast Ring (basically, betatesting early versions before they were released to get access to early features). I've heard horror stories from my friends and realized most of them were using older hardware, so the hardware you're running on is likely the deciding factor. Frequency is not as much of an issue as you might think, given the updates became very small in terms of download size (since they finally figured out how to only download things that changed instead of the full system), and thus install quicker. In my case, they usually get installed overnight, so I wake up and the worst I've seen is the computer restarted because an update got installed.

The part with system vulnerability - well, the ones which are very vulnerable are the ones that are decades old and abandoned, like everything from Windows 7 and older.

 

I find Windows 10 start menu really confusing, unclear and unpractical. These alphabet letters in the programs list take space away for nothing and are completely unnecessary. Too much space between every line, also this stupid metro app and advertising part takes too much room away and I find it really disturbing, having it in a start menu. I removed that part completely and all this related metro garbage. These animated effects in the start menu are useless, the used system font (Segoe UI) is ugly, Windows font rendering is harsh (cleartype).
I had to install a third party software (Stardock Start 10) to get it simple and much more usable. The search bar in the taskbar also takes space away for nothing. The space between the applications in the taskbar is too huge, the new settings windows are also very unclear and confusing in structure. There is so much unbalanced and incoherent stuff everywhere in the Windows UI design.
The Windows 7 start menu was so much better, clearer and usable in my opinion. There is somewhere an option, which now I don't remember now, that gives you the possibility to show always all programs in the start menu without to have to open it. This in fact was annoying.
In every Windows version there are so many default configurations which are so wrong and unusable in my opinion.

I don't think so. There is so much wrong in my opinion. It's missing simplicity completely. You can't order your drives as you want on the left side, you can't decide the things you want and you don't want to have there (network for example) without changing the registry or third party softwares (Winaero Tweaker). When you click on a drive or a device it always opens the folder structure below which is completely useless and disturbing, because it takes space away and you lose the clear view of your devices. Folders should only be visible on the right side. These stupid icons on the top left side of the titlebar which you can't hide completely is stupid, the menu below is also visually too much filled with unnecessary options and it is disturbing. A lot of stuff is there that you don't need to have in that place.
Just try to use macOS Finder for some time and then use File Explorer afterwards und you'll notice such a huge difference in usability and user oriented design. The file tagging system with colors in macOS is also so useful which you can't do in Windows. The fast preview of every file by hitting the spacebar in Finder is so helpful, the direct audio and video preview on the icon... There are so many things better done in macOS.

The multitasking in Windows is fake for many reasons. If you for example open or do many things at the same time, the OS gets really slow and sometimes it also freezes or hangs. Sometimes it's enough to copy a certain amount of files from one location to another to notice this system slowdown... Also, if a program crashes, it happens also that the complete system hangs or freezes until you open the task manager (if you are still able) and force close the crashed program.
This never happens in macOS. You can open applications as much as you want and you don't notice any slow downs. And if something crashes, which is very seldom, the system is never affected and you can force quit the application with a right click. Moreover, the most of the time when this happens in macOS, it reopens the application and recover all the stuff on which you were working. Instead on Windows you have lost all your work.
I have both systems on the same desktop and laptop PC. So, the hardware is the same for both operating systems.

Updates on Windows are really annoying. Firstly, because sometimes they get installed in the background without asking or advising you. Afterwards, when you shut down your machine you have to wait minutes and minutes for finishing the installation process. And this in some situations could be really a problem. A friend of mine happened this after a performance and he had to wait half an hour until it finished with the update...
Windows has really too many useless updates, and too often. Sometimes it also happens that Microsoft put an update online without testing it carefully and it screws up your system completely and you can't boot anymore.
In macOS you have 4-5 updates a year and nothing else.

Also Windows 10 is very vulnerable because it still relies on the registry. I find so many times viruses, malwares, adwares, PUPs on my Windows 10 system...
These things didn't changed that much, even with the new version and with all these constant "security" updates.


Then, the whole macOS system (Mojave) needs just 8 Gigabytes of disk space, meanwhile Windows 10 at least 20-30 Gigabytes. The booting time for Mojave with a SSD is around 5-6 seconds. Windows 10 needs 20 seconds and more, and also when your Desktop screen appears, you have to wait further time to use the system.

There is so much wrong and so many things poorly cured in Windows.

 

Last edited: Sep 10, 2020

Agree on the font rendering, in terms of start menu there's an option to disable "suggested applications", though I never use the start menu since you can start typing your search right after pressing the Win key.

In my experience, this type of software ends up doing more harm than good, I'd expect things to break someday after some update due to incompatibility - or other weirdness/bugs to occur. I prefer running as stock as possible.

It can be set to search bar, search icon, or disabled. It's useless since you can use Win+S insted, so hiding this bar (and the workspace button next to it which is equivalent to Win+Tab) is the first thing I do on a fresh install.

You can set it to be the old long Windows XP-style bars which waste space, grouped or even separate for each window of the same program. You can also set the whole taskbar to be half the size, which I often do on notebooks with a small resolution. Usually I have my taskbar on the left side of the screen in small size, this gives you more vertical screen space when working - since in the days of widescreen monitors we pretty much always end up with unused space on either side of the screen.

This is accurate, fortunately you can get to most things by pressing start, typing "control" and pressing enter. Most of the things you need are still there.

There is, this is due to "Windows" being scattered across multiple development teams with not much in terms of central quality control or design/vision - each team does their own little thing, and the results can be quite disjointed. On the flipside, they're finally opening up to feedback and sharing their work early (at least some of the teams), so things that were long forgotten in the system now finally got some love.

There are. As in any system. Just think of the first things you do when setting up a new Mac. Setting "Allow apps downloaded from" to Anywhere instead of just the App Store? Reversing the scrolling direction back to normal? You bet. The best part about Windows 10's start menu and its biggest advantage over Windows 7 in my opinion is that you can pretend the start menu doesn't exist and use search for everything instead. Couldn't do that with XP at all (the horror of scrolling through folders which don't fit on the screen...), and with 7 it was slow and required some mouse clicking. I prefer having anything I might want to open right on my keyboard. In Windows 10, it's almost as good as Spotlight on Mac.

I did. I'm working on 10.14.6 Mojave exclusively for over a year, even though I can reboot to Windows 10 any time, and I have Windows 10 on my notebook. Finder is absolutely atrocious for file management. It will only move things to the correct folder if I drag something right to the text on a folder - a pixel to the right makes it drop where I didn't want it to, in the main opened folder. The default icon view is useless, switching to Details is the first thing I do. FTP mounting doesn't work for me at all on some servers I admin, so I need to use Filezilla instead. Default ZIP support is wonky and doesn't allow you to see the file list before extracting. Unarchiver/Keka/BetterZip (tried them all, settled for the last one) have their own problems, the Finder integration in BetterZip doesn't work at all for some unknown reason, and it won't support .zip.001-type files. To be honest, for anything .rar or multipart, I prefer to use 7z from the terminal - it's faster and more reliable than any Mac program I tried. Same goes for converting videos - to get fast conversion from .ts to .mp4 without re-encoding the file and waiting 20 minutes with full GPU usage and 80 degrees C blasting at me from the exhaust fan, I need to use ffmpeg in the terminal. I also can't set custom keyboard shortcuts in Finder - and any script I write goes in some weird Services/Quick Actions and can't be assigned a shortcut. Windows is no better in that regard, but I use XYplorer with custom file associations and actions mapped to shortcuts (simple things like "replace all _ with spaces" or "convert to mp4" right in the context menu). I'm using Path Finder on macOS at the moment, but I find myself running XYplorer in Parallels very often when I need quick keyboard-driven file management.

Also, Finder will often do weird things when moving big (30GB+) sample libraries, like "the folder has been moved, but the original can't be deleted" even though the source drive is writeable (okay it's NTFS with Paragon NTFS, but still - I get no issues running mv from Terminal or using Path Finder). More importantly, when moving/copying folders and some of them already exist, Finder will ask if I want to replace the folder or cancel. Windows meaning of replace is copy everything and overwrite whatever files were there. Finder meaning of replace is delete what was there and make the destination exactly as the source. I've lost hundreds of GB of data because of this issue. Never happened on Windows, never happened when using terminal, never happened when using Path Finder. It's completely due to bugged, crappy Finder. Stock Windows File Explorer is better than it.

Well, opening 10 apps at the same time also slows down my Mac. Any misbehaving, poorly written apps also contribute to freezes or hangs. So this is mostly a 3rd party software thing, the stock apps all run fine for me on both systems.

This is due to Windows first making a list of all files and then doing it. It's crap, and takes a long time. Third party copy handlers (e.g. TeraCopy, or there's one built into XYplorer) bypass this issue and make things a lot faster. It will also queue operations so you don't slow your external HDD/flash drive to zero when adding multiple jobs - by default, Windows will try to juggle all operations at the same time. MacOS also does this.

It doesn't, unless the problem was the application took over all of your resources. This is the same on macOS. I've had complete system hangs and freezes where the only option was to reboot the system, even though the cursor moved, nothing responded and keyboard didn't work, either. Force Quit window wouldn't open, either. Even keyboard shortcuts for logout, shutdown, or restart wouldn't respond. On Mac. For Windows, try Ctrl+Shift+Escape, it bypasses the full screen where you select Task Manager. The behavior of reopening last opened windows and files is annoying to me, if I restarted my computer while having a Facebook client, Discord and other random folders and things open, I might have restarted because I wanted to wipe the screen clean.

Depends on how you set it up. On Windows 10 Pro, you can set group policies. This is designed for managing multiple computers in a office setting, but you can set it on one computer as well. It allows you to never check for updates, check but show a message when it finished downloading that asks you when to install (and won't install unless you let it), or not download automatically and just let you know there's update available. If you click OK it will then download and install. I use the last option, or the one to never check as I periodically go to Windows Update and check myself.

All situations where updates took a long time I've seen are on crap ultra-small notebooks with dual core, low power processors and like 4-8 GB of RAM. And they usually had a year worth of updates that they skipped, so it was really like 5 different updates one after another, with restarts inbetween. And even then, on the crappy laptops (with crap HDDs) it took like 30-40 minutes max. In my case, I never seen a update screen, since it happens overnight on my desktop.

Define useless, I haven't seen anything useful added in Mojave updates except support for new DLSR cameras which I don't have, or updates to Safari which I don't use. I do install all the updates just so it stops showing a "1" badge on the dock though.

As said before, I have never had an update completely break the system unless I was running beta versions that I opted into, neither did any of my relatives who use 4-5 year old computers. Perhaps if you're running something even older, or something very weird/uncommon, you could have trouble. Or if you're using things like 10-15 year old audio interfaces on PCIe cards that crash the system and aren't supported since Vista or 7.

Then you don't have enough common sense or basic precautions on using the Internet. It's basic knowledge that you don't just click "next", because the way shady companies make money now is by adding their crap into good software in the installer, so people who can't read carefully install all sorts of crap on their computer. I haven't had a single virus, malware, adware or PUP since 2002. And I don't use any antivirus software, I even disable the one built into Windows because I don't like it preventing me from opening my ZIP files right after I download them.

The registry isn't the part that's vulnerable. MacOS uses text files in the system directory. Registry is literally the same, except it's all in one file instead of millions of files in millions of folders. The problem is usually "cleaner" software that deletes things that were actually important, or "registry tweaks" that break things.

Actually, using Clover here, and the boot time is 3-4x longer than Windows 10 here. Granted, this is due to graphics driver and kext injection while booting, but on Windows 10 I get 6-7 seconds from power button to desktop, with Mojave it's 1-2 minutes.

Just like in any other software.

 

I'm running a HP z820 with dual 8-core Xeons E5-2687w v2.
Win 10 64 and MacOs Catalina 10.15.7 (with proper power management and everything working).

A couple of years ago i posted my logic benchmark results over at gearslutz and maxed logic out (if i recall correctly logic had a 256 max track count back then) with an almost 40% cpu headroom. (with my old E5-2670 dual setup).
The machine did cost me 1000 euros.

The one i got now is even faster (around 15-20%) and was even cheaper at 900 euros total.

Having said that, Hackintoshing can be a frustrating endeavour but in the end really is worth it.

I've seen a lot more problems with real macs than i had over the years running my Hacks(almost zero in my case if i count the one time i had a crash with logic 9 on my Gigabyte p35-ds4 system 7-8 years ago. It was a 100+ track arrangement wit a lot of VST's running).

Other than that win 10 is at least as capable and solid as MacOs and to be honest i never got my head around the praise of MacOs. I even had to install magnet to MacOs because the Win10 window workflow is a huge timesaver when multitasking.

 

This, I have noticed faster animations, lower reported latency (Studio One, Audiobox 1818VSL) and generally better performance in Windows 10 over macOS (Mojave in my case). I have a sneaky suspicion this is due to me using Mojave way more than win10 (so there's more software installed and running), but right when I installed both clean systems, win10 still felt a touch faster. This is on i7-8700K with an RX580 8GB and 64 gigs of 3000MHz RAM.

 

I did a comparison between MacOs and Win 10 with a benchmark i've created.

I used one of the demo songs (Adam Nitti's track) and added instances of Mosquito playing quarter notes throughout the whole song.

What i noticed was that on MacOs (High Sierra) the number of added instances was higher but the system became sluggish.
On Win10 with less instances of the synth (before the occurring dropouts) the system (multitasking) remained completely usable and smooth.

My best guess is that MacOs prioritizes Audio over Video.

Here's the thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StudioOne/comments/a4gjb6/anyone_running_smoothly_on_pc/
And a follow-up
https://www.reddit.com/r/StudioOne/comments/bsvw6l/studio_one_45_performance_gain/

 

Windows 10 is useable with a bit of work. First I agree the interface is dreadful. Get hold of a bit of software called Stardock. You can change the interface to be (almost) identical to Windows 7.

W10 Privacy is a bit of software that lets you block all the Telemetry, spyware and Windows crap. You can also disable Updates and Windows Defender.

Finally get a free copy of Malwarebytes Windows Firewall control and use it to block all the crap the "writes home"

I have built several Hackintoshes. I looked at doing a laptop, but gave up because of wireless kexts.

I can build a Hackintosh with 64GB RAM, and 4 or 5 Hard Drives of any size and an i7 CPU. Getting a compatible motherboard is #1, with a couple of PCI slots for add-ons. I've used almost exclusively ASUS boards, they have good support. I agree, Windows is better for sound and range of "available" (you know what I mean) software.

Studio One is fine for what I want. Logic is nice, especially the Notation, but lacking in Chords and Lead Sheets, which Studio One has, if you have Notion. If you just want to print very nicely laid out Notation with or without Tablature, Logic Pro is brilliant, but if you want to print the chords or Lead Sheet, Logic doesn't do it (without a lot of manual work.

It's horses for courses, but I would NEVER buy a genuine Mac, when I can build an upgradeable Hackintosh for a fraction of the price. Getting a compatible motherboard is the most important step. You can always find compatible video, card. Wireless is a pain.

Because I really only use Logic for printing Scores, I'm running Mojave on VMware, Logic doesn't work on VMware using Catalina or higher. I would hate to try recording on it, but playback and editing is fine.

 

Have you tested for DPC latency? Things like GPU drivers and other devices can use what's called DPC, which is effectively locking out the CPU for a moment (interrupt), if it happens to be right when you need that last millisecond to fill in your ASIO buffer, glitches happen. NVIDIA GPUs, WLAN cards are the most common culprits, but I've seen blueray drives reducing the effective performance. Try High Performance power plan, disable wifi, unplug unnecessary USB devices, setting a fixed CPU clock is also a good thing to do - when your CPU boosts temporarily, you can add new plugins but after a minute or two the thermal limit is reached and your clocks drop, reducing the number of plugins. Having a fixed clock can help there giving you more consistent performance.

I've never needed Windows 10 to look like Windows 7. Windows 10 is faster and the search blows it out of the water. Additional theming software is more always trouble than it's worth for me, YMMV.

Defender (like any antivirus software) can interfere with loading files from disk, slowing down things like Kontakt because it scans all files before they get loaded. Telemetry and spyware is a debatable topic, and let me tell you, you get way more of it on macOS

You can do the same thing with Windows Firewall, no need for additional software.

The only thing you need is a wireless card that macOS knows how to talk to. It's not hard, but you need to do your research and possibly replace your card.