And low latency audio might fly out of my butt.

It will be interesting to see how possible it will become to build the equivalent of a VST host and plugins in winrt. At the moment it is a non starter as it doesn't even support midi (ios did not either until 4.2). Looks like due to the sandboxing and limited background tasking the Reason 6.5 model might be the only choice where plugins are developed in the hosts format.
One thing that makes you think is how long the OS has had a bad security model. A vst plugin unbeknown to the user can access any file on the system and the network connection. For the typical user winrt is much safer - everything sandboxed, nothing trusted and apps have to ask permission to resources.

Note that metro applications can't be extended after installation. i.e. you can't add plugins to an app later. All plugins must ship with the original application. This makes 3rd part plugins difficult (not impossible... but painfull).

Just installed VS11 on a virtual machine and made some tests.
I've imported my VS2010 VST projects without issues (apart of the lack of the Windows 7.1 SDK) and built them with the new "v110" toolset. Everything is fine, but I had to disable the GUI library (VSTGUI 4), as it won't compile because of the lack of the gdi32.h header...

I'm not seeing any performance improvement anyway, building in release configuration I notice exactly the same CPU usage as the VS 2010 version compiled with the same flags.
I can't test the new "Advanced Vector Extensions" feature (AVX), as it should work on Sandy Bridge processors only, in fact the plug-in causes an error during scan if I compile it with that feature active (I'm using a first generation Intel Core i7).

Keep in mind that I've toyed with it just a few minutes, I may be missing something.

I'm using the Express version.

Anyone else tried it with VST projects?

I can see where this goes. Windows 9:One button per full screen.

Well, they relented for VS12:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/microsoft -extends-visual-studio-express-2012-desktop-apps-195242

To be honest, I'd be using Ubuntu now if there was more application support for it. The fact that VSTs and many applications I use are Windows-only has held me back. I am perfectly happy with the Ubuntu desktop.

Same here. To me it feels like there's a huge need for a dedicated DAW OS. Something based on Linux and what all manufacturers would support. All i'd need would be Elicenser + Cubase, as it seems vst are already working. Better yet if everything was native + winevst for the ones that arent.


Btw. I've thought of going fully virtual.. running 7 + Cubase + vst's inside a virtualmachine in Linux. But there isn't proper support for Asio and multiple i/o.

I'm glad I experienced the years where computer programs could run free. Seems like TRON wasn't so much of a fantasy after all. No App escapes the Master Microsoft Control Program. NO APP!