Poll: what OS do most people use for music production?

[tsenkov]

My sales are split about 50/50, with a slight skew towards OSX. A KVR poll, in the dev forum, with 90 or so respondents, shouldn't be construed as the final say on such matters.

Yes, I'm not sure why people have trouble understanding this. People @ KVR are probably overwhelmingly Windows users, but that doesn't in any way correspond to actual sales numbers. It'd be nice if more developers divulged this info, but for some reason some of them are strangely secretive about it, as if saying anything will potentially destroy their business.

I suppose it also depends what someone is developing. Valhalla (I assume the poster below represents that company) makes professional stuff. Sure, 50 dollars as such is not much, but then again, many hobbyists won't buy a mere reverb for 50 dollars, no matter how good it sounds.
Apple has always been an elitist thingy for wealthier people. And that will show in the sales of plugins as well.
Developers offering both Windows and OSX versions of their stuff should charge twice as much for OSX versions

@fluffy_little_something would you be so kind to share what plugins have you developed?

I started this poll, in this specific section of the forum for a reason and it's to get opinions from people building and selling music production software. It will be nice to actually connect the many statements you made here with your background, so we know what their actual weight is.

[fluffy_little_something]

Huh? Your initial post is not clear as to who you are asking. Are you asking only developers and/or end users as well?
As suggested in your initial post, I gave my opinion on this topic...

[random_id]

One thing that is very interesting for me is - what % of OS X users are with OS earlier than 10.9 Mavericks. What do you guys observe from your personal stats?

When I look at my download numbers, I get about a 60%/40% split, with Windows having more downloads (I can't tell by my sales).

This is my "gut" response. I think AU plugin users will probably have the latest version of OS X. Logic is huge, and Apple has a way of encouraging everyone using Logic to update to the latest versions.

On the other hand, I think there are a bunch of Pro Tools users that do not like to upgrade. Pro Tools is a pretty hefty beast, and I think people stick with what works. Therefore, there are users on 10.5, 10.6 that are using Pro Tools 10, and thus want RTAS plugins.

To also add on the comments related to this being in the DSP forum..., I also think there is some bias being on KVR. This website attracts certain types of musicians more than others. I would image that a similar poll on another site might yield different results just because of the user base.

[tsenkov]

One thing that is very interesting for me is - what % of OS X users are with OS earlier than 10.9 Mavericks. What do you guys observe from your personal stats?

When I look at my download numbers, I get about a 60%/40% split, with Windows having more downloads (I can't tell by my sales).

This is my "gut" response. I think AU plugin users will probably have the latest version of OS X. Logic is huge, and Apple has a way of encouraging everyone using Logic to update to the latest versions.

On the other hand, I think there are a bunch of Pro Tools users that do not like to upgrade. Pro Tools is a pretty hefty beast, and I think people stick with what works. Therefore, there are users on 10.5, 10.6 that are using Pro Tools 10, and thus want RTAS plugins.

To also add on the comments related to this being in the DSP forum..., I also think there is some bias being on KVR. This website attracts certain types of musicians more than others. I would image that a similar poll on another site might yield different results just because of the user base.

Thanks again for the useful insight!

[valhallasound]

Sean, thanks so much for sharing this.

If you are tracking this, would you be willing to share what % of your OS X customers are on OS X lower than 10.9?

I don't have any way of tracking this. My breakdown is basically Windows versus OSX. I have installers for each OS, and can track the downloads of each, but that is about it.

Sean Costello

[tsenkov]

Sean, thanks so much for sharing this.

If you are tracking this, would you be willing to share what % of your OS X customers are on OS X lower than 10.9?

I don't have any way of tracking this. My breakdown is basically Windows versus OSX. I have installers for each OS, and can track the downloads of each, but that is about it.

Sean Costello

Fair enough. Thanks for getting back to me. Please, accept my apologies for the messy thread.

[mystran]

For Windows, use VisualStudio 2010 or later (pretty easy). I've heard that some recent changes in Visual Studio make supporting XP more difficult. There are still some XP users out there, but Microsoft hasn't supported XP for years. It might be best to have your first plugins NOT support XP, as keeping the support for this up and running will be problematic with SDK and compiler changes. Plus, you'd have to keep an XP machine running for testing.

The extra challenge is just a matter of having to set a non-default platform toolkit in the project properties. You probably set about half a dozen properties already for every plugin project (eg. /MT, /fp:fast, /arch:SSE2 or whatever .. and so on), so not exactly a huge deal.

[random_id]

With Visual Studio, I am using 2015 with the 2013 XP toolset. I think 2015 also has an XP toolset, but I had some issues with it (whatever it was, I can't remember). The process is pretty painless, you just need to install both VS versions. Then for each project, select the correct toolset under properties. So I am using v12_XP for everything and it is working so far.

[fluffy_little_something]

I think developers should get organized and jointly decide to abandon certain older operating systems, so they can focus more on improving their products as such. The longer they support outdated operating systems, the longer those will be around, which is a vicious circle. When nobody supports older systems anymore, those will soon be gone. As long as only only a few products are not available for a given operating system, users can opt for an alternative product and continue to use outdated operating systems.

[trimph1]

I notice that Linux is out of the running...

[valhallasound]

For Windows, use VisualStudio 2010 or later (pretty easy). I've heard that some recent changes in Visual Studio make supporting XP more difficult. There are still some XP users out there, but Microsoft hasn't supported XP for years. It might be best to have your first plugins NOT support XP, as keeping the support for this up and running will be problematic with SDK and compiler changes. Plus, you'd have to keep an XP machine running for testing.

The extra challenge is just a matter of having to set a non-default platform toolkit in the project properties. You probably set about half a dozen properties already for every plugin project (eg. /MT, /fp:fast, /arch:SSE2 or whatever .. and so on), so not exactly a huge deal.

Any recommendations for which platform toolkits will still have backwards compatibility with XP?

I should also note that I have to use fp:precise for my Juce GUI code, as it doesn't seem to work properly when optimized for fast floating point and SSE2. I set the optimization flags on a per-file basis.

Sean Costello

[Taron]

Just a little "thank you" for the brilliant poll!
It does put things into perspective. Whereby [32 bit] would've been an interesting addition, because I really wonder how many people are left, who are exclusively on 32bit systems. Nothing crucial, but curious...

[Keith99]

For Windows, use VisualStudio 2010 or later (pretty easy). I've heard that some recent changes in Visual Studio make supporting XP more difficult. There are still some XP users out there, but Microsoft hasn't supported XP for years. It might be best to have your first plugins NOT support XP, as keeping the support for this up and running will be problematic with SDK and compiler changes. Plus, you'd have to keep an XP machine running for testing.

The extra challenge is just a matter of having to set a non-default platform toolkit in the project properties. You probably set about half a dozen properties already for every plugin project (eg. /MT, /fp:fast, /arch:SSE2 or whatever .. and so on), so not exactly a huge deal.

Any recommendations for which platform toolkits will still have backwards compatibility with XP?

I should also note that I have to use fp:precise for my Juce GUI code, as it doesn't seem to work properly when optimized for fast floating point and SSE2. I set the optimization flags on a per-file basis.

Sean Costello

Visual Studio 2013 still has support for Windows XP, it comes with the platform toolset, but I am not sure about Vis 2015

[tsenkov]

Just a little "thank you" for the brilliant poll!
It does put things into perspective. Whereby [32 bit] would've been an interesting addition, because I really wonder how many people are left, who are exclusively on 32bit systems. Nothing crucial, but curious...

You are welcome. Indeed, I didn't think of that at the beginning - I apologise, I should've thought about the supported architectures (32/64bit), too.

[Ivan_C]

I should also note that I have to use fp:precise for my Juce GUI code

I'm curious about that one, could you tell us more about that ?

I use all the time fp:fast since some of my code get significant improvements on the CPU load side this way...