Future of Windows in pro audio

[audiojunkie]

Apple? Too many, “is x plugin compatible with the latest operating system?” complaints.

If there was some magical event that made all my software work natively in Linux… I’d probably switch, if there was a performance benefit.

Those Apple complaints are illegitimate in 2026.

But what about 2027? 2028? Why would I trust a company that has consistently shown its willingness to ignore backwards compatibility?

Rosetta disproves that assertion. That said, there are times where, for security or architectural reasons, backwards compatibility is not possible. I was 100% on Windows back when Microsoft changed security requirements with UAC and introduced the VirtualStore location with Windows Vista, and that screwed up compatibility with a lot of existing software. I remember specifically problems with AmpliTube not being able to save and load presets because the standard location suddenly became verboten. That required compatibility updates from IK Multimedia and other developers for those plugins to be usable again.

There have been similar broken compatibility with graphics due to various changes to Windows that left plugins with black screens until they were updated, when Microsoft changed graphics frameworks.

And I remember when Windows 2000 came out and no drivers worked anymore. Printers, CD burners, audio devices... none of it worked. And there were still massive driver issues at the start of XP. It required lots of hardware manufactures to scramble and develop new NT compatible drivers. And older hardware that was no longer supported just simply never worked again. The point is, it happens on all OSes, it is not a Mac-exclusive phenomenon, as many Windows partisans pretend.

All I'm trying to tell you here is that all of that upheaval on macOS leading up to and after Apple Silicon was carefully planned and staged to get Apple from an Intel-based platform to an Apple Silicon based platform, and it was executed as smoothly as humanly possible, and it is complete now. I haven't ever personally experienced any of these backwards compatibility issues, and I've transitioned from MacOS High Sierra through to Tahoe over two MacBooks, one Intel and one Apple Silicon. The only issue I've had to deal with that I can think of has been waiting for plugins to be ported to native Apple Silicon so I could run native Apple Silicon VST3 plugins in the native Apple Silicon version of Studio One. There are only 4 plugins that I used that never made the leap.

Any plugin that has been in active development within the past 5 years is compatible.

So what about my plugins that work perfectly well but have not been in active development?

It's the same kind of situation as abandoned 32-bit plugins on Windows. Thanks to Rosetta2, it can be done. If they are VST3, you will need to run an Intel-based DAW on Apple Silicon, just as you need a 32-bit DAW to run 32-bit plugins on Windows. But on Mac, Intel-based Audio Units plugins will actually run in native Apple Silicon DAWs because of Apple's AUHostingCompatibilityService. Eventually they will stop working if they're abandonware, if Apple stops supporting Rosetta2. But the same sort of x86-to-ARM upheaval is coming to Windows, too.

One of the nice things with that for linux, is that there is already an existing (and working) project for running X86-64 applications on Linux using the ARM architecture. If I’m not mistaken, I read that Microsoft has it planned and wants it to be a seamless transition, so they are working on it too.

[jamcat]

Yes, but Apple has already gone through it and come out the other side. So we have the advantage here of the difficult work and difficult times already being over, rather than still ahead.

[audiojunkie]

Yes, but Apple has already gone through it and come out the other side. So we have the advantage here of the difficult work and difficult times already being over, rather than still ahead of us.

Oh, I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying that all three of the big desktop OSes are doing it. I don’t think CPU architecture change will affect any of the major OSes too negatively. Linux has been supporting ARM since it came out. Windows is probably the furthest behind in this area, but they are getting there too.

[jamcat]

Right. They have to. The x86_64 architecture has run out of road.

Yes, Apple had to break a few eggs to make an omelette. But that omelette is here now, and it is delicious.

You're going to lose some old plugins no matter which OS you're on. But you have to let go of the past before you can embrace the future.

[keys_au1]

Will ARM allow low level access to the USB ports using WINE to run windows apps in Linux?

And in simple terms, difference between ARM and the X86_64?

Thanks

[audiojunkie]

Will ARM allow low level access to the USB ports using WINE to run windows apps in Linux?

And in simple terms, difference between ARM and the X86_64?

Thanks

TL;DR - That is unlikely—at least in the near future, because it is in WINE’s realm and it isn’t a high priority right now for them.

I’ll explain. The things you mention are apples-vs-oranges issues. One is a chip architecture issue, and the other is an OS compatibility layer issue.

In order for applications to run natively on a chip architecture, the applications must be compiled to that architecture. In other words, in order for X86-64 applications to run on ARM architecture natively, the original source code must be compiled with a compiler on the ARM architecture.

As for WINE, things get more complicated, because WINE is designed to run X86-64 architecture Windows apps. In order for this to work, there would need to be an ARM to X86-64 emulation layer that WINE can run on top of, to then run the Windows X86-64 apps from. The good news, as I mentioned above, is that this project already exists and works (FEX).

But that again brings us to WINE. WINE does not currently support much of anything with USB, and very little development is being done on this front that I’m aware of. That’s where the problem lies.

[keys_au1]

ok cool, thanks AJ -that illuminates it a bit more! I sorta get it now haha!

[zerocrossing]

Apple? Too many, “is x plugin compatible with the latest operating system?” complaints.

If there was some magical event that made all my software work natively in Linux… I’d probably switch, if there was a performance benefit.

Those Apple complaints are illegitimate in 2026.

But what about 2027? 2028? Why would I trust a company that has consistently shown its willingness to ignore backwards compatibility?

Rosetta disproves that assertion. That said, there are times where, for security or architectural reasons, backwards compatibility is not possible. I was 100% on Windows back when Microsoft changed security requirements with UAC and introduced the VirtualStore location with Windows Vista, and that screwed up compatibility with a lot of existing software. I remember specifically problems with AmpliTube not being able to save and load presets because the standard location suddenly became verboten. That required compatibility updates from IK Multimedia and other developers for those plugins to be usable again.

There have been similar broken compatibility with graphics due to various changes to Windows that left plugins with black screens until they were updated, when Microsoft changed graphics frameworks.

And I remember when Windows 2000 came out and no drivers worked anymore. Printers, CD burners, audio devices... none of it worked. And there were still massive driver issues at the start of XP. It required lots of hardware manufactures to scramble and develop new NT compatible drivers. And older hardware that was no longer supported just simply never worked again. The point is, it happens on all OSes, it is not a Mac-exclusive phenomenon, as many Windows partisans pretend.

All I'm trying to tell you here is that all of that upheaval on macOS leading up to and after Apple Silicon was carefully planned and staged to get Apple from an Intel-based platform to an Apple Silicon based platform, and it was executed as smoothly as humanly possible, and it is complete now. I haven't ever personally experienced any of these backwards compatibility issues, and I've transitioned from MacOS High Sierra through to Tahoe over two MacBooks, one Intel and one Apple Silicon. The only issue I've had to deal with that I can think of has been waiting for plugins to be ported to native Apple Silicon so I could run native Apple Silicon VST3 plugins in the native Apple Silicon version of Studio One, instead of going through Rosetta2. There are only 4 plugins that I used that never made the leap.

Any plugin that has been in active development within the past 5 years is compatible.

So what about my plugins that work perfectly well but have not been in active development?

It's the same kind of situation as abandoned 32-bit plugins on Windows. Thanks to Rosetta2, it can be done. If they are VST3, you will need to run an Intel-based DAW on Apple Silicon, just as you need a 32-bit DAW to run 32-bit plugins on Windows. But on Mac, Intel-based Audio Units plugins will actually run in native Apple Silicon DAWs because of Apple's AUHostingCompatibilityService. Eventually they will stop working if they're abandonware, if Apple stops supporting Rosetta2. But the same sort of x86-to-ARM upheaval is coming to Windows, too.

I switched to PC sometime around 2007 to run a plugin called Mobius. It's an audio looper that's roughly based on the Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro (later made by Gibson). I bought a Toshiba laptop that ran Vista. I still had a G5 at the time, but slowly phased it out and switched to Dell PCs, though now I have them built to my specs by a local shop. To be honest, I've had very few compatibility issues since I went to Windows. Bitwig has a built in bridge for 32 bit plugins.

So I went to Apple to see what a PC that would serve me the ability to run a bunch of monitors (I run 3) and it looks like with the specs I like, I'd have to drop $3,899.00. That's almost twice what I spent on my current machine, and includes $1,200 for a 4 tb SSD. What the hell? I think what's in my PC now was 1/3 that price. It's f'n ridiculous that Apple bilks its customers in this way. No thank you. When Apple makes a machine that I can easily open up and add more RAM or drives, or PCIe cards that costs a normal market rate for such things, I'll consider it, but it doesn't look to be in the near future.

[willy_dinglefinger]

Personally I can't see Microsoft losing that many 'pro audio' users irrespective of how much people complain about Windows on forums and no matter how enshittified Windows continues to become.

People won't use valuable time and resources switching to Mac because it's expensive. Nor will people put energy into switching to Linux because there are outdated / generally incorrect assumptions about the need for CLI to do anything or that there are no native DAWs / plugins for Linux or that performance is shit, etc.

I'm 100% Linux (no Yabridge, all native) and have never been able to make music this well and this easily before and I would scream it from the rooftops at anyone that'll listen. But even I acknowledge and accept that most people would just rather live with an ever-enshittified Win OS than migrate to a new OS altogether. And that's absolutely fine.

[dellboy]

So I went to Apple to see what a PC that would serve me the ability to run a bunch of monitors (I run 3) and it looks like with the specs I like, I'd have to drop $3,899.00. That's almost twice what I spent on my current machine, and includes $1,200 for a 4 tb SSD. What the hell? I think what's in my PC now was 1/3 that price. It's f'n ridiculous that Apple bilks its customers in this way. No thank you. When Apple makes a machine that I can easily open up and add more RAM or drives, or PCIe cards that costs a normal market rate for such things, I'll consider it, but it doesn't look to be in the near future.

Have you checked the price of RAM and SSD's lately? I also am on windows, but I think the days of building lower cost desktops are past.

[legendCNCD]

"x86_64 architecture has run out of road" Does not seem so, yet.

Native ASIO also coming to Windows, ARM first though.

[zerocrossing]

So I went to Apple to see what a PC that would serve me the ability to run a bunch of monitors (I run 3) and it looks like with the specs I like, I'd have to drop $3,899.00. That's almost twice what I spent on my current machine, and includes $1,200 for a 4 tb SSD. What the hell? I think what's in my PC now was 1/3 that price. It's f'n ridiculous that Apple bilks its customers in this way. No thank you. When Apple makes a machine that I can easily open up and add more RAM or drives, or PCIe cards that costs a normal market rate for such things, I'll consider it, but it doesn't look to be in the near future.

Have you checked the price of RAM and SSD's lately? I also am on windows, but I think the days of building lower cost desktops are past.

A 4 tb SSD doesn't cost $1,500 more than the standard drive they include.

[jamcat]

Personally I can't see Microsoft losing that many 'pro audio' users irrespective of how much people complain about Windows on forums and no matter how enshittified Windows continues to become.

People won't use valuable time and resources switching to Mac because it's expensive. Nor will people put energy into switching to Linux because there are outdated / generally incorrect assumptions about the need for CLI to do anything or that there are no native DAWs / plugins for Linux or that performance is shit, etc.

I'm 100% Linux (no Yabridge, all native) and have never been able to make music this well and this easily before and I would scream it from the rooftops at anyone that'll listen. But even I acknowledge and accept that most people would just rather live with an ever-enshittified Win OS than migrate to a new OS altogether. And that's absolutely fine.

What kind of music do you make?
Which plugins do you use?

[keys_au1]

Linux simply cannot handle live gig operations, as in, there are zero apps like Camelot Pro, Cantabile, Gig Performer et al.

There are no native apps that match the sample quality of Sampletank (as much as I dislike IK) Omnisphere, Kontakt et al...and anything on Linux that is "sorta kinda" p, ales into insignificance compared to the ease and operability of those apps.

When THOSE types of actual real world gigging apps are available, I'll switch permamently to Linux. Until then, I am forced to stick with Microsoft. Apple IS too exxy, nice gear, but you DO pay for it!

[dellboy]

The immediate future of Windows audio is the imminent release of "Windows Midi Service". I have been using it for a few months in Windows 11 beta, and it makes Windows multiclient midi by default. For instance, you can now run multiple midi devices at the same time as watching Youtube. Apparently, as has already been mentioned, native inbuilt ASIO is also coming soon.