With Waves dropping mac support for Super Rack, a Windows ARM with the near infinite battery life sitting next to the console would be awesome, as long as the thru latency at around 128 buffers is safe

Counting buffers without specifying a sample rate doesn't really make any sense. 128 samples at 192khz is very different from 128 samples at 44.1

What I do know is that Cooper was using it to play live guitar, processed in Cubase, at Snapdragon Summit. I think they were running 48k. Latency was low enough to play comfortably with the effects running, and Cubase recording. That's a pretty good test of how reasonable the latency is.

Dom was also finger drumming on the keyboard with his laptop using HALion and some other stuff in Cubase, again, comfortably.

What I don't have for you is "how many tracks of XYZ VST can I run before it starts glitching?". That's the kind of info DAWbench provides.

Pete

I mean like 128 samples at 48k. I'm assuming Waves is using the same TheSycon drivers as pretty much everyone, and in the case of the allen and heath or behringer or midas USB that's a sure thing.

For those using an ARM-based PC, native Windows 11 Arm64EC / Snapdragon Beta versions are now available for Martinic plugins on the following download pages: Pianet T, AXFX, AX73, Scanner Vibrato, Elka Panther, Kee Bass, Martinic Colorsound Tremolo, Lem Echo Music & AX Chorus.

Awesome! Congratulations

Pete

Bitwig just announced that 5.3 beta includes Windows on Arm support. Exciting!

https://www.bitwig.com/whats-new/

Pete

For folks interested in technical details, Bitwig also put out a blog post explaining their choices.

They went with Arm64 instead of Arm64EC (both are native Arm, but EC has emulation-compatible ABIs) mostly because of the loss of some floating point registers when compiling to EC, and because Bitwig Studio already has a sandboxing approach (another process) which makes it possible to host plugins of a different architecture from the main process.

https://www.bitwig.com/support/techn...rm-support-69/

It's also why I generally recommend using Arm64X, which packages Arm64 and Arm64EC in the same package, enabling the DAW to load the most efficient version for their process, which still supporting backwards compatibility with existing Intel/AMD x64 plugins.

I explain Arm64X/EC/etc here
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windo...s-and-plugins/

Pete

RME has released their Arm64 drivers, with a massive number of supported devices.

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=40737

They've also updated their installers across the board, and generally made everything better, including on Intel/AMD x64. A nice little Christmas present for us all

Pete

[I said this all seems promising but years away from being broad adopted]

What's hard to understand? It's almost 2025 and the plugin and VI ecosystem is massively broad and deep with everyone here deeply invested in their favorites. When can we reasonably expect to jump to WindowsARM and be able to use our existing stuff?

I'm guessing years - happy to be wrong.

That depends on your particular needs for CPU power as well as what audio manufacturers will support. Most audio manufacturers will just support their current devices, at best.

If you have a RME USB device it will work (all of them ever made), as you can see in the post just above yours.

Currently WindowsARM is targeted at low power laptops, which might not fit your needs.

Personally I wont be getting a WindowsARM laptop anytime soon.

Hardware: you skipped the bit where we're releasing a new class driver next year which will support all USB Audio Class 2 devices. So if there aren't vendor drivers available, you'll still have a low-latency ASIO option in Windows.

Software: Several of the major DAWs are already on Arm64 and have chosen models which enable them to load existing x64 plugins under emulation. This is different from what Apple's emulator does, in that we can emulate at a function call level, enabling much easier migration of code, and also reuse of existing (and unchanged) plugins and libraries.

Several others are coming next year. Still others, like FL Studio, run quite efficiently under emulation on Arm64.

All covered in previous posts, which is why I was confused by your response.

The tech isn't going to replace a high-powered desktop right now, but laptops FAR outpace sales of desktops, even in the music industry.

Pete

Our class driver will be available in preview in the first half of 2025. It'll support all USB Audio Class 2 compliant devices and include both ASIO and WDM interfaces. If it works on a mac without a driver, it'll work on Windows without a driver. This isn't an ASIO4All wrapper.

Vendor-specific drivers, which will likely offer a bit better performance because they can be tuned device-by-device, will still be an option. They won't be required though.

Audient, Focusrite, Steinberg (Yamaha), and RME have all announced for early 2025 or already released preview drivers for their devices.

Pete

Thanks Pete, what’s the ETA for doing that on x86?

Likely to be shortly after we release the final in Windows for Arm64, so (currently) sometime around the end of next year +/-.

There's more backwards compatibility checking to do there because x86-64 (x64) has a lot of history.

Pete

This is impressive.

"System76 accidentally built the fastest Windows Arm PC"



Pete

I had been wonder if an Ampere Altra would run Windows Arm.

Does this mean I don't need to wait for the audio device company to make an ARM driver?
I mean as long as the device is class compliant?
I have a great SSL2 interface, but when asking SSL about any future ARM driver they just went "meh we don't know about that"

Correct. You won't need companies to create dedicated Arm drivers for Windows if the device is USB Audio Class 2 compliant.

Pete

I assume you mean "when the new native ASIO support comes"
I mean, to be able to change settings for buffer size, khz, bit rate etc.

Nice to see more ARM workstations are available. It seems that the future PC workstations will be all ARM and x86 will be mostly emulated.
Sure it may take 5-10 years but having the same computing power at 1/3rd of the power usage is a total no brainer IMHO.

Yes. I thought that was a given in the question

When the new USB Audio Class 2 driver with ASIO component is in-box in Windows, likely near end of 2025 for the Arm64 version (unless you want to use preview versions), you won't need to use a vendor driver unless you want to.

Vendor drivers will typically provide somewhat better performance because they are optimized for a single hardware device or family. They are also needed if the vendor provides a custom control panel of some sort that you want to use.

So the experience will be similar to macOS today: the device will work immediately when you plug it in. But if you want to go find a vendor driver, the performance will sometimes be better with it, but it is not required.

Pete

Is it possible to run or jbridge 32bit plug-ins ?
Will UA Apollo thunderbolt interfaces work ?

32bit: It's possible, but not something I've tried.

Thunderbolt interface: that will require a driver from UAD because there is no Thunderbolt audio class standard.

Pete

I don't think I posted this previously, but KVR has a list of Arm64-compatible plugins and music software.

They list it as Arm64EC, but that seems to be a misunderstanding on their side. It covers both types of Arm-native (Arm64 and Arm64EC) products.

https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/windows-11-arm64ec

Pete

Is this same type of windows driver coming to the regular x86 CPUs too?

Yes, for 64 bit. Scroll up to this post:
Making Music on Windows on Arm - ASIO, Apps, and MIDI 2

Pete

Nvidia will release ARM based SoC for Windows later this year as well. There's a possibility it might outperform the Apple M4, and if that happens, could it essentially be a death sentence for Intel and AMD? The Mac Mini-like desktop super computer that Nvidia announced this week is said to have extraordinary performance, while it is Linux only.

For any of you at NAMM this year, Windows on Arm will show up in a few places.

Qualcomm has a Snapdragon booth showcasing Windows on Arm PCs with our new MIDI stack, the preview native ASIO driver, Cubase 13 and Cubase 14 (a developer prototype only, no statement about Cubase 14 and Arm64 or MIDI 2.0 is being made) and also apps like Bitwig Studio, REAPER, and more.

I’m also showing:

• Windows MIDI Services in a couple MIDI Association panels
• The preview Network MIDI 2 functionality in some panels including the Network MIDI 2 specification panel
• Windows MIDI Services with USB and Network MIDI 2 in the AmeNote booth, and in the MIDI Association booth

MIDI Association Events Calendar, including NAMM events:
https://midi.org/event-calendar

See you there!

Pete

This video also has some interesting info about mac fan noise, and what performance you get to reduce the fan noise to near zero. There's a chart around halfway through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMtgTPIAv-4

Not the kind of thing I'd normally share, but after hearing those fans, and seeing the performance delta (plus the inability to control the power profile on the less expensive units), I felt it is relevant for folks here when talking about M4 and similar.

Pete

The performance seemed almost identical between the quiet automatic fan mode and max power.