Ableton Live 12 on Windows ARM

[Kannan.Balasubramanian]

I'm currently using a Windows x64 based machine for my full production.

With manufacturers launching ARM based Windows machines in the coming months, is there a possibility for Ableton Live to be compatible with these machines?
I'm especially looking at Windows ARM based tablets where I can do quick sketches when I get an idea.

Does anyone have any idea?
I have not seen much information about Ableton Live on Surface Pro X as well.

[nullwerk]

I have a windows dev kit with a snapdragon processor in it, running the latest insider build of Windows 11 24H2.

I can confirm Ableton does not run on Windows-on-ARM at all. The application simply crashes at launch.

[jonljacobi]

I did manage to get it to run using Parallels on the Mac Studio. But the x86 emulation done by Windows ARM is so slow, it's basically useless for CPU-intensive programs like DAWs, video editors, etc. If X Elite supports the little endian addressing mode (x86) that Apple Silicon features, then you might at some point get decent x86 emulation on Windows ARM. But Microsoft will have to program it in first.

So for now, no. But maybe for the future.

I wrote an article about Windows on M1 Macs that explains some of this in greater detail.

https://www.macworld.com/article/331825 ... works.html

[nullwerk]

I did manage to get it to run using Parallels on the Mac Studio. But the x86 emulation done by Windows ARM is so slow, it's basically useless for CPU-intensive programs like DAWs, video editors, etc. If X Elite supports the little endian addressing mode (x86) that Apple Silicon features, then you might at some point get decent x86 emulation on Windows ARM. But Microsoft will have to program it in first.

So for now, no. But maybe for the future.

I wrote an article about Windows on M1 Macs that explains some of this in greater detail.

https://www.macworld.com/article/331825 ... works.html

Just a note: you ran this test 3 years ago? You need Windows 11 24h2 for the latest emulation layer (prism) to actually test this level of compatibility. Considering this was just released to the insider builds, you might want to consider revisiting this.

[Rivanni]

Just a note: you ran this test 3 years ago? You need Windows 11 24h2 for the latest emulation layer (prism) to actually test this level of compatibility.

If you run it on a last-gen ARM Surface laptop, yes.
If you run Windows ARM in a virtual Windows machine on Apple Silicon (as jonljacobi described), you don't. This has worked for years but performs poorly.
But these are two completely different scenarios, and you cannot compare the emulation in Parallels with that of Prism.

Since there is no Windows ARM version of Live, it will run under Prism. I assume and hope this emulation performs way better than the one in Parallels.

[nullwerk]

Just a note: you ran this test 3 years ago? You need Windows 11 24h2 for the latest emulation layer (prism) to actually test this level of compatibility.

If you run it on a last-gen ARM Surface laptop, yes.
If you run Windows ARM in a virtual Windows machine on Apple Silicon (as jonljacobi described), you don't. This has worked for years but performs poorly.
But these are two completely different scenarios, and you cannot compare the emulation in Parallels with that of Prism.

Since there is no Windows ARM version of Live, it will run under Prism. I assume and hope this emulation performs way better than the one in Parallels.

Per my reply above: It doesn't run on Windows 11 with snapdragon chipsets at all. Nothing.

But I was curious about the actual Parrells performance under the latest Win11 build, not necessarily a comparison between the two.

[jonljacobi]

Thanks for the info. It was three years ago with whatever version or WFA was available, and not directly comparable. I'll have to revisit. I have no X Elite and have no plans to get one, but I was looking at the Signal65 emulation results, and they seem to be quite good for x86.

But the main takeaway I meant to present is that Apple Silicon has a little-endian addressing mode (macOS is big endian) which eliminates the byte-swapping that must be done by the emulation layer if it's not present.

However, just reading another article, it claimed that ARM is bi-endian and can use either mode so maybe the Apple guys just took better advantage of this.

When you say Live doesn't run, do you get a message of some sort? Does it just die trying to boot?

[jonljacobi]

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