3dot... wrote:have you read the above ?
there are considerable performance improvements... directly related to audio...
The SONAR blog posts were misleading.
The SONAR test wasn't a real benchmark. They just read a bunch of meters without pushing their test systems to see what the OS could deliver. TAFKAT/Vin from DAWBench did
Win7-to-Win8 tests on the same system with both SONAR and Cubase, and got identical results, using the RTM version of Win 8 64-bit. The DAWBench tests involve loading projects with literally hundreds of disabled plugins or hundreds of muted notes of sample polyphony, and you progressively enable plugins or unmute tracks, depending on the test, until audio breaks down. You count the number of plugins/notes once you reach that threshold, and the higher the result, the better the performance.
I did
my own DAWBench tests between fresh installs of Win 7 and Win 8 on the same system on four different audio interfaces, and my results ranged from a 0%-44% performance
reduction on Windows 8, depending on the interface. I believe that the reason for the underperforming on the MOTU interfaces was the drivers, and will re-test again once MOTU officially adds Win 8 support.
There ARE some performance enhancements in Windows 8, but it's mostly around launching apps, starting Windows, and for applications explicitly optimized for Win 8. I have seen zero evidence of any performance improvement in terms of music production, and in fact there are several reasons NOT to jump to Win 8 yet, depending on your plugins and hardware.
- I never got my Waves stuff to work on Win 8, and neither did TAFKAT.
- Several folks, including TAFKAT, have reported issues with iLok.
- Sylenth1 has problems on Win 8.
- I've seen various reports of people experiencing lots more pops and crackles on their interfaces under Win 8.
- Some Virus TI owners are complaining of Win 8 problems. The audio interface feature of my Virus seems to work fine (in fact it was the only one of my interfaces that didn't perform worse on Win 8 ), but I haven't done anything else with the Virus on Win 8.
All of the above are things that will probably fixed through software updates. Win 8 works fine for some people, but for music production, for the time being at least (performance may begin to improve as vendors optimize for the new OS), at best your music production performance will be the same on Win 8 as it is on Win 7. (Although it will probably be an improvement over Vista if you're still on that!)
I don't care what OS you use, but I encourage anyone interested in trying Win 8 out to either install Win 8 on a separate drive/partition, or make a full, validated backup of your working Win 7 image before doing the upgrade. Everyone's system is different, and we just don't know all the current problems/benefits yet.