Windows 10 - please do not upgrade! Discussion

How do you know that they haven’t been testing from the start?

However, with the OS morphing rapidly in the last few months, the only time they could be certain W10 was in a stable configuration, and thus when any issues could be reliable tested and reported on, was just before release.

These issues could have only recently appeared, or some of the key supporting components in the OS may not have been in place until recently, so that they couldn’t have even started comprehensive testing. Too many hidden moving pieces to be able to make such categorical criticisms.

I went against the advice of Steinberg after much consideration and Cubase 8 Pro is running great here.

Because they posted a note saying they would be evaluating it shortly before it was released also if they had been on top of it, there would be no issues. Windows 10 handles audio better than Windows 8.1.

What I learned?
hmm, I never expected the tech support to only response to my posting full of sarcasm and leave every other post uncommented.
Nearly everything you’ve written is absolutely clear and right and everybody should know that, without your response.
But the Win10 Release Candidate is here for quite some time now and I would have wished to read something like:
“We know about this issue for quite some time and we already know where the problem is and you’ll receive an update soon”
What you wrote sounds like: like all “normal” consumers we downloaded Win 10 today and realized it does’t work! Sorry but we were too busy releasing our yearly update without enough new “must have” features to get our yearly fee for DAWs without calling it a yearly fee.

Why I wrote my first post was because I’m really angry about IC Pro for Android!!!
I can’t say give me my money back, because I haven’t paid for the Android App, you made me pay for the Cubase/Nuendo Extension and this still works with Apple Products. So you say then buy 1,5 Ipads instead of 4 Android Tablets for your Musicians Headphone Mixes.

Thank you for your response!

PS: Get rid of Quicktime!
And when you do this give us a Number! The number of the exact lag that Nuendo produces compared to the audio!!! and not the dynamik lag we have now with quicktime! (there are now tools to measure the TV input lag, but the DAW is always an unclear variable factor)

PPS: May I got some attention now and would like to ask:
Why does the 7.0 Update for Nuendo costs 8% of it’s full price and the NEK Update 67% of it’s full Price???

Windows 10 is always going to be a ‘work in progress’. There will never be a Windows 10 in a locked down, no more updates state. If we accept that, then Steinberg’s decision to wait for RTM may be correct, but how do they know that a future update won’t ‘break’ Cubase’s functionality in some way? They don’t, nor can they know.

I used to work in software management and it isn’t easy. For the record, I have gone to Windows 10 and all seems fine, but I can understand why people are cautious. They are good people who are doing their job as best they can.

Indeed, there is no guarantee but at the moment it’s very much about rather fundamental issues that need to be addressed and Microsoft contacted us as a result of our statement regarding Windows 10 compatibility. We are working on a solution with Microsoft now and they are really eager to have it working as they put much effort in the audio parts of Windows 10.

DAWs are about the most complex prosumer software available, and you think they can regression test its FULL functionality against a new OS in a few days! Reality check time.

Between the Developer and Consumer previews of Win 8, there were 100,000 changes. There would have been thousands between each preview with W10. That is a lot of moving parts to create possible problems with existing software at short notice. And you expect them to have been on ‘on top of it’?

And when I intimated that they may have been testing form the early previews, I would not have expected anything other than an attempt to see if the software would even run on each preview, and if it did, some rough tests to see if it was sort of stable. Just so they could do something about any major issues, if they occurred early enough.

If there had been no issues so far, I suspect that this thread would not have been started, as they would probably have had to take a while to finish testing to be able to give the all clear. As it was, we got a warning that things may not work OK, so that if we were wanting to avoid risks, we could hold off upgrading.

It’s good to read that MS did get in touch with you. I would have expected that professional audio performance might have been low on their list of priorities, it being such a minor part of their installed base.

Thanks for the insight Ed… Please, while you have their attention, get some guidance regarding video handling in the absence of a QuickTime solution. Just saying…

Cheers,
Bob

Thank you, Ed Doll, for update on what is going on. Could you please describe a bit what the issues looks like, when/if they appear? I updated to win10 and all seems quite ok at first glance. But maybe it is not? How do I know issue is there. I would hate it to make some mixes, only to find out later that some tracks were out of sync for few miliseconds, or some plugins were not processed in mixdown or something like that.
Please, if it is not too much to ask, describe briefly what kind of issues are experienced by users after update, and how can we know if we have same issues present on our system. Thank you.

Having abandoned every video handler other than QT, no amount of talking to MS about it now will get a Windows-specific solution, as SB would first have to build a rather more flexible video infrastructure into Cubase, which is obviously what they were trying to avoid by standardising upon QT.

Well yes, its going to be tricky… I had something of this in the back of my mind when I wrote my comment. SB have put themselves in a corner, by burning some bridges as you say. I just thought MS may have some insight as to a way forward for them. There are other solutions out there of course; but they’d need SB to do a video engine re-write (with the need for backwards compatibility…? Or else, all those old projects with MOV files may no longer load, etc, etc…).

Interesting times.

We discovered a serious issue for Audio/MIDI applications on Windows 10. After some time (a few seconds or a few minutes) audio recording or playback will contain noise (drop outs).
Steinberg Cubase 8 application shows this usually after a few seconds.

During our analysis we discovered the following behaviour of Windows 10:
The Windows MMCSS services will get disabled for any audio application when the user interacts with the computer. As a result the audio processing/streaming threads get suddenly the same importance as non time critical programs. Frequent audio drop outs will start to happen. We observed that moving windows and switching between running applications will result in this issue.

We currently work with Microsoft to investigate and hopefully soon resolve the issue.

Sounds like an OS pre-emptive multi-tasking priority issue. Hopefully it is some simple programming typo or config error, that MS can fix quickly, rather than a core design fault

I also noticed that drag/drop from explorer doesn’t work on my setup. If i grab a wav file from explorer, and try to drop it into Cubase, it doesn’t happen. I can drag files only from media bay.
But copy/paste works, meaning I can hit ctrl+c in explorer, and ctrl+v in cubase, and new track is created properly.
Is anybody else having this issue too?

EDIT: The problem seems to be related to running Cubase in admin mode. As described here: Cannot drag and drop files from windows to Cubase - #2 by Buzzz - Cubase - Steinberg Forums

Working here…

I’m running the 1808. Does it work on Win 10 at all sample rates and bit depths? Does the GUI fix need applying every time you switch on or have you found a way for it to autostart?

When I switch the simplerate 44.1k to 48K(or any) in ur824 console,there will be no sound on WDM driver :cry: :cry:
but ASIO driver & DAWs works well on win10.

I don’t have these issues. Could you explain why? It works as well or better than it did on Windows 8.1. Maybe because you are using a Steinberg audio interface? Mine is an RME on an i7 Quad with 32 gigs RAM but also using it on a less powerful computer with a Steinberg interface and switching between applications with no dropouts. Have not tested the slow computer with a large project. Ironically, Wavelab which is said to work with Windows 10 does not for me on the slower computer. It works fine on the fast one. Both are Windows 10. Both seem to run Cubase fine.

It’s been a very positive surprise to hear Microsoft has been putting effort into audio. There’s a new MIDI API, as well as audio improvements, like the new audio core isolation, which applications will need to opt in to (coughSteinbergcough).

Good overview at https://www.namm.org/video/148