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Glad to see a mention of CoreAudio for once in a public forum. No matter the value for money or compatibility, I will never leave macOS for windows because of

Glad to see a mention of CoreAudio for once in a public forum. No matter the value for money or compatibility, I will never leave macOS for windows because of it. I bought a hugely powerful windows PC in 2018 and the audio performance is awful compared to a 2011 macbook and my 2019 macbook is on another level. Windows lack of attention to audio drivers is frankly staggering. CoreAudio 'just works'.

pjmlp 6y ago
I never had audio issues on MS-DOS/Windows, unless we are speaking about the pre-Sound Blaster/AdLib days. Maybe pay better attention to the sound hardware next time?
- ratww 6y ago
  This really depends on your needs. For music production things are different in Windows. Due to latency, studio-level hardware vendors completely skip Microsoft's audio stack and use something that talks directly to the card called ASIO. So, you kinda need external audio hardware even if you're on-the go and wants to do some low-latency audio. Or you use hacks like Asio4all to achieve low latency. In macOS CoreAudio has low latency even if you use the built-in 3.5mm audio jack.
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    Exactly - it really is a big advantage to have that performance natively. There’s a reason external hardware drivers are native on macOS.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  I have significant professional experience in audio engineering so let’s skip the petty rhetorical questions. Windows audio drivers are so poor that they’re bypassed completely and basically all major hardware producers offer either ASIO drivers on windows or native CoreAudio drivers. Using the same high quality external sound card, I get better performance on macOS with latency and buffer than I do on a windows machine with significantly ‘better’ hardware. I know full well sound hardware makes a difference, and macOS and CoreAudio interfaces with said hardware significantly better than windows. There’s a reason producers of pro audio interfaces write their drivers natively for macOS and use ASIO for windows. I’m talking about pro audio production tools here, not playing a few mp3s.

pjmlp 6y ago

I never had audio issues on MS-DOS/Windows, unless we are speaking about the pre-Sound Blaster/AdLib days. Maybe pay better attention to the sound hardware next time?

ratww 6y ago
This really depends on your needs. For music production things are different in Windows. Due to latency, studio-level hardware vendors completely skip Microsoft's audio stack and use something that talks directly to the card called ASIO. So, you kinda need external audio hardware even if you're on-the go and wants to do some low-latency audio. Or you use hacks like Asio4all to achieve low latency. In macOS CoreAudio has low latency even if you use the built-in 3.5mm audio jack.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  Exactly - it really is a big advantage to have that performance natively. There’s a reason external hardware drivers are native on macOS.
breakfastduck 6y ago
I have significant professional experience in audio engineering so let’s skip the petty rhetorical questions. Windows audio drivers are so poor that they’re bypassed completely and basically all major hardware producers offer either ASIO drivers on windows or native CoreAudio drivers. Using the same high quality external sound card, I get better performance on macOS with latency and buffer than I do on a windows machine with significantly ‘better’ hardware. I know full well sound hardware makes a difference, and macOS and CoreAudio interfaces with said hardware significantly better than windows. There’s a reason producers of pro audio interfaces write their drivers natively for macOS and use ASIO for windows. I’m talking about pro audio production tools here, not playing a few mp3s.