“Apple only has 6 pieces of hardware you can buy, and they only evolve every so often,” he said. Macatee cites problems with ensuring compatibility and optimal performance for the endless number of PC hardware configurations among Rane’s customers. Analyzing a crash dump after a ‘blue screen of death’ is a joy compared to the Mac.” But the Windows development tool chain is arguably better than the Mac’s. On Windows, there are several ways to make a driver, and they don’t focus on high-performance audio, so there’s a lot more work to do before developing your audio engine. Speaking on behalf of the Novation Software Development Team, Dave Hodder, Product Development Engineer for Focusrite/Novation, explained that “The Mac development path is well defined, so you can focus almost immediately on writing the audio engine itself.
The potential for PC audio may be for naught if the developers are too overworked to tap into it. So what’s the problem with Windows for audio? For small-staffed audio companies, some of it comes down to personnel hours available for testing and coding. “We consistently see ASIO and Core Audio performing with the same high quality and low latency,” he said.
#Mac core audio vs asio drivers#
Generally speaking, ASIO drivers are no less capable of delivering low latencies than Core Audio, a stance backed up by Steve Macatee, Director of Product Development at Rane Corporation. However, when latency is a factor most hardware developers use third-party ASIO drivers to achieve lower latencies for their products. Windows systems include DirectSound and a USB class audio driver.
#Mac core audio vs asio for mac#
While some audio hardware developers for Mac choose to include their own audio drivers with their products, many of them simply use Core Audio and can achieve low latencies. Mac computers run OS X, which includes Core Audio, a built-in programming environment for generating, recording, mixing, editing, processing and playing audio on the computer. We understand that with a great PC running optimally, latency can easily be negligible for DJing and live music performance, but let’s look into the differences.
#Mac core audio vs asio mac os#
In our years of testing different computer-based audio systems, both the observational and anecdotal evidence suggest very strongly that-all other factors being equal-Mac systems since the improvement of Core Audio in Mac OS 10.2 produce lower latencies than Windows systems. In the interest of full disclosure, we should own up that most of us at DJ TechTools are die-hard Mac users.
To get a better handle on what the differences are when creating audio drivers for both Mac and PC, we asked a couple of third-party audio hardware developers who produce products for both platforms. However, one of the most important factors is the audio driver at work. Latency is a murky issue with many factors affecting it: the number of audio channels and effects being used, CPU power, and more. A recent DJ TechTools round up of soundcards sparked some queries about whether latency is a bigger problem on Mac or Windows machines, or if it’s a moot issue these days.
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