After boldly declaring that the Arm development ecosystem is ready for the mainstream, I wanted to follow up on how Arm is moving to support my other favorite hobby. Music production!
So I embarked on a quest to find any music production software that could run at, or near, native speeds on Arm for Windows, and honestly, I came up entirely empty-handed. Despite not having developed any new music in recent years, I was still cling to the hope that the urge would strike again, and I wanted to be ready.
Coincidently this week’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 2024 Summit seemed to address the music production gaps for Windows on Arm (WoA) and so I am almost ready to say that the music ecosystem is ready. Here is what I was missing out on with Windows on Arm:
- Music production software running natively
- Support for the vast x86 VST 3 plugins (or enough native alternatives where it does not matter)
- Support the for ASIO driver for low latency between your software and your audio interface
- Improved Midi support
Basically everything.
Music Production Software
It would seem that the newly announced music apps coming over the next 6 months are all compiled using Arm64EC, and the DAW list kicking off this new era includes:
- Cockos Reaper in preview today
- Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo in preview this week
- Reason Studios Reason in preview in early 2025 (I am most familiar with this brand)
The magic here is Arm64EC!
Arm64EC is a new application binary interface (ABI) that enables you to build new native apps or incrementally transition existing x64 apps to take advantage of the native speed and performance on Arm-powered devices. The code built as Arm64EC is interoperable with x64 code running under emulation within the same process. The Arm64EC code in the process runs with native performance, while any x64 code runs using emulation that comes built-in with Windows 11 (given the speed of the Snapdragon I am not as worried about emulation here).
This interoperability is so important because it allows us to continue using many of your x86-64 VST 3 plugins under emulation!
ASIO
Microsoft, Qualcomm and Yamaha have worked together to create a brand new USB Audio Class 2 Driver in Windows with the ASIO interfaces. This new driver will increase support for high-IO-count interfaces with options for low-latency scenarios that most musicians crave, honestly, anything over a 10ms response time is noticeable to me. We should think of this driver as the way to get started with zero effort, but the expectation is that hardware vendors will optionally produce their own optimized drivers.
An ASIO driver from Steinberg/Yamaha should preview on Windows by default mid 2025, with an ASIO driver preview coming from Focusrite early in 2025.
MIDI
My initial foray into songwriting with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was also one my first ventures into the world of PC software. It was simple but thrilling to save an idea to floppy disk, and share it with friends and have them iterate and contribute. It is a little unfortunate that the MIDI format has not changed much since the early 90s, however a few years back the MIDI Manufacturers Association announce MIDI 2.0.
The Windows MIDI Services is a fresh rewrite, free from previous limitations. It's fully designed to support MIDI 2.0 UMP, making it a breeze to integrate new features and transports, while still supporting MIDI 1.0. A new and bright future for MIDI users! Some of the advantages includes:-
- No speed constraints (except the underlying transport).
- Improved discovery and self-declaration of capabilities.
- Higher resolution controller values
- Per-note articulation
The all new MIDI 2.0 (Windows MIDI Services) previews in Windows Insider builds this November, and in retail Windows devices by default, early next year.
I for one am ready to jump in!