Microsoft is making Windows great for musicians and other audio professionals

Many media professionals rely on Apple Mac for their creative tasks, mainly because of the overall software support and Apple's focus on improving the experience of creative and media professionals. Microsoft is now trying to win over music industry professionals with new changes to Windows.

At the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit, Microsoft announced several improvements coming to Windows PCs to improve the overall experience for musicians and other audio professionals. Microsoft is bringing MIDI 2.0 support with backward compatibility with MIDI 1.0 APIs and devices. Also, Microsoft has partnered with Qualcomm and Yamaha to create a brand new USB Audio Class 2 Driver in Windows.

While these new improvements are currently announced for Windows on Arm PCs, they will also come to Intel and AMD x86-64 devices in the future. Find the full list of new announcements below.

• Musician Software coming to Arm64
  • Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo in preview this week
  • Cockos Reaper in preview today
  • Reason Studios Reason in preview in early 2025
• Audio Hardware coming to Arm64
  • Vendor-specific USB Audio / ASIO driver preview from Focusrite early in 2025
  • Vendor-specific USB Audio / ASIO driver preview from Steinberg/Yamaha in 2025
• In-Box Support coming to Arm64
  • ASIO and low-latency USB Audio Class 2 driver previews mid-2025, in-box in Windows when complete
  • MIDI 2.0 (Windows MIDI Services) previews in Windows Insider builds this November, in-box in retail Windows early next year.

Pete Brown, Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft wrote the following regarding the new music-focused improvements in Windows:

With the new MIDI stack and in-box ASIO, these three killer DAW apps, and two families of audio interfaces with optimized drivers for Arm64, we’re set up to help make the experience of creating music amazing on Windows. I am beyond excited for so many of these efforts to come together at this point in time.

These updates show Microsoft's commitment to the music industry and its desire to compete with Apple in the creative space. With regular updates, Windows may become a more powerful and versatile platform for musicians and audio professionals in the future.

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