Windows 8: Improved Sound Handling

I've been hearing good things about Windows 8 having some seriously improved native sound handling without having to jump thru a bunch of hoops. The WASAPI engine is completely recoded to eliminate internal conflicts and streaming issues, and is fully integrated, bit perfect, and the next best thing to zero latency. Plug and play without having to resort to ASIO or other such kludges for effortless USB DAC goodness.

One bit of strangeness - if your DAC is 24 bit native, and your source material is 16 bit, the new W8 kernel will build up the data to 24 bit by adding nulls. The DAC will ignore those and read the incoming stream as 16 bit, so ... no harm, no foul.

W8 also has a completely new DirectSound engine with greater precision and fidelity that makes for major improvements in sound quality. It's resampling and anti-aliasing is now virtually perfect also.

I'll stick with XP on my "work" machine, but I'm thinking I may have to pull the trigger on the new OS for my HTPC. That's currently running XP MCE SP3 et all. No complaints - it's stable and sounds nice - but I'm always willing to experiment, especially if W8 is all it's cracked up to be. Only thing I haven't figured out yet ... there's a Media Center edition also, and not sure if you get all sound handling improvements with the standard edition or not. W8 just hit the market yesterday, so I guess we got time to figure that one out. <G>

I have a habit to wait some months when something new is released in the market, 4 to 6 months is enough time for any "issue" to come up.
Remember when Windows2000 was released? I almost bought but decided to stick to Windows98 a little longer, it saved me from a lot fo headaches.

Belo said:

I have a habit to wait some months when something new is released in the market, 4 to 6 months is enough time for any "issue" to come up.
Remember when Windows2000 was released? I almost bought but decided to stick to Windows98 a little longer, it saved me from a lot fo headaches.

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Same goes for Vista and Win7. I skipped Vista altogether and Win7 a year after first release.

I'll wait till at least one Service Pack has been released. As others have indicated, early adopters of anything Microsoft risk finding out what it feels like to live on the 'bleeding' edge - in Vista's case, it was the gift that just kept on giving people chronic diarrhea.

estreeter said:

I'll wait till at least one Service Pack has been released. As others have indicated, early adopters of anything Microsoft risk finding out what it feels like to live on the 'bleeding' edge - in Vista's case, it was the gift that just kept on giving people chronic diarrhea.

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Vista was a piece of crap. Microsoft had to release ver 7 big time. 7 is alright but I'll als wait til all the bugs are out. Say about Dec time frame.

I had the test version for few days. It made a lot of problems, crashed constantly and such, so I went back to Win7. That is GREAT NEWS they finally solved the Windows audio bottleneck and integrated WASAPI. Wohooo! OK gonna give Win8 another try. Hopefully they have solved major bugs.

Belo said:

I have a habit to wait some months when something new is released in the market, 4 to 6 months is enough time for any "issue" to come up.
Remember when Windows2000 was released? I almost bought but decided to stick to Windows98 a little longer, it saved me from a lot fo headaches.

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It's my understanding that 2 out of 3 people who have installed Win8 on their desktops uninstalled it within a month and went back to their previous OS. It may be OK for tablets but it's a DOG on any real computer that you use for serious work.

Not sure what you mean by 'a DOG'. Speed-wise, there's essentially no difference. The complaints I've read stem from the interface (in that M$ made some simple things more tedious to accomplish in Win8 than previous operating systems).

Belo said:

I have a habit to wait some months when something new is released in the market, 4 to 6 months is enough time for any "issue" to come up.
Remember when Windows2000 was released? I almost bought but decided to stick to Windows98 a little longer, it saved me from a lot fo headaches.

Click to expand...

ccheath said:

Same goes for Vista and Win7. I skipped Vista altogether and Win7 a year after first release.

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estreeter said:

I'll wait till at least one Service Pack has been released. As others have indicated, early adopters of anything Microsoft risk finding out what it feels like to live on the 'bleeding' edge - in Vista's case, it was the gift that just kept on giving people chronic diarrhea.

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Particularly when Microsoft is trying to play catch-up with Apple. If I wanted to buy a tablet at this moment, I wouldn't even consider Microsoft's new product. Then again, I prefer a Windows 7 netbook (to the extent they're still made) to a tablet. I like a keyboard.

Gun shy, are we? <G>

Still hoping to hear some more comments, speculations, rumours, and better yet ... actual experience with the sound handling. I also like to sit back for a while until the big bugs are put down, but I'm only planning to use it on my media server, and there, only audio. I've seen nothing but praise from the pre-release folk in that area.

I did find a couple comments that W8 audio is better than Android and now on a par with <or - dare I say it - better?> than that iOS thing. I've also seen hints that any outboard equipment that REQUIRES an ASIO driver may have issues, as that and WDM kernel streaming is no longer supported. In those cases, the <also improved> DirectSound handling should come to the rescue as that's more or less universally supported.

One interesting tidbit - apparently W8 has two modes - standard and "metro". None of our old applications will run in "metro" mode as that has a whole new API set. Shouldn't be an issue as standard mode is the default, at least until developers switch over to the New! Improved? platform.

Here's where it gets screwy - the new audio goodness is NOT included with the standard and Pro W8 releases. You have to purchase an addon. I assUme that's just a player front end and the WASAPI and DirectSound upgrades are built in so that a standalone player like jRiver will be able to work with them.

> > > > Here's an important little fiddlybit to keep in mind. If you're currently running W7, your upgrade to W8 should be seamless. If you're running an older OS (like XP ... like me) you'll need to reinstall ALL your applications. <grumble grouse>

sKiZo said:

Gun shy, are we? <G>
Here's where it gets screwy - the new audio goodness is NOT included with the standard and Pro W8 releases. You have to purchase an addon. I assUme that's just a player front end and the WASAPI and DirectSound upgrades are built in so that a standalone player like jRiver will be able to work with them.

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Where do you get the add on?

I installed Win8 on a rarely used computer, so I can't really compare the sound quality.

I did mess around with the interface and it is awkward. You start off in the "metro" styled interface and then when you click on something like WMC, you get transported to the old Win7 style Desktop. You have to weave back and forth depending on the program you want to use. Internet Explorer is even stranger because it has a version for the Desktop and a version for the "Metro".

I also used a coworkers Surface RT and I think I would rather have an iPad or a laptop at this point. The RT does not really work that great as either one. You want to run a macro on Excel, you need a real computer. You want to read a magazine via Zinio, it is awkard to hold in Portrait format and it has black bars at the top and bottom. You want to access a computer back home with Logmein...nope. You can't run it from the web interface and there isn't an app for that.


Personally, I installed Win8 on a computer that is not used very often. I also installed Jump (and the Jump app) which lets me use the Touch interface with an iPad just to try it out. I will not be updating computers I need for work. I prefer Win7 for real work.

WASAPI is the (integrated) sound engine in Win7.

Pandovski said:

I had the test version for few days. It made a lot of problems, crashed constantly and such, so I went back to Win7. That is GREAT NEWS they finally solved the Windows audio bottleneck and integrated WASAPI. Wohooo! OK gonna give Win8 another try. Hopefully they have solved major bugs.

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I just upgraded to 8 today, got the download upgrade from MS for 39.99. I attached half a screen shot. So far so good, but some things will need to get used to. It's slick, but not sure if it's too slick! :scratch2:

Sound seems good so far, there is an add on for the media center, not sure it's worth the 10 bucks.

Windows media center? yikes!!! J.River Media Center

Ida know ... Windohs MCE front end in XP was decent enough for playing media ... it was just buggy with my equipment. Mostly, the visualizations sucked, but truth be told, the main incentive to change was that it refused to recognise the VFD built into my HTPC case. Went over to jRiver Media Center and can't imagine going back. It does everything so much better ... and by everything, I mean EVARTHANG, from rip to playback.

Well, everthang except for the VFD, but I did find a patch to make that work. <G>

I did post up to jRiver's forum asking about W8 - with all the audio/media upgrades integrated into the OS and using the same API calls, their Media Center won't notice any operational differences running as a standard app. Not much in the way of reviews yet, as you'd expect. One "problem" a couple people have noticed - when you upgrade to W8, jRiver will give you a "What the hell is this OS your running?" kind of error message. The "fix" is to reinstall the version of jRiver you're currently using, or just install the latest update. This doesn't affect your library database or any custom tweaks you've done. I'm sure they'll be keeping a close eye on things - they usually do - and do updates as needed for any W8 quirks that present themselves.

Oh ... and ya ... the WASAPI engine is the integrated sound handling package that came along with Vista and W7 and allowed applications to talk directly to the hardware without going thru any intermediate software or play games with kernel streaming. That became the defacto standard for Windows media applications. The W8 version is supposed to address a LOT of issues that didn't allow W7 to reach it's full potential. DirectSound also sees major improvements, but that's more for backward compatibility with older hardware - WASAPI <should> be the sh!t for all things Windows if your hardware can handle it.

> > > > Here's an important little fiddlybit I just stumbled upon at the MS website. If you're currently running W7, your upgrade to W8 should be seamless. If you're running an older OS (like XP ... like me) you'll need to reinstall ALL your applications. That would 'splain the jRiver WTF error I mentioned earlier. <grumble grouse>

I did an upgrade from Windows 7 and it was very painless, no issues at all. I usually do a clean install, but this time I wanted to see how well it would work, and I am impressed. We'll see how it holds up...

while some people do buy other tablets..look at the market as a whole....

"People don't want tablets..they want iPads"...I dont have one..my brother-in-law does..but I have an older mb pro and iphone. its enough for me. maybe its from using OS X for a few years exclusively, but I feel dumb trying to use a PC now, they
re too confusing for me..I used to repair and build PCs even..



*hides behind bushes*

PS:

I use windows 7 at work with hardly any complaints

*hides back in bushes*

From what I have read about it (quite a bit), WIN8 has to be the worst OS MS has ever done. It's really designed for tablets and touch screen PCs. MS seems to assume that everyone has a touch screen PC or will run out and buy one so they can load WIN8.
As for sound, since when has MS been in the sound dept? I use a decent sound card and third party audio specific software for any audio work or playback. (I also don't use my PC as a playback source though).
I miss WIN 3.1 and DOS, as far as I'm concerend that was the most stable. I waited until WIN 95 was out for a year before I moved to it. Then along came WIN98 and I waited 7 months. I waited until XP was one year from experation before I switched over. My laptop still runs XP and not a single issue. My newish desktop runs WIN7 PRO. I don't like it as much as XP though. I don't even like it as much as WIN 95/98. At least one could fix something gone wrong with Win 3.1 through 98. After that they make it harder and harder. WIN7 is next to impossible to fix if something goes wrong and WIN8 is so user unfreindly, you don't even have access to utilities or areas you need to go into to fix anything. WIN 7 doesn't run most software packages out there and almost no games at all (if your a gamer). I don't see WIN 8 running anything, let alone booting up successfully. I use Excel and Word a good deal, not to mention third party software and WIN 8 will not run any third party software not designed specifically for it as far as I know, at least not at 100%. I know it won't run Office 97 at all. It also will struggle with Office xp. It willrun the new Office version which is horrid anyway. (We use the new version at work and I use to be Excel certified (Word, etc as well) up to advanced and now I can't even find the "save" button let alone do anything else without looking for a half hour and reading up on it. It's not a little bit different than the other versions, it's completely different).
I'm getting a new laptop next year (I hope) and I'm sticking with WIN 7 since I can't get XP anymore and my XP disc won't load in another PC except the one it's on of course. If I am forced to go to WIN8 I just won't use a PC anymore if WIN7 or XP stops working. I went without a PC for years and could probably do it again. WIN8 would make it a doorstop anyway so why spend the money? IT's like cell phones. regular cell phones are no longer available. Now it's all these damn smart phones which are useless to me. So wen my current phone goes the way of the ghost, that's it for cell phones for me. I won't even consider replacing it with a smart phone.
I still have copies of WIN95 and 98, but they won't load due to the hardware I'm running these days.

It's really designed for tablets and touch screen PCs. MS seems to assume that everyone has a touch screen PC or will run out and buy one so they can load WIN8.

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While I do think they had that in mind, it still doesn't work very good with a touch screen tablet. Like I mentioned, it is not uncommon to start an app and be transported to the Win7 style desktop (without start button).

Also, someone mentioned that WMC had a $10 fee. I got my code for free last week on Microsoft's website. I personally like WMC for movies.

Couple items ... the new start screen is the biggest complaint I've heard, but there is a fix. Most popular new app out for W8 is apparently one that restores and locks you into the old style desktop unless you're running a metro app. Still trying to figure out if those are real or just a bit of the cloud wandering into your machine upon request ...

Also, W8 is <supposed> to be able to run most legacy apps, but you have to RTFM to figure out how to make it happen. I was reading up on the installation process and one of the first things you need to do is run their "compatibility wizard". That scans your machine and lists good apps, bad apps, and those that can work with tweaks, then lists the tweaks you need to do specific to each program. The downloadable version is a couple gigs, so I expect I'd spring for the DVD version myself.

And once again, I don't expect to use is for anything other than a back end for my HTPC, so I'm not talking a lot of apps myself. I ran the wizard and there's a couple programs I've got loaded that sent up flags, but I don't use them anyway.

* I've heard the same thing about the IE10 browser which comes packaged with W8 ... mostly because it's different, but a lot because website developers haven't updated their code for some of the deep tweaks. Not unexpected ... I'm still running IE7 and they haven't caught up with THAT yet. Thank the gods for Firefox ... <G>

** I did find yet another reason to consider upgrading myself. I had a few "issues" that popped up when I built my new HTPC. Rather than do a complete new XP install, I did a repair, and apparently some of that didn't work out so well. I've been able to kludge my way around most of it so far, but ... A full new install would require me to re-install all my apps from scratch, so if I gotta do that anyway ... the bigger annoyance would be having to download all the patches past SP3 yet again - that pretty much killed the bigger slice of my 5gig per month limit when I built the machine.

Now ... about those improved sound features ...