1 (edited by ramses 2021-09-02 11:48:53)

Topic: Windows 11

Thanks to Microsoft's benevolence and care, we will soon be allowed to buy new hardware under the guise of security and stability, how nice (/irony off).

Other soft arguments: older systems would have more bluescreens. Oh dear, Microsoft can't program anymore or what?
Well under Win7, Win10 and Linux my System is still stable !

But better let customers buy new systems ? With TPM chip of course to support industries long term goals to gain more and more influence on the system of their customers.

And btw .. how environmentally friendly. Mother nature will say "thank you" in terms of valuable resources if tons of systems will need to be decommissioned and in most (if not all cases) with no real technical reason.

I don't think TPM as a requirement is all that great either. It's probably going to be the next scourge for computer users, along with cloud-based software with subscriptions that milk the customer monthly when Microsoft or whoever suddenly dictates what application on your system is considered secure.

Question: has anyone had any experience with the Windows 11 Preview in recording, with RME products and DAWs?

And what are your plans? Still riding the Win10 21H1 horse until the end of support ~2025 while it's still running?

Personally, I'm still undecided and will wait until new technologies like DDR5 with ECC support, etc.  will hit the market anyway. So it is very likely that I will refuse to buy Win11 with TPM support as long as it is possible and then re-evaluate the market / the situation.

Thanks for your feedback upfront.

@RME: when will RME drivers and software be Win11 ready ? Is this already a topic for you ?

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

Re: Windows 11

upgraded my win10 to win 11 22000.168 a few days ago, and noticed no impacts or issues or problems

both my surface pro (using digicace usb) & main desktop rig with an ancient hdsp9652 working no differently
main audio apps used (again no issues or changes
Cubase Pro 11.0.30
Wavelab 10.0.70
Spectral Layers 8.10

unless you are using the start menu a LOT, then there seems very little changes for audio, projects dont seem to use any more resources/cpu at same latency settings.

**before taking the plunge I did take a full backup of each OS drive using macrium reflect pro. but in over 3 days now ive had ) issues

_

RME HDSP9652 | | RME Digiface USB

3 (edited by ramses 2021-09-02 12:14:48)

Re: Windows 11

garry wrote:

upgraded my win10 to win 11 22000.168 a few days ago, and noticed no impacts or issues or problems

both my surface pro (using digicace usb) & main desktop rig with an ancient hdsp9652 working no differently
main audio apps used (again no issues or changes
Cubase Pro 11.0.30
Wavelab 10.0.70
Spectral Layers 8.10

unless you are using the start menu a LOT, then there seems very little changes for audio, projects dont seem to use any more resources/cpu at same latency settings.

**before taking the plunge I did take a full backup of each OS drive using macrium reflect pro. but in over 3 days now ive had ) issues

Hi Garry, thanks for your reply and nice that it worked well for you.

What about TPM ? Did you follow a workaround from internet or do you have a quite new system or one where you can add the chip to it (I could theoretically upgrade my Supermicro motherboard with a TPM chip, but then it will probably fail due to the age of the 6-core CPU) ?

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

Re: Windows 11

my surface pro was already TPM2 compliant

as for my desktop... its pretty old (but perfectly powerfull enough for my needs)
intel i7 6700K /  32gb ram / asus Z170A pro board (got it just to keep PCI slot for the hds9652)

by default it had no TPM chip, but i do use bitlocker (just with pin/passwords)
i found there was an addon for it and it only cost £6! for a tpm chip
"ASUS 14-1 Pin TPM Module Trusted Platform Module TPM-M R2.0"

plugged that in, and the windows 11 installed fine (as an in place upgrade too)  without needing any hacks or alterations.

_

RME HDSP9652 | | RME Digiface USB

5

Re: Windows 11

Yeah, time will tell. My older Dell laptop (XPS 15, 9550) was shipped with TPM but disabled. Dell enabled that at that time only for more expensive or business models. Needs a BIOS patch to work, it seems. If that doesn't come it stays with W10 - no issue for me...

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: Windows 11

Ramses,
Just returning after a 2 year absence and find this so timely as my pc’s have had a performance life of about 4 years and it is time to change. Of course Steinberg has always warned against upgrading to each windows change prematurely. I believe this time I will bite the bullet and go Xeon to replace the 7700k. Always admired your system test results you’d either posted or sent. Any suggestions?

Al

Babyface Pro, UFX+ via Thunderbolt, Win 10, Cubase 9.5 Pro, Asus Z270 i7700k Guitarist-1961

7 (edited by ramses 2021-10-11 14:12:30)

Re: Windows 11

Hi Al. Nice of you to drop by again wink

It's not an easy topic that you're addressing, expect a "wall of text" wink

One thing upfront: there will certainly be different opinions on the subject and far be it from me to start a controversial discussion! So, this is my opinion, which I don't want to impose on anyone, so please let everyone make up their own minds. And if you need a new system for your business, then you surely can not wait. I am here more in a comfort zone, as I have no business drivers for a new system, because this is only my private PC.

In short: I don't like many things about Windows 11.

1. that my still very performant Xeon 6-core is simply no longer supported for extremely flimsy reasons
2. that a lot of systems are unnecessarily thrown away worldwide, although sustainability should be on everyone's lips nowadays and we should be careful with the limited resources available.
3. compulsion for TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot
4. that Microsoft is making Windows / the GUI worse and worse and I can't even install Windows 11 to evaluate the product because my CPU is not supported (I could even upgrade TPM 2.0 for my board, but in the end I don't want to).
5. And at the moment still many teething problems (e.g. performance issues with AMD)

In times of Corona, semiconductors and raw material shortages, you don't throw away computers unnecessarily just because Microsoft would like you to. Environmental protection and sustainability should have slowly arrived also at Microsoft, right?

There are a few marketing slides on TPM, but it is largely unclear what Microsoft can and will do with this chip on your system (now and later). There are a lot of "hollow" phrases and marketing terms, but none of them are explained to the extent that you really have a good feeling that all this will really be to your advantage or that you will not be gradually incapacitated (de: entmündigt) as system owner.

Furthermore, I think that forcing private users to use a TPM is completely excessive; only bigger companies (or those who deal with sensitive data) will have such high security requirements. If Microsoft really wants to do something for security, then they should offer Bitlocker drive encryption free of charge for all version of Windows, not only the more expensive Pro version.

That's why I will continue to use my system as long as possible, i.e. according to the current status until the end of support in 2025, until there are no more security patches for it, because I use the device on the internet every day.

To support that long usage I recently upgraded the CPU from E5-1650v3 to E5-1650v4 from used market, which runs much cooler (now ~35°C), is a little bit faster and supports somewhat faster ECC RAM, in order to get the most performance out of the upgraded graphics card (RTX 2070 Super). The v4 generation was also supposed to be less susceptible to Meldtown/Spectre, so they said at the time.

I am also concerned that the owner of a PC is losing more and more autonomy over the system. Be it through TPM, Secure Boot, changes to the EULA that allow M$ collection of certain usage data from your system (containing biometric data) and even transfer to partner companies, online accounts, etc.

I'm afraid it won't be long before Microsoft starts to turn Windows into an operating system service, as is already the case with application software. Then there will be compulsory online accounts, maybe even compulsory shops, and at the end of the day you will be "milked" monthly for something like "Windows as a service" just as you are for some software (which I do not buy), and if you don't play along, your account will be blocked and you won't be able to use your computer any more.

I don't want to paint a too dark picture, but all these incremental measures are going in that direction as far as I'm concerned.

That's why I'm putting off switching to Windows 11 as long as possible, because I simply don't want to be forced to throw away a system that is still performing very well for the flimsiest of industry reasons.

And at the moment I would also like to wait until Intel manages to create more powerful systems again, Thunderbolt is perhaps integrated into the chipset, DDR5 comes for consumer systems. There are a lot of new things on the horizon, which I would also like to take with me. Perhaps there will be more boards with 10 Gbit NICs and cheaper, perhaps more compact, 10 Gigabit switches.

Whether it will be a Xeon-based board again next time, I can't even say for sure yet. At the moment, the prices for a Xeon system with - compared to AMD - lower performance still seem a bit too high to me.

Then, unfortunately, I can't find a motherboard with Thunderbolt support yet. I don't really like the reduced cable lengths with Thunderbolt compared to USB3 and I really need 3m at my workplace, which would simply not be possible with Thunderbolt. But I just wanted to have it with a new system to be able to make some experiences with TB myself.

Supermicro doesn't offer anything like that yet either.I might even consider a turnkey system if it doesn't become too expensive.

Who knows, if Microsoft continues like this, then I don't even want to rule out switching to Apple, unless they do the same thing. My choice of operating system will in any case be based on where I feel most comfortable, where one still has the impression of being the master of one's system. However, a certain trend is unfortunately pointing in a different direction and you can't turn back the clock.

Your requirements might be easier to map and you probably don't have to go for a Xeon-based system.

EDIT: and now I read an article in the computerbase forum, why you would need smth like TPM, to make other authentication mechanism secure, see also: https://www.computerbase.de/2021-09/win … -updates/.
I cite: "In future, users would be able to log in with their face or fingerprint via Windows Hello without having to store a classic password insecurely in the system in the background."

And now I translate it into more common language (again my personal view on this): "We make you believe that a local account on your system would be bad/insecure, that you will become compliant to create an online account, alternatively we will make it more trickier to you to create local accounts and maybe at some day even force you to do so. Why ? Because we would like to collect more biometric data about all our users: recent photos and fingerprints. "

Whoever has all the data has the power ..

If I would need to buy a system now, I would maybe contact somebody offering audio pcs and ask for a Windows 10 Pro based system with very low DPC latency (good drivers) and which offers also a lot of Single Thread performance which can be important if you are using VSTi's which might require low ASIO buffersize to stay under 10ms RTL or in case you want to use a lot of inserts in one track which are being processed in one thread and need to be ready "in time".
If your focus is the normal recording or the mastering of tracks, then your HW requirements might not be so high.
You also need to consider that some DAWs (if I remember right Cubase is such a DAW) can not make use of a high number of cores/threads in a CPU. This you might need to evaluate a little bit deeper, this is now only hearsay, not my own experience.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

Re: Windows 11

Hi Ramses,  thank you for this insightful and enlightening reply.  In the interim, I have begun to identify many of the issues you elude to as fact and I can see the cloud based control problems in my phone and tablet already developing as you say.  No doubt these will continue to to develop blindly and begin to erode the control we each maintain over our own computers. Sounds like the plot of so many sci-fi movies.

As long a Microsoft does not take over and automatically upgrade the computer, it will stay for a bit. I was a Win7 user for the longest time so I will just hang out on the sidelines.. funny, I did see a drink box last month labeled “Soylent Green”

Thank you again, I am very appreciative…Al

Babyface Pro, UFX+ via Thunderbolt, Win 10, Cubase 9.5 Pro, Asus Z270 i7700k Guitarist-1961

9 (edited by ramses 2021-10-12 12:57:43)

Re: Windows 11

https://www.computerbase.de/2021-10/win … cure-boot/

The system tool Rufus can adapt the system images of Windows 11 accordingly so that the various specifications and constraints like TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and 4 GB of RAM for the installation media created with it are omitted. Besides this "Extended" option, a portable "Windows 11 To Go" can also be realized this way.

Am currently testing Win11 on my "not supported" configuration (unsupported CPU, no Secure Boot, no TPM).

Thanks to Rufus, I was able to install Windows 11 on my 2nd SSD without any problems and without having to fiddle around manually or otherwise in the registry.
All that you need is an USB Stick with at least 8GB and to download the Windows 11 ISO image and Rufus and to start it with the suggested settings.

https://pics.computerbase.de/1/0/0/7/9/ … a1ca6e.png

The only thing that I did during Win11 installation proactively / additionally: when it comes to the point to create a user account I unplugged the LAN cable to have no Internet Connection. By this I hoped to enforce the creation of a local (no online) account for privacy reasons. This worked well for me.

The good news regarding RME drivers and Software. Driver and Digicheck run very well so far without any issues.

I got already a cumulative update for Windows 11 although this setup is not supported. What looked strange, that I got 80 optional updates for CPU / Chipset and USB drivers. Those 80 had to be selected one by one. Felt 75 of those are normally being installed in one sweep as so called "chipset drivers". Addiiotnal pain: the selection lasts 2-3 sec per entry and if you click too fast, then you deselect again. Clicking a few one after each other does not always succeed. This has not been coded well.

With new taskbar / new start menu I tried to work for a while. It just feels unfamiliar. As a Windows user, you are just used to clicking somewhere else for what feels like an eternity, it doesn't bring a better workflow and is just annoying.

So I quickly installed StartIsBack++ for Windows 11 and the 8Gadget Pack. There I use some of the not so annoyingly colorful gadgets from Orbmu2k (https://orbmu2k.de/), which tell you the status of CPU, GPU and network very clearly and by which you can quickly switch between three power profiles.

Compared to Win10, I see a further development of the system settings in Windows 11. It simply looks much tidier.
If you want the old style setup for certain things, then StartIsBack++ lets you select those through startmenue entries like under Windows 7.

I like the rounded corners of screen windows and applications, which makes a more pleasant visual impression. However, Microsoft has been a bit sloppy, because the window becomes too big when you zoom in vertically, you can't see the rounded corners anymore and the menu bar of Firefox, for example, then sticks penetratingly under the upper edge of the screen and that doesn't look so great again. Maybe the intention was to make much room for the rest, but it looks very ugly when selection menues are close to the edge.

A nice feature of the new Edge browser is that you can play YouTube videos on network-connected TVs. All of a sudden this no longer works, possibly due to O&O Win10 Shutup settings.

In LatencyMon, when Firefox is started, there is a severe spike in DPC execution time from the nVidia driver. Therefore I installed the version 471.96-desktop-win10-win11-64bit-international-dch-whql, let's see how it performs, it delivered a slightly lower DPC under Windows 10.

There were no audio dropouts when playing music with MusicBee. Here I use, to "tickle" the setup a bit, very sporty settings with an ASIO buffersize of only 32 samples (according to forum postings from RME, you should better use ~256 samples with WDM drivers).
There were only a few dropouts when installing the nVidia drivers, but I see that as normal when installing software and drivers.

In the further course I will look at the loading times of my "fat" Cubase project and compare between Windows 10 and 11, as well as compare between different Cubase versions, because Cubase 11 Pro has significantly increased the loading times, this is very apparent especially with such large test projects.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

10 (edited by ramses 2021-10-13 17:04:52)

Re: Windows 11

I made now some performance tests and everything is well with Windows 11.

Don't wonder about a big project with 400 audio tracks with 2 VST per track,
it was simply for performance testing from the beginning to see whats still possible to playback with lowest ASIO buffer sizes.
Smaller projects wouldn't have make any sense, because for that the machine was or is simply too performant.
And my interest was to look what would happen in extreme situations.

Here you can e.g. see clearly, that Cubase 11 has not been optimized well yet, because the time for loading such a project are much much higher compared to Cubase 9 and 10. Things like this I want to highlight by such a big project.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe1nqi91pw91rmb/2021-10-12%2020_54_06-Ladezeiten%20Cubase%20Win10%20vs%20Win11.xlsx%20-%20Excel.jpg?dl=1

Conclusions:

[ Please note: this doesn't look too bad in terms of performance, but bear in mind that the new Win11 security features are not yet activated in this type of installation, but they are supposed to cost a lot of performance, which is why Microsoft wants to exclude CPUs that are around 5 years old.

And I am also curious whether this might have also a bad impact on DPC latencies which would be bad for near-realtime applications like for recording, use of VST / VSTi. ]

1. Steinberg

Cubase 11 project load times are very bad compared to older releases of Cubase.

2. Microsoft

Similar performance like with Windows 10 and no instabilities or disadvantages by using an older CPU.

It would have suited Microsoft better to simply allow an upgrade to Windows 11 without all these high requirements, because it runs quite well (except a few issues around AMD processors, but give this simply more time).

All the M$ propaganda that the old CPUs are no longer good enough and that there were more Bluescreens is simply utter bullshit. There are no instabilities and for normal customers like us the security is well enough.

Thoughts in the direction of Microsoft: please less politics, data collecting mania and greed for control over other people's computers/property.
Maybe just back to more quality and customer orientation and respect for other people's privacy. It would also be good to think a bit more towards sustainability and drop nonsensical requirements (new CPUs, Secure Boot, TPM 2.0).
In this case I could really think about an update to Windows 11, but only then.

Next steps for me

This installation has come about by exploiting some loopholes that Microsoft has presumably left for its own tests, but cannot be regarded as the basis for an operable system.

Before switching to Windows 11, I expect clear statements from Microsoft that my CPU will continue to be supported and that a setup without TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot will be supported and provided with updates.

I will NOT buy a new computer for Windows 11, to be clear on that.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

11 (edited by ramses 2021-10-13 10:26:47)

Re: Windows 11

Interesting german article how M$ justifies the requirements.
https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Windows- … n-1381330/

The examples of Microsoft cited in it seem to me somewhat contrived / overengineered in places and don't necessarily give the impression of being justified, as if that would solve a multitude of problems.

Higher CPU are basically justified by the performance impact of some security measures:

"[...]If, in addition to TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, HVCI aka core isolation is also activated, drivers and code are also stored in a virtual environment that uses the CPU and the memory. Now the core isolation checks whether a driver has the correct signature and only allows drivers that have been signed as secure by the manufacturer to pass through to the operating system so that they can be loaded in the Windows memory. VBS functions require a supported CPU with activated virtualisation function.
[...]
Memory integrity on CPUs takes a toll on performance, so Microsoft has decided to only designate CPUs as compatible for Windows 11 that have sufficient performance and full VBS support. When upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11, HVCI/core isolation is disabled by default, but TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are enabled if you have previously enabled them in the UEFI BIOS and if you use Microsoft Bitlocker hard disk encryption, respectively.[...]
"

TBH, also this will not solve security issues entirely. If this "Security" is so "expensive" in the truest sense of the word (because then many will have to scrap their system and buy a new computer) ... THEN I would like to be able to make the final decision as a consumer whether it is worth it to me or not, because it won't solve the more likely security problems that can and will happen.
When I think back, neither I nor any of my friends/acquaintances have been hacked in the past around 30 years and have not had any other security incidents.

Microsoft is missing the point here and is only making things unnecessarily expensive (and more complicated). There will always be risks, not only in IT.

Nevertheless, we still go out on the streets, ride bicycles or drive cars and don't wrap ourselves in cotton wool. If such a security concept has such effects on the cost side, you can't seriously push that on everyone like that. On the one hand, that is quite impertinent and, on the other, it is complete nonsense.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

Re: Windows 11

I’ve just installed win 11 onto my backup/mess around pc. It is a non supported xenon 4 core 3.6ghz with 16gb ram, no TPM chip at all or secure boot. I used rufus to create the media and removed a dll from the installer. Installation went smoothly (I didn’t do a fresh install but over the top of win 10. I may do a fresh install next) TotalMix works fine as does Cubase and Wavelab. I have a couple of test projects which played back the same as win 10. No clicks or pops. I also tried reaper which looks to be working fine. Because I installed over win 10 a lot of the settings are still present including using the ultimate power mode. I won’t be doing my main pc yet which is win 11 compatible but so far it works well on an unsupported pc.

Babyface Pro Fs, Behringer ADA8200, win 10/11 PCs, Cubase/Wavelab, Adam A7X monitors.