Comment by piva00
9 months ago
> I think you are confused, MacOS definitely necessitates specific kernel drivers to get the lowest latency possible and some other features. Every high-end audio interface has its own driver that you need to install just like on Windows.
> Otherwise, you actually use the generic HID (Human Interface Device) implementation which has a 16bits/96khz sample rate limitation along with many other limitations, depending on variables (interface speed, specification etc.).
I currently have an audio interface with 32bits/96kHz which never needed any special drivers, it runs flawlessly without any latency whatsoever, plug-and-play.
Yes, I didn't keep up with the times. Nowadays both macOS and Windows support USB Class 2 for Audio Devices, which does add a lot more capacity, within the limits of the 480mbps bandwidth.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/Audio2_with_Errata_a...
Version 4 is in the works, not sure what/how much is implemented in which OS.
My point still stands (even more), if you have such low requirement for your audio, the OS really doesn't matter, you can be fine with an iPad or Android tablet even. If you really are working somewhat professionally with a pro level audio interface, you are installing the drivers regardless of native driverless support, rendering the "advantage" of macOS rather moot.
Audio latency in DAWs is more related to processing power than purely to the audio interface capacity. People get confused because some audio interfaces actually have accelerators in them that offload some of the audio processing from the CPU to allow for lower latency (because of lower buffer size). However, those are very expensive and have become extremely rare with the massive increase in computing power (as well as explosion of cores, allowing each VST to have its own thread) so it's not something most need to be concerned about.
There is however a performance delta depending on the driver implementation and DAW software of choice. It's in the single digit ms range but it still exists. The good thing is that as usual, more expensive is often better and you would only care about that if you are really professional, meaning you already buy the expensive stuff for many other reasons.
Here is some reading if you wish to educate yourself. On latency: https://www.original.dawbench.com/audio-int-lowlatency.htm On the funny idea that Macs are inherently better for audio: https://original.dawbench.com/win7-v-osx-1.htm Make sure to use the part links in the bottom right corner to get the full story.
There are many reasons to like and use Macs but anytime someone pretends it's for performance I get the hick, having been confronted to precisely the reverse. Both my own experience with Hackintoshes (and comparable PC hardware to Intel Macs) and many experiences supporting musician/recording technicians in studios, there is no real performance reason to use macOS, quite the contrary. People use it DESPITE the mediocre performance, because it allows them to use other tools that make more difference than just a little bit more performance.