In my experience, over a very long period of time, back and forth over platforms and tons of hardware with tons of projects, and tons of audio devices, I’ve found Cubase and Nuendo to be roughly “approximately equally stable” on either platform, under the following VERY important conditions:
- Universal guideline: You should treat your DAW exclusively as a DAW. Not a gaming machine. Not a do-everything machine for all your media and social-media production dreams. Not a dumping ground for tons of junk, apps, and plugins. Just treat it with care and respect, and it will treat you with care and respect. I promise on my grandmother’s mandolin, this advice is still just as relevant today in 2025 as it was when I started decades ago, despite what anyone else will say today. Ignore this at your own risk. Because it’s all about risk factors and playing the odds to your favor. (And so BTW that doesn’t mean someone can’t game on a DAW… sure, it’s possible… but they are introducing risk factors that push them up the risk curve.) So my humble suggestion born out of my own painful experience, is to play the odds in YOUR OWN FAVOR by NOT screwing around, and just treat your DAW exclusively as a DAW. The fact is a DAW is a complex ecosystem, comprised of many interdependent elements, both hardware and software, from the physical hardware to BIOS to OS to drivers to apps to plugins, etc… and any one component can cause issues for a real-time system like a DAW. It’s a miracle it all works so well, right? Why screw around with it?
- If on Windows, don’t skimp on hardware components! Pesky little things like power supplies and RAM quality really do matter for example, and don’t just ASSUME everything works if the OS installs! Run a standard burn-in process to validate your hardware! Then you are setting yourself up for a very solid experience if you do it right.
- If on Windows, you may also want to make some simple yet sane adjustments and de-crappify the OS (and sometimes BIOS) if needed. This step and #2 are indeed a little more work up front in some cases, and thus it earns MacOS a more “user-friendly out of the box experience” which is more or less true, but this issue is often over-hyped by biased Mac fans. The optimal Windows DAW set up process is not that bad, and while it may take a little more work out of the box, it’s not worth moaning and groaning about. Just deal with it IMO.
- If on MacOS, you generally need to stay about ONE major version of MacOS behind the current latest major version (exceptions apply, but then you increase risk factors), and you should NEVER jump the gun on major OS updates. Ignore this at your own risk!
- Also, to expand on #4 since it can be such a big deal… if on MacOS, again, you must accept that Apple is more aggressive in “breaking” things from time to time, and thus you frankly need to pay more attention to updates to everything else in general (including apps, plugins, etc.) and the ramifications of updating, compared to your Windows colleagues. In the real world, this CAN result in more work and stress over time for MacOS users, depending on what apps/plugins you use, and CAN actually end up costing more real-world money in upgrade costs than typical Windows users, who can often go for longer periods of time without upgrades that break things.
IF you follow the above guidelines, THEN both platforms, on average, over time, are “approximately equally stable.”
But again, I put “approximately equally stable” in quotes since perhaps someone else’s version of “approximately equally stable” is different than my version of “approximately equally stable” and also can’t be confused with equal performance, equal features, equal ease of use, equal cost, equal maintenance, equally easy to screw up, equally easier to set up out of the box, and so forth. And again, consider the complex ecosystem of hardware, drivers, apps, plugins, etc… the myriad issues that can come up are too many to list. Not to mention user error too. Again, it’s a miracle it works as well as it does.
And in all fairness, guideline #5 is kind of a cheat for MacOS, because the pure fact of life is that Apple breaks things more often than Microsoft, and they tend to break things in such a way that you CAN’T roll back easily, without giving up important OS updates, and you can’t as safely upgrade without introducing higher risk factors of something breaking. And thus, you can be left high and dry if you upgrade too early, OR left stranded on an older OS/app/plugin stack because Apple broke too many things at once. And in some cases, you may end up having to shell out more money for upgrades more often for plugins or apps because a newer version of MacOS won’t run an older app or plugin.
In other words, guideline #5 tilts the whole equation slightly in the favor of Windows IMO… BUT in all fairness, IF you tend to be slightly more risky and loose with guideline #1, or technically challenged with guidelines #2 and #3, then the equation might very well tilt toward MacOS for you!
So it really boils down to how YOU might fit better with one platform or another. In my case, I’ve happily phased out Apple recently (after years of running Windows, MacOS, and Linux DAWs), and don’t plan to look back to Apple again, I’m happy to move on at this point. But YMMV. Cubase 14 has been remarkably stable for me with tons of plugins and complex projects, and I tested it heavily on both platforms and multiple systems. On carefully built and configured Windows systems, I currently find it slightly more stable than on MacOS. But I know what I’m doing and I abide by the guidelines above. However, in the past, at different times over the years, I might have said the same of MacOS at that time.
In any case, the bottom line is that you should pick the platform that you like the best. MacOS has certain advantages over Windows right now, AND vice-versa. And it’s a shifting landscape with dozens of factors that may or may not matter to you. For every advantage someone gives for MacOS, I can give one for Windows, and vice-versa. If you want to talk about bloat, I can make the case either way. If you want to talk about invasion of privacy or too much telemetry, I can make the case either way. If you want to talk about performance, I can make the case either way. If you want to talk about money/cost, I can make the case either way, depending on what you are doing. If you want to talk about size/portability/noise/performance per watt, I can make the case either way, depending on what you are doing and what you really need in your studio.
Just pick your poison for what YOU want/prefer and go with it, and remember the guidelines above. And if you do… stability itself is “approximately equally stable” on either platform.
Cheers!
