Thanks for sharing your experience.
It left me hopeful for Windows on a less power gobbling and heat generating platform.
However without knowing the CPU in your MacBook Pro, it’s difficult to get much of an impression of the performance comparison you made.
While support for ARM64 may eliminate many issues associated with Intel CPUs, isn’t the real problem here with Windows. The ARM64 Cubase still needs Windows for ARM, correct ?
I still don’t know what to do with my 6 Win 10 machines after Oct 14,2025. Only one will officially run Win 11 and I really don’t like where MS is going with Windows anyway. Even if I did like it, I can’t afford to replace them all right now.
Of course, that is what the name already says. It is a different CPU architecture and needs an operating system built for that architecture.
It will simply continue to run, you just don’t get any updates or security fixes anymore. So make sure you either disconnect them from the Internet, or at least run a good firewall and virus scanner.
Not sure what you mean with this. Microsoft has supported Windows 10 since July 2015, so they did that for ten years (end of 2025). Look at Apple and see what they do with their OS, they support only for about three years, currently it is back to Ventura and that was released in June 2022 and if you run older systems you need to be lucky if they run on the so called “Apple vintage hardware”.
If you want to view it as a half-empty glass, a “problem”, then it is about the CPUs being more power efficient, at least as far as I can see.
I think Windows is heading in the right direction in a lot of ways. The whole “problem” with operating systems like Win and OSX is that they cater to a ton of use-cases, not just us, so they have to support a ton of functionality. I think win 11 looks and feels better than 10 which looks and feels a lot better than earlier versions. General productivity increases significantly as we move ahead.
For some users that focus on DAW work only in an “isolated” scenario I can definitely see how a large and comprehensive OS seems unnecessarily big. On the other hand for people like me that do post audio what the OS provides is necessary. On my DAW computer I don’t just need the DAW and 3rd party audio software, I also need email and calendar, a browser, file transfer software, Zoom, Davinci Resolve and so on. So for people like me there’s just a need for a comprehensive OS at the base of it all.
Looking forward to testing Nuendo on Win on ARM personally. Should be interesting. I can see myself upgrading my very old laptop to something of this decade.
My Mac has 10CPU 16GPU and 32gb of ram.
My Galaxy Book4 Edge has a Snapdragon Elite X XIE801100 12 core processor and 16 gb of ram.
I’m pretty stoked about the laptop, just wish there were more drivers and apps. At the moment it seems not a lot of companies are developing for Windows ARM…
Is it fair to assume it’s an M1, rather than current generation M4 ?
Yes, M1
I’ve used Windows ARM for past few years, and this is the biggest problem for sure. I’m sure it will come once people appreciate the efficiency with ARM even though many were talking down on it ahead of Apple Silicon setting the standard for desktop machines.
Also for audio applications I use aggregate devices and onboard audio a lot on the move, so that’s something that they need to figure out on Windows too. It winds me up when you can’t load up a session on a laptop and switch across to a separate application that requires audio.
Or if you plug in something like an amp profiler that has USB audio as an option but you want to route out of a different interfaces speaker to monitor it’s a no go on Windows.
CoreAudio I find to be a really solid backbone and zero maintenance. So this new architecture on Windows will be interesting from that perspective. It needs to be of serious consideration in my opinion.
You can add in a second SSD into those Samsung devices too can’t you? That’s a really massive selling point over a macbook where they want to drain you dry on the day of purchase! 
Unfortunately, no user replaceable parts in this laptop.
I use VBaudio’s software to access my MOTU 16A at the same time as Nuendo. Nothing like that works for you?
I tried a few solutions including vbaudio’s, but they all required pre-configuring and adding in an extra layer of complexity. I just want simplicity and less IT tasks when doing music, as it either costs me money or costs me free time.
The best tool was a command line one, but it would really struggle on a moderate project.
On my desktop machine I have multi-client audio as part of my hardware, so as long as sample rates match it’s fine. It was more a convenience thing when on the move using a W10/11 laptop and onboard audio via headphones.
Mac just does it out the box and so convenient you don’t even consider that it could be a problem on other devices. As an example: I can plug in an audio interface for my mic/guitar, and then monitor it via the onboard audio interface and out through the macbook speakers, plus open any other app that has audio.
That would be an incredibly complicated task to achieve on Windows due to the nature of it’s drivers and lack of aggregate device support.
So my point was more that I hope this is part of the ASIO system drivers discussed at the top. As it would help a lot of people who just want to plug a MIDI keyboard in and songwrite via the device speakers (Which the macbooks work very well), or simply mix via the headphone port, and it doesn’t kill the ability to open an audio file someone has sent, or browser audio.
yes the MBP/Core audio do this a lot better…however…it’s really annoying that on my MBP/Sonoma machine Apple have decided that the speakers and headphones are separate audio devices, so everytime I plug in headphones I have to manually change the audio device to headphones, and then vice versa back to speakers. I was auditioning headphones the ther day and had to do this everytime I unpluged one set of headphones and plugged in another…Grrrrrrrrrrrrr
M
I had a 2012 macbook and went windows around 2019, then returned back to mac in 2022. And you’re right, I don’t know when they changed to the split ports or why.
It was a really big problem with the windows laptop I had as that was the same. I guess there’s advantages in being able to address ports separately, i.e. for for people who want to practise DJ’ing on a macbook using it’s speakers and the headphone as a cue.
I notice that the latency changes on speakers so I think there’s some kind of additional DSP that has to engage which helps deliver the sound quality on those macbook speakers?
I’ve got the 16" and it’s simply incredible as a portable audio machine. But there’s no reason that a Windows ARM machine couldn’t match it in future at a good price point and with upgradeable SSD etc.
It all comes down to how good this new ASIO o/s level driver is going to be. For myself it’s quite a critical aspect, along with the aggregrate devices.
Exactly, we NEED asio drivers. The Built n Steinberg driver has a round trip latency of 60 msec, useless for synths and guitars. I have an IX022 coming soon so I’ll let you know how that goes. I contacted ILOK and they basically said there’s no timeline for releasing a Windows Arm app. As far as the OS, is concerned, Windows Arm is supposed to be tweaked for audio? That’s the hype with the big presentation with Steinberg…I guess it’s early days but I sure do like a laptop that’s as powerful as my M1 MacBook,
Definetly, I know people will say “Oh it’s not as powerful as an M4”, but I agree if it’s around the M1 level already that’s really promising as an M1/Pro is already enough for most audio tasks. After that it’s more about SSD/Ram and associated costs for the majority of users and clearly there is only one winner there.
I’d really appreciate if you could keep us updated, always nice to have someone willing to dive in the cold water first, and wave to the rest of us when it starts to warm up! 
I’d be really interested in general efficiency on mains vs battery, what battery life is like, and whether you hear any fan noise the more you use it too.
I don’t know if those elements are better improved purely due to being an ARM architecture, or if there’s still a lot that comes down to the motherboard/power management as set by Samsung/Apple.
A bit off topic (but still adjacent!), but I agree it is unfortunate that Windows 11 won’t officially install on older hardware. There are a few options for you:
1 - Run Windows 11 on your old computers even if they don’t meet Microsoft’s requirements. YMMV, it may not work well long term, and I don’t personally recommend this. But there are plenty of guides for this. Again, YMMV.
2 - Keep running Windows 10 but disconnect from the Internet. I know a bunch of people who will be doing this. They plan on “freezing” their DAWs at Windows 10, sometime in 2025 and that will be the end of upgrades and Internet connection for them. Those machines should still be useful for years to come, so this is a very valid option.
3 - Keep running Windows 10 but pay Microsoft for extended security updates. They recently announced that it is $30 for another year of security support for consumers, so you’d have until late 2026 to decide your next steps. ( Microsoft wants $30 to let you keep using Windows 10 securely for another year - The Verge ) – you will have to enroll in the ESU (Extended Security Updates) program “closer to the end of support in 2025.”
4 - Keep running Windows 10 and stay connected to the Internet at your own risk but beef up security and firewall… I don’t recommend this but I know a number of people who will be doing this. Danger zone if you ask me.
5 - Transition those older machines (that you decided won’t be upgraded to Windows 11) over to Linux and run many Linux native plugins, and even many of your favorite Windows plugins on Wine/Yabridge. You can even use Audiogridder on those Linux machines and integrate them in your network so you can access them on your Windows 11 machine to run plugins remotely. Very cool tech. Lots of options with Linux. I run many Linux machines in the studio along side Windows and Macs (although I recently decided to phase out Macs though).
6 - Take the full leap over to native Linux and say goodbye to Windows forever. Several great native DAWs and plugins run great on Linux. This used to be my big DAW dream, but for now it is a dream deferred. One day though I will eventually get here, and perhaps by then, Steinberg will support Linux too. In the meantime, I’ve accepted that I will have a very hybrid studio and I’m loving Cubase 14 and intend to upgrade my Nuendo license to v14 too. I also plan to buying into the ARM64 platform now that Steinberg supports it. ARM64 looks very promising to me long-term.
Good luck with whatever you do… But you DO have options.
Yes. This. Sorted.
You will also instantly become more productive.
thx uarte,
Sorry if I came off like a newb. I didn’t mean to. I am a recently retired engineer and have used (at least tried) every version of Windows since 1.0 and I am aware of the solutions you generously provided. What I should have said is I have not fully decided what to do about Win 10 EOL. I already run a Linux Mint fileserver (I used to run RedHat then Debian then Ubuntu). I also keep 3 Win 10 PC’s internet isolated except for updates.
What I don’t like about Windows evolution is it seems to be moving towards a subscription model or at least Windows As a Service. Also it is becoming less configurable in terms of implementing a minimal installation (local account, a gazillion unecessary running servicess, etc).
Cheers
No worries. And there are many of us that are wrestling with this situation and have a similar point of view about Windows in general. In my case, I’ve been trying to move my studio entirely to Linux and I got pretty far. So close. I’m very impressed by what can be done with pro audio on Linux now and if I didn’t do this professionally, I would have already jumped ship entirely to Linux.
Here’s a little more background of my thinking, and please forgive the long post that is about to follow. For those not interested, feel free to skip it! I promise there is a tie-in to this thread.
The reality of my own personal and business situation requires me to use certain tools, and those tools do NOT work on Linux (yet or perhaps ever, even with various tools like Wine and Yabridge). So I had to confront my own reality and I made a tough choice to bite the bullet and stick with the apps and plugins that I rely on professionally. So in my case I decided to stick with Windows, despite my own concerns with Windows.
Now I don’t want to get into my actual philosophy about OSes and shifting business models of the main two commercial OSes, etc… (it’s not truly relevant here but something I love to chat about in other contexts), BUT I’ll just say that I relate entirely with your point of view and concerns.
But after having Windows, Macs, and Linux machines in the studio for years now, I had to make some hard decisions. I decided I had to at least consolidate down to two OSes… not juggle three OSes like I had been doing. For a while I moved heavily over to MacOS with Apple Silicon due to the performance per watt issue (and thus portability option advantage), but every investment I made in Apple Silicon took me even further away from my longer-term goal with Linux (despite some noble efforts for distros on Apple Silicon).
But then… when I saw the ARM64 demo with Dom using Cubase for ARM, and frankly years of Pete’s outstanding efforts with Microsoft to improve pro audio support, as it started to bear some real fruit, I knew I had to come back to Windows. You can blame Dom and Pete! Despite my philosophical issues with Microsoft (and BTW I also have plenty of philosophical issues with Apple), the idea that Windows now offered a viable performance per watt solution for pro audio with ARM, PLUS my ability to dual-purpose my various Intel/AMD machines for Windows and/or Linux much more easily, all came together to make Windows the right platform for me. Farewell Apple. Thank goodness. No disrespect or flame war intended for those who love Apple.
So how to address my philosophical concerns with Microsoft? Well, my mental gymnastics may be different than what you might have to go through if you choose a similar path, but the equation is simple for me. I decided to keep my core music and post production apps and plugins on Windows machines, and everything else I do on Linux machines. Including even posting this long response in the forum… I’m on Linux right now for everything but music and post. Simple as that. It’s working for me so far. I decided I just had to compartmentalize what tasks I do on which OS. It’s not a perfect world, and this compromise works for me, at least right now.
I then attempt to do best practices to reduce the unfortunate intrusiveness and other concerns I have with Windows (no offense, Pete!), and I accept the reality that if I want to use my favorite (and in many case critical) apps and plugins, I MUST use Windows (or technically, MacOS is still an option, but again, I’ve recently moved away from Apple). Meanwhile, I also maintain several Linux DAWs and I have invested in many of the Linux commercial pro audio apps and plugins on the market and integrate them into my workflow for some projects.
I have accepted this is the reality I have to deal with, and it is what it is. And it’s working so far.
Why is this relevant to this thread? Well… it’s specifically because Steinberg pulled off an impressive stunt, urged on and perhaps inspired by Pete’s efforts ( thank you again, @Psychlist1972 !) to improve Windows for pro audio. I can now get closer to my objectives… I get to return to Intel/AMD for big horsepower machines to handle my projects when I don’t care about performance per watt as much in the studio, PLUS run all my critical apps and plugins, PLUS dual-purpose those machines to be able to run all the Linux distros if/when I want to, PLUS I now have a viable performance-per-watt solution with Steinberg running on ARM64 too! It’s a good day for me TBH. I credit Pete for making it happen TBH, and it’s a huge deal in the larger sense that people who need performance per watt and who do NOT want to succumb to Apple (for whatever reason), no longer have to… since there is now a viable Windows on ARM platform with pro solutions for pro audio. I don’t need Apple Silicon any more. I am happy with my latest AMD 9950X machine as a studio machine. (Which can also run Linux whenever I want to, now or in the future). I just needed that other puzzle piece with viable portable computing options which Windows on ARM64 now supplies.
And moreover, it’s important to note that it’s bigger than that… I love that Pete and Microsoft are taking MIDI 2.0 so seriously and they’ve been spending resources on performance issues, latency issues, etc., etc… So I now believe the future is actually brighter on Windows for DAW work right now… despite my own misgivings about Microsoft in general, and despite all the hoopla around Apple’s M4 CPUs, etc. I’ll take my setup over a rack of the best M4s any day now. Nothing against Apple users.
What’s so cool is that Steinberg and Microsoft have now given us more meaningful options. And yes, one day I hope Steinberg will support Linux, but I’m good for now with this new balance. I’ll deal with the aspects of Microsoft and Windows that I don’t like by restricting my activities to just the core music and post activities that I need to do, and the rest I do on Linux, where I have total control over my most important personal/business info. Again, no offense to Pete and Microsoft.
So there’s more of my thought process… for whatever that’s worth. And it may not resonate with you at all. It works for me though. I’ll close out this post on a Linux Mint machine with tabs open in the background monitoring Black Friday deals popping up like crazy (I just upgraded a VSL library, excited to test it!), as I have my DAW running on a nice new 9950X machine with Windows 11 and Cubase, etc…
Cheers, and let us know what you decide to do about your own decision re: all your machines and Windows 10 EOL, etc… you’re not alone, and I’ll be curious what solution you come up with. 
I like to keep my options open and without bias. If i decide to go all in on a brand is where there’s danger, and they all want you to dive into their eco systems so it can be hard where there’s clear conveniences.
This is why I ensure anything I rely on is cross platform. And I don’t make use of embedded cloud solutions that ‘make life easier’. i.e. iCloud, iMessage, OneDrive etc.
I’ve found OneDrive to be the most intrusive as despite saying no to it, i’ve had Windows updates where it’s then decided to restart the machine and replace my documents or desktop with onedrive links and sync to the cloud.
It’ll be typical that they get windows running well from an o/s level for audio and then another department at Microsoft undermines it with a daft telemetry or service based decision.
Seems that the ideal windows versions to get are the govt ones where everything is stripped back by default. Shame they couldn’t do the equivalent as a ‘productive edition’ or something, even if they had to charge extra for it.
Fact that they want to force so much on to us by default is always going to go against the folk wanting to make a more efficient audio environment. Which is a shame, as all the benefits gained in this area by going Mac or Linux are achievable in Windows from a technical perspective.
As always, It’s the decisions at the top which spoil many of the end products and how they’re sold and packaged to us.