It would be great too if Microsoft develops something for real musicians to make some real music !
The two primary audio APIs available on Windows have very high latency, to the point where they make tracking with effects virtually unusable. You can increase your sample rate to improve the latency, but that is far more taxing on your CPU.
OS X uses a system called Core Audio, and it has very respectable latency and is comparatively easy to develop for. We're at the point where a sort of self-sustaining feedback loop is well under way. Poor latency causes musicians to prefer OS X to Windows. Audio hardware manufacturers want to release products for platforms that people are actually using, so they target OS X. Now musicians who were on the fence about switching to a Mac have to in order to get access to decent recording equipment.
I have an Apogee Duet that works on OS X and iOS(!), but it doesn't support Windows. The really weird thing is that I get better latency when recording through my iPad then I do when recording through my beefy gaming rig.
tl;dr: Nifty controllers won't fix the problem. Microsoft needs to get serious about audio performance if they want musicians to use their platform.
Really? Apogee is the only manufacturer in this market I can think of, out of many, that supports Apple products but not Windows. All latency-fearing Windows audio software and hardware uses ASIO, for which there is broad industry support.
> Audio hardware manufacturers want to release products for platforms that people are actually using, so they target OS X.
I think you perceive their motivations correctly, but most people would reach a different conclusion than you have. Anecdotal evidence suggests that said manufacturers have as well.
> The really weird thing is that I get better latency when recording through my iPad then I do when recording through my beefy gaming rig.
The latency of a digital audio system is determined by the amount of buffering in the signal path, but your computer must be able to keep those buffers reliably full. Your iPad, being a more controlled system with fewer background processes, should be able to do a much better job of this than your desktop box, where anything goes.
These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. That's before we even get into software.
My understanding is that pro audio software on Windows generally bypasses the Microsoft audio stack. Instead, they use ASIO to access the sound card directly.
Thus, the Windows ecosystem is not at a disadvantage when it comes to audio latency.
However you can't beat real instruments for latency.
Anyway, it's true that is a shame that you need to use a third developer party SDK as a standard to have the lowest latency available on Windows, when you have CoreAudio on Mac OS X.
But you know, developing music hardware/software for Apple has a lot of serious/ridiculous issues too, mainly about compatibility between Mac OS X versions, developing tools broken after an update, signing apps, the whole Apple Store thing, sandboxing AU plug-ins... That's why I'd like Microsoft to perform better here.