From Mac to Windows - What to Expect

[Jeezer]

I find most people who have "issues" with windows, are like that purely because macs held their hand too much all these years. I've only ever used macs temporarily and found them a little 'dumbed down' for me, someone who builds my own PCs from own spec to get the best perf for the money for a variety of tasks. I couldn't be less interested in locked down hardware if you paid me (maybe ok in a tablet but not a desktop computer that I pay thousands for!). So the sooner you jump on the windows PC train and understand it the better imo, unlearn all the 'treats me like an idiot' stuff from the MAC years which actually made me feel like one (I find apple tends to overthink - for you - in the way they portray and design a lot of their software from the OS, to iPhone.. to even iTunes... often to the detriment of IT savvy power users who just want it to stop treating them like idiots and get out of the way).

Anyway, before going there....

Windows in fairness can be a bit of a head scratcher at times, even for someone who's used it since windows 98.. 20 years, over multiple systems. If it's working well and tweaked (services stopped, bloat uninstalled etc) and then imaged to a restorable backup (just 10 mins to reinstall in future and have it clean/fast) then it's just as slick/simple as mac basically. It's only when you dig down into the more complex stuff that MAC doesn't even let you do that you may lose your way.

Pro Tools wise? Excellent performance here on 12 HD with 8700k overclocked to 5ghz on all 6/12 cores. Just keeps on rolling, works great with D-command and if there's any crashes or issues, for me, it's typically a bad plug in rather than PT or Windows itself. Watch what you install, keep the bloat off, back It up when you have pt + plugs installed and you can get back to that state quickly if things get weird later on (windows 10 has built in system image maker to back up your system/C drive for future restore in minutes wiping out any nefarious/bloaty stuff that's cropped up since.. obviously store all your important data/music/files on a separate drive/partition as that won't need overwriting in future. And back up to a cloud server somewhere too with important DAW files! (same goes for mac there)

[The Weed]

If you don't want to build your own and do a deep dive into Windows, talk to www.pro-tools-pc.com. They build Windows computers guaranteed to run Pro Tools reliably and they support their computers extremely well.

As to backing up, try Macrium Reflect.

[SigFriedChicken]

I briefly tried to run Pro Tools on Windows 10 (via Bootcamp) on an iMac.

As others have mentioned, it is basically the same, but the Pro Tools text and graphics are not as sharp as they are on a Mac. I don't think that this is necessarily a Windows thing. I think Avid just hasn't updated the graphics for high-DPI screens on Windows yet.

As others have noted, the mix and edit views are contained within an outer window. In order to use a second display, you have to resize the outer window to take up both screens and then move the mix view window over.

One thing that I HATED about PT on Windows is that if MIDI devices were not hot-swappable -- meaning that if you plug in a MIDI device, you must completely restart PT before it is able to use it. If you are someone who just leaves the same MIDI devices plugged in all the time, it's not a big deal. But I found it to be a workflow breaker.

On the bright side, I think the Windows version may actually be faster and more CPU efficient, based on some limited testing. Scrolling through the MIDI editor, in particular, is MUCH smoother than it is on MacOS. PT on MacOS seems to be struggling with graphics/GUI performance issues at the moment.

I ended up switching back to MacOS after a couple of days. Not so much due to disliking PT on Windows, but various issues with Windows itself. I took for granted that the Apple magic trackpad works great on MacOS, but is not nearly a smooth on Windows. I also do other things that didn't seem to work smoothly in Windows.

That being said, if Apple doesn't deliver a good solution with their next hardware updates, I may consider Windows again.

[Gaston69]

After many many years working with on a Mac I decided to switch platform and purchased a refurbished HP Z420 Workstation with a single 8-Core E5-2670 XEON Processor which is an AVID certified machine for running Pro Tools 2018 plus I was told by the salesman that it is a whisper quit machine.

What I noticed are the poor graphics in Pro Tools 2018 while I still use the same Dell Ultrasharp U2515 Monitor.....

What to do in order to get the same graphic results as I had on OSX, are there drivers to update ......????

[The Weed]

What is the resolution of the video card in the box? Is it 1920x1200 capable? IIRC, that's all your monitor is capable of. How do you have the monitor hooked up? VGA or DVI?

[Gaston69]

I have a Nvidia Quadro K2000 videocard and my current (max) resolution is:

2560 x 1440

[athlon64]

I own a lenovo P50 (6820hq, 32 gigs of ram, nvme ssd, quadro m2000m)
Best mobile workstation i ever owned.

I use protools 12.5 on it.
I have done a lot of work, from mixing at high buffers with bunches of plugins, to recording at small "64" buffers".

The summation is as follows. The machine itself is great for the job. I would give you every reccomendation for it. I had an HP Zbook g1. It's great to bit can't compare to a good old thinkpad.


Protools on windows runs quiet much identical to OSX. The problems it has are the same and it seems to me that OSX users usually clam how it's more stable just because they got used to it trough years and decades.

But considering how little respect apple pays to content creators these days, and how bad their hardware has become for actuall powerusers. I don't even consider a macbook pro to be a competitor to a P series thinkpad.

So, once it's set up well on a fresh install of windows with all your plugins, it should run smooth and stable.
The only slight problems are the parent-child window arrangement which can be problematic on some dual screen setups, but can be lived with. And some high DPI scaling blur. But these are not major problems.


What can be a problem, and seems to happen on OSX too. Is that trough time, the operating system gets updated, your computer drivers get updated, and pieces of code that protools relies on get changes. Problems arise.
Then AVID patches them up and we keep playing the game of cat and mouse.

I realized that most studios go around this problem by keeping the DAW operating system locked up.

So you install everything. Get it running perfectly well, and then pull the plug. You don't update windows or drivers or ever install anything but audio software on this machine.

And it keeps running fantastic.

My older friend for an example, has a 2011 MAC pro, with el capetain running on it. And uses protools 10. He doesn't want to upgrade anything because everything runs well. Studios often do this.

How do you do this on windows but don't loose your machines functionality?

You dualboot two sets of windows. You can even put them on different solid state drives if you want.

Then you have one set of windows for everything. And the other one for audio only.

In this audio only set of windows you only have your DAW and audio production software. You disable updates with registry mod if needed and unless you are having some problems, don't bother with laptop driver updates either. It will keep running great forever. Then a few years down the line, you simply refresh everything the same way.


There is a version of windows called windows 10 enterprise LTSB. Which only recieves critical updates and comes with no bloatware. Google it. I'm just trying it out now. It could be great for this "dedicated DAW os" usage. It's meant for apps where stability is critical. Like ATM machines and medical software.

[athlon64]

Also, here is a subject i wrote on helping with low buffer performance on windows:

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=397594

With these affinity settings, my P50 can record as many tracks as i want at a buffer of 64, with no crackles and with like 15 tracks playing simultaniously, while there is 30 plugins on them...


Sometimes OSX users tell me how windows is too hard to set up if you want protools to run nice and stable. And then i see them using 3 generations old OSX releases because they had problems with newer software.
Or i see them going crazy when someone opens the internet browser because "it's a DAW pc only, you will make some mess and it's won't run stable anymore".

Protools is not a perfect software, it has some problems, but they are simply not as related to the OS as some people might think.

And then on windows, it's very important to select a good piece of hardware with decent drivers. Which you are doing by getting a P51

[Gaston69]

Originally Posted by SigFriedChicken

I briefly tried to run Pro Tools on Windows 10 (via Bootcamp) on an iMac.

As others have mentioned, it is basically the same, but the Pro Tools text and graphics are not as sharp as they are on a Mac. I don't think that this is necessarily a Windows thing. I think Avid just hasn't updated the graphics for high-DPI screens on Windows yet.

As others have noted, the mix and edit views are contained within an outer window. In order to use a second display, you have to resize the outer window to take up both screens and then move the mix view window over.

One thing that I HATED about PT on Windows is that if MIDI devices were not hot-swappable -- meaning that if you plug in a MIDI device, you must completely restart PT before it is able to use it. If you are someone who just leaves the same MIDI devices plugged in all the time, it's not a big deal. But I found it to be a workflow breaker.

On the bright side, I think the Windows version may actually be faster and more CPU efficient, based on some limited testing. Scrolling through the MIDI editor, in particular, is MUCH smoother than it is on MacOS. PT on MacOS seems to be struggling with graphics/GUI performance issues at the moment.

I ended up switching back to MacOS after a couple of days. Not so much due to disliking PT on Windows, but various issues with Windows itself. I took for granted that the Apple magic trackpad works great on MacOS, but is not nearly a smooth on Windows. I also do other things that didn't seem to work smoothly in Windows.

That being said, if Apple doesn't deliver a good solution with their next hardware updates, I may consider Windows again.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...gh-dpi-devices

[Bob Olhsson]

I laughed myself silly when I made the move after 15 years on the Mac and that was from system 9 to xp. Windoze 10 is very Mac-like which is most of why you'll hear Windoze enthusiasts bad-rapping it.