U-SYNC for Windows

[mattbassg]

Windows - yes please. Mostly Windows 10 for recording, but 11 will be forcing it's way through eventually.

Using a Focusrite 2i4 2nd gen and / 6i8 3rd gen with Ableton 12 and the Focusrite USB ASIO

It's not a deal breaker for me not to have USYNC for Windows right now (as most of my current use is live and without a DAW) - but I know I'll likely need to be using a DAW live in the next 18 months or so and an Apple device (other than iPad) is not at all on my horizon... so if USYNC for Windows will become more important to me in time...

Still love Midronome BTW

[soulomon]

YES PLEASE!!!

Latest Win 11 Pro
RME Fireface UFX II
Latest drivers

[think2wice]

Lack of U-SYNC for Windows is the only thing swaying me away from buying a Midronome. Otherwise I'd probably be one of the first to pick one up when the next batch is ready.

Please make it happen, guys. There's a Lotta PC based producers out there these days, compared to yesteryear.

My specs are:

Win 11 Pro.
Scarlet 18i20
Ableton live 12
&
Win 11 Pro
RME Fireface UFX III
Presonus Studio One 6.6

[SalaciousBCrumb]

I too would very much like to see a Windows version. I'm aware that 24P will still work, but it doesn't feel great to be abandoned as a user for feature support (if even only one aspect) this early into a product's life's span.

Windows 10
Scarlett 8i6
ASIO Drivers
Ableton 10 Suite

[MarkF]

Yeah, I supported in Kickstarter and would be pretty disappointed if there wasn't a Windows version of Usync, personally. I don't use Mac.

Windows version 10
Audient ID22. And Universal Audio Apollo Twin interfaces.
Audient Windows Driver v4.3.20a
ASIO
Ableton Suite 11 & 12

Hi

U-SYNC 1.0 only works for Mac, and for now the Windows version is indefinitely postponed.

Would you really like U-SYNC to work on Windows? If so please comment below with:

• Your Windows version
• Your Audio interface (or the main one(s), if you are using many)
• If you know, what audio driver you are using

And if you just want to make your voice heard, you can ignore all of these and simply reply "+1"

Thank you!
Simon

[HappyClocker]

Hi @Simon,

Are there news regarding U-Sync for Win?

[Simon]

Hey HappyClocker, and hi all

Thank you all so much for commenting here, it really helps giving an idea of what kind of setup you guys are using!
You've all made it pretty clear that we should find a solution to get U-SYNC to work on Windows, in fact we started developping two different ideas that could work on Windows a couple of weeks ago. U-SYNC development is generally very difficult, and takes a loooot of my time - which I must also use smartly as there are tons of other areas to focus on (the new batch coming soon, FW 4.0 features, or the very-long-waited-for Ableton module, just to name a few!).

So far both solutions showed potential but also a lot of problematic edges cases (e.g. problems when you use this together with that at the same as that) and not an amazing precision. As much as I want to release a Windows U-SYNC, there is no point releasing something if it'is not as precise or stable as the current solution (the 24P mode)

But we'll keep trying and I really hope we eventually find a way that works! Please be aware that there is a big chance that if/when we do, the Windows version will have more restrictions in terms of sample rate / buffer size / driver / etc.

Simon


PS: just to give you a short tech explanation, U-SYNC is all about timing, and the only timing a DAW plugin gets is when the audio driver is asking the DAW for audio, which gets the DAW to call the plugin to process audio data. The "real" analog audio timing, i.e. when the audio comes out, is very hard to get, varies a lot from one DAW to another, from one audio driver to another, the plugin can only guess it - which is what U-SYNC does on Mac.
But it's only possible if the precision of these calls to the plugin is decent. On MacOS as it's handled by the main audio driver called "CoreAudio", which is made by Apple, is very stable and precise, and also used by almost everybody (why would you need anything else really).
Audio drivers on Windows are... much, much more complex. Windows' low level audio has just not been improved for many many years (maybe one day Microsoft will do something about it?), which is why Steinberg decided to make the ASIO driver, which nowadays is the audio standard on Windows. It's much better than the basic Microsoft drivers, but it's not anywhere near as precise as CoreAudio, moreover it's built on top of those basic drivers so it's performance is still limited.

You can learn more about the ASIO driver here: https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-u ... n-download
and look at this nice diagram made by FlexASIO: https://github.com/dechamps/FlexASIO/bl ... ACKENDS.md

[HappyClocker]

Hi Simon,

many thanks for your detailled explanation and insights!

[Dave]

Hey HappyClocker, and hi all

Thank you all so much for commenting here, it really helps giving an idea of what kind of setup you guys are using!
You've all made it pretty clear that we should find a solution to get U-SYNC to work on Windows, in fact we started developping two different ideas that could work on Windows a couple of weeks ago. U-SYNC development is generally very difficult, and takes a loooot of my time - which I must also use smartly as there are tons of other areas to focus on (the new batch coming soon, FW 4.0 features, or the very-long-waited-for Ableton module, just to name a few!).

So far both solutions showed potential but also a lot of problematic edges cases (e.g. problems when you use this together with that at the same as that) and not an amazing precision. As much as I want to release a Windows U-SYNC, there is no point releasing something if it'is not as precise or stable as the current solution (the 24P mode)

But we'll keep trying and I really hope we eventually find a way that works! Please be aware that there is a big chance that if/when we do, the Windows version will have more restrictions in terms of sample rate / buffer size / driver / etc.

Simon


PS: just to give you a short tech explanation, U-SYNC is all about timing, and the only timing a DAW plugin gets is when the audio driver is asking the DAW for audio, which gets the DAW to call the plugin to process audio data. The "real" analog audio timing, i.e. when the audio comes out, is very hard to get, varies a lot from one DAW to another, from one audio driver to another, the plugin can only guess it - which is what U-SYNC does on Mac.
But it's only possible if the precision of these calls to the plugin is decent. On MacOS as it's handled by the main audio driver called "CoreAudio", which is made by Apple, is very stable and precise, and also used by almost everybody (why would you need anything else really).
Audio drivers on Windows are... much, much more complex. Windows' low level audio has just not been improved for many many years (maybe one day Microsoft will do something about it?), which is why Steinberg decided to make the ASIO driver, which nowadays is the audio standard on Windows. It's much better than the basic Microsoft drivers, but it's not anywhere near as precise as CoreAudio, moreover it's built on top of those basic drivers so it's performance is still limited.

You can learn more about the ASIO driver here: https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-u ... n-download
and look at this nice diagram made by FlexASIO: https://github.com/dechamps/FlexASIO/bl ... ACKENDS.md

Not sure if/how he'd be able to help, but perhaps you could chat with Pete Brown of Microsoft. He posts regularly on Gearspace and is very much involved in both MIDI 2.0 and also audio and MIDI refinements in Windows. There are improvements coming to Windows MIDI. Possibly also audio?

https://gearspace.com/board/member.php?u=226762

[Simon]

Thanks Dave that's really great info, we shall definitely do so!!
Simon

[originsprogram]

Thanks for info on the process. Adding one more vote here for Windows.

Running Win 10 Pro with Motu 828es

[Cabanossi]

Hi

U-SYNC 1.0 only works for Mac, and for now the Windows version is indefinitely postponed.

Would you really like U-SYNC to work on Windows? If so please comment below with:

• Your Windows version
• Your Audio interface (or the main one(s), if you are using many)
• If you know, what audio driver you are using

And if you just want to make your voice heard, you can ignore all of these and simply reply "+1"

Thank you!
Simon

Would love to see usync for windows, I'm on windows 10 and use Apollo twin usb. Asio driver.

[spdk]

Hi,

Any news on the subject? Can't wait for the u-sync feature, thanks for the effort!

[Simon]

Hi - as I have mentioned on the Facebook group, and being fully transparent here: U-SYNC for Windows might just never be a reality. We are doing everything we can, but the whole concept is to build precision software on the audio and underlying drivers layer of Windows, which in all honesty is unreliable and unprecise. Nobody's fault, the reason it is like this is a combination of different priorities (Microsoft is focussing on other things and sorting out the low driver layer of Windows would for sure be a huge project, even for a company like Microsoft), and the fact that Windows is designed to run on so many different computer hardware, which all need different drivers.

As for what we are doing right now, we are trying to write our own custom audio driver, both ASIO level but also the very low Windows level which is a hell of a task. If we manage this, we still have another issue to overcome regarding how a VST plugin runs is called in a DAW running on Windows (strangely very different than on Mac), and if we overcome this as well then I'd say we have a good chance of making U-SYNC work on Windows.

I wish I had better news than this, trust me! I think I will make sure the other old "Midronome" plugin is maintained and tested for Windows in the meantime, and make the download more easy on the website.

Simon

PS: just FYI, when I say "we", it's because I am working tightly with the Reliq guys on this. Being more working on this helps a lot speed the process, but right now we are all very busy with our respective coming productions

[spdk]

Thanks for your honest reply Simon, I hope you figure it out! eventually

[Foksadure]

we are trying to write our own custom audio driver, both ASIO level but also the very low Windows level which is a hell of a task.

It sure must be!

Not sure they still are in the low-level stuff business, but Ploytec had a custom USB audio driver (once bundled with the Behringer mixers), and their ATmega8U2 chip based designs licensed to ESI or Miditech were highly regarded when it comes to (MIDI) timing.

https://www.usb-audio.com/
https://www.usb-midi.com/
https://www.ploytec.com/

[Simon]

Thanks for the feedback and useful info! We will defo check them out

[spacialrob]

Hey, Simon!

Not sure if someone has already posted this or the info got around to you yet, but I recently found a link from a Reddit post about an official universal ASIO driver coming to Windows in 2025: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows- ... n-windows/

I don't know too much about the challenges you face as a developer, but in case any of these upcoming changes to Windows aligns with the goals of U-Sync, I thought it'd be worth a share.

Cheers!

edit: the ASIO is initially rolling out for ARM-based machines in '25. While there's no specified date, it's confirmed to rollout for all Windows devices after that. If the possibility of Win U-Sync depends on this update, it may have to wait a while

link to Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/musicproductio ... veral_low/

[Dave]

Hey, Simon!

Not sure if someone has already posted this or the info got around to you yet, but I recently found a link from a Reddit post about an official universal ASIO driver coming to Windows in 2025: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows- ... n-windows/

I don't know too much about the challenges you face as a developer, but in case any of these upcoming changes to Windows aligns with the goals of U-Sync, I thought it'd be worth a share.

Cheers!

edit: the ASIO is initially rolling out for ARM-based machines in '25. While there's no specified date, it's confirmed to rollout for all Windows devices after that. If the possibility of Win U-Sync depends on this update, it may have to wait a while

link to Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/musicproductio ... veral_low/

Pete Brown, as I mentioned awhile back, is working on that project/knows the people who are. Best bet for direct knowledge.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows- ... petebrown/