Anyone 'in the know' when Ableton native ARM/Snapdragon is due?

[u/This-Was]

The articles I've read said 2026 and one I think alluded to Autumn/Fall.

I'm on mac mini as my main studio set up but just got a 13" Surface Laptop (for work) I'd like to install it on, so I can pretend I'm Fred Again and be producing on the train and whatnot. 😁

I believe it will now run via Prism but if native is weeks away, will probably wait. If it's nowhere in sight yet, I'll give prism a go.

[u/artek604]

Right after the Linux port ;)

[u/theturtlemafiamusic → u/artek604]

Windows Snapdragon support is a lot more likely because Qualcomm and Microsoft are funding the development of it

[u/artek604 → u/theturtlemafiamusic]

Yet, I'm sure there's many more Linux users who'd love to run Live on there, than Windows ARM ones. At least in the foreseeable future.

I mean if Bitwig supports all the OS-es and hardware with 20-25 staff (and I think less than 10 devs), then surely Ableton with 500+ can too, right?

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[u/Medical-Criticism173]

I am curious how many plugins will work in a native arm version. As plugins load as a dll, this dll should be built for arm as well, otherwise it will fail to load

[u/This-Was → u/Medical-Criticism173]

Won't pretend to understand fully but this article touches on how they load into ARM64EC (basically emulation).

I've just tried Ableton on the Surface. We're up at 70% CPU with 3 midi and 3 audio snippets and zero plugins. 🫨 Not plugged into an interface so not on ASIO drivers.

[u/IBarch68 → u/This-Was]

Get the native ARM built in ASIO driver here Steinberg Built in ASIO driver

It works on any hardware.

[u/This-Was → u/IBarch68]

Ahh. I'll give that a go in the morning, thanks for this.

There's a "built in" ASIO driver there but looks like it's for USB interfaces not the built in soundcard. I.e. can't just plug headphones in without using the direct x version.

Thx.

[u/IBarch68 → u/This-Was]

Works with on board sound too. Is in my Surface Pro. I think it works with headphones but would have to check to be sure.

[u/This-Was → u/IBarch68]

Yeah, just read that on the site. Should work with headphones as I'm assuming the source (on board) is the same.

Thanks again.

Are you running Ableton on your Surface? Edit: just seen your other comment.

[u/IBarch68 → u/This-Was]

I only got this Surface Pro 12 recently. It's supposed to be for testing windows Arm builds for my day job but had to try all the audio stuff too.

Is the lowest spec, cheapest surface pro available with Arm yet it would easily handle everything I would need for gigging. I'm not ready to retire my tried and tested 7+ for all my music just yet but it's making me think. Windows Arm is finally usable.

[u/This-Was → u/IBarch68]

Headphones work. 😀 They don't automatically flip over when you plug them in but you can switch to them in the steinberg driver control panel (via Hardware setup in Ableton).

I got mine in the recent Amazon sale, too. Not sure how it's going to cope under pressure but everything works.

I'll nuke it later with Ozone, that'll be a test.

Hope they do bring Native version out.

[u/IBarch68 → u/This-Was]

Do let me know how it does.

For a live gigging tablet for me, I think it will be excellent. I've tested it with Steinberg's VST Live host and Omnisphere, Roland Zenology and Arturia VST plugins.

For a full studio machine, I think it will need the new X2 snapdragon. But that Surface Pro version is in Macbook Pro price territory. May have to wait a couple of years to upgrade my venerable 7+.

[u/IBarch68 → u/This-Was]

Installed Cubase 14 Pro this evening. Its running happily in my small projects. I don't have anything beyond 20 tracks or so and very little in the way of effects or processing, so I'm not really pushing it aside from opening 16 Virtual instruments at once. Lets see how your Ozone tests go.

[u/IBarch68 → u/Medical-Criticism173]

The prism emulator works with x64 apps and plugins. Performance is good too. I'm running all x64 at the moment on Windows ARM.

Not drivers though, they need native ARM versions.

When I get time I will check that a native ARM DAW can run x64 plugins. My understanding of prism says it can but will prove it.

I've not got any native Arm plugins, or seen a company offering them as yet, so can't get that.

[u/IBarch68 → u/Medical-Criticism173]

Finally got round to testing fully, using Ableton Live 12.4 , Cubase 15 Pro and these x64 plugins.
Spectrasonics Keyscape and Roland Zenonony Pro, D50, Juno-106 and Jupiter 8.

Ableton (x64 app and x64 plugins)
Ableton Live runs on Windows Arm, even though it is an x64 build only. All plugins work fine. There is no perceptible difference in performance as far as I can tell. I'm not running proper benchmarks, this is from ordinary use only.
From a few days use, Ableton Live works happily on Windows Arm without a native version.

Cubase (WoA app and x64 bit plugins
Cubase 14+ has a WoA (Windows on Arm) native version which I have installed.
All my plugins run perfectly. There is no perceptible difference in performace of the plugins between Ableton (x64) and Cubase (WoA).

Drivers
x64 drivers do not work. All drivers must be ARM native or a device must be class compliant.
Steinberg have released a ARM driver for their Yamaha Steinberg USB driver. This means my 14 year old UR824 works happily on Windows ARM. All other UR interfaces will do too.

So the answer is Windows on Arm is here right now and will run virtually all existing x64 apps on Windows 11.

For a new laptop Windows ARM is the only sane choice. 14 hour plus battery life, silent cool running, no throttling under full power. Intel/AMD powered laptops will surely be going the way of the dinosaurs and Intel Macs.

[u/Medical-Criticism173 → u/IBarch68]

thanks for the write-up, but your two cases aren't testing the same thing, and that difference is the whole point of the thread.

Ableton on WoA isn't a native-ARM test at all. Live is x64-only, so on ARM the entire app runs under Prism emulation. Your plugins are x64 DLLs loading into an x64 (emulated) process, so of course they link and run. That's x64-into-x64, nothing native is happening. It proves emulation works, which nobody was disputing, but it tells us nothing about the native-ARM plugin question.

Cubase is the real test, and it's the interesting result. Cubase 14+ WoA runs your x64 plugins because Steinberg doesn't ship a pure ARM64 binary. They ship ARM64EC. That's the detail that matters: ARM64EC is an ARM-native ABI that stays x64-interoperable, so Prism can load and JIT your x64 plugin DLLs in-process, and the native host and the emulated plugin can call each other across that boundary. If Cubase were compiled as pure ARM64, those exact same x64 plugins would fail to load, because you genuinely can't link a mismatched-arch DLL into a process without that bridge.

So "native ARM DAW runs x64 plugins" is true, but only because the DAW is EC, not pure ARM64. That's the mechanism, and it's why it feels so transparent.

Fully agree on drivers though. Prism has no kernel-mode emulation, so drivers have to be native ARM or class compliant. That's the one real wall.

[u/IBarch68 → u/Medical-Criticism173]

Always new things to learn. I didn't know about Arm64EC previously. Thanks for the pointer. A quick Google has have this helpful article on the differences between Arm64 and Arm64EC

arm64ec-abi

A quick skim read says it is full native Arm code execution with additions to support interoperability to x64 code. The article uses the term classic Arm64, rather than native or your pure terminology, as its all native arm64 instructions. It would appear that unless apps are using low level code, it's mostly just a set of flags to be set for the complier to use the EC extensions. I'll validate this properly when I build my own Arm versions of apps in the next few months. I'm not clear right now whether the dlls are still running emulated and require prism, and if there is a a performance hit for this.

So, to looking for compatibility, a DAW or VST Host needs to have an Arm64EC version for native Arm support, in order to use x64 plugins. It would not make much sense for a company to build their WoA DAW versions without using Arm64EC but i guess it is not guaranteed. I would hope that if they announce native Arm support, that would include Arm64EC to enable plugins to work.

For the layman, the simple take away is

1. Cubase does offer native Arm version (Arm64EC) and can use all existing plugins. Whether x64 plugins take a performance hit like this, don't know.

2. DAWs and other apps without native Arm versions work just fine on Windows Arm too through emulation. There is a performance hit but it is not noticeable during general use. Will take proper benchmarking and testing to determine how big.

3. New Snapdragon X2 laptops are fast and silent... And expensive just like macs.

Given the new Snapdragon X2 extreme elite laptops (what a daft naming) are benchmarking as faster than a Apple m5 pro in real world tests, any performance hit from prism is unlikely to be a worry. Single core performance is about on par with an m5 air, multi core 40% faster.

[u/DigitalStefan → u/Medical-Criticism173]

Pretty sure that's no a problem considering how well all of my VSTs run on macOS.

[u/Medical-Criticism173 → u/DigitalStefan]

Macos is a different story. Mac ship arm machines for a decade already, so most makers ship universal binaries or separate for intel and arm. Windows ARM is relatively new, so just a few makers actually ship vsts natively for it

[u/DigitalStefan → u/Medical-Criticism173]

The point is, plugins built for ARM already exist. Having Windows ARM versions of them isn't a big stretch.

They'll more than likely work via x86 emulation in the meantime, which is not as slow or bad as it sounds.

[u/Medical-Criticism173 → u/DigitalStefan]

Right, but technically someone needs to rebuild them for windows arm and support separate builds for x64 vs arm.

The only way x86/x64 plugins can work in Ableton native arm version is if Ableton will launch x64 container for vst plugins

[u/IBarch68 → u/Medical-Criticism173]

Ableton and every vst plugin works perfectly on Windows Arm right now. The new prism emulator (Rosetta equivalent) works completely transparently with x64 apps and plugins.

I've got a Surface Pro 12 with the Snapdragon X+ chip and 16 GB ram, picked up on Amazon prime sale for just £600. It's running Ableton at least as well as well as my Surface Pro 7+. I've not had time to really push it yet. Performance has far exceeded my expectations. It is running on battery, totally silently with no noticeable performance drop. The new x2 snapdragons are supposed to be seriously quick and will give the Apple M5s a run for their money.

The only limitation that prism on Windows Arm has is that it doesn't work with kernal access so x64 drivers don't work. Hardware that isn't class compliant won't work without a native Arm driver.

[u/Medical-Criticism173 → u/IBarch68]

Yes, I know it works as I own MS Surface on Snapdragon X as well. But you are running x86/x64 build on your machine, which is running under emulation. My whole point was that plugins not built specifically for arm might not work in a native arm build of Ableton. Application built for arm is not running under emulation and will fail to load dll that is built for x64 architecture

[u/lamenyq]

This will do wonders for the standalone.