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The Well-Tempered Computer

An introduction to computer audio

Operating Systems

Networking

The world of OS

When I started using a PC for audio in 2008, the major operating systems on the desktop were Windows and OSX.

On the audio forums there was a hot debate about which one was best for audio.

For those still interested, Mac vs Win is covered here.

Today you won’t hear much about this subject.
Lot’s of people switched from PC’s to tablets.
For audio, streamers has become main stream.
Either you buy a box or you go the Raspberry PI way.

Mixing can only be done if all audio streams have the same sample rate. You can't send more than 1 sample rate to a DAC anyway. Digital mixing is converting to float, mix, add dither and convert back to integer. Depending on the operating system it has a interface to set a default sample rate and bit depth (Win, OSX) or not (Android, iOS).

Each OS has its tricks to get bit perfect output.

I don’t think there is any reason to prefer one OS over the other if it is about sound quality.