Yeah, I will never buy another Thunderbolt device, especially with this diaper-fire of Thunderbolt 3. It's just not worth it. At this point I'd rather use my working DigiDesign 003R that actually works, has onboard MIDI, and tracks sample rate changes in Windows 10. It's only 2ms "slower" than my Apollo 8 Quad. I just don't care anymore about the superiority of my Apollo 8 Quad. It sounds amazing via my 2012 Mini 2.6GHz. But, if I can't get a high-spec machine going to use it (my Mac Mini is actually a better performer –despite what the Geekbench 4– then it's a waste of time and money.
Yeah, I will never buy another Thunderbolt device, especially with this diaper-fire of Thunderbolt 3. It's just not worth it. At this point I'd rather use my working DigiDesign 003R that actually works, has onboard MIDI, and tracks sample rate changes in Windows 10. It's only 2ms "slower" than my Apollo 8 Quad. I just don't care anymore about the superiority of my Apollo 8 Quad. It sounds amazing via my 2012 Mini 2.6GHz. But, if I can't get a high-spec machine going to use it (my Mac Mini is actually a better performer –despite what the Geekbench 4– then it's a waste of time and money.
Yes, Windows support for Thunderbolt has been disturbingly sparse, and there are the siimilar "type C" interfaces, which are not the same. Actual on-board Intel Thunderbolt support is rare, and seemingly not improving. This if frustrating once you have a nice Apollo 8 along with their impressive software suite. I took a serious look at Macs, but their cute little 'closed/invisible' computers were a far cry from bountiful hard drive bays and easy expandability that I am used to - and the jacked up priices for the real power "cylinders" were not happy news.
It seems Apollo bet on Thunderbolt, but they are not enough to change the MB market.
On a possibly encouraging note, for interested parties, I did build (MB conversion) using the Gigabyte Z270X-UD5, which does have on board genuine Intel Thunderbolt port (no add in card - which are also hard to find). This requires Windows 10, but you can download a USB install free, and transfer your Win7 license to it. So this works fine with Apollo (using the required TB3/TB2 adaptor [Startech] ). AND, I did add a hard drive, and install MacOS/Clover, which does work INCLUDING the Thunderbolt port and Apollo 8 - running Apple Logc. (you have to be plugged during boot in for the TB port to work). That is 7th gen though, and they don't seem to give you price breaks for 'old stuff'. We want 6 core CoffeLake for about the same money.
For now, I have installed Windows 10 Pro (downloaded free), and am setting it up (getting into registry, and killing telemetrics, cortana to the extent I can). This does let me at least be sure my hardware is ok on my new i58600K system. (typing from there now).
P.S. I did (suprisingly- to me "oops") get audio devices to show up by actually bothering to upgrade the bios from 1.9 to P3.1.
Didn't make the audio WORK in MacOS, but, did show up. I may give Mac another try, but I was getting frustrated, and just want to see things "work".