At Musikmesse today MOTU have announced a new Windows ASIO driver for its latest-generation audio interfaces, including the 1248, 16A, 8M and 112D. This new ASIO Windows driver has been written from the ground up for today's ultrafast Pro Tools computers and modern Windows architecture and the driver includes support for Thunderbolt audio I/O on Windows and best-in-class round trip latency (RTL) for both Thunderbolt and USB Windows operation.

MOTU users can now connect their Thunderbolt-equipped MOTU audio interface (1248, 16A, 8M or 112D) directly to the Thunderbolt port on a PC laptop or desktop computer and access up to 128 channels of simultaneous audio input and output with any ASIO-compatible host software.

The new MOTU Thunderbolt/USB ASIO driver supports all latest-generation MOTU audio interfaces (equipped with AVB/TSN networking) and will be made available to all MOTU users as a free download during the second quarter of 2016. Jim Cooper, MOTU Director of Marketing told us....

MOTU is thrilled to deliver Thunderbolt support for our many Windows users. Whether they use Thunderbolt or USB to connect to their computer, MOTU Windows users will enjoy the best possible latency performance on the market.

We have been vocal in the past about the lack of Windows drivers for Thunderbolt peripherals. PTE's resident Windows specialist Alan Sallabank said... 

I'm absolutely delighted and look forward to testing it out! MOTU have form for writing Thunderbolt drivers for Windows - the HDX-SDI being one of the first Windows Thunderbolt audio interfaces. Hopefully they'll lead the way for other major audio manufacturers to follow suit.

This is a real breakthrough for Windows users wanted access to Thunderbolt equipped interfaces, congratulations to MOTU for doing this.