How does it handle DSP inner loops? SIMD? x87 code? Floating point corner cases like denormals? What about the inevitable cases where impedance mismatch between the architectures causes severe performance loss? Is Rosetta2 binary translated code guaranteed to be realtime-safe if the original code was? What about the JIT? There's no way that is realtime-safe. What happens if some realtime code triggers the JIT?

We still can't emulate some 20-year-old machines at full speed on modern hardware due to platform impedance mismatches. Rosetta2 may be good, but until someone runs a DAW on there with a pile of plug-ins and shows a significant performance gain over contemporary Intels (and zero unexpected dropouts), I'm not buying the story of Rosetta2 amazingness.

Rosetta2 is not emulation.

Edit: And Apple has already discussed how Rosetta2 handles complexities like self modifying code. It probably won’t help with performance but the M1 has a lot of power to keep even that code running fast.

But more importantly video/audio apps aren’t going to be using Rosetta2 for very long. 99% of code written for x86 MacOS is going to be a simple recompile to native, if not more. Not going native when your competitors did and got 2-5x faster is corporate suicide.

Rosetta2 is emulation just as much as qemu and Dolphin are emulation, both of which also use binary translation like every other modern emulator. Apple marketing just doesn't want you to call Rosetta2 an emulator because "emulators are slow". Anything running software on a different architecture is an emulator.

If you read my parent comment you'll see how DAWs are going to be using Rosetta2 for years to come, maybe even a decade, for many people. Even if there are ARM versions, you won't be able to use them until all your dozens if not hundreds of plug-ins, some of which won't be actively developed any more or will require a re-purchase for an ARM version, have also migrated.

People invested in such ecosystems aren't just going to up and give up half their collection of software, or spend thousands re-purchasing upgrades to get ARM versions.