Windows 7

Haha none taken dude :cool: I was just trying to highlight the fact that a lot of people will move over for shits, giggles and hype when in actual fact they are selling themselves down the river of epic fail. I whole heartedly agree with moving forward, but i think from an audio workstation perspective if you've got something fairly rock solid its not a priority. For people like us who like to tinker, I say hell yeh! But even still, i am quite reserved, for the only feature i benefitted from under vista was DX10. How about you? I might load the new release candidate tonight just to see whats going down, since i got my new SLC Samsung drive i have one of those old mechanical drives hanging around :p

Yeah, true man, I didn't benefit of anything in Vista either, not even DX10, which is why I skipped Vista completely.

However, Windows 7 and its separated kernel and GUI is something that should improve stability a lot, even for us audio guys.

I agree with you on that many people upgrade just because "it's the latest" and they're cool because of doing it, and they don't really know what the hell they are doing :) But I for one know that XP is running its last miles, Windows 7 should be a worthy next step.
 
I installed Win7 RC 32bit a few days ago. Reaper did run, a lot of other things did run, but my card reader freezed the whole system (other collegues have the same problem) and some minor things do just not work. I switched back to my harddrive with my Vista-installation and would even go back to XP for audio work, because XP is the most stable and fastest windows system around and will be for some years.
XP will NOT DIE SOON, because a lot of companies (maybe all larger companies?) are running XP on 10's of 1000's of office-machines and they are not willing to upgrade to Vista nor will they upgrade to Win7, because they see no reason to train 1000's of Word/Excel/Outlook-users to the new system to let them do the same thing they do today. The biggest mistake Microsoft did in the last 10 years is making XP as good as it is... because nobody sees a reason to upgrade to a new Microsoft-OS.
 
Yeah, true man, I didn't benefit of anything in Vista either, not even DX10, which is why I skipped Vista completely.

However, Windows 7 and its separated kernel and GUI is something that should improve stability a lot, even for us audio guys.

I agree with you on that many people upgrade just because "it's the latest" and they're cool because of doing it, and they don't really know what the hell they are doing :) But I for one know that XP is running its last miles, Windows 7 should be a worthy next step.

I hope so! Yes XP is indeed getting on... I must say, when i installed windows 7 64bit it decided to hang at the last stage lol, gives me lots of hope for it. I figure i might just have to give it more time, but this was actually a good hour and I had to get to sleep so I switched it off.

I'll try again tonite.

I installed Win7 RC 32bit a few days ago. Reaper did run, a lot of other things did run, but my card reader freezed the whole system (other collegues have the same problem) and some minor things do just not work. I switched back to my harddrive with my Vista-installation and would even go back to XP for audio work, because XP is the most stable and fastest windows system around and will be for some years.
XP will NOT DIE SOON, because a lot of companies (maybe all larger companies?) are running XP on 10's of 1000's of office-machines and they are not willing to upgrade to Vista nor will they upgrade to Win7, because they see no reason to train 1000's of Word/Excel/Outlook-users to the new system to let them do the same thing they do today. The biggest mistake Microsoft did in the last 10 years is making XP as good as it is... because nobody sees a reason to upgrade to a new Microsoft-OS.



My company (Rolls Royce) want to "upgrade" a vast amount of clients to vista in the coming year, and want me to manage most of it. But i kind of laughed when they were telling me :lol:
 
Once all the DAW hosts move over to 64bit, the plugin manufacturers will follow. Currently you've got two choices; Cubase and Sonar.

Windows 64bit and Sonar 64bit is great combination - touch wood, I've never had any problems with VSTs etc. Essentially Sonar runs a 64bit engine anyway, so there's no reason for any trouble if something works in the 32bit version.

All this talk of XP reaching it's limits seems a bit silly to me though. The OS isn't important in the grand scheme of things (in terms of audio production). If you use your amp in the UK you need a different power cable than you do in the US, but it doesn't change the the way the amp works, and it's basically the same thing; as long as it's stable and runs your DAW as you want it to, the exact details of your OS are fairly irrelevant - it's just the means to run the software.

People still use outboard gear that decades old because it does it's job and it does it well. XP is the same; Windows 7 can't offer any added functionality to your DAW, only a potential increase in stability and resource handling - so if neither of those are issues for you, there's nothing to gain from the upgrade. Your operating system isn't a bottleneck to the process of recording; nothing is being held back by using an old version of Windows.

The next major thing in DAWs will in all likelihood be the switch to pure 64bit, which XP covers too. Until there's a development in the DAW that XP can't handle, developments in the operating system don't really affect music production. At it's core, there's nothing Windows 7 does that XP can't in terms of linking your instruments and outboard gear to your DAW, which is all that really matters in terms of a music workstation.

Steve
 
For the sake of separating the kernel and UI alone Windows 7 is worth considering. Can you imagine the amount of total system hang-ups you could avoid? The more user friendly nature of system management and maintenance is certainly welcome too. The prayer that we won't need to augment the OS with so many 3rd party apps is also welcome. My XP is basically hanging by a thread of 3rd party apps that add all the functionality you need in the modern day. There is too much that has to be done to XP to get it to be a functional modern OS, and even then it's not exactly easy to have widgets and whatever else streaming data to you.

There are always improvements that can be made. If we are talking a solely DAW machine, then continuing to run XP should be fine. I need an OS that does everything well.
 
Did you hear about the fact that 7 could (I say could) have a special way of dealing Asio, a bit like does linux with Jack ?

It could route any asio input to any output, and let you work with all your audio interfaces at the same time, all that natively. But I've read it a long time ago and maybe it was just a rumor, cause I can't find this anywhere, and say a stupidity. But I was curious if anybody had heard of this.
 
Did you hear about the fact that 7 could (I say could) have a special way of dealing Asio, a bit like does linux with Jack ?

It could route any asio input to any output, and let you work with all your audio interfaces at the same time, all that natively. But I've read it a long time ago and maybe it was just a rumor, cause I can't find this anywhere, and say a stupidity. But I was curious if anybody had heard of this.

Computer Music magazine did a pretty big feature on Win7 last month, they talked about the new audio engine and also about ASIO, no mention of any jack-like abilities though. i'd say its just an un-founded rumor, especially as its not up to microsoft to develop the asio platform. isn't that Steinbergs responsibility?
 
Yeah I guess you're right. Maybe I misunderstood something, thinking it was microsoft whereas it was a third party having the idea. Dunno, I wanted to ask in order to check.
 
Ok, update:


- Saffire Pro 40 Works excellent, just had to change the firewire driver to legacy. LSI Firewire chip on a asus p5q motherboard

- Reaper works excellent as expected

- Ableton Live doesn't work to good, huge visual lag, didn't have that on previous system
 
never again am i going to step onto an OS before its first service pack has been released.

+100

Did you hear about the fact that 7 could (I say could) have a special way of dealing Asio, a bit like does linux with Jack ?

It could route any asio input to any output, and let you work with all your audio interfaces at the same time, all that natively. But I've read it a long time ago and maybe it was just a rumor, cause I can't find this anywhere, and say a stupidity. But I was curious if anybody had heard of this.

It would be real nice if Microsoft or anyone else could implement something in Windows 7 that works like aggregate devices in OSX. That shit is really nice. Almost worth having a Mac around just for that.