MS Vista: Still a no-no, right?

I've read/heard that Vista is no good for PC recording, right?

Well if you aren't running a high spec machine you might notice a rise in latency times and a reduced capacity for the computer to handle plug-ins etc, because Vista is something of a resource hog.

As far as software/hardware compatibility, I have no idea.

I've read/heard that Vista is no good for PC recording, right?

It's not the computer operating system that does the recording, but your software the the computer and peripherals you use. If what you use or have is all compatible and set up right it will be fine.

I can't say more without knowing what you will use but I can say that I've staged and placed a lot of Vista systems at my sites now and they are all just fine.

Good luck.

A long winded post.

I think your mileage will vary depending on what program you are using, what 3rd party plugins you are using, and if your audio interface has Vista drivers.

The key is staying away from older software and especially software that doesn't list Vista as a supported OS. This includes 3rd party plugins. It may work but if it isn't listed as supported, well your not going to get direct help if you run into a problem up the road. These companies are always focussed on their latest product, they want you to buy the latest, and will not take the time to fix older versions of their product to support every operating system that comes out.

My understanding is that Vista can take advantage of 64 or 32 bit processing. All the fancy mathematical calculations a computer has to make to mimick real life have less chance of rounding errors working in 64 bit.
This "better" handling of calcualtions may give a perception of better audio quality. Less "artifacts" or random strange noise in the recording compared to 32 bit systems. Something that would appeal to nd probably be more noticeable to people who do this for a living.

Vista even though it is a bit more resource hungry is also supposed to allocate resources more efficiently to the processes you run.

My thoughts, if I was deciding to go the Vista route would be to look at it based on every piece of gear and software you have and seeing what the advantage would be if you are running XP.

1
My audio interface Presonus Firebox cost $300 bucks it will work with Vista

2
My recording program Sonar Home Studio 6 xl cost $300 bucks it will work with Vista running either at 32 bit or 64 bit and Vista is listed as a supported operating system.

Wow everything is sounding really good I'm ready to take the plunge and ditch XP for Vista, I can't wait to run Sonar in 64 bit. Lucky me, good bye Windows XP. Ohhhh what about my plugins that cost more than my recording program and audio interface combined?

3.
Guitar Rig 3 software edition which cost me $300 bucks. Yes will work with Vista but only at 32 bit, not 64 bit. No advantage here. 32 bit Vista is like 32 bit XP

4.
All my Nomad Factory plugins about $700. Yes will work with Vista but only at 32 bit, not 64 bit. No advantage here. 32 bit Vista is like 32 bit XP

So in a nutshell, sure I can run Vista in 64 bit but none of my plugins will work at 64 bit, so now I have to run Vista at 32 bit which is what XP runs at. XP is incredibly stable for me so why change.

Stu

I had computer problems last week and strongly considered upgrading to Vista... until I found that drivers aren't available for my M-Audio soundcards. And since it would cost me $300 or more for equivalent (not better) functionality to go Firewire, what's the point?

And speaking as a long-time professional programmer with a lot of OS experience, I HATE to think what they must be doing inside Vista to make it that dang hard to write a simple device driver.

Vista is a memory and CPU hog. If you have a 2GB XP system, you'll need a 4GB Vista system for similar headroom for recording, etc. Also, Vista has been notoriously bad for disk IO in certain circumstances because MS has built in copy protection features in a very invasive way. This also causes a lot of CPU utilization, along with the processor inefficient 3d graphics. If you are typing in Word, this isn't a big deal, but if you are doing music you don't want or need these "features" that effectively degrade your machine by consuming a lot more of its resources. On machines that I use for recording (or media in general) I keep the OS as lightweight as possible.

- Josh

Vista is a memory and CPU hog. If you have a 2GB XP system, you'll need a 4GB Vista system for similar headroom for recording, etc. Also, Vista has been notoriously bad for disk IO in certain circumstances because MS has built in copy protection features in a very invasive way. This also causes a lot of CPU utilization, along with the processor inefficient 3d graphics. If you are typing in Word, this isn't a big deal, but if you are doing music you don't want or need these "features" that effectively degrade your machine by consuming a lot more of its resources. On machines that I use for recording (or media in general) I keep the OS as lightweight as possible.

- Josh

Much or most of this is a non-issue for software written for it or tweaked for it and powerful CPUs, memory and I/O performance are all cheap in the context of history. We also have XP sales stopping soon so for a new system the right fight is becoming live with Vista.

I am also seeing DEP by default and ASLR working where some site with poor security have had Vista systems spared problems.

Where I have software vendors suggesting it Vista is best. The site I speak of is engineering and design but they have similar workstation level computers with XP and Vista and memory management is better and performance better. Thus, I've moved to using it where possible if Microsoft isn't getting out of the picture. If nothing else look at Microsoft's table of support and obsolescence and decide how often you want to give them money and do upgrades.

The resources should be used too! Why should my XP system sit using less of it's physical RAM if it's there when the Vista system next to us uses it.

I have not looked at the music related software with the detail I did in the summer. If progress has been made Vista could be a good idea or a non-issue. Many hardware vendors did have statements regarding Vista drivers coming. That has me putting off upgrades in some cases.

YMMV of course.

Resource hogging is resource hogging, and no amount of improved management gives you back used resources. Most people don't have dual core 64 bit CPUs and many gigs of RAM. I do, and I run VMs with XP32, XP64 and Vista and have measured their behavior quite a bit. Vista takes up *A LOT* more (like 5x or so) the CPU and memory of XP 64 in just a normal resting state. Running apps is slightly worse than XP, but gigs of RAM are already gone to the OS, and a significant amount of CPU as well.

Keep in mind that computer recording is all about IO on large streams of data and real-time processing, and Vista has been notoriously bad with just this sort of IO, due to invasive DRM crap. Completely different animal to engineering workstation type of stuff (load file into memory, operate on file, save file to disk).

I've run Windows since 3.0, and been a professional programmer since 1992. I'm not anti-MS, and an interview with me was even on the launch disk for .NET as I managed one of the largest ASP.NET launch products (http://www.cancer.gov). Windows Vista is the worst OS I've seen come from Redmond (except Windows Me), and the press generally agrees with me. I expect MS to keep extending the XP support date until the market says otherwise. This is what they did with NT 4.0.

- Josh

Interesting debate

Here's a link over at the Cakewalk Sonar forum on a Vista discussion but warning these guys swear lots.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1210331

Thanks Stu!

Here's a better thread yet (it has some actual measures in it instead of opinions):

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1090789

The data:

SONARbench DSP R1 : Core2Quad QX6700 @ 2.66 GHZ : 1066 FSB : Sonar 6.21

Motherboard : i975

Memory : 2 GB - XMS 6400 @ PC6400 - 800 MHZ : Standard Timings by SPD :

O.S : XP SP2 :

Lynx 2 : Driver : V2 Build 14/WDM

5.8 MS - 135 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 130 :

2.9 MS - 112 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 112 :


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SONARbench DSP R1 : Core2Quad QX6700 @ 2.66 GHZ : 1066 FSB : Sonar 6.21 x64

Motherboard : i975

Memory : 2 GB - XMS 6400 @ PC6400 - 800 MHZ : Standard Timings by SPD :

O.S : Vista64 Bus:

Lynx 2 : Driver : V2 Build 14 / WDM

5.8 MS - 60 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 50 :

2.9 MS - 35 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 25 :

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So XP is between 2 and 4 times faster than Vista in this measure.


And another test:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SONARbench DSP R1 : Core2Quad QX6700 @ 2.66 GHZ : 1066 FSB : Sonar 6.2

Motherboard : i975

Memory : 2 GB - XMS 6400 @ PC6400 - 800 MHZ : Standard Timings by SPD :

O.S : XP SP2 :

Lynx 2 : Driver : V2 Build 14

256 Samples - 114 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 114 :

128 Samples - 095 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 095 :

064 Samples - 060 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 058 :

032 Samples - No Go from the Get Go :
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SONARbench DSP R1 : Core2Quad QX6700 @ 2.66 GHZ : 1066 FSB : Sonar 6.21 x64

Motherboard : i975

Memory : 2 GB - XMS 6400 @ PC6400 - 800 MHZ : Standard Timings by SPD :

O.S : Vista64 Bus:

Lynx 2 : Driver : V2 Build 14 / ASIO

256 Samples - 060 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 045 :

128 Samples - 038 Vintage Channels / Save-ReOpen 020 :

064 Samples - No Go from the Get Go :

032 Samples - No Go from the Get Go :

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So again, Vista is less than half the performance of XP. This is exactly what I've found in general with the OS. If you are doing something that isn't taxing the system, it feels about the same as XP (unless you have <2GB of RAM) but it's actually very slow - you just have headroom on most common tasks. This is not true of digital audio recording (or compiling programs, rendering 3D, etc.)

- Josh

Great post Jay. I have to dig into that thread a bit and see if here's an advantage with Sonar 7 and Vista as hyped by Cakewalk. All those tests are with Sonar 6.

don't do it! There is not reason to go to Vista. Sure it might look pretty but that has nothing to do with making music!
It's slow and won't offer anything but new troubles that you didn't have with XP. MS finally got XP solid don't move over to there latest rickety offering.

Great post Jay. I have to dig into that thread a bit and see if here's an advantage with Sonar 7 and Vista as hyped by Cakewalk. All those tests are with Sonar 6.

Well dug into it and test done with Sonar 7 suggest XP is faster than Vista. Ouch Cakewalk lied or had a little too much faith in Bill Gates. I wouldn't upgrade anyway XP is a rock.

Vista has many layers of auditing going on for every process running on the machine. This is in part due to security problems with Windows' approach to process ownership and privileges (there is a special privilege level that exceeds the Admin account - a remarkably stupid idea, but one that is nearly impossible to correct without screwing up backwards compatibility) and in part to enforce DRM and MS licensing. Also, Vista has pushed some of the core media functions out of the kernel and into user processes - crossing the memory address space boundary between processes costs CPU and memory. This adds up to the reality that Vista will never be faster than XP on the same hardware, unless they undo these changes. In some cases, Vista will take hours to accomplish tasks that XP (or other OSes) do in minutes, such as copying very large files - a common thing to do in digital audio. The common counter argument is that newer OSes are "always" slower, but this is simply not true. Mac OS X has gotten faster on the same hardware over time, as have Linux and BSD. It's just bad software architecture.

Even Dvorak is saying that Vista is DOA and is threatening to leave the Windows fold. I think MS really shot themselves in the foot this time...

- Josh

It's interesting doing a search to see if these problems in the audio realm are a phenomina restricted to pc.

Do a search for "probelms with leopard and logic" yikes.

It's interesting doing a search to see if these problems in the audio realm are a phenomina restricted to pc.

Do a search for "probelms with leopard and logic" yikes.

I just did the search (I did correct the typo) I looked through the first 20 listings... what is the yikes? every single problem was trivial and user based....

I think folks should be a little patient with Vista, it is taking a little time to get everything together, but it will get there.

In the meantime, Leopard has an update that takes care of several things that could not be diagnosed without a more heterogenous sample... this is good news.

Dvorak is kind of the Bill O'Reilly of technology. He has an audience and I respect that but I would never attend a party that advertised 'people who like Dvorak will be there.' If he is prolific it is only in how often he is wrong.

Dvorak is kind of the Bill O'Reilly of technology. He has an audience and I respect that but I would never attend a party that advertised 'people who like Dvorak will be there.' If he is prolific it is only in how often he is wrong.

My feeling exactly. In fact, just as I was beginning to believe that Vista could have been the biggest OS flop in history, I heard Dvorak's comments, and now I expect Vista to pull through. That's how much faith I have in his being wrong. The guy is a visionary, but not a prophet.

Personally I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten-foot pole. None - none of the audio hardware manufacturers had Vista support for the first few months of the release. Some of the software folks did, but it was nearly untested. I'm semi-anti-Microsoft, (I use OpenOffice) but I wouldn't be if they were interested in building a functional product, instead of becoming big-brother. If we didn't already have our system resources being hogged by our audio software constantly calling our copy-protection dongles, now we get to wait for our machines to check all the music we're making for DRM crap - or we can pay extra for a more powerful machine that doesn't run faster than our old XP rigs... It's almost enough to make this anti-Applecult guy go anti-PC.

If folks think that XP is going away, well, they may (may) end sales, but it will be supported for a good, long time. Hell, there's a 386 in the control room at my radio station that is running OS2 (remember that thing?) and controlling the satellite demodulators. We just stopped using it a month ago, but IBM only stopped supporting that at the end of 2006! Plus, MS just recently began to re-offer an expanded range of XP installs for OEMs! When I bought my laptop a couple of months ago, you can bet I went with XP!

I'd be running some kind of Linux if I felt like I had the extra time and energy required to switch back and forth between that and my XP machine at work.

The laptop I'm typing on is running Vista. Compared to my fairly new dual core XP desktop with the same amount of RAM (2 gigs), it seems to use resources more efficiently. That said, I would recommend anyone interested in using their computer for recording to stick with XP, because Vista still has a lot of compatibility isuess with recording hardware and software. I run Sonar on my laptop, but I really only use it to transcribe interviews, because many of my plug-ins don't work with Vista.

It's both. We've probably staged 100+ Vista systems now and have no obvious problems and people who have it are happy. The catch is doing it with new systems where performance is not a problem and most importantly doing it with compatible software and peripherals.

At one site the software vendor suggests it and memory management and performance is better. I think that's the telling piece - a app designed for it seems to use memory better.

It makes my blood boil when fools spout nonsense in their placing blame. If it's as bad as they say and it's all Microsoft's problem it would seem we could not have the general staff, engineers, lawyers and scientists we have using it getting anything done. The common elements at our sites are first tier hardware and people who checked compatibility before vs. after.

I have no choice but to have and use several operating systems but at this point I do place Vista where possible because the users like it, it stages fast and easily, has greatly improved user rights and security it will cost less in terms of life cycle and support.

As far as Music goes, yes there are driver problems with some programs and I am indeed split between using XP, Vista and my Mac but with economics included as one of the reasons too.

Bottom line is that it's fine to say there are compatibility issues but we have too many systems running great to believe much of the nonsense I read and hear. We also have a world that needs and will move to encryption, digital signing and privacy we haven't had and that transition has to be made somehow so people will get it whether they have Linux, a Mac, or Microsoft's now and future called Vista, Server 2008 and XP SP3. A computer used for general and personal productivity should have the improved security and user rights. A computer staged for a specific task should have what's best for that task.

Good luck whether it's patching XP or waiting for Vista drivers and don't forget about virtual machines as a tool.

Dvorak is kind of the Bill O'Reilly of technology. He has an audience and I respect that but I would never attend a party that advertised 'people who like Dvorak will be there.' If he is prolific it is only in how often he is wrong.

True - my point was that he's been an MS lap dog for years and has made so excuses for them that seeing him criticize them is interesting. Vista is sure to take over as the dominant OS, but to me that's a sad thing.

- Josh

As seen above: Its fine to go on and on about how vista is working for 100 people or whatever but for goodness sake we are comparing word processing with Recording, probably the most demanding task a computer can face aside from working with Video. Nuff said.