brandondrury

I have been debating getting a new 7 rig, not only because of the cost but for the 32bit bridge problems as well. I do believe the gains outway the occasional blips.

I have been working with 7 and have had zero problems. A massive CPU helps too

I have been clinging to my nlitened XP because it is so stable... that and my irrational fear of OS conversions. I even have a clean copy of 7 installed on another drive. If someone were to throw up a quick conversion guide they would be cooler than Fonzie... and THAT is cool.

What do you mean by "conversion guide"? There are a few buttons that have moved and a better search. It take about an hour o playing to get used to it. That's the only difference in the GUI that I can think of.

Brandon

I'm really talking about "getting it up and running" versus GUI. I think we are all good with reinstalling our software. What I have concerns about are my licenses, iLok and other crap like that. I really don't want go through a bunch of crap getting my Pro Tools, BFD, and IKMultimedia software up and running on 7. If there are other stability tricks for 7 that would be of use too.

You can't actually upgrade from XP to 7. I've done a few machines over the last year. 7 will take your entire XP disk & save it in a folder so you don't lose anything. You then will have to move whatever you want to keep into the new folder/libraries structure.
Libraries let you take more than 1 disk location (including multiple machines on a network) & call them 1 thing. The basic libraries are the usual: Documents, Music, Videos & Pictures.
I'd contact each of the software vendors you mentioned & ask them what you might need. You'll have to reinstall each of them so you'll need your software keys.
Other than that... piece of cake. My experience has been that your system will run faster (yes... faster) be more stable & support more RAM. Just prepare first & then go for it.

I got my first computer last year, with windows 7 64 bit..I've had one minor quick crash, and not many other problems..I am still learning computer recording, and I'll be choosing a recording computer soon..Due to the cost of Apple products, I'll be going with a windows 7 system; an i3, i5, or i7 chip; 6 or 8 DDR memory, and perhaps a 1 tera drive..It seems that the cost of S.S. drives is becoming affordable; any thoughts on those ??? My girlfriend is my computer tech, so, I've done fine thus far with computers....Just my simple thoughts.........Damian...

I recently gave some thought to going Windows 7 64bit when I was upgrading Sonar. Out of sheer laziness I stuck with XP 64bit - mainly because I have pared back the XP install so it runs minimal background services and apps, has internet, firewall and virus scanning turned off or not installed. I just didn't want the hassle of having to build the Windows 7 machine to the same spec.

OK, I fully agree that Win7 is better for music (better view, better sped, better performance, more usefull features), but f*cking M-audio doesn't make their sh*tty drivers ready for win7. And it have been already 3 years since Win7!

Buy someone else's products. If they can't support the current operating platform after all this time, it's only a matter of time before their out of business anyway.

I working on it, but it's hard to get enough money for RME, other choices don't seems any step in quality from MA)

I've been using Windows 7 Pro 64 bit now for a few years. It blows the basket case Vista out of the water. Vista was another MS item that MS should've had to buy back from their customers.

Windows 7 is much better with multi-processor usage and memory allocations, and it isn't hosing itself and the registry on its own after a few months of usage like Vista would.

After installing Windows 7 Pro on my Q6600 Intel machine (was using Vista Ultimate) quite a while back, I've never looked back. I do still have an old-old Pentium IV workstation that is sometimes pressed into portable recording service, and an AMD Turion laptop doing the same thing, both with Windows XP and probably forever so until they die, but the main machine is now most assuredly Windows 7 Pro.

I use Nuendo 4 (32 bit) and Reaper (64 and 32 bit) with lots of 32 and 64 bit plugins. Of course Nuendo 4 is stuck with the 32 bit plugins. Nuendo 4 64 bit was quite a hiccup to begin with & I'll never reinstall that. I have a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 interface that is now working fine for me (Google focusrite beta drivers), and a Motu PCIe-424 with breakout boxes also working fine. There are lots of plugins including Drumagog, Lexicon PCM, Voxengo, UAD-1 all working fine without hiccups on my main machine.

I made the switch to window 7 x64 at the beginning of this summer. I'm glad I did it, but it hasn't been without it's glitches. For whatever reason, I can no longer import sonar bundles into sonar. I get massive file corruption errors. I've narrowed it down to either sonar not playing nice with windows 7. I've tried on multiple machines. The projects import just fine on windows xp, but don't on windows 7.

Originally Posted by dikh

OK, I fully agree that Win7 is better for music (better view, better sped, better performance, more usefull features), but f*cking M-audio doesn't make their sh*tty drivers ready for win7. And it have been already 3 years since Win7!

really? both my m-audio interfaces work fine in win 7. Which one do you have?

FW410. Hm. An interesting story - both x86 and x64 versions works fine until cubase or amlitube (or other low latency required app). The point I start to work with music the point I get a headache. A lot of glitches, I simply cannot work with that. I switch to XP (thanks god, I got 2 hard disks - one with XP, second with 7) - and no glitches) I very surprised that someone work fine

Look harder. There are plenty of choices in between M Audio and RME.

Originally Posted by dikh

I working on it, but it's hard to get enough money for RME, other choices don't seems any step in quality from MA)

Originally Posted by dikh

OK, I fully agree that Win7 is better for music (better view, better sped, better performance, more usefull features), but f*cking M-audio doesn't make their sh*tty drivers ready for win7. And it have been already 3 years since Win7!

Without knowing what M-Audio gear you are using (midi controller? control surface? Mic/Git interface?) it's kinda difficult to know just what needs to be done to deal with it. I set up a dual boot option with XP (x86) on one partition with all the bells and whistles stripped and gutted out - Screaming fast. On the other boot partition, I'm running 7 (x64), with internet and Office, all that good garbage. You can set up the same suite of programs on both partitions, and use a thumb drive (the biggest one you can afford, so there's room for all those undos and stuph like that) to transfer the song between OS's. If you are using an M-audio Mic/inst. interface, just use the same DAW on each partition. Record the tracks that you want that use the interface, save to the thumb drive, and reboot into the 7 partition. Open up your DAW, import the tracks, and away you go. This is what I had to do to get around a couple of the same issues - I'll be the first to admit that it's a caveman/big stick approach, but at least it held me until those pesky drivers were updated. Good Luck!

richiebee - post some examples! recently I start to looking at Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56, it got more "democratic" price, also more inputs (compare to fireface 400), also, focusrite seems to be good (I've already own ISA One). Maybe I will get it eventually, but I will do internet research about it bugs, problems and other "not working" feature some later (now I'm running out of time).

obsoehollerith, I've got a FW410) About dual boot - I've don't need second OS, I can do everything on XP (OK, if I find a way to do music on linux - I switch to it without hesitation). Also, I receive a lot of trouble from FW410 at every moment of working with music (recording, mixing) so, that option will not help to me. Also, it's possible that W7 don't like my PCI FireWire card (I need it, because motherboard don't has one). I think then I step form MA, I will be happy with W7 - badass appearance and performance have already make me fan of 7)))

dikh - You can run Reaper in linux using WINE windows emulator. I do it all the time and it works great.

but FW410 driver isnt exist in linux still)

Presonus Studio One Pro works like a dream in Win 7 64Bit.

I switched to Windows 7 After that, I've never looked back. I use 7 at church and xp at home this works for me best of the best----acoustic

Excuse me, but what sort of FireWire port do you use? It's inbuilt in MB port or PCI extension card? And which chip it use? I've study m-audio forum and they stayed that they products work well only with PCI extension card built on Texas Instrument (M-AUDIO - Knowledge Base and Avid (PT manufacturer) even make some test and give a list of cards will 99.9% works - Avid - Digidesign-Qualified FireWire/1394 HBA Cards for Windows) - does anybody familiar with "not TI chip" problem?) seems it's maybe my problem of windows 7 and FW410)

And nobody complains about the communist UAC which you can't turn off and pops up all the time...
I will never go back to windows 7, I hate how if you turn off your computer by holding the power button the crummy os automatically tries to back-up your system and checks for erros. Than theirs the whole backing up over 60 gigs of nothing !, periodically.
Yea, I herd Macs work pretty swell for music too

@dudermn:
1. You can turn most of the user account control off.
2. You're not supposed to turn off the computer with the power button, unless you change the settings so that Windows will shut down properly when you use the power button. It is possible on most Windows 7 compliant hardware to configure the power button to tell Windows 7 to do the shutdown sequence. Because of your improper shutdowns, you could loose data, and Windows will occasionally run chkdsk to check for file system errors.
3. Backup 60 gigs of nothing? You can turn Windows scheduled backups off and run manual backups. What you backup is highly configurable.

You will never turn it off. It will go into minimum mode. I'm not a caveman.
Than you got winsxs :P

I will say that Windows does cater to the American Idol crowd and therefore requires 10 minutes of optimization to better handle the audio thing. The Mac people don't seem to need this 10 minute investment.

American Idol crowd? I don't get it.

Get the run dialog box up.

Type in gpedit.msc (if you are an administrator & you are willing to chance hosing your computer). Press <Enter>.

Navigate to:
Local Computer Policy.
Computer Configuration
Windows Settings
Security Settings
Local Policies
Security Options

In the right pane, scroll down to extended features of User Account Control.

I'm not going to attempt this, but if you're feeling particularly lucky today give this section a try after carefully reading up on it.

I'll put up with some UAC, because I find I need the internet access with some of my computers. It is an extra layer of protection while at the same time being a nuisance.

American Idol crowd? I don't get it.

Oh, that's my generic word for "the masses". I've never met an American Idol watcher who used a Mac. In my head, all the American Idol fans buy computers for $300 at Walmart.

Note: This is not a serious analysis of the world. It's just a poetic license thing I do for fun like saying that white people can't dunk a basketball.

Brandon

BTW, I think both Windows PC's and the Apple Macs are just fine. Whatever it is that floats your boat and gets the job done is just that. And it is quite true that PC's tend to be "tweaky" if you want them optimized.

I happen to like Linux too, the Linux Mint 11 Kataya version in particular, and it is what I have on an old Dell laptop, but I don't use it for audio.

I am a computer programmer and what I currently work with and have done so for years is Windows based. I also do recording and live sound.

Here at least, Windows 7 Pro has been working quite fine with my software, dongles, and hardware. For me, it has so far been quite superior to both Windows XP Pro, and Vista Ultimate.