Comments on: Adieu, XP; How Vista SP1 is Doing, and Why This OS Generation Has Been So Tough

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:23:07 +0000

Joseph, you need 64-bit Windows, that’s the problem. Vista vs. XP isn’t the issue. And since Reason isn’t 64-bit, it won’t help you anyway. If XP is working, I’d stick with it.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:38:24 +0000

I use XP Pro, on a Quad core system with 4 Gig of Ram (32 bit) but XP dose not utilise all of the ram, I am useing ‘Reason 4′ Music proggrame would Vista Home be better than XP or would you suggest I stay with XP?

Thankyou,

Joseph.

By: iBot

iBot — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:50:47 +0000

I tried vista around its release and none of my music software worked (maudio drivers probably, lots of BSODs) and getting an OEM XP disk from Dell was a real palava as, obviously, was the reinstallation.
When tweaked to my liking, everything worked great in XP SP2 and after installing SP3 I can’t remember the last time it crashed.
I recently bought a laptop with vista sp1 installed and thought I’d dual boot with XP. I didn’t bother in the end because everything works fine, I’m mainly using Cubase SX3 and NI Komplete and latency on my maudio cards is negliegeable.
I tried ubuntu at work but setting it all up took a lot of forum reading and downloading. I switched back to cubase on windows in the end as it was taking far too long to get any work done and would take ages to become as intuitive as something I have been using for nearly 20 years.
I have been a microsoft systems engineer for over 10 years (I hate when people do that in posts: Give me a chance…its not just arrogance…I’m obviously not making enough out of music!) so I’m perfectly capable of speeding up OS installations and setting up for lean use of resources. However, I really share your sentiment about using a computer for making music instead of comparing OSes (unless you write about it for a living of course). Set it up so it works and then forget about which version of OS or software could be better for you until something breaks or you need more than you have. Many computer musicians spend far too much time bogged down by specifications instead of making music…take it easy, you could still be bouncing down tracks using a 4 track and step programming drum machines. It seems wiser to me to get the features you use regularly up and running as quickly as possible (i.e. on the OS your new machine has shipped with). This could mean a couple of hours instead of at least a full day of backing up, formatting massive disks, reinstalling, cursing yourself for forgetting your favorites folder etc.
I know someone who changed back to XP, with considerable effort, just because the optical output wasn’t showing up on the mixer panel for his soundcard…he doesn’t even have a cable to plug into it let alone use it and everything else was working!
For those of us of a certain age with other commitments, finding the time to make music is hard enough as it is…I know I’d rather be doing that than spending the weekend pulling my computer apart.

By: justanottan1ga

justanottan1ga — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:03:25 +0000

cool that took the time to explain all that.
i still wonder if the search function actually works now when sp1 is out for a while.
and the usb latency..urgh, soundglicthes whutdaf..
if all works but i cant play 1 specific game cuz of soundglitches or lagg on the keyboard, vista can srsly lick my A..sorry, that specific game is important to me, yes im counting ms, even 2ms difference could/will kill me, thus making me mad, and annoying the ppl around me.

By: Create Digital Music » Optimizing for Vista: Inside the Mechanics of SONAR 8 with Cakewalk Engineering

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:19:40 +0000

[...] Adieu, XP; How Vista SP1 is Doing, and Why This OS Generation Has Been So Tough [...]

By: Julio

Julio — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:28:32 +0000

Hi all, I have been using Vista for over a year now on my laptop (FL Studio 7, Reason 4, Sonar 6, to name a few), and for about 5 months on my custom built protools 7.4 desktop rig (Only Protools on that baby NOTHING ELSE!). I have only had ONE blue screen and that is when my echo indigo laptop card failed and I had to get a new one. I have not had any issues with vista. Just my opinion. Thanks for a very non biased and informative article.

By: Shane Yates

Shane Yates — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:16:26 +0000

I used Vista from day one on a few machines, never had any issues. I did however see lots of other people with many, which is a shame and sadly that caused a lot of people that didn’t even use Vista to say how poorly it performed, it didn’t seem to work that way with Leopard, all issues seemed to be regarded as genius in some manner ;)

By: Jon Daley

Jon Daley — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:01:33 +0000

Correct. (download automatically, and don’t install automatically, except for those ones that install automatically without telling you and you don’t know unless it crashes something or you read Ed’s blog).

I do know that drivers can cause major issues (ie. unpreventable crashes) if they crash in certain places on most (all?) OSes.

By: nomad radio

nomad radio — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:11:05 +0000

So Jon, have you been keeping automatic updates switched on and it’s still been stable? I just reinstalled XP SP2 myself, without autoupdates and it seems to be ok so far.

The reinstall came after Vista BSODd from tring to choose an audio driver in Reason btw. Probably a driver bug, but…uh….fault tolerance anyone? Audio drivers failing in Linux ,for instance, stop audio from working and don’t bring down the whole kernel.

It’s not the lack of airplanes you need to worry about anyway: It’s those damn shape-shifting lizards.

By: Mythmonkey

Mythmonkey — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:10:46 +0000

Great article. I run Vista and it has been more stable than XP in my case. Also, the OS mixer and audio device management is better than XP.