Windows matters. It’s what roughly half of CDM readers use, and – for all the attention Apple gets – it’s a big part of the computer music world. Windows today also faces many of the same under-the-hood challenges that other operating systems do, so even if you’re a die-hard Linux or Mac user, you may want to pay attention.  You don’t need to love Windows, and you certainly won’t be hosting a Windows 7 launch party. You want to know if the OS will get out of your way and let you get to work.

Windows Vista proved what happens when an operating system’s many interconnected pieces are out of alignment. Even a graphics driver out of sync with underlying changes in the OS could render audio unusable, because just one missed sample can produce an audible glitch or dropout. Part of why I’m optimistic about Windows 7 is that Vista today is a radically different picture, thanks to many, many fixes delivered by Microsoft in updates and more mature audio and video drivers. But that means not just whether 7 is better than XP, but whether 7 is also better than Vista.

Vista wasn’t entirely alone: Mac and Linux have all had their share of growing pains in recent years. The devil is usually in the details. So, I again turn to one of the best guys in the business for sorting out all those technical details. Noel Borthwick, the CTO for Cakewalk, probably has a better big-picture view of how music and audio work in Windows than anyone on the planet. He’s a person hardware and software vendors outside Cakewalk often rely upon as a resource. Noel kept us technically honest on Vista, and he’s doing it again on Windows 7, with some exclusive information for CDM.

Those details get mighty technical, so here’s the punchline: Windows 7 is an OS Noel would use himself. It was hard to get anyone to recommend Vista over XP; loyal Windows-using developers I know still largely stick to XP. But would Noel switch from XP to 7?

Yes, absolutely. Windows 7 finally delivers on the stability and performance that users hoped for from Vista. The kernel changes and optimizations for large scale multi-core processors make it very attractive to DAW users who are interested in better low latency performance. I will be building a new DAW soon and Windows 7 X64 will be my OS of choice.

What’s new in Windows 7?

• Better multithreading: Improved performance of highly-multithreaded software and hardware by removing a significant bottleneck, especially relevant to a tool like SONAR
• Better memory management: Improved memory management when working with multiple threads
• Less nagging: More customization over UAC prompts (meaning they don’t have to nag you more than you want)
• More lightweight: Fewer system services run by default on a stock system, plus a leaner footprint of the OS
• Media support: More native media format support, including QuickTime MOV and H.264, plus drag-and-drop media transcoding
• Composite devices: More logical display of hardware with multiple functions (like audio and MIDI).
• FireWire: Enhanced FireWire support, with IEEE 1394b
• Multi-touch: Multi-touch display support
• Usability improvements: An improved user interface, task bar, and Libraries for managing files

If you’re ready for all the gory details, read on – including a frank appraisal of how all of this compares to XP in real-world performance, and what compatibility issues to look out for if upgrading from either Vista or XP.

Noel Borthwick of Cakewalk effectively wrote this story in response to my questions, so these answers all come from him. Microsoft has not responded to my requests for a review copy, so I’ll be able to evaluate this on my own system – albeit far less scientifically than Noel can – closer to launch.

WARNING: Extremely geeky details of the inner workings of Windows 7 follow, in keeping with our “never dumbed down” policy. If you’re a developer, you can likely get some leads on how to better support Windows 7 in a single point, something even Microsoft doesn’t provide as completely. But if you’re willing to dig, you get a rare view of the OS from a developer view – no marketing speak, no cheerleading, no fanboyism, no platform wars, no writing for the lowest common denominator.

What Actually Improves Audio Performance

Peter: In terms of performance for audio production, what are the significant differences in Windows 7?

Noel: Windows 7 on the surface is very similar to Windows Vista. It has the same audio driver support and same audio system infrastructure as Vista. However, it’s some of the under-the-hood improvements that are more significant for audio production. There are some interesting innovations and optimizations in the Windows kernel, making the OS more scalable for concurrent processing. This makes it attractive for highly multithreaded applications like SONAR. Additionally there are various new API’s/SDK’s that may be of significance to developers. Some highlights are below:

Multi-threading: Removal of the kernel “global dispatcher lock”

In Vista and earlier, on a highly multi-threaded system (e.g. SONAR running on an 8 core hyper-threaded Intel Core I7 PC), you have many threads all processing tiny audio buffers at low latency. All these threads are ultimately waiting on the dispatcher lock when it comes time for them to be managed by the Windows scheduler. This global lock becomes a bottleneck in the system and prevents efficient multi-core workload distribution and scalability. This problem gets magnified as you increase the number of cores since they are all gated by a common lock. In Win 7 the kernel team changed the logic in the Windows scheduler to abolish this global dispatcher lock and use per object locks. This effectively removes this age old bottleneck and allows Win 7 to scale better even under workloads of 256 processors.

This change means a lot to applications like SONAR that rely on multithreaded processing of very small workloads. Initial benchmark results have been promising in this regard. SONAR performs more efficiently at low latency on multi core machines.

Improved Memory Management – PFN database lock

The PFN (page frame number) database lock was used by the memory manager to lock pages of memory in the working set. Like the dispatcher lock above, this would gate memory access from different threads causing resource contention. Work in this was first done in Windows server 2003 SP1 and Windows 7 has now has this optimization as well, improving asynchronous access to memory.

Power Optimization: Core Parking

Windows 7 has a new feature called Core Parking. Core Parking is a power saving optimization that shifts processing load to one or more cores and puts other less busy cores to “sleep”. The objective is to let other cores idle if workload levels allow for it. This optimization had us scratching our heads when we ran a benchmark test on a Quad Core I7 machine. At any point in time, we would notice that some cores were idle in task manager. The reason for this turned out to be Core Parking. Core parking can be useful to save battery life while running projects on laptops.

Better WaveRT Performance

Unlike Windows Vista, Win7 now uses event mode internally. This is good news, since it will help guarantee that HDAudio drivers in Win7 support WaveRT event mode properly. Additionally event mode is now part of WHQL logo certification for driver vendors, so any WAVERT device must support this to get a Win7 compatibility logo.

Ed. note: The plain-English translation here is that WaveRT, Microsoft’s own real-time audio driver facility, now is more likely to work the way you expect. Cockos, makers of REAPER, actually provided the ability to turn off WaveRT Event Mode at the end of last year because of unpredictable results. Windows 7 should resolve these issues.

Other Improvements

Peter: Noel also assembled some other improvements worth noting in Windows 7. They’re subtle, but useful: you may finally be able to avoid installing QuickTime/iTunes just to play some video files, interfaces with audio and MIDI jacks don’t have to show up separately any more, there’s improved FireWire support, usability improvements, and multi-touch on mainstream computers is now nearly here.

Noel:

Additional File Format support

Windows 7 adds native playback support for media in MP4, MOV, 3GP, AVCHD, ADTS, M4A, and WTV multimedia containers. It has native codec’s for H.264, MPEG4-SP, ASP/DivX/Xvid, MJPEG, DV, AAC-LC, LPCM and AAC-HE

Yes you read that right – QuickTime MOV file support is now natively available in Windows 7 so you don’t need to install QuickTime. Another big plus is that this is supported under the X64 version of Windows 7 as well, something you cannot do with Apple’s native QuickTime itself!

All media files using these codec’s should play in Media Player. It appears that these new codec’s are exclusively available to Media Foundation applications and not via other legacy API’s such as DirectShow etc.

File format transcoding

File format transcoding of many popular formats is now built into the Windows 7 shell. I.e. dragging and dropping files onto a device automatically performs the necessary format transcoding if the format is supported. This was primarily done to copy formats to portable devices like cameras but should be useful in other scenarios as well.

Multi-function devices and Device Containers:

Prior to Windows 7, every device attached to the system was treated as a single functional “end-point”. While appropriate for single-function devices (such as an audio interface), this does elegantly represent multi-function devices such as a combination audio/MIDI interface. In Windows 7, the drivers and status information for multi-function device can be grouped together as a single "Device Container", which is then presented to the user in the new "Devices and Printers" Control Panel as a single unit.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/Device/DeviceExperience/ContainerIDs.mspx

Note: this should not be confused with device aggregation as is available with Core Audio on Mac OS. On the Mac, you can treat multiple audio interfaces as though they’re one interface, so, for instance, you could get extra outputs by combining a couple of audio interfaces, and your software will see them as if they’re just one box. But SONAR provides this capability on its own, so if you’re a SONAR user, you can get the same functionality.

FireWire/USB

Windows 7 contains a new FireWire (IEEE 1394) stack that fully supports IEEE 1394b with S800, S1600 and S3200 data rates. According to reports, USB 3.0 may be supported in a future Windows Update. It was initially planned for Win7 but is not supported in the shipping version of Win7 due to delays in the USB 3 specification.

Multi-touch

Windows 7 includes integrated support for multi-touch displays.

Libraries

Libraries are user-defined collections of content including folders. It’s a handy way to categorize and create shortcuts to samples, music, etc. Special shell folders (Documents, Pictures, Music, and so on) are now Libraries.

Accelerators for Windows

Windows 7 Accelerators provide a way for learning more about selected text, optionally using voice control.

Virtual hard disks

The Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 incorporate support for the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format. VHD files can be mounted as drives, created, and booted from.
An installation of Windows 7 can be booted and run from a VHD drive, even on non-virtual hardware, thereby providing a new way to multi boot Windows.

Leaner Footprint

Win7 has a leaner footprint and has been tweaked to work well on less powerful PC’s, laptops and Netbooks. I have heard reports of Win7 working more smoothly on machines that would be slow under Vista.

Listen Mode

Another nice touch in Win 7 is that they now have a listen tab in the audio properties. Turning on "listen mode" basically routes input to the default output device allowing you to monitor an input device in Windows itself. Sadly this runs via the Windows audio engine which is always running in WASAPI shared mode, so it’s subject to a 30 msec delay. Of course you can always load an application like SONAR and route the audio inputs to an output for low latency monitoring.

Compatibility: What to Watch

Upgrading from Vista

Peter: Relative to Vista, are there any changes that are likely to introduce new compatibility issues with hardware or software?

Noel: With any new OS there is always the potential for compatibility issues. Win7 is built on the Vista foundation and one of its goals was better compatibility. As such most applications that are Vista compliant should work as well or better in Windows 7. UAC in Windows 7 has been improved so this might also help with general compatibility problems with some applications.

We have run into only a couple of compatibility issues in Win7 during the course of our development/testing of SONAR 8.5.

The MMIO API in Win7 (typically used for writing RIFF wave files) has a compatibility issue with the mmioDescend API with LIST ‘WAVE’ chunks. This caused our code that reads audio bundle files to fail and read scrambled audio data. We worked around this problem in 8.5

In WASAPI exclusive mode under Win7, the minimum latency you can achieve is now unfortunately 3ms and the code reports an error if lower. The fact that Vista has no such limitation has been reported to Microsoft. Hopefully its a mistaken fence in their code and this issue is fixed via an update, since it’s a step backwards for low latency in WASAPI mode.

Ed.: That last issue is an interesting one for anyone really pushing the envelope with low latency, so I’ll keep in touch with Noel if there’s any update.

Upgrading from XP

Peter: What hardware and software compatibility issues should users be aware of if they’re thinking of migrating not from Vista but from XP to Windows 7?

Noel: The compatibility issues that typically affect users migrating from XP to Vista/Win7 are:

UAC problems: Many applications and plug-ins are not built to handle the newer security settings in these OS’s. For example, if an application relies on something that requires administrative access it will fail when running as a limited user in Win7. This is a serious issue since in Vista/Win7 even if you are running from an administrator account; programs are launched by default with limited user privileges. Unlike XP, you have to explicitly run as an administrator to use such programs. To be Win7 logo-compatible, all applications need to should support running as a limited user.

Drivers: Although for most practical purposes audio drivers in XP and Windows 7/Vista are similar (you still need to write WDM drivers) there are sometimes quirks in specific drivers may cause problems. Most typical driver issues here are caused by installers that make assumptions about the OS version. In many cases this issue can be solved by the end user by setting the “compatibility mode” to Vista in the file properties for the appropriate driver installer file. (Right click the setup exe file to set its properties)

Ed.: I don’t feel either of these is a deal-killer, as I’ve been living with Vista for some time, but they’re still worth watching out for if upgrading from XP. And it means if you have an older machine that’s still working properly, you’re just likely to leave it on XP and worry about sorting the upgrade on a new box.

Less Nagging?

Peter: We talked when Vista came out about User Account Control and particularly audio-specific tasks that required elevation or different handling of permissions in Vista. I know UAC has been streamlined in W7. Do these changes impact audio apps at all? Are there corresponding under-the-hood changes?

Noel: The UAC changes in Win7 are primarily to allow more customization over the UAC elevation prompting process. There are no changes to the fundamentals of how UAC itself works that I am aware of. The classic problem with audio applications with UAC is when programs or plug-ins write to areas of the registry or file system prohibited from standard user access. Even when you are running as an administrator, by default when you launch a program (or the program itself launches a secondary process) Windows 7 will run that process with standard user privileges. If a program or plug-in attempts to write to an area which it doesn’t have write privileges for, virtualization will kick in. While this may allow the program to work, in general it is bad practice to rely on virtualization, since it can cause many unwanted side effects and behaviors in applications.

There are now four customization settings for UAC:

1. Never notify (least secure). The user is not notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is not notified when they make changes to Windows settings or when programs try to do so.

2. Only notify me when programs try to make changes to my computer. The user is not notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is not notified when they make changes to Windows settings. However, the user is notified when programs try to make changes to the computer, including Windows settings.

3. Always notify me. The user is notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is also notified when they make changes to Windows settings or when programs try to do so.

4. Always notify me and wait for my response (most secure). The user is notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is also notified when they make changes to Windows settings or when programs try to do so.

Customization and Tuning Advice

Peter: How much customization would you advise people do to their OS? That is, you’ve just installed a build of Windows 7 for working with SONAR on a test machine. Do you run the stock configuration, or start turning off services, disabling disk indexing, etc.?

Noel: Optimization and customization is a topic that can’t be fully discussed in the scope of a brief article. In general you need to optimize a system when you have known bottlenecks. Otherwise you can spend a lot of time tweaking things that have little effect on the end goal. In fact, you may even end up destabilizing a perfectly working system. A stock Win7 machine is not optimized for audio necessarily but it appears MS put some thought into trimming out unwanted startup tasks to cut down on startup time. For example there are now “Triggered start services” in Windows 7, so out of the box you can have fewer services running after a fresh boot. There are probably many background services in a modern DAW that could be suspended if you don’t need them but they should be evaluated on a case by case basis depending on what you use the machine for.

Peter: A lot of users were advising running Vista with Aero off, certainly in the early days. Do you think it’s now advisable to leave Desktop Window Compositing switched on for audio work? (Note: I am aware that there’s actually no way to *completely* disable the Aero windowing environment in a way that it reverts to XP, as even in Class mode with no compositing settings the engine has been altered.)

Generally speaking, turning off Aero will free up some resources on your system, since it uses more costly 3D graphics rendering and transparency a lot. However on any modern graphics card, Aero offloads a lot to the GPU so unless your DAW is also competing for the same GPU resources, turning it off may or may not make an appreciable difference to performance. Most applications that are not graphics intensive use GDI for rendering to the screen and since GDI doesn’t take advantage of DirectX hardware acceleration it’s normally not contesting with the GPU. If you are using plug-ins that use Direct 2D or Direct3D, you are probably better off disabling Aero.

Launch Party, After All?

Thanks, Noel. So, the big news behind all of this is that a move from XP to Windows 7 is finally advisable.

I would still caution, as I did recently with Mac OS Snow Leopard, that you typically don’t want to upgrade to a new OS the day it launches. You’ll want to verify compatibility with your software and hardware before making the jump.

That said, this is an unusual upgrade in that it appears to resolve more issues than it introduces. I actually haven’t been able to find a single user out there testing Windows 7 who has found any issues with audio or music production. Of course, when it launches, we’ll have a much larger test base, so I expect we’ll find something – even Windows Service Packs and point releases of Mac OS have been known to create some issues. As we get closer to launch, I’ll review how you would backup your existing XP or Vista system to ensure that if you do choose to upgrade, you can revert to a previous version.

I am, however, cautiously optimistic. And now is an especially good time to make the jump to 64-bit. It’s easier on Windows than any other OS at the moment, and easiest in SONAR, because SONAR allows you to easily migrate 32-bit plug-ins into the 64-bit environment. You’ll need a 64-bit machine and enough memory to make 64-bit worthwhile, but if you’re building a new workstation, as Noel is, the timing could be perfect.

I also think there’s plenty of room left to talk about issues that go between operating systems, particularly how audio software can better support multi-threading and processing on the GPU, multi-touch, as well as emerging I/O standards like USB3. (OpenCL, much-touted in Snow Leopard, is also supported on Linux and Windows, and Linux actually beat both Mac OS and Windows to the punch in providing a first implementation of USB3.) Correction: I should also add that the excellent Reaper has also added this feature. With full 64-bit support in Cakewalk’s own Dimension and other instruments, NI’s Kontakt sampler, and the bundled 64-bit-native plug-ins in Reaper and SONAR, that means you can build a really capable 64-bit rig on Windows.

With fixes getting the OS out of your way, we can return to issues that really matter, many of which apply to every OS.

Music is, as always, the perfect place to talk about these issues. We push our machines harder than just about anyone, and in ways that are the least tolerant of timing discrepencies and glitches. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you want to look into the future of computing, ask a musician.

And that calls for a party.

Previous coverage:

SONAR 8.5 and how it can smooth the transition to 64-bit (8.5 is the build that includes Windows 7-specific improvements)

Vista Tweak: Use the Audio Profile Cakewalk’s CTO Uses

Optimizing for Vista: Inside the Mechanics of SONAR 8 with Cakewalk Engineering

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

Vista for Audio, 1 Year Later: Talking OS Plumbing with Cakewalk’s CTO

Vista for Music + Pro Audio: Exclusive Under the Hood with Cakewalk’s CTO

And yes, I think Noel deserves an Honorary Contributing Editor position for all he’s done giving us absurdly-precise inside details for how Windows works.

Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.

What’s in 8.0.1

If you’re an existing Pro Tools 8 owner, you’ll want 8.0.1:

• Improved interface performance (“snappiness”!)
• Improved selection drawing in audio
• Workflow improvements, fixes

Those of you who grabbed the update in the last week or two, I’ll be curious to hear what you’ve found in some of those subtler improvements. Avid, to their credit, does do a lot of work on these point releases, not only in bugfixes but in other improvements, as well.

Software update for 8.0.1 (LE + HD + M-Powered)

End of the Line

Pro Tools 8.0.1 is the end of the road for quite a range of "legacy" hardware. 8.0.1 (in one or several of its LE, HD, and M-Powered flavors) will be the last version to support:

• Original Mbox
• Expansion|HD Chassis
• Macintosh PowerPC Computers
• Pro Tools MIX-era Peripherals

See last week’s End of Software Support announcement. Now, I suppose you can look at this as glass-half-empty or glass-half-full; it means if you have a studio with that gear in it and a PowerPC-based Mac at its center, you have a stable, modern, brisk version of Pro Tools that could last you a while.

PowerPC support is generally waning; Apple also dumped PowerPC for its own Logic. But there’s still a surprising amount of life in the processor. MOTU’s Digital Performer 7, released this week (news story on that coming) will actually run on a 1 GHz G4; see their System Requirements. I wouldn’t recommend that system, necessarily, but if you’ve got a fast Mac tower with a PowerPC, it could still make a fine studio machine. And DP7 is also compatible with Pro Tools HD, including Pro Tools 8. Ableton Live, also popular around these parts, also still runs on a PowerPC.

New OSes? Not Yet.

Absent from the 8.0.1 update is support for either Snow Leopard (Leopard only is supported) on the Mac side or Windows 7. Now, in fairness, Windows 7 isn’t even shipping yet, though in stark contrast to Vista’s RTM version, developers I’ve talked to have found their software runs without modification – and can run better without intervention than under the previous Vista release, which is something that almost never happens.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem, but it does mean that studios with “legacy” gear could wind up with a version that doesn’t support Mac OS X 10.6 or Windows 7, if 8.0.1 is in fact the last version of that gear. It obviously won’t matter for the PowerPC Macs, since they run neither Windows nor Snow Leopard, but I can imagine some folks with the HD chassis or MIX peripherals who won’t be thrilled. It’s a small handful of people, but – well, before you complain in comments, yep, I’ve figured it out, too.

It’s been one of the few constants in music technology. To use Pro Tools software, you need Pro Tools hardware – that means M-Audio interfaces for M-Powered (and now Essentials) and Digidesign interfaces for LE and HD. Without M-Audio or Digidesign hardware actively plugged in, the software refuses to run. And there’s no way for a third party to get their audio hardware working with the software.

Or so everyone thought. Without the cooperation of Avid, Mackie says they have managed to get their Onyx-i mixer line working with Pro Tools, and they’ll even “certify” compatibility. At the end of July, a number of audio sites (including Mix and Sonic State, but not CDM) received a package with one of Mackie’s new mixers, a video, and a copy of Pro Tools M-Powered. The message: a “secret” driver provided compatibility between Mackie’s mixer-audio interface package and Pro Tools. (See Sonic State’s writeup.)

So, what’s going on?

Onyx-i – What’s “i”mproved

Before I get into that, first, a word about Mackie’s new Onyx-i mixers. Viral videos aside, I already know many CDM readers don’t actually like Pro Tools, and the Onyx-i has plenty of other features to recommend it. The original Onyx was already an interesting solution, with the potential to combine a full-blown Mackie mixer with a FireWire audio interface. But the hardware was bulky, and adding FireWire support required buying and installing a separate add-in card.

The Onyx-i solves both problems. The entry-level Onyx 820i model adds a compact, inexpensive (street just US$500) 8-channel by 2-channel output option. Also, all of the new Onyx line (up to the 16×16 1640i) have FireWire built-in – no expansion needed. The line still has a rather hefty bulge that sits below the mixers, but at least with the addition of the 820i, there’s an option I could imagine throwing in a backpack. (That’s good news, I think there are more scenarios where you might want simple mixing than need to lug around a 16×16 mixer-interface.) The cheaper Onyx-i models are also competition for the Cakewalk VS-100 I reviewed recently. The Onyx lacks the VS control surface, flash recorder, and the Cakewalk software bundle, but if you were more interested in the mixer to begin with, the Onyx series could be worth a look.

At the high end, the 1640i can stream full 16 x 16 audio channels in and out of your DAW.

The Onyx also makes “universal” compatibility a selling point, and that’s where this Pro Tools saga comes in. The Onyx-i is “qualified for use with all major DAWs,” including Logic, SONAR, Cubase, Ableton Live, and … Pro Tools M-Powered 8. Of course, the last entry was assumed to be technically impossible, and Avid has, to my knowledge, never been compatible with any hardware other than their own. (The only exception I can recall is the brief availability of something called Pro Tools FREE, which worked with standard audio drivers and cost nothing, though it had a number of other limitations.)

Mackie’s announcement came with this disclaimer:

The Onyx-i Series Mixers are qualified by Mackie for use with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8. Mackie will release a driver (via www.mackie.com) together with full details of how to use the Onyx-i series with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8 in the coming weeks.

Avid has declined to comment for the time being on the Onyx-i compatibility claim, though they at least confirmed that they were not involved.

Shaunna Thompson of Mackie emphasized to CDM that there was “no reverse engineering” involved in creating the Onyx-i driver for Pro Tools M-Powered, and that they were “in discussions” with Avid but could not comment further on those discussions or how Avid would respond.

Conventional wisdom about Avid and Pro Tools has been that hardware “lock-in” – the reliance on their hardware – is good for their business. That may well be, and I do believe in hardware choice; it’s part of why Pro Tools hasn’t ever been my main DAW. I do have to point out, though, that every other audio software maker, from big developers to people maintaining open source software, will tell you compatibility is a huge pain. Massive amounts of time get spent on testing and compatibility, particularly when you start combining different operating systems and different combinations of hardware and drivers. So there’s no question that the other thing Avid has been able to do is to reduce some of that complexity, some of the additional sources of support problems, and all the costs associated with both.

But that made me all the more curious about just how the Onyx-i support works.

Q&A with Mackie

CDM: Can you comment on the inclusion of Pro Tools M-Powered?

Mackie: The “Ransom Packages” that were sent out as part of a viral campaign included a copy of Pro Tools^® M -Powered^™ 8. However, the mixers do not come with a copy of Pro Tools; users will need to purchase this separately.

CDM: I’m sure you can’t talk about all the details, but is there anything you can say about how the M-Powered support was reverse-engineered?

Mackie: Mackie did not ‘reverse engineer’ support for Pro Tools M-Powered 8. We created a custom universal driver that enables use with all major DAWs including Pro Tools^® M -Powered^™ 8.

CDM: For that matter, at the risk of asking the obvious, why would Mackie want to support Pro Tools given support for other hosts and your own DAW (Tracktion)?

Mackie: The Onyx-i Series interfaces with all major DAW’s including Pro Tools^® M -Powered^™ 8 and our very own Tracktion Software. Our customers have been telling us for years that they want a mixer that can interface with Pro Tools^® – we are simply giving our customers what they want. 

CDM: Aside from the Pro Tools questions, I’m a little unclear – what’s new in the "-i" versus the original Onyx predecessors?

Mackie: The biggest difference is that the Onyx-i Series has deep FireWire integration. Now you don’t have to buy a separate FireWire card because it’s already built into the mixer offering a significant increase in performance and value over the older Onyx Compact Series. This effectively means you get a premium analog mixer AND an ultra-high quality digital interface. These are the tools you need for serious computer recording.

Every channel on the mixers can be routed pre- or post- EQ to the computer, allowing the user to choose whether to implement EQ to tape or not. Returns from you computer can be routed back through the channel strip for integration into the mix or for mastering the Perkins EQ.

So, Does it Matter?

It seems that if this had happened a few years ago, it might have been explosive news, which is not the sense I got with Mackie’s attempt to “go viral” with that guy, his little dog, and his pantyhose mask. Then again, I’d better not speak too soon, lest I wind up with 100 comments on this post…

For many users, people who want hardware choice may already have found DAWs with which they’re happy. Pro Tools has its loyal users, and people make great music with it – it just happens that the same can be said of Ableton Live, Apple Logic, Reaper, and many others (just in descending order of recent reader interest on this site). And, of course, Mackie also makes their own Tracktion. Mackie actually risks overshadowing the other news here – the ability to buy a single piece of gear that’s both a Mackie mixer and a FireWire audio interface for under $500.

On the other hand, it’d be a fairly significant acheivement to release this driver, and perhaps even to get Avid’s support. And while I had to ask the question above, of course, Mackie wouldn’t do this if they weren’t getting customers bugging them for it. That’s why interoperability ultimately matters: users want certain choices, and (perhaps rightfully) don’t understand why they might be denied those choices.

I’m going to place the burden on Avid on this one, for one reason: Avid claims “interoperability” is one of their new corporate goals. It’s never been entirely clear what they mean. Some of that goal seems to have more to do with interoperability between products in their own product line. (In fairness, that seems a logical place to start!) So I hope whenever Avid and Mackie do finish their discussions, whatever Avid’s decision, we get clear communication for exactly what the “new” Avid’s interoperability goals are. If they feel they have a case for not supporting hardware like Mackie’s, that’s their prerogative. I’d just like to see clear communication from either company, to explain to their user base why they make those choices.

And, of course, I don’t expect that communication from either Mackie or Avid will come from anyone wearing a mask and a disguised voice.

I’ll be watching for the outcome of the discussions between these two industry giants. Stay tuned.

Snow Leopard looks like a promising upgrade for Mac users. Most importantly for music users, 10.6 is the first operating system with what looks like a mature foundation for 64-bit support in the future. Previous versions of the Mac operating system had begun this transition, but Snow Leopard is the first to have a proper 64-bit kernel mode. Also, some Mac developers are likely to be able to take advantage of new multithreading capabilities provided by OS APIs. (Others, particularly those targeting more than one OS, will continue to provide multithreading and multi-core support via their own mechanisms.)

However, there are very few scenarios that are likely to benefit from upgrading today. Nearly all software developers (Propellerhead, Avid, Ableton, Plogue, and Native Instruments) advise waiting as support stabilizes. A number of hardware issues (Digidesign, M-Audio, Tascam, PreSonus) are known to exist, and many more likely simply haven’t responded this week to our call for information. Other hardware and software issues are likely to be uncovered now that the final OS build is available for widespread testing by end users.

Also, while Apple’s own software (Finder, Mail, and other apps) appear to get performance improvements, and startup/shutdown is better, the advantages of new OS services aren’t likely to be realized immediately. In fact, even measuring what the difference will be may take additional time.

Compatibility issues should be resolved fairly quickly – which is even more reason to wait. PACE Anti-Piracy, for instance, works now, as does software and hardware for MOTU. Other updates should be available in a few weeks with enhanced compatibility, making that a better time to upgrade.

If you’re looking to reclaim hard drive space with a smaller OS, I recommend Monolingual. By removing PowerPC-native code from Intel systems that don’t need it (or visa versa), it offers the same significant disk space improvement available in Snow Leopard. (Clarification: It should achieve similar net results, though Snow Leopard nips and tucks in a different way – cutting PowerPC but adding 64-bit, while reducing elsewhere – see David Pogue in The New York Times. But that’s academic – if you need extra gigs, you can get it both ways, and I expect we’ll eventually see Monolingual on Snow Leopard, too.) It also removes extra languages you don’t need to save space – something even Snow Leopard doesn’t do. I was able to nearly halve the size of my OS install using the tool, the same gain claimed by Snow Leopard. And it’s free.

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

This advice doesn’t mean that Snow Leopard is a “bad” operating system – just that the OS is currently ahead of the other pieces you need to make it useful for music. Developers are largely talking about new updates in “weeks,” not months.

Another way to look at it: Snow Leopard might run just fine for you today. But it’s almost certain that it will run better – and fully supported – in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

That said, just as 10.6 is coming out, 10.5 is maturing. Ableton notes that the latest version of 10.5 is recommended for maximum graphics performance. Native Instruments now considers 10.5 its officially supported operating system. As you’ll recall, early builds of 10.5 offered a very rough road for audio, as it contained more significant under-the-hood changes than 10.6 does today. Audio and music applications simply acheive their best results on fully-mature operating systems, and they tend to require more extensive testing and tweaks by both the operating system vendor and third parties.

If you do like being on the bleeding edge, more power to you. If you encounter issues, let us know about them, and that may help get them resolved more quickly.

So… relax. And enjoy your weekend.

While you wait for full compatibility, remember you can watch updates at:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard

MOTU has a comprehensive update page, and I’ve added the news to the http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard round-up page.

That said, while MOTU has the greatest level of out-of-the-gate support I’ve seen from any vendor for 10.6, even they have run into a showstopper issue. Their Ethno Instrument isn’t yet compatible; an update is expected. Sure, that’s just one instrument. But the lesson here? If you don’t mind the occasional wrinkle, you can live on the bleeding edge. But if you want to keep your software up and running, your best bet is to be patient and wait to upgrade. That’s not to discourage you from testing the latest-and-greatest, it just means you need to have the expectations to match.

The news remains, though: MOTU does have updated drivers for those of you with MOTU hardware or software who want to get a head start on setting up Snow Leopard.

That does not seem to be the case with other hardware vendors (Pro Tools, M-Audio, Tascam, and PreSonus all suggest waiting), and even some of the drivers that will initially become available should be considered “beta.” That is, they may even be designed to work with 10.6, but could use additional testing. I think that could probably generally be said of this update for musicians – just as with any significant operating system update on any platform.

Okay, that’s technically not a snow leopard, but I came pretty close, right? Photo (CC) Mark Kenny.

For the latest on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), be sure to check out our full round-up. It’ll be regularly updated through the coming days.

We have updates from Propellerhead and Ableton. Basically, the message is what we’re hearing across the board – developers have been testing their software, but you should be cautious about updating and ensure all the hardware, software, and plug-ins you want to use work. More details on the state of development from these favorites to follow… notably, including an expected update to Live 8 that will bring full, official support to 10.6.

Updated: More news coming in and added to the round-up page. Antares reports their software works — good news. But the big news is that many Tascam hardware products will need driver updates. That is suggestive of changes to the OS that could impact other audio interfaces from other vendors. I’m going to keep saying this – upgrade on launch day at your own risk. Writing and testing audio drivers is tremendously time-intensive, so if you want everything to work, you’ll need to verify compatibility before you upgrade. Snow Leopard’s improvements will only be cool if your audio box works, too.

Ableton’s Dom Wilms, Manager – Technical Support, writes CDM:

10.6 is not officially supported yet, as we’re currently testing it with Live 8 and based on the results we will release a free bugfix update during the next weeks that will officially support 10.6.

It’s likely that Live 7 will also be just fine with 10.6 – but we don’t want to promise this right now before the tests are all finished and us being sure that we can achieve 100% compatibility.

And yes, we also do not recommend upgrading yet if stability is crucial for the used system. In this case customers should wait until all third party software and hardware products are confirmed to work with the new cat…

We will come up with a little FAQ regarding those questions in our forum today or tomorrow.

Note that reader Jae sent in a thread from the Ableton forums with some testers, but I wouldn’t take it as scientific evidence. It begins with a user finds a reduction in CPU usage that’s actually too large – that is, it seems there’s some significant variable that’s not controlled.

None other than CEO Ernst Nathorst-Böös writes in with the official statement from Propellerhead. So far, so good – just, again, approach this new OS with caution.

Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Compatibility Statement

Apple have released a new operating system, Mac OS X 10.6 also known as Snow Leopard. Our products have been tested on this new OS X version and we are happy to report that all our applications are fully functional.

Please note the following non-critical issues:

ReCycle – You need to activate Rosetta to make ReCycle work. This is similar to what happened if you ran ReCycle on a Intel-based Mac under Mac OS X 10.5.

Reason and Record – The text in the device patch selector has a display bug. The characters O, o and 8 have filled rather than hollow circles.

Record – The Record installer reports an (actually non-existing) problem after installation, but Record runs fine. You can safely use Record without any problems.

Hardware Note

Your music system does not consist of software alone. Please be aware that you may need to update the installation of your audio hardware, keyboard controller or other controller when upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6. We recommend that you consult the hardware manufacturer for more information about compatibility, before you upgrade your operating system.

Disclaimer

While Propellerhead Software has gone to great lengths to verify the information above, please note that it is based on early versions of Mac OS X 10.6 and that the testing performed is by definition limited. This information does not constitute any warranty, express or implied.

By the way, I want to thank developers who do post frank information on the forums and who have helped us out with this series – at a time when they don’t have all their testing data yet.

The changes may be subtle, and you may not notice a thing. But if you upgrade your OS – any OS – the day it comes out for the ever-delicate work of live music and visuals, you should think of yourself as a tester. There’s a good chance you’re going to find some issue somewhere. Guess what: griping about it gets you nowhere. If you find a problem, fill out a detailed bug report with the vendor. And be patient. Anyone who’s tried developing software or drivers knows what I mean: stuff breaks. The advantage now is, we can arm ourselves with information through the power of the Web.

I’ve created a page for tracking Snow Leopard compatibility, changes, and other information, with a visual equivalent to follow after launch. (Right now, most of the visual information we want to talk about is still under NDA.)

Bookmark it at:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard/

What kind of updates? Well, this just in: Iced Audio writes us to let us know they’ve successfully tested their awesome AudioFinder under 10.6.

This is information that’s constantly changing, and it’s an unscientific compilation – just think of it as a place to start your research and testing process if you do want to hop onboard 10.6 early.

As we get closer to Windows 7’s launch, we’ll give Windows a page, too, and I hope to have some centralized info for Linux, too.

Word from developers confirms what I had suspected: developers were as surprised as we were to learn Apple was shipping a new operating system on August 30.

If you have to ask yourself whether you want to upgrade, then the simple answer is – don’t, not yet. And via Christopher Wimbrow on Twitter, here’s the first tool that we can confirm will outright break if you jump too soon – PreSonus hardware. From their forum, earlier today, PreSonus’ Nick RICK Naqvi tells a user (unofficially):

Right now, we are planning to have support for Snow Leopard by the end of October. We had originally heard they were going to release it in September, so our plan was to test it thoroughly and then release a new driver about 30 days later. They moved up the date to August 28 so it looks like we will be a little more than a week later than we expected.

Please note, if you update your OS, your PreSonus hardware will not work.

If you have to install it to play with, I’d recommend doing a partition. But leave Leopard on it so that you can continue to record.

Ouch. I’ll let you know if this gets fixed sooner. And remember, this is an operating system that is being tested under a Non-Disclosure Agreement; more incompatibilities are likely to appear next week.

This illustrates a problem, too. Shipping an application early is great news. Shipping an operating system early – with countless hardware and software vendors pulling time from other work (like new features) to keep their stuff working – not so great news.

Fortunately, you have power over your computer. Ignore that Apple email that appeared on Monday saying Snow Leopard is “In store or at your door Friday,” and consider it a bleeding-edge operating system. Assume that for most users, the current build of 10.5 represents the best compromise of Mac stability, compatibility, and features – at least for the time being.

UPDATE – PreSonus WILL have beta drivers. And like the vast majority of vendors, real stable versions are expected in a few weeks.

Earlier in the week, I was told that we weren’t going to have Snow Leopard driver until October, but our engineers worked overtime the last week or so to release a beta driver that is fully functional. We have tested it internally and it is working well and allows for daisychaining of interfaces and full feature functionality. This driver will work with all of our Firestudio Family Interfaces including:

Firestudio 2626
Firestudio Project
Firestudio Lightpipe
Firestudio Tube
Firestudio Mobile
StudioLive1642

Our other interfaces are class compliant and are going to be immediately supported on Snow Leopard:

Firebox
Inspire1394
FP10 / Firepod
AudioboxUSB

Lastly, our new recording software, StudioOne is also ready for Snow Leopard. Here’s a link to the StudioOne page: http://www.presonus.com/products/SoftwareDetail.aspx?SoftwareId=11

If you are an early adopter, let us know your experiences.

Updated: See http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard for a running report.

Apple’s “Snow Leopard” 10.6 ships Friday, which means it’s time to start compiling information about the new OS flavor. Just don’t upgrade too fast, as always.

Want to push an operating system to the breaking point? Ask a musician. Between the demands of real-time performance and the complex ecosystem of mix-and-match hardware, software, and plug-ins, odds are your local audio geek will break an OS faster than anyone else. Not every operating system upgrade is going to have a big impact on music software, but keep in mind that even subtle changes can cause issues that may interfere with your work.

Of course, all of this means music users should treat any OS update with caution. :

• If you’ve got a critical, primary production machine, your best bet is often simply to wait. Confirm that software works before you upgrade rather than after.
• If you’ve got some time to invest in an upgrade or have more than one machine, be sure to do a full backup and system image so you can revert to the previous, known working OS.
• Best solution: Boot off an external hard drive. Don’t commit to installing internally until you’re sure everything is working. Once you are, go enjoy. (as noted in comments, and yes, I should have said this initially… still, the latest 10.5 build is still the preferred OS for now.)

So, sit back. Enjoy life. Go for a walk on a beach. Recline in your favorite chair with your MacBook running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Isn’t it great? Need to waste time? Plants vs. Zombies is out for Mac.

What? Still want to upgrade?

Fair enough. We’ll be tracking changes to Snow Leopard and which of them may impact audio.

The short version: Snow Leopard introduces only small changes, but if a developer hasn’t been on top of those changes, you could see issues. And as for the 64-bit mode that’s attracting most of the attention, the short answer is, you can’t use it for music yet.

Native Instruments and Plogue have each responded to CDM with information on their software.

Executive Summary

• NI and Plogue have tested their software as functioning on 10.6
• Neither NI nor Plogue recommends you upgrade your OS yet – Plogue uses stronger language to discourage you
• 64-bit support, expanded in Mac OS 10.6, is not yet relevant to music use because nothing (not even from Apple) supports it yet, but don’t worry – you can get more RAM through other methods
• Audio MIDI Setup gets a tune-up, and built-in audio support appears to be improved

Native Instruments

If you’re a Mac user who uses NI products on any version of the operating system, you should stay tuned to this URL:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/support/compatibility/mac-os-x-compatibility/

NI tells CDM they’ve just updated it today with Snow Leopard information:

Native Instruments has conducted initial compatibility tests with Mac OS X 10.6, which have shown all current NI products to work without any specific issues under standard installations of this operating system.

However, users involved in professional audio production or live performance should be cautious about upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 until compatibility with third-party audio software and hardware has been widely confirmed by the relevant manufacturers.

Native Instruments is currently conducting further systematic compatibility and performance tests with Snow Leopard, and will provide additional information on this page as it becomes available.

The second paragraph sounds like what I just wrote, huh?

Plogue

Plogue, an independent developer of a variety of software ranging from the awesome modular environment Bidule to sampling engines for Garritan’s orchestra and piano products and an upcoming library of vintage chip sounds have been doing their own work. Privately, I talked with them about some of the work they had to do after Apple rewrote underlying operating system plumbing with Objective-C (from C and Carbon). Here’s their official statement to CDM on Snow Leopard and, in the parallel Windows dimension, Windows 7:

10.6 and W7 each caused only minor modifications to our code base, however these mods are necessary for proper functioning of our products on those platforms. Most of our transition efforts as a company will be of a user support nature.

Any musician foolish enough to jump on new OSes without a hint of caution, inevitably makes me wish for a new kind of Darwin Award prize.

(Emphasis mine. Consider yourself warned.)

Ableton (Unofficial) and a Plug-in Warning

From the Ableton forums, via comments:

It’s currently being tested internally over here, so the current version is not officially compatible yet – on the other hand this does not mean that it doesn’t run.

We will release an update after the tests during the next weeks that will be officially compatible, but we don’t recommend upgrading yet if stability is your main concern.

It’s likely that a few new third party plugin problems will show up due to the changes under the hood in 10.6 and experiences show that the latest 10.5 versions now are the way to go after the gfx performance problems with earlier 10.5 and 10.4 versions.

So, in other words, now is a great time to upgrade to 10.5!

More in the thread here:

Ableton Forums

Now, note, mostly what this extensive discussion reveals is that Snow Leopard is poorly understood, partly thanks to a very successful hype campaign on Apple’s part. (Ahem.)

There are not magical performance and speed improvements found by installing Snow Leopard – or, most likely, any OS. (Would that such things were true.) The presence of a set of multithreading tools, for instance, is specific only to developers for whom that set of tools is useful. Audio software already has finely-tuned multithreading implementations specific to real-time applications, and in the case of something like Ableton Live, it really needs to work across platforms.

If you install a new OS with the expectation that it’ll be “faster,” you’ll almost certainly be disappointed. If you install a new OS hoping you’ll “break things,” then you probably won’t be disappointed. I don’t mean to suggest don’t ever upgrade or live in fear of all software, just that you should imagine that, like redoing the plumbing in your basement, long-term advantages will come, but with significant effort and time.

PreSonus Hardware

See a separate post: at Snow Leopard launch, PreSonus audio interfaces are likely to be entirely incompatible.

About 64-bit (Nothing to see here…)

NI notes that the 10.6 offers significant changes to 64-bit support, including a new 64-bit kernel mode – this being the rough equivalent of the “x64” 64-bit versions of Windows (and Linux) that have been available for some time.

Here’s the bottom line: 64-bit support on Mac OS isn’t yet relevant to audio users, period. It’s not supported by Apple’s own Logic Studio, or any other major host at this time. This is a situation we’ll be watching, as it is something developers appear to be investigating.

But before we get too far into that issue, you should consider why you’re asking about 64-bit in the first place. 64-bit computing offers two potential advantage. First, running processor computation natively at 64 bits offers a marginal improvement. Second – the issue most people care about for music – 64-bit memory addressing offers access to massive amounts of memory, beyond the approximate 4 GB barrier that applies to 32-bit applications.

More memory is a very good thing. But you probably don’t want to sacrifice compatibility just to get it. Fortunately, you don’t need the 64-bit OS to get beyond that 4 GB barrier. On the Mac, some workarounds have extended the practical life of 32-bit memory addressing for music applications – thus avoiding the need to get a 64-bit native version of every driver and every piece of software you want to use.

On Windows and Linux, you can indeed get a number of audio applications (like SONAR on Windows, for instance) that have excellent 64-bit support, and a number of the drivers have followed suit. Even, then, though, many users choose to stick with 32-bit versions in order to have superior compatibility.

Note that processing “64-bit audio” – that is, digital audio represented using 64-bit data – is a completely different issues. A 32-bit processor and 32-bit operating system and 32-bit software can all do 64-bit audio processing. Whether you really need 64 bits for audio production is a whole other can of worms I won’t open here.

Getting More Memory – Without Any 64-bit Snow Leopards

When I spoke to Apple earlier this month, they downplayed the 64-bit issue and pointed out that their own EXS24 sampler in Logic Studio can access additional installed memory just fine with 32-bit – that means if you have Logic 8 or later, Pro or Express, Tiger or Leopard or Snow Leopard, you can use additional RAM. Each EXS24 sampler instance has its own memory space, so you can use as much memory as you want.

Apple even has a support doc on the subject:

Logic Pro/Express 8: How the EXS24 sampler addresses RAM in Logic 8

Last month, we looked at the situation for Native Instruments’ Kontakt. Again, using some of the flexibility of the memory architecture unique to the Mac, they’ve managed to access bigger amounts of RAM even on 32-bit OS.

Kontakt, Battery: Enhanced, More Compatible, 64-bit Memory

Kontakt is able to get up to a whopping 32 GB thanks to something called the Kontakt Memory Server. Again, you can get still more than 32 GB using 64-bit Windows, but for most users, that’s overkill.

All of this is to say, 64-bit is not a reason to upgrade to Snow Leopard for audio work – at least, not yet. Some of the built-in applications (like the Finder and Safari) get performance boosts from 64-bit optimization on 10.6, but none of that is critical to audio and music – and it’s certainly not worth upgrading too soon only to find some compatibility wrinkle we haven’t yet found.

Updates to Audio MIDI Setup

A reader tips us off to some small changes to Apple’s centralized Core Audio settings panel, Audio MIDI Setup. Audio and MIDI are now separated into separate windows, and Audio gets some nice improvements.

Note the per-app settings and adjustments for sample rate, bit depth, and Format. As in previous recent versions of Mac OS, you can also aggregate multiple physical audio interfaces into one – one of a number of reasons we really love Core Audio as a sound system.

The reader also notes that the update seems to improve support for his built-in hardware:

It’s now possible to choose a higher sample rate and resolution for all inputs/outputs on the built-in sound card of my MacBook Pro early ‘08, which is pretty cool. Before there was clearly hearable, annoying digital fragments when playing back any sounds, especially on low volume – all magically gone, i don’t hear anymore noise.

Got More Information?

Help us continue our “More Than You Wanted to Know,” obsessive series of coverage on CDM and tip us off!

Corrections and clarifications are welcome, too – that’s why I enjoy the maleable nature of the Web.

Native Instruments has updated its sampling engine, releasing beta versions 3.0.5 for its Battery drum sampler and 3.5.0 final for the flagship Kontakt sampler. Both are free upgrades. (For anyone who thought that somehow Maschine was replacing Battery, it isn’t: the former is a drum machine, whereas the latter is more like a high-end drum sampler.)

There are a number of significant enhancements, but perhaps the most interesting is the support for 64-bit memory addressing. On 64-bit Windows Vista (and upcoming 64-bit Windows 7), that gives you true 64-bit memory addressing for — well, more memory than you have. (The theoretical limit of Windows’ 64-bit architecture on Intel is 16 terabytes.) This allows native 64-bit memory addressing on Windows for both Battery and Kontakt.

The Mac isn’t quite capable of that just yet (at least no audio applications beyond Apple’s own developer tools support 64-bit memory addressing yet), but the Kontakt Memory Server gives you up to 32 GB on 10.4 and later. Clarification: The Kontakt Memory Server is available now only for Kontakt.

The other important development for both Battery and Kontakt is that compatibility with Pro Tools 8 under Mac OS 10.5 Leopard has been restored.

Getting Kontakt on 64-bit is a very big deal, because of the widespread popularity of the sampler. At the same time, the fact that it’s not alone is a good thing — it suggests 64-bit memory for samplers may be catching on. Steinberg’s HALion, Cakewalk’s Dimension Pro, Garritan’s ARIA, and the open source Linux Sampler Project are some of the more familiar samplers that have gone 64-bit recently. (Note that, despite its name, Linux Sampler can run 64-bit on both Linux and Windows.) Cakewalk did a lot to lead the way here on Windows by getting both its SONAR host and Dimension Pro (among other plug-ins) fully 64-bit early. Garritan is equally interesting, because their Plogue-based engine is getting licensed out to soundware makers and, architecturally, is built more as a cross-platform engine. Garritan ARIA is also targeting Linux, and Cakewalk and Garritan are also supporting the open SFZ format.

Okay, I should have put that in a table. Imagine a table in your mind. Wow, that looks beautiful.

What else is new in Kontakt

64-bit is the headline, but there are other enhancements, too, in the Kontakt engine:

• “Zero-memory” DFD means you use less memory when streaming from disk (and using less memory is usually the very reason you’re streaming from disk)!
• True multiprocessor/multi-core support for enhanced performance
• A virtual rack of all your installed libraries and third-party content, so it’s easier to find your sounds
• Direct MIDI learn (meaning everything is finally assignable), improved automapping, bypass for effects slots
• Pro Tools compatibility now works properly on Mac Leopard
• KSP aftertouch interpretation – so now you can do something with that aftertouch-transmitting keyboard of yours

Update: Note that these are Kontakt-specific features, and not relevant to Battery for reasons clarified below.

Battery vs. Kontakt

Updated: You will note that Native Instruments is updating Battery and Kontakt more or less at the same time, and they do share some core technologies that allow that to happen. They aren’t exactly the same under the hood, though, as NI explains to CDM:

The core engine technology is the same in Battery 3.0.5 and Kontakt 3.5, but Battery uses a “lighter” version because of its typical use case as a drum sampler.

It doesn’t include the Memory Server and the multiprocessor/multicore support because these features really only become necessary with multitimbral operation, high polyphony and a huge number of instrument samples (and heavy effects usage) like in Kontakt.

Let us know what you think if you’re a Kontakt/Battery user.

New features in Kontakt 3.5 versus 3.0 [Native Instruments]
Public beta of Battery 3.0.5 [at the NI public beta site]