Those of you in the market for a new MacBook Pro are no doubt already tuned into the product news. So let’s talk about what isn’t changed on the new MacBook line, because it’s a good thing.

• You still get FireWire 800 ports on all models, including the entry-level 13″ machine.
• ExpressCard is still standard on the 17″ MacBook Pro.
• Your dongles for video adapters still work.

I’m researching implications for audio of the new Thunderbolt connection. My guess is it’s a little too early to say; 10 GBps storage sounds fantastic, but it’s far beyond the needs of all but the craziest audio applications. (That is, fast FireWire and USB drives work really well already.)

Where you’ll see it in audio is likely two places: one, more high-performance audio I/O, and two, clearing the bottleneck with DSP chips that has long plagued external hardware DSP. The latter is maybe a bit ironic as we look at ongoing performance gains from GPUs and integrated architectures there, but it’s no accident that Universal Audio and Avid are excited about it, as they have DSP products. And enthusiasm from Avid and Apogee means you can expect to see high-end audio with lots of I/O for this format. See the Intel technology page. As for specifics, we’ll be watching.

For adoption, this is certainly big news. Thunderbolt faced a chicken and egg problem; Apple is the 800-lb chicken.

The short version of the other specs: these machines are faster. Again, though, current audio applications run pretty well on the previous machines; I’m pleased to say we’re now in a place where people aren’t red-lining their CPU every day.

In fact, for those reasons, if you want a bargain on a MacBook Pro for audio work, now could be a great time to pick up a closeout on the old machine. On the audio side, the new models are largely appealing because their Thunderbolt port ensures future-proofing for whatever comes next – without having to give up the I/O on the previous models.

More discussion on the Motion side, focusing, naturally, on what we know about the graphics chips:
MacBook Pro Revision Updates GPU, adds Thunderbolt, but No New Display Dongles (Phew)

And yes, you have choices in this competitive marketplace, including PCs. But there you go – anyone who thought we’d see a step backward in I/O today can now exhale. And anyone looking for greater architecture performance, your machines have arrived. And anyone saying that laptops aren’t still awesome and improving in the age of low-end mobile and tablets? You’re just kinda all-around wrong. As for tomorrow, well, who knows, who knows…

One keyboard, a mind-bending nine engines, lots of tech specs … now that we’ve lived in a world of impressive, technically-intimidating workstation keyboards for a couple of decades, it’s easy to imagine your eyes glazing over when there’s a new one, let alone the general public. So, what might get your attention? This.

“Workstation keyboard” is usually a phrase that sends me for the exits; my computer makes a perfectly good workstation, thanks. I’ve understood why people like them; I’ve just never seen one that could personally excite me. But now that the trade show hype has died down, it’s time to take a serious look at the Korg Kronos. This one is a bit different. It’s the first real integrated computer-in-a-keyboard workstation since the Korg OASYS – and it and the OASYS really do something no other integrated keyboards have. (Just sticking a PC in a keyboard shell doesn’t quite count; that’s almost more of a case mod than an integrated design.)

Now, imagine the OASYS in a completely new generation, and at half the price. The OASYS was priced so that it seemed like only rock stars need apply, however – US$8000. Kronos is US$3700 street, a price that has typically bought you an arranger keyboard, not something like this. Kronos, at that price, really does seem like a studio in a box. It’s certainly not cheap (not with very capable instruments under a grand), but it enters the realm where a musician could make an investment in a keyboard that’d outlast a couple of generations of computers and (ahem) computer repairs.

Underneath its shell, the Kronos is still based on the Linux kernel (via a custom OS), lots of Korg software, and an Intel processor.

Kronos is impressive enough that other, computer-loving fans I know are taking a look. So, I asked Korg if they could walk us through more of the technical details.

This isn’t a review. But while Korg’s Richard Formidoni is positively glowing about their new baby, I do listen to what he says. Rich is one of us – and having been to his home studio, I can tell you that while he may be a company man, he has a cherished place for some instruments from makers beginning with the letter ‘R’ and rhyming with Yoland, not just Ma Korg. And while his pride shows through, he also has some great details for us. (In the grand tradition of CDM, I’ve … not edited those answers. All the news fits, so we print.)

So, consider this a full, detailed preview. I actually think it benefits from some distance from the NAMM show, the week in which everything is unveiled at once. If you miss the din of NAMM, replace all the bulbs in your house with fluorescents, fire up some white noise generators and background crowd sound effects discs, and then buy yourself breakfast at IHOP before charging yourself $500 to sleep over. And stay tuned for when we get to try this thing first-hand.

What’s the relationship of Kronos to OASYS, technically or in terms of learned experience?

There’s absolutely a blood relation. Much of the technology that was originally developed for OASYS has made its way to KRONOS (sound engines, UI, etc). That being said, KRONOS has more than enough innovation to stand on its own. It has quite a few performance-oriented aspects that wouldn’t have been possible without new hardware. One example is the inclusion of a fast solid state drive with direct access to about 12gb of sample libraries, rendering the blanket spec of “ROM size” totally irrelevant. More on that later. In terms of compatibility, KRONOS can load OASYS Programs, Combis, and Sequences.

What’s the underlying hardware engine? (OASYS I know was a Pentium 4 with a custom embedded OS based on the Linux kernel.)

It’s a dual-core Atom processor, again running a custom OS atop a Linux kernel. This is a big deal for a few reasons… Read the next answer for details.

It’s very apparent how much the Kronos does, and I think typically we end the conversation that way — “look, it does this, this, and this.” But walk us through, if you will, how someone might typically uses all of these engines? It appears that there are some significant features there (like the ability to seamlessly change sounds, which certainly is non-trivial on a computer).

Strap in, this’ll be the long one…

A walk-through would definitely start with a description of the nine engines. I’ll try to differentiate a little than our marketing copy, which as you might imagine, I am starting to recite in my sleep.

1. SGX-1 Premium Piano: This lets you play and modify large acoustic grand piano sample libraries, directly from the internal solid state drive. There are two 4.7gb libraries, a German grand and a Japanese grand. We include 30 piano types based around these libraries, with different response and tonality. SGX-1 lets you interact with the pianos by adjusting lid position, damper resonance, note release (simulating old damper felts), adding mechanical noises (keys, damper rise/fall), and adjusting velocity intensity/bias. Obviously, the big deal here is the SSD playback. It lets us use more velocity layers, high quality, unlooped samples, and gives us huge polyphony (SGX-1 can sound 400 mono channels at once).

The whole point is that SGX-1 provides the most realistic, detailed, nuanced, and flexible collection of pianos that we’ve ever offered.

2. EP: This engine recreates six different models of electric piano: Four tine-based Eps (Mark I, Mark II, Mark V, and Dyno) and two Wurlys (200 and 200a). It uses a method called MDS (Multi-Dimensional Synthesis) which doesn’t have some of the more unnatural characteristics of looped samples, so it responds smoothly as you play harder. Any audible switching between soft/loud, and sweet/strong is gone. It also has the vintage effect models from the SV-1, without taking up any of the internal effect slots. Tremolo, vibrato, all the fixin’s from the classic EPs are there.

3. CX-3: This is the software version of our CX-3 tonewheel organ. It lets you use the physical sliders as you would drawbars, and accurately models the chorus/vibrato, percussion, overdrive, leakage, and amplifier/rotary speaker. The fun part for me is how ridiculously tweakable it is. For example, you can basically design your own rotary speaker, as well as the room it’s sitting in… And you can add four additional drawbars to the organ, with customizable pitches. I’ve logged a few gig/studio hours with this engine alone, and I’m pretty thrilled that Urban Sun finally has true drawbar organs to work with.

4. MS-20EX: Taken almost directly from our Legacy Collection software, this recreation of the MS-20 monosynth (now with 40 notes of polyphony) is a point-to-point model of every component from the original design. It was created by the same designers who made the original. You can even run audio input through the frequency-to-voltage converter, and have the synth sing along with you. You can create patches just as you would on the original, except instead of using actual cables, you just touch points on the display.

Put simply, it’s an MS-20 that would not pass a screening for performance-enhancing drugs.

Ed.: Careful, Rich, the iPad fans may chime in here … as may someone with some other drug reference, dunno. Readers, see image above.

5. PolysixEX: Along the same lines as the MS-20EX, it’s a recreation of the venerable Polysix (only now more like a Poly180). The display lets you touch a graphic representation of the Polysix, and we’ve also mapped all the controls to the KRONOS control surface for hands-on tweaking.

Just like the original Polysix, the PolysixEX is a great way to get into synthesis. It can be incredibly powerful, but it’s also really approachable. If you’re new to analog synthesis, it’s a wonderful place to start experimenting.

6. AL-1: A more futuristic look at analog modeling. We often describe AL-1 as “futuristic” because of its potential to go so far beyond classic analog synthesis. It’s a ground-up design, with massive capabilities. Each instance (two per Program) can have three oscillators, five envelopes, five LFOs, a step sequencer, and various filter types including a Multi Filter, which lets you blend together (and morph between) different filter shapes. One of its most notable features is the Ultra Low-Aliasing Oscillators, which sound pure throughout the audible frequency spectrum.

7. MOD-7: This is a frequency modulation synthesizer based on Korg’s VPM architecture. It can read SysEx from classic FM synths (you know the ones), and it lets you go beyond the traditional “choose an algorithm” format, and create your own using a patch panel system. You can also modulate using PCM samples, ring modulation, and waveshaping. All things considered, MOD-7 offers the most programming depth of all the engines in KRONOS.

8. STR-1: This is a plucked-string physical modeling engine. You can design a string, with specific properties like damping, dispersion, and nonlinearity, and then excite it at any given position with a pluck, strike, or scrape. It’s very good at replicating string-based instruments like harps, guitars, sitars, etc., but it’s also capable of percussion, bell, and wind sounds, plus some really haunting textures that wouldn’t be possible for a string to generate in the real world. There’s a lot of fun to be had by warping the string’s physical properties with the Vector Joystick as you play.

9. HD-1: Our all-purpose, high-definition sample playback engine. Eight stereo velocity layers with crossfading means we can into greater detail than we ever could before. As with SGX-1, we’re taking advantage of large sample libraries being played from the internal SSD. With access to nearly 12gb of sample data (remember what Korg did with only 4mb in the M1?), It is a huge Swiss army knife of sound. HD-1 also incorporates Wave Sequencing and Vector Synthesis, from the Wavestation.

One of the big themes of KRONOS is making sound design fun, varied, and inspiring. There is so often a divide between modeling synthesizers and sample-based instruments, so it’s pretty exciting to have one instrument that raises the bar in both areas. Having three different flavors of analog modeling is a great example of that. If you want quick and easy, go for the PolysixEX. If you want to experiment with a semi-modular patch panel, grab the MS-20EX. If you want to go beyond “classic” capabilities, fire up AL-1. I end up using the word “playground” very often while describing it.

There’s also onboard KARMA, a powerful sequencer with 16 MIDI tracks and 16 24-bit audio tracks, our Open Sampling System, and loads of effects… I don’t want to undervalue these aspects, but the fact that it’s nine complete synthesizers is definitely a paramount feature.

So, this is all well and good… It’s a synthesis monster. You can get lost for weeks, just programming sounds. The real beauty of it, though, is how all of them can work together and feed off of each other.

For instance, we now have a “Set List” mode that gives you immediate access to Programs, Combis, and Sequences from the same display. You can organize sounds and songs into groups of 16 slots. You don’t have to duplicate sounds in an empty bank any more, or waste a Combi location just to play a single Program. Now you can make quick shortcuts. This is a godsend when you’re playing live.

There are also some “under the hood” operations that really make all the difference in the world for live players as well as studio guys. For example, the smooth sound transitions are a vital new feature that the world has been waiting for. As you’re playing, you can now switch to a new sound (regardless of mode), and the last one decays naturally, as if you just reached for a different keyboard altogether. We’re able to do this without limiting the number of effects you can use, the number of timbres playing, or any of the other limitations that exist in other instruments.

Here’s another one: KRONOS is always performing dynamic allocation of CPU processing power. Each of these synth engines has its own polyphony spec, and when one engine is running low, it will steal voices from another engine that isn’t using it. The same is true of the effects, which are running on a separate processor core, unaffected by the synth engines’ performance. KRONOS also allocates voices depending on other factors, such as where on the keyboard you’re playing, how fast you play, etc.

The practical upshot of all these technologies is that there’s no disconnect between you and your music. You never have to think about polyphony, you don’t waste lots of time loading samples, you never have to worry about CPU overs. It’s just an immediate connection between you and your music. It’s what makes it an “instrument” rather than a “system.”

If we need to draw a comparison to the DAW world, think of it this way- When you’re changing from Combi to Combi, you could equate it to loading a DAW template with 16 CPU-gobbling softsynths and 16 effect plug-ins already assigned to tracks. Depending on your system, that template could take a little while to load. On KRONOS, you can dial through about six Combis per second, and start playing them immediately.

Speaking of DAWs, another great aspect of KRONOS is that it runs as a VST/AU plugin via a software editor. This opens up a whole series of doors for a studio musician… You can run all nine engines at once, 16 timbres total, controlled via the plug-in editor, without using your computer’s resources. Whenever you revisit a project within the DAW, the editor software will recall the appropriate settings, so it’s just the way you left it. It also has class-compliant USB MIDI and audio I/O capabilities. I’m actually listening to Pandora right now, being piped through via USB to KRONOS’s headphone jack.

Artist feedback was a part of this, I know — who did you work with (of those you could name) and what kind of feedback did they give?

We worked very closely with Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Lyle Mays, Jae Deal, Adam Blackstone, Tom Coster, Jordan Rudess, Frank McComb, Jeff Lorber John Novello, Eldar, David Haynes, and Russ Ferrante… Plus a few others. I don’t want to (mis)quote them directly, but we got plenty of positive feedback from all of them.

Most of these artists are mission-specific… Some wanted to focus on the EPs, some focused on organs, etc. As a result, KRONOS has lots of signature sounds, representing customizations we made with these artists to tailor the instrument to their needs. This includes key response, tonal changes, effect choices, EQ, etc. We encouraged them to be very specific about their tweaks, because we wanted the resulting sounds to feel like you’re borrowing the artist’s instrument, rather than just calling up a new Program.

I will say that all of these sound design sessions ended with some variation of “So, when can I get one?”

As you can see, it’s easy for me to start ranting… I’m genuinely thrilled to be a part of KRONOS’s development, and I can’t wait until the rest of the world gets to try it.

More information…

Like I said, this isn’t a review – so if you’ve got questions, fire away.

In the meantime:
http://www.korg.com/kronos

And for some history, here’s me writing about the making of the OASYS, way back in 2005 for O’Reilly:

Inside a Luxury Synth: Creating the Linux-Powered Korg OASYS

Swedish developer Magnus Lidström is something of a virtuoso of music software, having worked with Propellerhead (Malström, etc.) and releasing his own unique µTonic (MicroTonic) and Synplant instruments. It’s been a bit since we’ve gotten new work from him – little matter, as I find his instruments tend to stand the test of time – but that changes now. MicroTonic, a well-loved drum machine cum drum synth, gets a major update this week, a 2011 New Year’s present to the producer community. (It is indeed a gift if you own a previous version; upgrades are free.) And one more thing – Sonic Charge is also releasing a terrific “real-time pitch-excited linear prediction codec effect” that does wonderful things with audio.

MicroTonic was already a lovely combination of percussion synthesizer and pattern-editing drum machine. New in µTonic 3.0:

• A morph slider which interpolates between eight drum patches – all MIDI-controlled and automation-ready, for crazy performance and production options
• A matrix editor for accessing all eight drum channels’ patterns at once
• MIDI pattern drag and drop, for Ableton Live users (and all major hosts)
• Choke groups, MIDI pitch wheel and program change support, new pattern modes, undo/redo
• Prettier improved skin and UI improvements

And there’s much more, as well. See the full changelog:
Changes in µTonic v3.0

Just as compelling as MicroTonic, though, is a new US$29 effect called Bitspeak. Sonic Charge describes Bitspeak thusly: “It will make you sound like a robot. Robots are cool. Bitspeek is cool.”

But that doesn’t quite do it justice. Bitspeak is vocoder-like in that it works on the same fundamental principle. But it’s closest to the compression algorithm used in mobile phones – it’s a “real-time pitch-excited linear prediction codec effect.” Pitch, volume, and formant data drive an oscillator, noise, and filter. The resulting timbres can sound like conventional ring mods and vocoders, or something quite different – and I’m really intrigued to try this on different sources. As presented here, you really have a gamut of possible effects.

And yes, it sounds like a Speak ‘n Spell turned into an effect. Listen to those sound samples for more.

The two Sonic Charge plugins are available for Windows VST and Mac VST and AU. MicroTonic even supports Mac OS 10.4 and (G5) PowerPC, so it’s an ideal choice for an older machine. (Bitspeak requires 10.5 and Intel on the Mac side, but also supports XP on Windows, so still works on an older PC.)

Full info:
http://www.soniccharge.com/bitspeek
http://www.soniccharge.com/microtonic

The jury’s still out about how many music producers will want to run desktop OSes on tablets. But here’s one thing that’s not in doubt: alongside dedicated mobile OSes like Android and iOS, you can expect to see tablets in 2011 that do the things your laptop does now. They’ll have standard ports (like USB), they’ll run full-blown desktop OSes (Linux and Windows), and you’ll be able to run traditional software on them. Don’t get me wrong: I think dedicated software design for tablets is a good thing, and the iPad isn’t going anywhere. But the imminent availability of Windows and Linux tablets – different animals from the iPad – ought to send a strong message to “desktop” developers to test their software and user interface design on these new devices.

And yes, all of this means you’ll have a slim, tablet-sized machine that can run Pro Tools. Thanks to the fact that Pro Tools now works with standard Windows audio interfaces and not just Avid and M-Audio gear, it’s possible to ship a tablet that runs Pro Tools. Trinity Audio Group tell CDM they’re doing just that.

The machine is not powered by an Atom processor; instead, it uses a low-voltage CULV SU3500 processor, which in turn is based on Intel Core 2 architectures. (The 3500 is a 1.4G Core Solo processor.) Trinity is pre-installing Pro Tools 9 with an iLok key so you can run out of the box. Performance certainly won’t be stellar, but it’s good enough for some applications. Trinity tells CDM they got 8 stereo tracks (16 total) with 2-6 plugins on 2GB RAM; the finished system they say will be tuned for better performance, and will ship with twice the RAM. The price, unfortunately, puts the tablet alongside high-end laptops, at US$1799.

The Indamixx tablet is an interesting proof of concept, but it faces tough competition. There’s nothing stopping you from watching the marketplace in 2011 to find a tablet you like and installing it yourself, and I would hope some of those machines will ship with beefier processors. (Knowing readers of this site, that may hold more appeal, too, with options from Ableton Live to Reaper to SONAR, none requiring an iLok.) And while you don’t get a touchscreen, the MacBook Air is still fairly light and portable, significantly faster, and costs a fraction of the price – and it runs Mac OS in place of Windows, which will be a draw for at least some consumers.

Of course, the same sort of compromises existed when laptops first arrived on the scene, then blurred over time. I think there’s something to all of this. It’s not hard to imagine an artist taking a quick set of bounced tracks, still in a Pro Tools session, from a hefty studio machine onto a tablet and heading to a coffee shop or nearby sofa to listen and get a different perspective. I don’t know whether the Indamixx tablet will be that tablet, necessarily, but there’s a trend here, and its architecture really is fast enough that it’ll work for quick mixing sessions or even live performance. And if I were a developer, I’d be budgeting for a couple of tablets to test my software and see how well it holds up to touch input.

Main production machine? No way. But for those times when you need to walk away from the studio, some kind of tablet will soon have you doing this (as seen here on an Indamixx prototype):

I fully expect the mention in this story of Windows, Pro Tools, and iPads will evoke some sort of flame war in comments, but I’m completely uninterested, so I’m going to move onto other stories and make some music sketches and let y’all hash that out.

http://indamixx.com/

Promo video link

You can also see the Pro Tools-running tablet in person at the NAMM trade show in Anaheim, CA next month, booth 6799.

See our previous coverage of the Linux-powered, more inexpensive sibling, available now in beta.

Trinity Audio Group and creative director Ronald Stewart have pushed the idea of a mobile music tablet since around 2005. I first saw what they were working on in the summer of 2006, as they readied a dedicated mobile DAW. But, at least from my vantage point, it’s really taken until now for some of the available hardware and software to evolve to the point that it could deliver on what they wanted to do. Products based first on Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) platforms and netbooks, while usable and more mobile than a laptop, required various tradeoffs. Linux software provided some significant power, but wasn’t yet an optimized experience for mobile use. I noted some of the promise, and shortcomings, in a review in late 2008 for Keyboard of Indamixx’s original Samsung hardware. (Keep in mind, this is all before anyone had heard of the iPad.)

Now, as they gear up for a 2011 release, Trinity have a new play to make a dedicated mobile music computer work. They’re offering a beta, starting now, for early adopters. I haven’t yet used the beta tablet, so I can only offer my personal perspective from my conversations with Indamixx.

There seems to be some confusion about what you get for the $699 price tag from an Indamixx 2 beta tablet. Engadget wonders why it tacks $200 on the price of the M1 Touch tablet on which it’s based. In fact, there’s more than $200 in bundled proprietary software, as well as customization of the free software. That makes Indamixx effectively a system integrator and the tablet a hardware/software bundle, rather than stock software. Synthtopia asks “does it matter,” as James Lewin argues for the greater “developer attention that the iPad has received.” That ignores the fact that what Indamixx represents – with one vendor’s customization work – is at its heart a Linux system. With compatibility with Windows VSTs, deep tools like energyXT, Ardour, Renoise, and LinuxDSP, and a host of free software like Pd and Csound, I’d say any Linux machine has an order of magnitude more music software developer hours behind it than iOS. That’s not to say it’s better or worse, but it is different: if you are musically productive in these more conventional tools, you may already have passed on the iPad.

The software bundle is the main source of value here, since the tablet you could buy separately. The beta includes various commercial, proprietary software, including file exchange support for Ardour, full copies of Renoise, energyXT, and superb plug-ins from LinuxDSP. There’s also software that, while free, could take a significant investment of time to set up, even for someone with some familiarity with Linux. That includes customization, tweaking, and configuration of the MeeGo Linux operating system, and packages for things like JACK setup. The beta also includes extras like access to a streaming server, accessories, and pre-installation of a multi-boot configuration. As Trinity has pushed before, one audio output option is HDMI, which provides multichannel outs without the need for a dedicated card (provided you have something to which you can connect HDMI on the other end).

I’m going to ignore the iPad versus Indamixx argument for now, tantilizing flame war bait as it may be. I think the software offerings are significantly different that people will have an easy time choosing. If you like the iOS apps, you’ll get an iPad. If you’re more productive in something like Ardour or Renoise, you won’t. If you want single-app experiences, you’ll go iPad. If you like interconnecting apps or using plug-ins, you won’t.

Instead, I think the question for the Indamixx 2 is how competitive other tablets may be. The “not-iPad” category now is small, but it may not remain so. Indamixx is betting big on MeeGo, but that Linux distro is relatively new and untested. The M1 Touch hardware features a capacitive touch input like the iPad, but I haven’t yet been able to use it myself, so I’m not sure how it stacks up in terms of display quality, touch quality, and overall reliability and performance. Many tech pundits, myself included, incorrectly predicted a slew of new tablets in 2010 to rival Apple’s, at least in hardware quality. But 2011 does seem a likely timeframe for new hardware. That means the question is whether you want to bet on Indamixx to customize your experience, or assume that you’ll set up your own Windows or Linux tablet.

Diving in on a beta now isn’t for the feint of heart. Trinity offers only 6 months free support for the system, and warns against “airing out” criticism publicly, instead asking for bug reports. (Support after six months is available for a fee.) I don’t see an indication of NDA, but I would like to see indications of how responsive Trinity is to criticism – and this is a significant investment of cash for something that lacks long-term support.

To me, the big competition for Indamixx 2 is likely to be, ironically, Linux and Windows themselves. Will Trinity’s solution rival your own Linux or Windows install in May 2011? And is the better solution for tweaking Linux – which, even with the addition of these proprietary apps, still depends mainly on free and open source packages like JACK and MeeGo itself – be Indamixx as a private vendor, or the free software community? The latter is a relatively open forum for participation, whereas Indamixx, in its beta, warns “no crybabies” in its invitation to beta testers.

What we need to see is whether Trinity can build on its work in this field to deliver a truly finished, polished product, and whether it can build the kind of support relationship with users, developers, and the press to make its solution viable. Laptops have that ecosystem, and Apple – love them or hate them – does with iOS. Now, we’ll see how Indamixx stacks up to what’s likely to become a more crowded mobile space in 2011. In 2005, Trinity was relatively alone in calling for mobile music systems based on Linux. By the spring, when it comes to the tablet space, we may be off to the races. We’ll be able to judge the finished product, and its rivals, then.

Beta site:
http://indamixx.com/indamixx2-tablet.html

Touch form factors make sense for music creation on the go: a mobile tablet with finger-based interface seems ideal for performance and travel. In the fast-evolving hardware, though, it’s tough to work out exactly what will be a hit and what will be a flop. Multitouch tablets have splintered in two – consumer-centric, inexpensive tablets like the iPad and Android tablets gravitate at one end, as higher-powered tablets are reserved for the business market. Worse, the entire computing industry is choosing battery life over all other factors, which doesn’t jive well with audio. (Almost everything you do to improve audio performance saps power. Doh.)

But that could leave opportunities for computer makers to cater to musicians. Here’s just one example, and it lies right at the convergence of next-generation, Linux-based operating systems, touch-centric design, and more efficient mobile computing.

Indamixx, who have previously done Linux-based laptops using tablets and netbooks, are now readying a multitouch tablet based around the current-generation, dual-core Intel Atom chipset. The Linux OS means you can run the terrific tracker-for-the-rest-of-us Renoise, as well as a variety of free software; that’s Renoise pictured as the Indamixx tablet hangs out by the rooftop pool of LA’s The Standard last weekend, for its public debut. (Indamixx hosted a Renoise-themed blowout party.)

Early specs: single core N450 Atom (prototype only; final model is planned to be dual-core), 2 GB RAM, 3 USB ports, 1 VGA port, 1 Ethernet port, analog audio I/O. That’s much like what you’d find on a netbook, and it’s a far cry from the computing power of a desktop or laptop. But with optimized software, it could be ideal for mobile production and performance. (Even with optimization, tablets, by contrast, can’t compete on computing horsepower – and they’re not really set up for terrific low-latency audio performance, either. Oh, and you get better hardware support from traditional Linux operating systems than things like iOS, Android, and Chrome OS.)

More details came out on the Renoise forum. The other surprise there: while Renoise is largely a QWERTY-centric experience to most of us, Indamixx tells us the touch approach works very well. I’ll believe it when I — uh, touch it — but I’m interested how that works.

The product will launch May 11, 2011, but we should have more info before then, and we’ll visit them at NAMM.

If you’re not in love with the hardware, you’ll be able to use the OS with your own rig, too, if you prefer to build or buy your own system. Dual-booting to Ubuntu will also be an (unsupported) option.

I got some further details on the direction they’re going from the source.

Whereas the Transmission custom distro Indamixx has used in the past was based on Ubuntu and Debian, the new OS is MeeGo, the distro with powerful backing from Intel and Nokia. It’s still Linux; it even uses RPM as its package manager. But it’s probably the most mobile-centric of the mainstream Linux distros. (By the way, Linux fans, don’t sweat those details too much – the development environment for MeeGo runs on Mac, Windows, and other Linux distros, and software ports pretty easily between them.)

I’m not thrilled about the touch digitizer on the development unit – the serviceable but unspectacular MosArt sensor used on Asus’ T91MT netbook – but it sounds as though that’ll change to something much better before this ships. (It should be just fine for development purposes.)

The choice of MeeGo, though, is certainly interesting. Indamixx lead developer Gabriel Beddingfield and founder Ronald Stewart are raving about how the OS feels and operates, and say they’re getting terrific performance out of the system. I’m eager to try it first-hand. Gabriel has more to say:

CDM: How does this differ from Transmission as we’ve seen it in the past?

Gabriel: It’s effectively a reboot of Transmission. All packages
currently in Transmission will be ported over. The end user-will reinstall this MeeGo-ized Transmission on their device.

Unlike Transmission 4, there will also be a Live CD / Live USB version that you can preview before installing.

Why MeeGo?

Unlike any Linux distro we’ve found so far, MeeGo is from the ground-up about multi-touch, portable devices that compete with iPad and Android. The main “desktop” user experience is sharp, fast, and finger-friendly.

Our departure from MeeGo is in tuning it for audio. Out of the box, Transmission will be more concerned with a high quality, low-latency audio rather than preserving battery life. However, our experience with the Atoms shows that battery life is pretty good, too.

Multi-touch support will come by way of Qt’s Multi-touch framework… which is expected to have a relatively smooth upgrade path to Xorg 1.10 or 1.11 when Xorg officially supports multi-touch (Q1/Q2 2011). [Note that this is a different solution than the one that Ubuntu is providing.]

How will users install their own software?

MeeGo is also working heavily for app-store integration. So, users will be able to install free and commercial apps from Intel, Ovi, or other app stores. MeeGo’s architecture will ensure that the apps will work on this device.

In addition, it’s still Linux… and so users are still able to hot-rod their systems.

What’s the multi-touch digitizer hardware?

Will be capacitive, and will at least be dual-touch.

Right now we’re developing on an eGalax dual-touch that appears to have some pressure-sensitive features (can differentiate between a mouse-over and a click), and we’re also using a Cando dual-touch that is a little more primitive.

Stay tuned for more — consider this a teaser for now. I’ll also have a look at a number of hardware options that take another approach to touch and performance, offering flashy multi-touch tables that make you look sexy onstage. Stay tuned here.

http://indamixx.com/

The headline says it all. Oh, sure, as if it isn’t enough to recreate the legendary EMS Synthi synth – one of the most creative vintage analog instruments ever devised – this artist takes it one step further, controlling parameters with a piece of colored paper tracked by a webcam. It’s an achievement of sheer patching genius, taken one step wackier.

The patch is entitled Le Synthé V5; the creator is Pierre Couprie. And yes, you can download this for Windows and Mac – even Mac PowerPC. Cost: US$15/EUR10, which is, I must say, insanely cheap.

Video in French with English subtitles.

Pierre Couprie | Le Synthé V5 [Description, download]

Thanks to Lee Ray for sending this in.

What happens when you mix technical chatter on the Cakewalk forum, Samuel Beckett, and The Matrix? I’d wager you get something like the surreal video above. Prompted by the posting of technical details for a new update to Cakewalk’s SONAR production software for Windows, and empowered by a strange, new tool that generates eerie virtual reality from typed text, we get banter like this:

The arpeggiator is now on every track, so you are supposed to use it. It is one of the new rules of recording.

Yes, I came from the days of one-finger piano playing. This is a total blessing to me.

I’m going to take that as a challenge and base my review of SONAR 8.5 on using an arpeggiator and step sequencer on every track. And I’ll have to pronounce all those hard g’s in the voice over, clearly.

And no, this is not some twisted viral campaign on the part of the folks of Cakewalk; I’ve been assured that this came from a user.

Okay, what was this post originally about? Oh, yeah – the actual technical details of the SONAR 8.5 release. Noel Borthwick talks about all the details of the new SONAR release on the Cakewalk forums. Apparently, some people care deeply about whether this is SONAR 9 or 8.5 or some conspiracy theory there, but what interests me is the technical details of the software itself.

SONAR 8.5 Fine Print

Noel goes down to a code level. Interesting tidbits: working with Intel, Cakewalk was able to do a demo of SONAR running an absurd number of tracks, instruments, effects, and live video without pegging the CPU, with a tiny 2 ms of latency. The Cakewalk engineering effort also has put together what may be the most highly-optimized VST support and richest 32-to-64-bit bridging on any platform, anywhere.

Whatever the opposite of “marketing speak” may be, I think that’s what Noel has achieved, getting into a sort of developer-to-developer level discussion. It is still readable, and worth digging through.

See also: Intel Developer Forum details and video on the Cakewalk blog

I could talk more about that, but let’s just leave it at step sequencers and arpeggiators on every track, okay?

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.