In the ongoing struggle to make a laptop into an instrument, there’s inevitably the scramble onstage (or even in a studio) to get everything primed and ready to play. You want to adjust settings, launch certain applications, and generally get your laptop ready for actual music making.

Wouldn’t it be nice to make all of that happen automatically, magically, instantly, and robotically? It is, after all, a machine. (They’re supposed to be working for us, I’m told, assuming they’re following the Three Laws.)

Martin Delaney, London-based Ableton Live trainer, has put together a nice tutorial for production education center Dubspot with one way of accomplishing that using Apple’s free Automator. I was always a fan of Automator, particularly in its use in the workflows for the Soundtrack Pro audio editor from Apple, but it seems like almost no one else (Apple included) seems to remember it’s there. So here’s a way to put it to some free, powerful use.

Of course, there are probably other ways of accomplishing this – shell scripts and the like – if anyone wants to suggest something. Automator has the advantage of some serious ease of use.

Have a look, and download this set of Automator actions free:
Video Tutorial: Simplify Your Ableton Workflow Using Apple’s Automator [Dubspot]

It’s become something of a tradition here on CDM. Apple releases new OS. Music developers – one or more – release notes that suggest you might want to wait to upgrade. It happens every time, and so you should be cautious every time. This time, it may be even more serious: developers are describing symptoms that they say they haven’t seen in previous updates.

Native Instruments, often some of the first out of the gate with reported issues, has already flagged one significant set of problems that will likely dissuade their users from upgrading right away. (Think immediate crashes with 64-bit plug-ins.) But just because they’re the first to report something doesn’t mean that there won’t be other issues. Apple operating systems tend to change right up to release, and music developers have limited test resources, and music software is sensitive stuff. Do the math.

I’ve been told specifically that there are significant issues involving plug-in validation, which can go as far as causing DAWs to crash. (I have not confirmed that this is necessarily related to the symptom NI is describing; it’s better to look at it this way — stuff you rely on has changed and you may want to be patient.) Some of these issues may occur during Mac OS X testing, but because of the complexity of supporting things like Audio Units, I think it’s fair to give credit to music developers who say they may not be able to keep up with OS release timeframes. If there is a more significant long-term issue with compatibility, we’ll report it here.

Also, we have now multiple confirmed reports of significant crashes that should strongly dissuade all musicians from upgrading at this time, until there’s a timeframe for fixes. (I’m bolding that just in case anyone should miss this message.) Updated: these symptoms are reported in a variety of hosts.

Oddly, some of these regular posts by me have caused people to accuse me of being anti-Apple, which is like saying someone is anti-bicycle for suggesting you wear a helmet (or shoes).

Let me put it more clearly: if you like to test things yourself, and don’t mind an occasional problem, you should upgrade, at your own risk. (Just don’t complain if it doesn’t work.) If you prefer to let the companies you pay for your software do the testing, and you’ve got a system that’s running well, don’t. If you’re in the middle of a project or trying to finish an album or playing later tonight, you should take a deep breath and think about what you think is prudent.

If you’re the kind of person who never makes backups, there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do for you. May the computer gods have mercy upon your soul.

Here’s what NI has to say, though they tell CDM that they’re continuing to do tests and expect to have more information soon. I expect to hear from other developers, too – and, of course, what we’ll hear from some of them is that everything’s fine.

Native Instruments has conducted initial compatibility tests with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.7, and has found an issue that causes the 64-bit versions of NI applications to crash both when used stand-alone and as a plug-in.*

The cause of this issue has been successfully determined, and updates for the affected products are currently in development, with their respective release planned for September or earlier. In the meantime, users should utilize the 32-bit versions of the respective NI applications**, or consider to refrain from updating to Mac OS X 10.7 for the time being.

The following products have so far been updated with a 64-bit fix for Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion”:
BATTERY 3.2.2

Native Instruments has observed no additional compatibility issues under Mac OS X 10.7 yet, but will conduct further systematic tests once it has access to the final release version of the operating system. New information will be provided on this page as it becomes available.

Full NI post:
Mac OS X Compatibility [updated regularly, so if you use a lot of NI stuff, bookmark!]

Apogee is also out of the gate with the first solid hardware compatibility. So far, they have confirmed compatibility with Duet 2, GiO, JAM
ONE, and Symphony I/O; ONE low-latency mixing compatibility is coming next month. Duet and Ensemble will be compatible soon; Symphony 64 for X-Series and Rosetta Series converters is listed as TBA.

More telling than that, though, is the advice Apogee gives about upgrading (remember what I said about backups?) –

Apogee Product Compatibility Overview: Mac OS X Lion

– and this advice: “If uninterrupted operation of your studio is critical, please wait for an official Lion OS compatibility message from Apogee.”

I’d just skip that last clause and apply it to everyone.

By the way, does anyone remember the days when SoundHack and SoundStudio were the only two apps you could run natively on Mac OS X? Ah, those were the days. I had that, Mail.app, a browser, and TextEdit.app, but someone had to be an early adopter…

Your OS is there, in front of you, daily – some of us for many, many hours a day. it often makes sounds at you, very rarely welcome sounds. Here’s an opportunity to change that.

Computers are extraordinary creative canvases for our work, but corporate branding can’t really respect that. Because Ubuntu is a free operating system, it can provide content that is free to be reused, remixed, and re-imagined. An OS’ soundscape could be provided by a user, not just a brand, and it could in turn be changed by someone else to fit what they want. And as awareness in the Linux community grows that their software is essential to musicians and artists, not just the “average” computer user, the music and sounds that a new OS release showcases have a second role. They can be a musical soundtrack to a powerful idea: the idea that all of these lines of free code are a tool for someone to use for expression. We need to make that message get across to developers and the larger free software community.

Actually, let me put it another way: knowing the community on this site, I’m eager just to hear what musical score, or sound scheme, you’d create. The results would be free to use not only in Ubuntu but anywhere you wish. Free as in freedom, free as in the beer I’ll buy you if I see you in person and you do something great. (And, hey, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp each got to try scoring sounds for Windows, so why not you as the next OS composer?)

Possible candidates here:

• A startup sound
• A sound scheme (for GNOME; I’d actually have to research how that works, but it could simply be an idea)
• A piece of music that stands on its own
• A song
• Ambient music to listen to while coding the Next Great Audio App.
• Something else I haven’t thought of that’s also sound.

It’s really open to your interpretation. As readers note, many of us find the best sound scheme for an OS to be … silence. But you could share a piece of music or soundscape. If it’s culture (according to you), and it’s free, it’s game.

I’m honored to be a judge for this year’s Free Culture Showcase, now accepting works through March 1:
Free Culture Showcase [Canonical Design Blog, itself often a good read]

To submit, you can join Ubuntu’s SoundCloud group. In addition to CC-licensed music, I’m particularly interested by the sound scheme idea. OS sounds have been largely disappointing and distracting; imagine if they were actually good. Way back in 2006, CDM readers did some amazing one-second sounds to honor the “leap second,” a chronological aberration by which clocks have to be adjusted to keep years in sync with the Earth. I’d be thrilled if some of you were to submit to this, too.

Whether or not you’re an Ubuntu user, if you believe in free licenses as a tool and option for artists, if you believe in the utility of free software, I hope you’ll get involved. There are no particular rules to the tools you use to make the work, either, and I think that’s only appropriate. I’ll be curious to hear if you do use free tools or Ubuntu, though, just to know how they’re working for readers.

Let us know if you submit, especially because entries will be free for CC use (and likely worth featuring on CDM) even if they don’t make the Free Culture Showcase cut.

This week, while we poll readers to find out what platforms they really use and care about for music, we’re launching a new series to help you get the most out of whichever OS you choose.

We’ve been covering the complexities of Windows for a while, from the bumpy Vista transition to the smoother advent of Windows 7. I also wrote up a feature in Keyboard Magazine covering Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Here, I’ve worked with Noel Borthwick, Chief Technical Officer of Cakewalk, and Kevin Jacoby of custom computer house Rain Computers, in order to get both the software and hardware developer perspective and the OEM side. They’ve offered some frank opinions in the past; Noel had some criticisms for Vista, and Jacoby and Rain kept XP the default for a while. But that means when they say Windows 7 can work for musicians, they mean it.

If you’re still on XP or Vista, or if you’re pondering going to a 64-bit version, we have some advice there. If you’re already on Windows 7, we’ve some tips on how to make the most of optimizing the OS.

When is the OS to blame? (aka, “Glitch” music when you don’t want it)

Before we get into talking about Windows itself, I think there’s a bigger issue to address.

Now that I’ve been testing Windows alongside a variety of operating systems, I can say this. I think the press and user base have sometimes blamed the Windows operating system itself when it isn’t directly at fault. A lot of the most annoying obstacles to music making on computers – glitches, audio stability issues, and an inability to run at lower latencies – depend on a complex chain of interoperating hardware. (That’s true even on the Mac platform; in fact, even given Apple’s relatively focused computer offerings, I think Apple deserves the same credit a PC vendor does when they have all their components working in concert. When we have seen issues on the Mac, drivers and chipsets are often to blame.) Chipsets and components, particularly on laptops, can cause problems. It’s simply easy to blame (or credit) the OS because it’s so fond of flashing its logo at you, and it’s the part of the computer with which you interact.

This also means the choice of Windows itself may not be as important as the choice of computer hardware. Custom shops like Rain Computers are unique in that they test their components for audio applications – that’s not an advertisement for them; it really does make a difference. Because part of what attracts readers to the PC is vendor choice, I’m working on ways of evaluating mainstream machines, too.

The bottom line is, because musical and visual applications are more demanding, there’s a greater need to remain educated and share information. Too much of that information in the larger tech press devolves into petty platform advocacy and bickering. We really need the information just to keep our machines running smoothly.

Windows 7, After Some Time in the Hands of Musicians

We’ve now been living with Windows 7 for some time, which means when you do choose to upgrade, you’ve got plenty of information behind you. When I first looked at Windows 7, it was clear the OS was better than Vista, but it wasn’t yet entirely clear how it compared to XP. And while Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux comparisons tend to be apples to oranges, you ought to at least be able to be pretty objective about comparing Windows releases to other Windows releases. Now, we do have a lot of empirical evidence, and both Rain and Cakewalk – the folks on the other end of the phone when people call to complain about problems – have pretty strong endorsements.

Kevin at Rain goes as far to say that Windows 7 exceeds XP:

Windows 7 is by far the best operating system we’ve seen for pro audio and video production. It’s got all the modern bells and whistles that were missing in XP, none of the craziness from Vista, and has managed to retain the benefit of an open architecture that lends itself to great application design. It’s given us the opportunity to squeeze every ounce of power from the apps and hardware we see most often like Pro Tools, Cubase, Adobe CS5, etc.

In terms of support, our tech support staff is over here celebrating. Windows 7 has remarkable improvements that help with stability. Pro audio/video isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It starts to get a bit touchy when there are too many features, apps, drivers, etc. But W7 seems to be more forgiving; it heals better than Vista or XP – doesn’t crash like them either. And when there is an issue, its got some tools, like Complete PC Backup, that help us get the user quickly back to a point where they’re making music and video again.

Noel Borthwick, on his off hours, is actually a musician. I’ve been following his experience with his own home computer setup, and he’s a happy camper.

I recently built a new DAW for my studio which runs SONAR 8.5 on an Intel Core I7 950 with Windows 7 Professional X64. (See http://www.noelborthwick.com/minidump/2009/12/new-daw/ for specs) I can categorically say that the SONAR/Core I7/Windows 7 combination is a match made in heaven for DAW users! I easily have way more bandwidth than I would ever need for the next several years on this rig. On my largest projects which would previously max out the CPU or drop out (an older dual CPU Windows 2003 based machine), I am now able to run at 128 sample buffers with a MOTU 828 MK2, at 24bit/96KHz with under 20% CPU utilization in SONAR!

Noel has also been listening to users, he says:

The response to Windows 7 and SONAR has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are a few threads talking about the great results that our users are having with SONAR and Windows 7.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1769661&mpage=1&key=?

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?&m=1774267&high=windows+7&mpage=1

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1734916&high=windows+7

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?&m=1713663&high=windows+7&mpage=1

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?&m=1601783&high=windows+7&mpage=1

Rain also confirms that, as always with PCs in general, it’s the combination of hardware that can be an issue and is the focus of their optimizations. “Part of the challenge is getting around the consumer-centric features,” says Kevin. “For instance, HDMI and other high def audio features often interfere with pro audio drivers and interfaces. It’s a bit of a challenge at times but Microsoft and our other tech partners have been helpful.”

Should You Run 64-bit for Music Apps?

Not to be confused with 64-bit audio – a representation of the length of digital samples and their corresponding dynamic range – 64-bit computing is what enables access to greater amounts of memory, and provides a corresponding computational boost in performance on the same hardware. On Windows, unlike the Mac, you must choose when you install the OS whether you opt for the 32-bit or 64-bit version. (You can configure a multiple-boot operation, but each boot entry must be one or the other.)

If you’re configuring a new machine, or upgrading from XP and Vista, it may be an optimal time to try 64-bit, since you’ll be evaluating compatibility and updating drivers anyway. So, which should you choose?

Kevin offers a whole-hearted endorsement of 64-bit, but with some ideas on why 32-bit still has some place.

My biggest disappointment when W7 was released is that we couldn’t put the 64-bit version on every Rain computer that left the factory. With due respect to the pro audio industry, some software engineers are chronically behind the curve when it comes to releasing new versions and drivers. However, all that is changing now. These days, I’m in a much better mood since Pro Tools released a 64-bit compatible update and our customers can choose from a wider range of plug-ins and virtual instruments. Kudos to Cubase and SONAR for doing their homework early on that one.

On the other hand, the folks over on the video side learned a long time ago that more memory would make their lives easier. The last system we sent to the US Olympic Committee had 24GB of memory installed which made Adobe Premiere sit up and bark like a dog. We’re just now updating our Element video editing workstation to 12-core and, as with before, you can match that with 48GB of memory. It’s a beautiful thing.

That said, there are still a lot of people out there attached to their legacy gear. Maybe you’re updating your computer and your budget doesn’t allow you to replace all your software and hardware at the same time. Maybe you’re in love with a certain plug-in that just refuses to play nice with 64-bit. For those people, we do everything we can to help them protect their initial investment. But if possible we do recommend getting the most up-to-date version you can, load 64-bit and take advantage of all its benefits.

As a side note, though some Rain computers ship from our dealers (Best Buy, Amazon, B&H, etc) with 32-bit, we have a program in place to help the user update to 64-bit at no additional cost once they get their computer home.

Noel notes that 64-bit support is vastly improved over the past – and this coming from one of the first software vendors to embrace 64-bit Windows in any industry, let alone in music. (SONAR first supported 64-bit way back in the XP x64 days.)

Any new CPU you can buy these days is capable of running 64-bit Windows. As a result of this proliferation driver support for X64 is a lot better now than it was a few years ago. In this environment it makes the most sense to install the 64-bit version of Windows 7. With a 64-bit OS you get the best of both worlds. You get the advantage of expanded memory as well as the ability to run 32-bit applications. 32-bit applications on a 64-bit OS run fine and in some situations might even show better performance than when running under a 32-bit OS.

In other words, if you’re using any music hosts (or video editing software) with native 64-bit support – just one – going 64-bit is a no-brainer so long as you’ve got a 64-bit computer like those based on the Core 2 Duo CPU. But what if you don’t have any 64-bit software? My standing advice had been to stick with 32-bit, but Noel actually disagrees – and I have to admit, I see his point. Noel writes:

I would argue that even if you don’t have any apps that currently take advantage of X64 [Windows 7 64-bit] it still has advantages to go with [64-bit] for the upgrade options. You can always add more memory to the system or later introduce native 64-bit apps, something you cannot do if you have a 32-bit OS without reinstalling Windows and starting from scratch.

So, is there anything that should keep you on 32-bit (aside from owning an older computer with a 32-bit-only CPU?) What about ReWire?

You don’t lose ReWire by running on a 64-bit OS. You can still run a 32-bit version of the application on a 64-bit OS and have ReWire access. The only reason I can think of that might deter someone from a 64-bit OS today is if they had some legacy hardware that didn’t have 64-bit drivers. I.e., you cannot run 32-bit drivers on a 64-bit OS, since those have to be native.

At least you can make that decision based on your music host, not your music plug-ins. A key feature of a modern DAW like SONAR is, even though it runs natively in 64-bit, it doesn’t require that you give up your 32-bit plug-ins. That’s a very big deal, because a lot of plug-ins – even paid ones, let alone freeware oddities – aren’t yet 64-bit. For its part, Cakewalk has been updating 32-bit support.

In SONAR 8.5 we addressed many user-reported VST compatibility issues with Bitbridge. Additionally, Bitbridge XR now breaks the memory barrier for 32-bit VSTs allowing you to run as many 32-bit VSTs as you want in SONAR X64. You can use up to 2GB of memory PER 32-bit VST and run multiple BitBridge servers allowing up to 128 GB of memory for your 32-bit plug-in. With Windows 7 and SONAR 8.5, more and more users are making the leap to X64 systems running systems with 12 GB of memory or more to run multiple memory hungry plug-ins in their sessions.

That’s anecdotal evidence, however. Here are some hard numbers. Aside from the benefits of expanded memory access – useful if you use big sample libraries and the like – 64-bit can have some real-world, quantifiable, verifiable performance benefits. Noel writes:

Here are some external studies/benchmarks that compare X64 performance against X86 on the same hardware.

http://www.noelborthwick.com/minidump/2009/12/a-case-for-64-bit-windows/

Disabling Power Management to Improve Multi-Core Performance

Most of the usual optimizations apply to Windows 7 that applied to previous versions. You’re best off disabling resource-consuming background applications like antivirus software, keeping drivers up-to-date, working with good quality audio interfaces, and the like. We do have a couple of specific pieces of advice for Windows 7, however.

One such detail, while it’s unlikely to impact everyone, is that disabling some power management on multi-core systems can improve performance. Noel explains, complete with instructions:

There has been some controversy about the new core parking feature in Windows 7 which was introduced for more “green” power management. On quad core and higher systems, some users have reported that core parking can cause audio glitches. It could be system specific since I haven’t personally experienced this issue on my own DAW which is pretty much running a vanilla Windows 7 install with a Core I7 (8 cores). In any case even though there is no user interface in Windows 7 to enable/disable core parking, fortunately there is an documented way to disable it in the Microsoft performance tuning guidelines. Look for “Core Parking” in this document http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/E/7/7E7662CF-CBEA-470B-A97E-CE7CE0D98DC2/Perf-tun-srv-R2.docx

To summarize:

To turn off core parking, set the minimum cores parked to 100 percent by using the following commands:

Powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 100 Powercfg -setactive scheme_current

Smarter File Management

With Windows generally working better out of the box, though, here’s a quick tip that can help make it more usable when you’re actually working on projects. Noel has become a big fan of Libraries (and yes, you’ll find access to them in SONAR’s file dialog):

Win 7 has support for a very useful feature called Libraries, which can be a very handy way to keep track of data scattered around your hard drives. Unfortunately Libraries do not directly support folders on networked locations. On attempting to add such a folder to a library you get an error message telling you the location is not indexed. Apparently libraries rely on folders being indexed. This shortcoming greatly reduces the usefulness of libraries for users who store folders in networked locations.

Fortunately, I came across a workaround to the libraries problem here which uses symbolic links to get around this limitation: http://hubpages.com/hub/Adding-a-Network-Directory-to-a-Library-without-Indexing-in-Windows-7

More Resources

Keyboard Magazine has my full comparison of Windows 7 and Snow Leopard online:
New Decade, New OS What Matters to Musicians in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7, by Peter Kirn

I’ve been writing “geeky as we wanna be” looks at Windows for some time – and rightfully so, I think; musicians push operating systems hard. I only wish the larger tech community paid greater attention to what we do, because we’re often best able to torture test any OS, Mac, Windows, Linux, or mobile.

Here’s some of our past coverage of Windows on CDM:
Obsessive Windows 7 Under-the-Hood Guide for Music; Can You Finally Dump XP?

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

And if you’re looking for some tips to get the most out of Windows:
Tips: Fix Windows Explorer, Be Happy

12 Free and Cheap Must-Have Music Utilities for Windows

10 Free Non-Musical Windows Software Every Musician Should Use

For a look at a 64-bit-native DAW, check out my review of SONAR 8.5.2:
SONAR 8.5.2 Hands On: Tradition, Meet Tempting Treats

Addendum: Finding 64-bit Crashes

This is an extremely obscure issue, so if you’re not interested in gory details, stop reading now. But because we like gory, technical details, I’ve decided to add it. It’s not a reliability problem with 64-bit Windows — far from it; you won’t actually see it until you encounter a crash, and even then, it’s useful only to the people troubleshooting. But it does demonstrate the power of getting to the bottom of an issue, and there is a fix. (So, Mac users, I don’t want to hear any “see, this is why I switched to a Mac.” You can get into weird, technical things if you dig deep enough in any OS, period. Shield any innocent eyes.)

Noel adds a description of troubleshooting 64-bit Windows crashes as follows:

How to make your apps crash gracefully on 64-bit Windows
OK this is admittedly a weird topic Why would anyone actually want their app to crash you may ask? To answer that question we need to have some background about why applications crash.
An application crashes when it performs an unexpected operation or encounters what is called an “exception condition”. Exceptions include unwanted operations like writing to invalid memory locations, divide by zero errors, page faults, etc. Programs can end up with exceptions like this for a variety of reasons – bugs in the host code itself or even due to bugs in loaded plugin DLL’s which share the same memory and address space as the host application. Normally when an error like this occurs, Windows will display the familiar error message “This Program Has Performed an Illegal Operation and Will Be Shut Down” and the program will close. Some applications like SONAR handle such errors more gracefully and will even try and intercept these exception and attempt to allow the user to save their work before exiting the program. Additionally on Windows you can choose to save what is called a Minidump containing “post mortem” debugging info that is very useful to developers to find out why the program crashed.

Recently we began noticing a pattern where we were receiving Minidump’s from crashes on from 64 bit Windows systems X64 where the dumps contained useless or apparently invalid information about the crash. This made it very hard for us to diagnose such issues. I was even able to reproduce this by writing a simple test application that forced a crash. In one case I found that the crash was reported in a completely different location and in another the application behaved as if the exception didn’t occur! This is actually very bad since when damage is done to the app the best scenario is to actually shut down the application or you risk data corruption or worse. So you really WANT your app to crash when something like this happens. I logged a bug with Microsoft about this with a test application. I recently heard back from their developer support about this issue. It’s an interesting problem that Microsoft is aware of and have issued a hotfix for.
Here is a link to a Microsoft blog post describing this problem in gory detail if you want to read more about it.
http://blog.paulbetts.org/index.php/2010/07/20/the-case-of-the-disappearing-onload-exception-user-mode-callback-exceptions-in-x64/
And here is the link to the hotfix if you want it now. This hotfix will also be rolled into Windows 7 SP1. I hope that this is not required in the final version but currently the fix requires you to set a value in the registry to enable it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976038

We hear your opinions in comments (sometimes loudly). Now it’s time to be counted. Which computing platforms do you own, and which do you use for music – desktop Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile iOS, Linux, Android? We’re not interested in what you don’t want to see (sorry, trolls), but we do want to know what you want to see more of. Connecting to the platforms you care about is important to CDM. This isn’t a popularity contest – I always enjoy the chance to write to an underserved minority. But it is a chance for us to look at who’s out there, and we’ll share the results. (It’s been a couple of years since our last survey, and a lot has happened.)

I’m not offering an incentive for this survey, for fear it might bias the results, but tell your CDM reading friends to answer – it’s democracy in action.

Answer now… Survey closes 11:59pm Sunday, August 8!

Direct link: [mobile device-friendly for iPhone/Android/etc.]
http://cdm.platform.sgizmo.com/s3/

Want to register your vote on the visual side? See our parallel survey for Create Digital Motion.

Embedded survey below. (RSS readers will likely need to click through to the site.)

With talk of tablets, experimentation with interfaces, new developments in low-cost and low-power processing, and ongoing challenges with access in different parts of the world, in 2010, it seems everyone is asking fundamental questions about what digital platforms and computing platforms should be.

There are few contexts to better explore that question than music. Sure, it may seem to the casual onlooker that music is just a niche for specialists, but it pushes hardware to the limits of performance tolerances, tests latencies lower than that used for mission-critical military applications, and has long been a venue in which innovations in technology and interaction arrive first. Little wonder: digital music touches the most fundamental form of human expression.

Having framed the discussion in such lofty terms, the actual work with a digital platform comes down to the details: what works, what doesn’t, what’s possible, and what isn’t. So this week is the perfect time to evaluate some of those nitty-gritty, mundane specifics. I’ll be looking this week at the early indicators on Apple’s iPad, prior to its launch this weekend, as well as the larger picture with tablets and slates, touch, and new low-power, low-cost architectures that power them. But I’ll also revisit the current state of Windows 7, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and current releases of Linux, including some tips for making them work.

And as always on this site, those questions aren’t an arrival; they’re … a jumping-off point. But I think you’ll find some resources that help you get to the actual music-making bit.

Got specific questions about these platforms, or particular platforms you’d like to see covered? Shout out in comments.

Apple’s iPad is here. It starts at $499. It’s a gorgeous, brilliantly-designed device that has the benefits of Apple’s cleverly-engineered, best-in-class developer tools for mobile. A lot are likely to sell. And unfortunately, to me that means bad news for the kind of creative computing we talk about on this site.

To put it briefly, I think the new, mobile Apple is doing immense harm to the computing legacy the company has forged. We could have had a Mac tablet today. Instead, we have a giant iPhone – and that’s a decision that has some serious repercussions. It’s a blow to open source alternatives, but also to open development in general: the power of interchangeable hardware and software, on which everything we do with music and visuals on computers is based.

For years, the Mac community railed against the perceived closed nature of Microsoft. Now, many are rallying behind an Apple with a vision more closed than Redmond’s.

This is important to both CDMs, because it’s on both these sites that I, along with readers and contributors, have advocated open computing as a creative outlet, for creation, sharing, and distribution of music, visuals, and knowledge.

I’m entirely biased by my own perspective. There are certain things I care about, that I believe in. I can talk about the technical, measurable values of each of those, but I can only speak for myself. With that in mind, the iPad, in a single device, embodies the exact opposite of all the reasons I’ve invested so much time in computing for the last 25 years.

• It’s a closed platform. As with the iPhone, development for the iPad means reliance on Apple’s tools, on the use of proprietary Apple hardware and software just to build an app. Now, those could be worthy sacrifices for a great product. But it also means that Apple alone distributes applications, and decides which applications developers will be allowed to create – something that has never been true on a computing OS. Since the unveiling of the iPhone SDK, Apple apologists argued that somehow this was a decision made by phone carriers, that surely their beloved Apple was not to blame. Yet Apple has chosen that path for a device that, while it lacks a keyboard, otherwise looks for all the world like a computer – like something that could have been a Mac, with all the power and freedom of a Mac, instead of an iPhone.
• It has no standard ports. Like the iPhone, the iPad has only a proprietary dock connector, ensuring Apple has control over the hardware made for the device. You can throw away decades of the lessons of the value of standard connectors, of the freedom to connect a computer as – to use a phrase Apple popularized – a digital hub. There’s not even HDMI to connect to a display. Clarification: video out will be possible, albeit with a proprietary adapter. And *access* to that video port from software has been a huge problem on the iPhone. See additional notes on Create Digital Motion. Additionally, the possibilities of external hardware are not entirely known. Apple will offer a memory card reader adapter that uses USB. But there isn’t a native USB port on the machine, and this doesn’t necessarily suggest full support for USB; hopefully, additional details will emerge.
• It’s tied to iTunes. As with the iPhone, you can’t use the iPad’s drive as a drive. You can’t connect it to a computer and put on it what you like. You’re limited to using third-party apps as conduits or servers – and even then, you’re limited; critical files for media and reading are controlled by Apple’s market-dominating iTunes app. It’s a storage device you own, but that someone else controls. Maybe that’s acceptable for game consoles, but, again, the iPad has the appearance of a computer. (Except, of course, it’s actually not.)
• Apple alone controls the distribution of media. Apple already has a dangerously dominant position in the consumption of music and mobile software, and their iTunes-device link ensures that content goes through their store, their conduit, and ultimately their control. This means that developers are limited in what they can create for the device when it comes to media – a streaming Last.fm app is okay, but an independent music store (like Amazon MP3 on Android) is not. Now, you can add to that Apple dominating book distribution. At a time when we have an opportunity to promote independent e-book publishing, the iPad is accompanied by launch deals from major traditional publishers. What does that mean for independent writers and content? Updated: As several readers have noted, one positive sign is that Apple’s book application supports the open epub format. We’ll see how this works, and how this interoperates with other devices over the coming days and months. (And it’s important, too – this is not Create Digital Books, but a lot of the information we want to read is published in e-books.)
• It’s not an open computer. It’s not a Mac. The bottom line: you can’t do the things that an open computing experience allows. You can’t connect the hardware you want, develop or run the software you want, or have the open-ended experience computers have provided. That’s not to say a tablet or slate or pad or whatever you want to call it needs to be exactly like other computers. On the contrary: if you believe in the computing experience, you believe it should work in new and creative form factors. (There was a time when the clamshell laptop was a new idea, remember, a time when computers were giant bricks you plugged into a TV.)

Limitations are a wonderful thing. Specialized operating systems for mobile make perfect sense. But that’s a design decision – it’s about the interface, the developer tools, the hardware. A mobile device can work just as well without being tied to iTunes or with actual ports on it.

I know what the objection will be: but this computer isn’t “for” people like me. But that’s the whole problem. Apple threatens to split computing into two markets, one for “traditional,” “real” computers, and another for passive consumption devices that try to play games without physical controls and let you read books, watch movies, play music, and run apps so long as you’re willing to go through the conduit of a single company.

And, of course, this wouldn’t be worth my breath if not for my real concern: what if Apple actually succeeds? What if competitors follow this broken path, or fail to offer strong alternatives? The iPad today is a heck of a lot slicker than alternatives. It’s bad news for Linux, Windows, and Android, none of which have really workable competitors yet. It’s especially bad for Linux, in fact, which had a real chance to make its mark on mobile devices. Edit: Actually, one major advantage of a big, splashy Apple announcement – a number of those manufacturers have started talking about their rivals, already in the pipeline.

These issues have always been a matter of open debate. Jean-Louis Gassée infamously got an “OPEN MAC” license plate for his car during the early days of Apple Macintosh. The “open” vision was the vision we got. It’s the Mac II. It’s the expansion capabilities of the Mac that allowed PostScript support, which let the Mac launch computer desktop publishing and ensured the survival of the platform. And it was a vision in contrast to that of one (younger) Steve Jobs, who argued against expansion and nearly made the Mac a failure, another forgotten 80s oddity. It was after Jobs was forced out of the company that the Mac platform, the Mac community as we now know it were really forged, built on the expansion and flexibility those later Macs offered. That expansion port was what enabled early products from Digidesign, which would later become Pro Tools – the very birth of digital audio production.

Like I said, I’m biased by my own opinion. But it’d be unfair, after years of being hard on small developers when it comes to issues of openness, if I held back here. This is the world’s self-proclaimed “largest mobile manufacturer,” the company that, as it reminds us in every press release, launched the computing revolution. I wish I understood why they were now running away from some of the basic ideas that made that revolution possible.

This is what I asked in January 2007 on this site, shortly after the original iPhone was launched:

“1. Will Apple lock down the iPhone, blocking Flash, Java, custom widgets, and open development from its new platform?

2. Could Apple’s multi-touch patents actually stifle growth of new, interactive displays?”

Unfortunately, that turned out to prescient. As for point #2, and perhaps no fault of Apple’s, it’s apparent that multi-touch gestures are now missing in prominent platforms like the Android because of fear of litigation. (Yes, the Droid in my pocket has multi-touch and even a multi-touch API, but nothing in the shipping apps, apparently because someone’s legal department got involved.)

And as for point one, just compare what you can do with a Mac to what you can do with an iPhone.

Ironically, at that same show, I saw the very thing the Mac users most badly wanted: a Mac tablet. But because an independent developer had to hack that product together, it was overpriced and not terribly useful. At the same time, I know some people bought them, because that’s what they wanted. They wanted a Mac tablet.

Ironically, the biggest disadvantage of the iPad is that it’s not a Mac. So now we wait and see if someone can come up with intelligent new tablets that are at least more like PCs.

I know who I’m rooting for. And it’s not this.

Clarifications / thoughts from comments:

Of course, comments are here so that we can have a spectrum of opinions, and believe me, I do read and listen – including (sometimes especially) those with a different perspective than my own.

Some issues worth clarifying, respective to the above:

Several readers pointed out that I’m oversimplifying some of the relative historic “openness” of Apple. When the “Open Mac” battle was raging in the early Mac days (leading to the SE and Mac II), the connectors were indeed often still proprietary. The question was more whether to have ports or expansion at all. In the defense of the early Apple engineers, recall that, with the exception of formats like serial, standards were not as evolved as technologies like USB today. Even though there were already IBM clones, they were clones of IBM PCs, literally, not the open-ended PC market we have today. So readers are absolutely right – I was blurring some of the issues here. At the same time, this only underlines my point.

We’re again revisiting the question of what “consumers” need. The reason Jobs was opposed to ports, expansion, and the general ability of a user to service or upgrade a machine was because he perceived a need for a “consumer” device. In other words, he was making the argument then that his design is making now, and that some commenters are making, as well. Jobs was forced out of Apple, and the “Open Mac” won – and the rest is history. But my devil’s advocate question would be, given that computers with expandability won out in the 80s, why are we in a rush to eliminate that functionality now, in 2010, when even average consumers are more demanding and less afraid of technology? Is that who this is really for, or by the very virtue of its limitations, is this just a toy for gadget lovers? (I’m not asking that rhetorically; I think the readers making this argument have a point, and I’d be curious to hear people follow up.)

The other question is whether Apple was “open” in the intervening time period. However, here I have to invoke some history. Apple under Sculley was working very hard on interoperability with IBM, even though that ultimately failed. The Mac platform may have run a different OS, but it also embraced and/or helped popularize serial ports (hello MIDI), SCSI, and 3.5″ floppy drives (standard storage for the time). Under Amelio, Apple even pursued cloning – before Jobs reigned it in. (I’m not arguing that was a smart business decision, but it did at least qualify as “open.”) Mac OS X and modern Mac hardware are replete with standards, the Safari team is by far the most active contributor to WebKit, and the Apple OS team continues to work hard on interoperability.So, I may have been oversimplifying, too, but I can at least say this particular product is not characteristic of some of the more “open” behavior of Apple in other areas.

Finally, many of the comparisons have been made to the Lemur. I agree the Lemur hardware is aging and the software is relatively inflexible (certainly more so than apps made with the iPhone SDK). As for specifics of how the devices compare in multi-touch accuracy, or whether users will be as satisfied with the iPad as a wireless controller versus the Lemur’s Ethernet cord, that remains worth discussing.

Side note: Nowhere did I say that the alternative to an iPad has to be open source. I’m a huge fan of open source and truly free software. But by the measures above, Windows qualifies as open.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) represents the end of a long-running transition of the Mac operating system from 32-bit to 64-bit support. 64-bit computing offers marginal (but measurable) performance improvements, and more importantly the ability to address more RAM — a lot more RAM, currently more than is even physically available in any shipping consumer computer. By contrast, under the current Mac OS, each 32-bit application can access up to 4GB of RAM. A few tools, like Apple’s EXS24 and Native Instruments’ Kontakt samplers, can address greater memory through the use of virtual memory and memory server schemes. But you don’t get native, 64-bit memory – yet.

That should begin to change. Today, Apple quietly released Logic 9.1 and MainStage 2.1, providing 64-bit support. They should be the first of more tools. MOTU confirms they’re working on a 64-bit version of Digital Performer and their plug-ins. (The free Ardour should work, too, in theory – it’s already 64-bit on Linux; sounds like one obstacle may be its UI toolkit on Mac.) Core Audio and Core MIDI have been rewritten as 64-bit-native Cocoa frameworks, with full 64-bit support, as of Snow Leopard. But prior to Apple’s announcement today, you wouldn’t have noticed, outside things like the developer examples and AU Kit host.

Logic Pro, MainStage get 64-bit support [The Loop, a recent Mac blog with a strong music focus]

Of course, today isn’t exactly the dawn of a brave new 64-bit age on the Mac – more like another (important) step in that direction. You’ll still want plug-ins to run in 64-bit mode, or you don’t get to reap the advantages. 32-bit plug-ins will work via a 32-bit Audio Unit Bridge, but that’s not the same as native 64-bit support, and such bridges are likely to require some testing and refinement before they’re ready for prime time. (On Windows, Cakewalk’s BitBridge technology for doing the same thing has gone through a fair bit of iteration and may as a result be more mature.)

There are some gotchas for some users, as noted by Jim in his story: REX file support, ReWire, AKAI file import (bizarrely), and the Vienna Symphonic Library Tool don’t yet work in the 64-bit version of Logic. In short, 64-bit will be terrific, but most users will want to wait a bit before they switch over.

Of course, this makes the number one question for Mac developers at NAMM, when do you anticipate 64-bit support? (I’m sure they’ll love that.)

Ah, there’s nothing like bleeding-edge laptop performance. And to really convey to your audience that you’re indeed playing live, there’s nothing like glitches, dropouts, and crashing in the middle of a live set. It brings that homespun, digital authenticity to your performance, as you…

Okay, who am I kidding? You may be longing for a more stable, predictable, controllable mobile music rig. One way to get there is with the Linux operating system. The problem, however, is that if you don’t know what you’re doing, that setup can wind up being less stable, not more stable. Because Linux is about freedom and endless choice, you have the “freedom” to combine software in ways that … uh, doesn’t actually work.

I’m all for continuing to document ways of improving your Linux experience. At the same time, part of the free software business model – even according to the die-hards at the Free Software Foundation – is that custom configuration and distribution is a reasonable way to make money.

The best-available plug-and-play Linux music solution right now, hands down, is Indamixx. It’s got basically everything going for it:

• A highly-tweaked Transmission OS, as developed by 64 Studio
• Based on Ubuntu, so you can install recent Ubuntu packages for maximum software compatibility
• Carefully-tuned, custom real-time kernel for maximum audio performance
• Bundled with some great proprietary software, too, specifically ArdourXchange so you can import AAF files from your Pro Tools session – making your free software and proprietary software coexist peacefully
• LinuxDSP suite of mastering effects and plug-ins, specially tuned so they’ll work well even on Intel Atom-powered netbooks

The surprise: with the setup tuned in advance for you, Linux can be the friendliest out-of-box experience of any OS for music performance – seriously. Don’t get me wrong – it’s possible to get glitch-free performance out of Windows and Mac OS X, too. But Linux does offer a level of control and inter-application connectivity, as well as uniquely-strong performance on certain audio interfaces, that makes it a strong choice.

With tools like Pd and SuperCollider and the superb Renoise now on Linux, there’s no reason you can’t migrate your live performance rig to Linux – even if you choose to keep your production tools on another OS.

Normally priced at US$69, the Indamixx digital download is on sale for $49, and if you use sale code CDM, you get it for US$39. You have to purchase by January 19, and you have to use “CDM” as the code when you check out.

What you need to run it: Any PC netbook or laptop (and even UMPC/MID machines) should work. Note that Macs are not yet supported in this release; they’re trickier to dual-boot, but that support should come in the future. (If you know what you’re doing, it is possible to dual-boot the Mac, and honestly if you know your way around EFI and drivers I expect you could even use this distro.)

I’m not getting any money out of this deal, but I’m hoping for something far more valuable – it’d be great to have a little community of Linux users here on CDM so we can share tips with one another. As with, frankly, any OS, compatibility requires testing and tweaking. (That’s true even on the Mac, with a relatively limited hardware selection.)

Indamixx Digital Download

There’s also a USB key version, though it’s just as easy to buy or reuse a USB key of your own and use that.

I can certainly say, having tried various Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu configurations, I think the Indamixx/Transmission setup is the most painless and audio-friendly out there.

For a generation of musicians of nearly every genre, the laptop has become an instrument. It’s easy to take for granted, but the rise of the computer for music has been remarkable. Less than twenty years ago, real-time digital synthesis and audio processing was the domain of expensive, specialized workstations. Now, $700 per seat can buy you a full-blown musical rig, with the computer hardware, gestural input courtesy the Nintendo Wii controller, and even a DIY speaker made from IKEA salad bowls. The next challenge is to make this setup as flexible and reliable as possible. Enter Linux.

According with the laptop’s graduation to instrument status, laptops orchestras have spread worldwide, inspired especially by the innovative Princeton Laptop Orchestra (“PLOrk”) directed by Dan Trueman and Perry Cook. PLOrk’s alumnus Ge Wang has even gone on to greater fame making applications for the iPhone via ocarina and T-Pain app developer Smule. The sounds of these ensembles may sometimes be strange, but by pushing laptop performance, the groups are a great place to look for how to get the most out of computer music, whatever your tastes may be.

Virginia Tech’s L2Ork’s claim to faim is that it’s a laptop orchestra powered by Linux. Why does that matter? For one, it makes a big difference on cost. By using Linux-powered netbooks, they’ve slashed the per-student cost from that of the Mac laptops used in some other ensembles, on a machine that’s more compact. Far from making sacrifices to save money, the result is actually  greater reliability, flexibility, efficiency, and audio performance.

As with the PLOrk ensemble, L2Ork combines expressive input with open-ended digital sound making production, localizing the sound near the computer itself using hemispherical speakers. In this way, the laptop instrument can attempt to learn something from acoustic instruments, which are played with human gestures and have sound sources that are positioned physically where the instrument is.

L2Ork

You don’t have to enroll at Virginia Tech to apply these lessons to your own music making, however. You can apply the lessons of the L2Ork ensemble to put together your own Linux audio machine. They’ve even further-documented the process of making PLOrk’s signature “salad bowl” speakers. And you can do it all without breaking the bank.

I got the chance to speak with Dr. Ivica Ico Bukvic, director of the Linux Laptop Orchestra and the DSISIS Interactive Sound and Intermedia Studio at Virginia Tech.

CDM: What is your software rig for this ensemble?

Ivica: We basically use Ubuntu 9.04 (vanilla) with our own custom-built rt kernel, which apart from solid performance also offers full support of standby/hibernate/external monitor, webcam, wireless, bluetooth, etc. We also have various patches/scripts that deal with chronic UI bugs (e.g. order of panel icons in gnome getting trashed whenever a resolution is changed).

Basically, our configuration supports every single functionality of MSI Wind netbooks, which we use as the backbone of the orchestra.

FWIW, our setup offers pretty darn cool price point. The entire setup (MSI Wind, UA-1G soundcard, hemi speaker, [Nintendo] Wiimote/Nunchuk, all the cables/accessories, headset, and case) comes down to approximately $700/seat which arguably makes it as cheap as an iPhone setup, except you get to enjoy flexibility of using a laptop (ok, a netbook .

What music software are you using?

Our audio platform is currently exclusively [multimedia patching environment] Pd-extended 0.42.5 (running through [low-latency audio server] JACK) which we’ve also customized to allow advanced GUI setup (e.g. per-patcher configurable background, menu/ontop/resize/scrollbar toggles, what is IMHO better scrolling algorithm than what we currently have) as well as integrated several new objects whose source we are about to release (our multithreaded version of the Wiimote object for Linux has been already posted on the Pd-list a couple weeks ago, and it fully supports Wiimotes/Nunchuks without any interruptions to the Pd’s audio thread).

What do you do to get Ubuntu running properly?

Basically, it’s lightly-modded Ubuntu 9.04 that allows us to support all the hardware on the netbook, thus offering a quality desktop experience as well as RT audio performance. The kernel is custom-built 2.6.29-rc6-rt3. We have it available for download from a temporary folder off of my personal site
(http://ico.bukvic.net/Linux/). Once we clean everything up we will actually generate a full HD image and offer it for public download in hope to allow people to load that thing and thus allow them to have the best possible out-of-box experience (obviously as far as MSI Wind is concerned).

Is the hemispherical speaker something readers could build?

There are probably dozen videos on the VTDISIS Youtube channel that are designed to help potential L2Ork adopters build their own speakers, from cannibalizing/retrofitting the amps to improve their performance, to building cables and final assembly.

Videos

Rehearsal video shows how the L2Ork work out playing and soundmaking as an ensemble.

A quick look at how to make your own hemispherical speaker pod:

Local news coverage:

Virginia Tech students demo new laptop orchestra [WSLS10 NBC]

Laptop orchestra at Virginia Tech gives people an affordable alternative [WDBJ7]

More videos, and lots of how-to’s on the speakers (including the conclusion of the video above), are available on the VTDISIS channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/VTDISIS

Got more questions for the ensemble? Let us know.

I’d definitely like to offer, as well, some information on how to make Ubuntu work this well for you, and how to learn Ubuntu, Pd, JACK, and other free tools, in a way that’s beginner-friendly. That sounds like a decent New Years’ Resolution.

In the meantime, it’s worth mentioning that if you aren’t excited about the prospect of custom-configuring kernels yourself, the Indamixx Linux laptop we’ve featured previously is pre-configured in a similar way; the netbook I’m testing now even runs on the same MSI netbook. And that also, in turn, illustrates how research and volunteer efforts can go hand-in-hand with commercial solutions:

http://www.indamixx.com/