Music software development includes some of the most sophisticated, expressive software out there. But it has long faced serious challenges in sales – audio software still appeals, generally, to a small slice of people, made smaller by factors ranging from piracy to the sheer complexity of available audio tools. As computing’s distribution model for software shifts, audio developers are undoubtedly watching.

Love it or hate it, what’s unique about Apple’s App Store for iOS is that it’s a one-stop shop for everything. With App Store fever spreading – new stores for mobile and desktop are either available or planned from the likes of Apple, Intel, Microsoft, and Linux vendor Canonical – we’re likely to see a new kind of store model. On desktops, Android devices, and others, multiple stores will compete with one another in overlapping arenas. They’ll do it without lock-in, too – unlike on Apple’s stores for iOS, you’ll have a choice of where to get your software.

Last week, of course, that list expanded to include Apple’s Mac App Store, coming to Snow Leopard and then the just-announced Lion.

Music creation and pro audio apps may be a specific niche, but creators of everything from plug-ins to audio software are at least interested. Little wonder: desktop music making software has always faced an uphill climb, but recently, iPhone creations have become breakout hits.

Just don’t get too excited yet. An early look at Apple’s guidelines for the store suggest restrictions will rule out a great deal of current Mac software, particularly audio software that relies on plug-in models. I’ve asked some independent developers to comment on what the store means to them, and take a look at some of those restrictions.

Several developers responded to my questions. Now, a disclaimer: clearly, the Mac App Store is not aimed at creators of strange synthesizers and effects. Nor is it possible to represent the full gamut of developers making software for musicians. TUAW has a nice round-up of more typical Mac developers, who are, unsurprisingly, more upbeat. I likewise expect that anyone who now has some success on the iOS platform – vendors like IK Multimedia or Smule — will be optimistic about the Mac App Store.

So, instead, consider this as a sampling of developers for whom the App Store may not actually change that much. I was, frankly, surprised to see plug-in creators and pro audio users assuming that the Mac App Store would be a natural marketplace for the software they care about. Early evidence is that it isn’t. But with app stores spreading across devices, the responses from developers provide some insight into longer-range challenges that transcend even Apple’s latest offering.

Gallery: sample applications and stores.

Could the Apple App Store be a viable option for creative music developers?

Angus Hewlett, FXpansion:

I’d say it’s a viable option for entry-level and somewhat novelty apps, and as a launch-assistance platform for brand new developers (allowing unknowns with no established reputation to get started in the world of ecommerce). It’s not of great appeal to FXpansion – we’ve been around long enough that I’d hope commercial trust isn’t a massive barrier to people buying from our web-store – but as a get-yourself-started platform, it is not completely without merit.

Of course, because these app stores are usually tied to a specific platform, for those developers who are on more than one platform, it does just add additional complexity, cost, and hassle. Admittedly it improves convenience for end users a certain amount (a good thing in my book), but the effort/overhead of getting out your credit card and typing in the number looks completely different for a $0.99 game you’re going to play for 20 minutes, compared to a $249 plug-in that you’ll spend hours/days just learning and (we hope) use several times a week for years to come.

Christopher Randall, Audio Damage:

The guidelines preclude selling plug-ins, so that rules out the segment of the industry I’m most familiar with. This will probably change, but my general feeling is that people that make things like Numerology will be well served, but for the majority of our business, our needs are a bit too particular to really benefit from something as broadly-focused as the App Store. And there’s no real financial incentive on Apple’s part to cater specifically to us, because we’re such a small segment of the overall software market.

David Viens, Plogue Art et Technologie:

As much as we like having our code base tested on as much compilers and platforms possible for correctness and efficiency, constant platform changes are quite boring, and usually dont spark any innovative ideas from us. Innovation not only is what drives us in the morning, but it’s also what users want, hopefully more than the typical will-it-run-on-my-toaster? kind. Also innovation is highly regarded by various tax break programs in many countries Also app stores make it impossible for us to do quick fixes, we could be committing code to Nintendo ROM carts that it couldn’t be different. So there is a need to raise QA and testing budget by a very significant amount, before release….

For standalone software, the kinds of things we’ve seen for iOS seem a likely candidate – particularly general-consumption audio “toys” (in the sense of stuff anyone can open up and use to make sound)?

Chris Randall:

That was my my general thinking. I was pondering it at length last night, and the smaller single-use app seems more likely to benefit from it, assuming it is a parallel environment to the existing App Store, with the same sort of customers. The chief difference between this App Store and the iOS one is that this isn’t the only option for purchasing software for your Mac. It has to compete with other channels, which is an important distinction, especially if most of its offerings are simple “casual” apps.

What about the app store landscape in general, as other players get into the business of doing their own stores? How does Apple fit in?

Gavin Burke, Future Audio Workshop:

The main issue is that the app store model just one piece of a bigger jigsaw and is tied in closely to the hardware, software frameworks and what this means to an independent developer and his/her ability to compete on a level playing field with established brands.

App store success is just one part in a bigger picture. The other players need to get the various parts right and not just create an app store and think it will work.

A major part is the price and ease of purchase. It’s easier to buy the software for $1.00 with one-click purchase than look on rapidshare.com for a crack. So price, ease of purchase, and last but not least, [making it] difficult to get the cracked version. Looking at it, it may only work if there is a single distribution channel and not multiple ones ( including rapidshare as a channel )

One flaw, though, in the Apple App Store is the charts. At the moment it is based on sales volume. Allowing people to view by highest user rating, etc., might help level things. Also, Apple can act as king maker with their ability to dish out the free advert slots on the device.

Angus Hewlett:

It’s a new channel that will no doubt get a lot of coverage – a few developers with the right products and first mover advantage will make some fast bucks for sure. After that, I don’t know. I suspect phones (and consoles – myself, I spend way more on XBox Live Arcade than on the iPhone or Android stores) are a better and more natural platform for cheap, one-shot novelty apps than desktops/laptops, simply because of how & where they fit in to peoples’ lives, but I’m ready to be proven wrong on that.

Are you concerned about Apple’s 30% cut of revenue?

Chris Randall:

Not at all. The app store runs on volume; that is its main attraction from a commerce standpoint. The trick is to take advantage of that potential volume, and the way to do that is through lowest-common-denomenator (e.g. “I Am T-Pain”) products.

Angus Hewlett:

Yes. It’s a lot more than the original generation of “app stores” (shareware ecommerce middleman sites like ShareIt, DigitalRiver, Kagi, NorthStar etc.) typically charged. We used to sell through ShareIt back in the day, they took about 10%, but once your turnover hits $10-15k a month,
it’s more economical to have a proper merchant account based shopping cart system (the hassle that entails costs a few hundred dollars a month in terms of overheads, paperwork, other bank-related BS, but it brings the average cost per transaction down to 3-5%). Also, at 10-15k a month turnover, your brand is probably well enough known that potential customers are likely to trust you somewhat as an online vendor.

Having said that – the terms-and-conditions aspect of being in an app store, especially when the operator is particular, capricious, anally retentive or all three at once (naming no names), is far more toxic than the 30% cut. Losing a predictable amount of money per sale is one thing, but failing to sell a single copy of your app – after you’ve spent months and $thousands developing it – because the store owner rejected it for reasons outside of your control is quite another.

David Viens:

30% is ridiculous. What enrages me is that users seem to think it’s normal and much less than ‘retail’ .. wuht whut??? We have never done retail ever and been using Share-It (which costs us less than 10%) for 6 years. That’s the price of a payment processor.

Sure, it doesn’t give you ‘visibility’ but what is that visibility on the 15th page of music software selection in a store? Can’t we just be as creative with our viral marketing, social network tricks as we are with the software itself?

Bandwidth price on Amazon S3 is microscopic (10 cents a GB), so not an issue, even with 100-megabyte demo downloads.

Share-it don’t care about the content, they never put their noses in our practices, suggest guidelines, or anything.

People are just getting to enjoy their new-found freedom with independent online music and fair-trade and local grown foods, however. they will let the inverse happen to software?
Will we see the movement to Fair-Trade software in 15 years?

Do you think it’s a model that could work, from a business perspective?

Angus Hewlett:

It’s a new channel, a few developers with the right products and first mover advantage will make some fast bucks. After that, I don’t know.

How well versed are you on acoustic physics in relation to loudspeakers, impedance etc.? There are some interesting parallels here with app stores – basically they are a good platform for allowing very small developers to cast a very wide net. Those of us who have a more specialist, focused audience can probably build trust with our audience via more efficient, focused channel….

It appears that plug-ins are ruled out by several of the guidelines issued by Apple. Care to comment?

Gavin Burke:

I can’t see the app store concept working for plug-ins; it’s pretty much already there with the downloads page on the Apple site.

If the app store is the only channel to purchase applications for a device that cracked software is not easily available for, then yes, it works. Otherwise, not so sure. We already have app stores for music software, like Don’t Crac[k], etc., with somewhat limited success. Also for complex niche software, it’s hard to beat the personal connections distributors have with stores and in turn with their customers. We find this especially true for Japan.

Artistic freedom and censorship

Artist and developer Kassen Oud offered some compelling thoughts on Apple’s developer “guidelines” and rules via Facebook. To him, the restrictions on what goes in the store conflict with making software art. I think it’s a reasonable and challenging point to make – just as Apple has the right to conduct their store in the way you wish, developers and artists presumably have just as much right to opt out.

To me, the big appeal to developing software for music is the chance to do something unique and individual. External limitations (like arbitrary moral guidelines or limits on the language to be used) conflict with that, to me. As the process used is important to me I need to be able to express myself about that publicly as well. This rules out Apple’s app store. With regard to code/ application distribution those are more important factors to me than the need to create applications for Apple’s app store on a Apple computer though that in and of itself would also be a prohibitive factor to me.

I don’t mean to imply that software on Apple’s platform would inherently be less “unique” or “individual”; I certainly do not wish to take anything away from my friends whose creative process wasn’t (apparently) affected by these factors and who did create very interesting works released on it, taking nothing away from their FOSS work.

Apple Developer Guidelines – Plug-ins Need Not Apply

Apple’s draft review guidelines for the Mac App Store have been widely posted, including full text. Here are the excerpts most relevant to the above discussion.

Plug-ins will almost certainly be rejected.

2.15
Apps must be self-contained, single application installation bundles, and cannot install code or resources in shared locations

(Plug-ins, by definition, install to shared Library locations, as per Apple’s own guidelines.)

Interestingly, though, hosts appear to be okay, just not the plug-ins themselves:

7.1
Apps that unlock or enable additional features or functionality with mechanisms other than the App Store will be rejected, except in cases where the application hosts plug-ins or extensions

Demos aren’t allowed.

2.6
Apps that are “beta”, “demo”, “trial”, or “test” versions will be rejected

Other guidelines are worth watching.

Various other guidelines provide fairly restrictive policies that developers will have to balance against their business interests. These aren’t unprecedented – see the strict review policies of venues like the Steam store for games. But those stores have seen their own share of developer complaints, and they’re specific to an audience (like gamers); here, it may be tougher for niche developers to justify. (That’s, at least, the feedback I’ve been hearing from music developers. For mainstream developers, the equation can be different.)

2.18
Apps that install kexts will be rejected

2.19
Apps that require license keys or implement their own copy protection will be rejected

2.20
Apps that present a license screen at launch will be rejected

2.21
Apps may not use update mechanisms outside of the App Store

2.7
Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them

Of course, some of the challenges of audio software are … unique. How many pro audio applications would meet the following guidelines?

6.3
Apps that do not use system provided items, such as buttons and icons, correctly and as described in the Apple Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines will be rejected

6.4
Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good it may be rejected

Comments from other developers are welcome. We’ll keep you posted.

Sequencing – the collection of techniques that actually assemble events in our music – seems to get far less attention than it deserves. After all, there are fairly accepted ways of synthesizing sound, but as many ways of thinking about musical events as there are ways of thinking about composition. Among the big DAWs, you’ll often see pitches to upgrade based on new effects plug-ins or magical audio-processing abilities, but rarely MIDI sequencing improvements. (When there are, of course, I applaud.)

That makes this week’s pre-Christmas announcement of Numerology 2.0 all that more special. Numerology is a modular sequencer and that alone. It brings some of the modular capabilities usually found in synths to sequencing, with component sequencers and modulation for manipulating sequence evens the way you’d usually transform sound signal.

The upshot of all of this: you can play with musical patterns with the freedom usually reserved for synths. Features:

• Sequencing modules, including MonoNote (monophonic sequencer), polyphonic PolyNote (duh) and MatrixSeq, eight-track DrumSeq
• Component sequencers for modular-style sequencing, plus LFOs, envelopes, CV mixers, MIDI generators, MIDI processors
• Stacks: virtual equipment racks for easier composing / performance, and an integrated audio mixer
• Add software plug-ins (AU) or route to external hardware gear (yep, the computer is still awesome when it comes to sequencing outboard synths, even in 2008/9!)
• New, simple sound-generating modules for easy integration with the environment, including synthesis, polyphonic AudioSample and eight-part DrumKit
• MIDI remote control of parameters, plus custom CV, audio, and MIDI routing
• Timeline playlist arrangement
• Sync via MIDI clock, MTC, or ReWire
• Mac-only, 10.4.11 and later; US$99 until 1/4/09 (then $119)

System requirements are pretty tame (this is a sequencer, after all), so this could be a great application for an older Mac, provided it has a 1GHz or greater CPU. (PowerPCs included.)

How does it all work? Here are some videos to give you an idea. Hope to add this to my scary but delicious testing pile (New Years’ Resolution: more useful hands-on content).

A demo:

Getting started:

Any passionate Numerology users out there? We’d love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the new version, and how do you use the tool in your music?

Want to hook that joystick / Wii remote / Guitar Hero controller / something odd to your music software? If you’re on Mac, OSCulator is the do-everything solution. It’s pay-what-you-like software ($19 minimum for PayPal), and it just got a big update:

Announcement: OSCulator 2.6 [Unidentified Sound Object, as seen in our sound design round-up]
Download page, with changelog [osculator.net]

There’s a lot new in release 2.6; highlights include:

• Preset management
• Graphical OSC routing editor
• Wii Guitar Hero support (preliminary)
• Hook up more: up to 2 virtual HID joysticks, up to 8 Wiimote (does anyone own that many?)
• Make keyboard shortcuts just by striking the combo

And just to be clear, this app outputs MIDI. That means you can use whatever music software you like — so don’t worry about the OSC business if it’s new to you!

It’s not even really just for OSC, any more — does all kinds of input tasks. Windows and Linux users have plenty to be jealous of in this program. Major kudos to creator Camille Troillard; USO Project points to a terrific SEAMUS newsletter article on the software and its future.

The only sad news: this is the last release that will support Tiger; future versions are Leopard-only. (I’m curious, Camille — why? Lots of us still run Tiger for audio apps. Is this just to streamline testing, or is there really something in Leopard that OSCulator needs?)

You can add this to yesterday’s good news as far as OpenSoundControl — the iPhone/iPod touch app we saw released to the app store in yesterday’s round-up.

Yesterday marked the official phase-out of Windows XP. That in itself isn’t terribly big news; it’s easy enough to get XP systems for the foreseeable future, and custom builders can even put together an XP machine for you. Heck, you can even boot XP on an Intel Mac. But it seems like the perfect time to talk again about Vista. As with any OS, the branding (“we’ve got a new thing called Vista”) masks the more complex reality evolution of software and drivers. In other words, Vista today isn’t what it was the day it shipped. (That’s a relief.) And personally, I’d like to start talking about real-world performance and dispense with the kind of schoolyard rivalry the platforms have had over the years. I think it’s a safe bet to say none of us is excited about operating systems. We’re excited about actually making music. The good news is, Vista is finally looking like an OS on which you can do that.

The OS Generation Gap

It’s a funny time for operating systems and music applications, in that the most recent generational changes in Windows and Mac were unusually significant. On Windows, XP and Windows 2000 improved both audio and hardware support, and finally saw Windows NT really mature for music. On the Mac side, albeit slightly later, the bumpy transition to Mac OS X finally paid off as Tiger and Panther brought major audio improvements and reliability and performance enhancements. And Tiger got musicians onto Intel x86 CPUs, which helped unleash the live use of laptops we see today. Each of these updates came with compatibility hurdles, but there was a clear payoff. They’re must-have upgrades for music. Many music and audio apps won’t even work with earlier versions.

By contrast, while Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista each introduce important features, they’ve proven less essential to the music and audio segment of the market. By extension, I’d say they haven’t yet made major enhancements to real-time performance or hardware support – at least not in a way you can currently experience as an end user – in the way their predecessors did. That’s not to say you won’t find reasons to upgrade; you just may not see a big difference in Ableton Live. That has made the compatibility issues each OS has introduced for music more painful, because the reason you’re upgrading may not always be as clear.

But don’t listen to anyone who says OSes are so mature that there’s “nothing left to do” to them. I don’t think that’s the problem. Leopard and Vista aren’t entirely comparable, but they do have a lot in common – and the common theme, beneath eye candy in the UI, is that both OSes are trying to tackle some very difficult problems.

Both make changes to the driver model, thread scheduling, multiple core support, and (including XP x64) 64-bit support. These are tough challenges for OSes that have years of development behind them and broad compatibility requirements. But these are changes on which computer musicians, even indirectly, are absolutely dependent. Support for better performance, more reliable drivers, and more memory is vital to a lot of the stuff we do.

The issue is, you may not see some of the payoff in these changes right away – or even in this OS build. Even with Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard, which has been relatively positively received, I think some of the real benefits of multiple core support and 64-bit compatibility won’t become evident until the upcoming Snow Leopard at the earliest. Microsoft’s under-the-hood driver model changes may have a positive impact on driver reliability and performance in the long run, but those benefits have been masked by just getting things working.

Microsoft had still-bigger challenges, too: while they jettisoned some much-publicized functionality promised for Vista, they still made massive changes to driver support, the graphics driver model, and the way things on the screen were displayed.

So moving onto Vista: did something go wrong? Yes – at the beginning, that is.

Vista, Take One: Yipes!

For all the over-analysis of what bombed in the Vista launch, I’ve been surprised by how little attention has been paid to what seems to have been the single biggest issue. Vista’s new graphics model just didn’t work for a lot of people out of the box, and that caused other issues to snowball. This is especially true in audio. If the graphics drivers weren’t working properly, just touching a UI element could make the sound glitch. Some people I think misunderstood the source of the problem and blamed DRM or other more dramatic causes. But if anything manages to starve the CPU for cycles, performance suffers fast.

I saw how nasty this could be in my early Vista tests – and was equally struck how dramatically the fix could be when installing new drivers, particularly on my NVIDIA test systems.

Would it have helped if Microsoft had kept its vendors more in sync? Absolutely. Should Vista have held off a little longer to resolve lingering quality issues? I think so. Should Microsoft have hired acrobats to climb buildings and staged other surreal Cirque-du-Soleil style antics to launch an OS before it was ready? Sigh.

Those things aside, though, some of the problems remain fundamental OS issues — and many of you, as a result, were smart enough to steer clear of the OS upgrade until it was fully baked.

Here are some obvious but oft-missed statements in regards to Vista or any other major OS change:

1. Small incompatibilities can cause total havoc. One bad driver can starve the CPU, crash the machine, and generally make performance and stability go awry. Sometimes these bugs come from the OS vendor, sometimes a third-party developer, sometimes a combination of the two that can’t even be fully explained until it’s fixed. And that makes other, arguably more minor incompatibilities, all the more annoying. Problems with video on Vista pushed it out of the “I can live with this” territory and into the panic you saw from a lot of tech users and even press.

2. Music and audio suffer first: Running many apps, you won’t notice sluggish performance. Run video, and you’ll notice a missed frame (about 30 of those per second). Run audio, and you’ll notice tiny timing problems and dropouts and glitches with even a single sample (about 44,100 of those per second). Audio real-time performance is less forgiving than applications like nuclear submarine guidance – literally.

3. If you’re having a problem, who the (*&$# cares how many other people are, too? If you’re having an issue, you’re sad. If  If you have a problem, you have the right to complain about it until it’s fixed. And you get permission to curse at the machine involved and the company who made it – until they fix it, at which point there will be great rejoicing. I’ve seen bloggers complain when people complain about significant problems with both Mac OS and Windows. I gain great comfort in knowing next week, they’ll be the ones cursing because they’ll have the problem. Let my people vent. And fix the problem. Then everyone’s happy.

SP1: What Changed

So, is Microsoft fixing things? The short answer is yes. It may not be a reason to switch from XP to Vista, but I do think Vista is a feasible choice for music production, depending on your environment.

I wouldn’t have said that a few months ago. Vista has changed since where it was even at the end of last year. SP1 is part of that, but changes generally fit into three categories:

1. Internal (Hotfixes): A big portion of SP1 is a big bundle of all the hotfixes that Microsoft released over the first year or so of Vista. It’s just a convenience – you could install all of those hotfixes without SP1 – but it’s a major one. And many of those hotfixes made specific improvements to audio performance, video performance (which also impacts audio performance), and USB and other hardware compatibility.

2. Internal (SP1): SP1 includes some changes that were not released as hotfixes, meaning that in addition to #1 being a big reason to upgrade, this is the only way to get a fully-patched, fully-fixed Vista.

3. External (Third-party): It goes without saying that, aside from what Microsoft has done, third-party vendors have fixed a lot of stuff since Vista’s release. Aside from software patches to music software and plug-ins, that includes changes to mainboard drivers, video drivers, and the like that can in turn impact audio performance and reliability.

We covered some specific Vista audio concerns in the past:

So let’s see how SP1 is addressing those concerns.

Vista SP1 + Music: Report Card

Complaint: Vista’s MIDI Timing is unstable.

Validity: True.

Current status: Fixed in SP1.

Vista introduced some MIDI timing instabilities. It was bad enough that at least some users were able to notice the difference in terms of hands-on experience. Cakewalk, who reported this issue to Microsoft, tells CDM that the problem was fixed as of SP1. (Microsoft previously indicated to CDM that this would be addressed.)

Complaint: Vista audio performance is unreliable: dropouts, glitches, and pain.

Validity: True; not an issue in all cases but reasonably widespread.

Current status: Fixed (at least in many cases). Vista performs like XP — once your video drivers are up to snuff.

Assuming we’re talking primarily about ASIO performance, which requires stability at low latencies, the biggest obstacle early on appears to have been buggy video drivers causing catastrophic audio performance. (If you doubt that incompatibilities not directly related to audio can cause problems with audio, look no further than the bugs gradually being resolved on Mac OS’ WiFi support and Leopard USB/FireWire support.)

Turning off Aero, Vista’s shiny, new UI, doesn’t necessarily fix things in all cases, either. Even with "Windows Standard" selected, Vista uses a new driver model for graphics. (It can be helpful to turn off Aero or other desktop visual effects on an older machine, however.)

Mainly, the fix seems to be installing SP1 and getting video drivers up to date. For that reason, I can’t entirely guarantee this — there are lots of other variables and different possible graphics drivers. But if you’re having symptoms that seem to relate to UI interaction like moving windows or turning soft synth knobs, starting with the graphics drivers couldn’t hurt.

Complaint: Vista can’t achieve the low latencies XP could.

Validity: Difficult to verify.

Current status: Jury’s out, but unless you’re counting milliseconds you’ll be fine — and very reliable, low latencies are possible with Vista as with XP.

Latency is introduced in various parts of a computer music setup, but generally if you’re in the 10-12 ms range and no higher, most users will be happy. I’ve been able to easily push below that even using a USB interface like my Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1. (Apparently, they hired a very talented driver programmer, so Native, I’m not giving you that one back! Send a bill over.)

Some users do push Windows latencies well below that, and have reported that Vista isn’t performing quite as well as XP. Now, whether driver updates could resolve this, I don’t know.

I can say this: you can get very usable low-latency performance with Vista, just as with XP. As always, the main variable is getting an interface with solid drivers you can trust, and (unfortunately) controlling for other variables like buggy video drivers. On any system, I suggest testing adding new hardware very carefully. But this issue in and of itself seems to me not to be a reason to avoid Vista. (Now, other compatibility problems that can botch audio? That’s a good reason — meaning you will want to test your system before doing something critical with it!)

Complaint: Vista’s WaveRT can yield better audio performance on built-in cards.

Validity: True.

Current status: Your mileage may vary, but if you can get WaveRT support you’ll be much better off than you were on XP.

Vendors Realtek and Analog Devices, who ship the internal audio cards including on many motherboards and laptops, have each supported Microsoft’s new WaveRT driver model, which is intended to provide lower latency for “consumer” audio functions. We knew this would help theoretically, but from reports we’ve seen, users have been pretty happy with this feature in the real world, too. I’ve even heard reports of extremely low-latency playback (as low as 2ms), which had previously been possible only using ASIO. While we’d need more extensive benchmarks to go into greater detail, there’s no question this is a big leap forward from previous drivers for internal audio cards, so this is very good news for those times when you don’t have a dedicated “pro” audio interface handy.

In fact, I could even see someone making use of one of these cards in live performance or installation. If you have, let us know.

Complaint: My (hardware/software) isn’t compatible.

Validity: Check with your vendor.

Current status: Largely fixed by third parties, and certainly most music and audio developers, but always check first.

I’ve been fairly impressed by compatibility between Vista and current music hardware and software. The first half year was, as always, rough, but things smoothed out after that. If you’re concerned about compatibility with older plug-ins, for the most part, don’t be. Once you have a compatible host, plug-ins generally work on Vista as they did on XP — meaning Windows still has Mac and Linux beat when it comes to giving you ridiculously absurd plug-in variety, enough to distract you from ever getting any actual work done. (Not sure if that’s a plus…)

With hosts and hardware, well, there’s not much I can say other than check with your vendor. But on my machine, with hardware from Focusrite, Roland/Edirol, Native Instruments, Novation, M-Audio, and Korg, and software from Native Instruments, Ableton, Image-Line, Cakewalk, Cycling ’74, and various other obscure things, compatibility hasn’t been a problem. In fact, I think music and audio vendors were more on the ball than the rest of the industry.

If you do have the rare older software that doesn’t work, you can often get it to install and function by turning off User Account Control temporarily or selecting a compatibility mode before launching.

That said, if you do have a lot of older software, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading. If you’re not upgrading your apps, upgrading your OS is unlikely to be a good idea. (The phrase “if it ain’t broke…” comes to mind.) But if you’re running current hosts and audio interfaces and just want to protect your VST plug-in stash, I don’t think this aspect will be a deal-breaker.

Complaint: Vista requires more memory than XP.

Validity: True.

Current status: Unchanged, but it may not be a deal killer.

There’s not much escaping this, but rather than dwell on this, I’ll say this: on a 2GB system, I haven’t found this to be a problem. On a system with 1GB or less, I run XP anyway. End of story. I don’t see a reason to run Vista on an older system or one with less memory, and likewise on a 2-4GB system I don’t think Vista’s memory consumption is significant enough to impact audio work. On a 64-bit system with 64-bit software, which can easily access well more than 4GB, it’s a non-issue.

Nitpicking on memory availability is probably overkill, but of course musicians — unlike mainstream users — do often push the envelope. But on my custom Vista desktop install, which only has a 2GB system, I’ve been happy.

There are things you can do to "slim down" your Vista install, as with XP (actually, literally as with XP in some cases as some of the services are the same). The new Windows Sidebar, for instance, consumes some memory and can be switched off. (I don’t miss it it, personally.) But that’s a topic for another article.

Complaint: Vista requires more power than XP.

Validity: Vista’s (usually) not the problem.

Here’s the thing: you can see massive CPU consumption when software crashes or drivers aren’t working properly. Many of these are reported under the process explorer.exe, because processes run as part of that larger process. On the hardware side, even a slightly-unseated PCI card can cause major CPU spikes. And if you are getting those kinds of spikes, the power of your hardware won’t make any difference. This isn’t really a Vista issue – if stuff is compatible and working, you won’t see the problem.

So, was this true? Yes, probably — but my suspicion is that a lot of these complaints actually originated from buggy drivers and unstable processes, not an inherently hungrier OS.

That said, I do wish Microsoft had made it easier to slim down their OS, in general. And I have found a couple of things especially annoying with Vista:

Media Center: I’d like to be able to switch off Media Center altogether, especially because a process called mcupdate.exe seems to randomly call the mothership and consume CPU cycles. Updated: Richard Burte wisely points out that you can disable this using Task Scheduler. Type “computer management” into the Start menu and select the first result to bring up the Microsoft Management Console. From there, select Computer Management (Local) > System Tools > Task Scheduler > Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > Media Center. In the top right pane, you’ll see the task mcupdate. It’s set to run at 4:51 pm daily. You can reschedule it, or simply right click it and choose disable. Thanks, Richard!

My recommended Vista version remains Vista Business. If you’re using a machine for music, odds are you don’t need Media Center’s features anyway – especially not with plenty of media playback options elsewhere.

Desktop Search: For reasons unknown, this service can index and churn away at the hard drive even when it’s not supposed to. I prefer to turn it off, but I’d like to see it get a little smarter about indexing more efficiently and switching on more conservatively.

Bottom line, though, is that Vista, like XP, can be tamed and turned into a well-behaved OS. That wasn’t true in the initial Vista driver train wreck, but I’m finding it’s true now – and that’s a good thing.

Complaint: Vista is full of audio DRM that will ruin your life.

Validity: Not true.

This complaint seems to have come from two sources. First, it seems to be partly a misinterpretation of audio protections Microsoft had to put in to support new US digital cable tuners and formats like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Those are in fact in Vista, though they’re also in XP, and they don’t really impact music production. (They’re annoying, but that’s a separate discussion.) Second, Microsoft did apparently plan to do more with DRM in Vista than they did, but backed away from the cliff. Some people were still looking at planning documents and seeing things that weren’t there.

Where I think this rumor continued was when people had glitchy, unreliable audio and blamed DRM, but as I said above, I think they didn’t suspect culprits like video driver problems.

Unfortunately, Microsoft did add some additional validation requirements in Vista as an anti-piracy measure. These are softened in SP1, and I think you can live with them. It does reduce your options for virtualizing the operating system using tools like Parallels, VMware, and virtualbox, but if you’re virtualizing an OS, why not Linux?

Why Run Vista?

I don’t want to get into a Mac versus Windows argument here. That’s an easy one. Want to run Mac OS? Do it. Want to run Windows? Go for it. There are enough choices and enough mature software that you’re unlikely to really regret either one. And it doesn’t really matter which is "better" so much as which is better for you.

Instead, I’ll take on something slightly simpler: XP versus Vista. It’s clear why you should run Windows XP:

1. It’s working, and you’re happy: Insert any software here (Windows, Mac OS, your word processor, your MIDI sequencer), and this statement is true, but it’s worth saying.

2. You’ve got an older machine, or are low on RAM, or both: This is doubly true – older hardware is likely to have the most compatibility problems now that newer drivers have caught up with Vista. And XP is a better choice with less than 1 GB of RAM.

3. You need it for specific compatibility reasons. ‘Nuff said.

But why should you run Vista? Believe it or not, I have a few reasons.

1. It can be more stable than XP. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Microsoft has improved the in-box drivers in Vista, and the driver overhaul has forced vendors to adhere more closely to Microsoft’s specs. Now, I have no particular need to believe what Microsoft tells me — but I have seen this make a difference in the real world. Also, because on many modern machines Vista supports more hardware out of the box than XP, you can go with Microsoft’s in-box and device class drivers, which can be more reliable than drivers that come from vendors.

2. The UI is more usable. I don’t mean in a skin-deep way: generally speaking, the UI in Vista is more usable and functional than XP’s in some subtle but important ways. For instance:

3. The audio mixer is great. Click the sound icon on the taskbar, and there’s a mixer that lets you disable applications. It’s a little thing, but worth mentioning.

4. GPU-native UIs are a good thing. If you have a fairly recent graphics card – even a basic one – I think you’ll probably appreciate glitch-free graphics display on the UI.

5. It is prettier. Aero tends to elicit love/hate responses. If you don’t like it, you can reskin it by using a hacked uxtheme.dll, as with XP. (Search for uxtheme.dll and you’ll get some solutions; various minimalist skins are available online, too.) But Vista is generally easier on the eyes, and improves font rendering and such in a way I find easier to stare at all day. I was surprised that even Create Digital Motion’s Jaymis actually warmed to the new Vista UI on a new PC — and he just bought himself a MacBook Pro for Mac OS X.

6. WaveRT. Internal audio systems work better on Vista, so long as they have WaveRT drivers and apps to support WaveRT. That’s a big enough feature that, assuming you can balance other factors, Vista could be worth an upgrade.

7. Explorer is multi-threaded and more better. While early versions of Vista prompted complaints about file copy speeds, those issues appear to be fixed now, and I find Vista’s Explorer to be much snappier. Multi-threading means Explorer doesn’t grind to a halt any more. I also find Explorer far more usable than it was in XP. Some XP loyalists disagree, but I think they’re crazy.

8. You’ve got a new system. Before you try to put XP on a new machine, it’s worth giving a test run on the stuff that matters and seeing if Vista works.

I’ll admit, I wish this list were longer, and I hope that with Windows 7, it is. But is it worth waiting for Windows 7? I don’t think so – not given that past experience, even on the Mac with its more controlled environment and musical focus, suggests that any OS transition takes time. The day Windows 7 ships will likely be a lot like the first day any OS ships – fraught with compatibility problems. Vista is, at least, finally reaching maturity, and I hope that Microsoft continues to ship patches where they’re needed.

Conclusion

I brought up the Mac just to reiterate something that’s obvious but important: musicians rarely upgrade to a new OS on day one, period, regardless of platform. (Even on desktop Linux, in fact, most stable music and audio systems are using distribution releases behind the latest, fanciest, "experimental" release.) The good news is, we’re not alone — Ed Bott observes today that businesses like Intel holding off on Vista are repeating cautious behavior from the past. Frankly, I’m with them. (I’ve had to make a conscious effort to adopt things too early so I can write about them!)

In short, if you held off on upgrading to Vista, it’s paid off.

If you’re happy on XP, there’s really no pressure to leave.

But I can happily say that, at this point, you can at least consider Vista. I don’t think it’s the doomsday release some made it out to be — though, in fairness, the way it shipped in the beginning I was inclined to agree with them.

And, ironically, at the end of the day I don’t really notice that much which OS I’m using. I’ve got some XP, some Vista, some Mac OS. CDM contributors Liz Knight, Mike Una, and Motion editor Jaymis all use multiple operating systems, too. The fact that we don’t notice? A very good thing, and a testament to the work developers have done to make sure that’s the case. And a far cry from the OS-centric turf wars regularly going on on the blogosphere. But then, we have more interesting things to discuss.

A big thanks to Noel Borthwick at Cakewalk and Robin Vincent at Rain Recording for providing some feedback as I wrote this. The opinions expressed are my own, but I encourage you to disagree — in fact, we’re looking for as much data on musicians and operating systems on all platforms as we can possibly muster, so don’t be shy.

Now, back to music.

Previous Resources on CDM

Summing up some of the growing pains OSes have been having lately:

Digidesign Talks Latest Windows, Mac Releases, Compatibility, Drivers

Fix for Mac Audio Dropouts: Roll Back Tiger AirPort Support

Blame Apple, Not Your Driver Maker, But Leopard Fix May Be Close

And specifically Vista-related:

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

Vista Bug Squash: Fix Driver Installation Problems with Class-Compliant Devices

Windows Sound Glitches Explained, Plus Glitches and the Fight-or-Flight Response

Microsoft Rolls Out USB Fixes for Vista Now; Not Everything Waiting for SP1

Cakewalk Vista Musicians’ Resource Page, Lots of Vista Drivers

How to Kill Windows Vista Bottlenecks: Pt. II, Stop the Disk Churning

How to Kill Windows Vista Bottlenecks: Pt. I, Aero and Display Issues

Vista “Content Protection” DRM Won’t Impact Music Production, Says Microsoft and You

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

Background:

Fortunately, on Tiger there’s a more specific temporary fix.

Tiger Fix: Musician Georgi Marinov has posted step-by-step instructions for reverting the AirPort Extreme Update to the previous release (2007-004). This fix will work only for Tiger users, apparently on specific MacBook Pro and Mac mini models.

tiger airport audio dropouts fix

I’d personally like to see Apple add some facility for uninstalling updates on all releases, as some other operating systems do. (Yes, you can use Time Machine, but that’s more of an argument for building this feature into Software Update.) But regardless, with any OS and any update (and certainly with this unsupported procedure), be sure to backup before applying any update to a critical machine.

If you do apply this, let us know if it works for you.

Previously:

Mac OS X 10.5.2: Music and Audio Problems on Apple Laptops? (Or Blame AirPort?)

Mac Audio Glitches: Serato Reports; Avoid 10.5.2, AirPort For Now

Photo: Telstar Logistics. (Hey, it was either that shot of SFO airport or another apple or tiger or something silly.)

Update: via Kris on comments, it appears the newest ("Penryn") Apple laptops are unaffected, presumably a side effect of using Broadcom chips. (That’s not to say the chip is to blame, but the software support for the different chips might be.)

Here’s the Serato report:

Mac OS X Version 10.5.2 not officially supported

Scratch LIVE users have reported various problems, including increased USB dropouts, after installing the 10.5.2 update of Mac OS X.

While these are yet to be confirmed and followed up with Apple, it is currently not recommended that users update to 10.5.2.

Users who have already updated and are experiencing problems should start a topic in the help forum to let us know the details and receive technical support.

In case this comes as a surprise to anyone, it shouldn’t. Real-time music applications are very probably the most timing-dependent of any consumer application. If only we could get every software engineer in the world to do real-time music making. (Well, at least a fair number do.)

Speaking of real-time, we appear to be getting this news close to real-time. Be sure to send detailed results to software you’re working with — as precise as possible — and hopefully this issue will be resolved soon. And be sure to comment here, as well, as all that data really is helpful.

AirPort fix upcoming? If it makes you feel any better, 10.5.x Leopard could generally screw up your AirPort, too. MacFixIt reports that 10.5.3 will resolve these issues and suggests some fixes. I hope that music playback issues get on Apple’s priority list with these fixes, as well, with these other fixes — rather than music users getting left by the wayside. At least AirPort seems to be the target of the updates, which suggests that whatever is causing this issue may be in the process of getting fixed, as well.

Digidesign Pro Tools LE 6.9.2 now supports Mac OS X 10.4.1 Tiger (LE is the Pro Tools software that runs on Mbox and 002 hardware.) (via Harmony Central) Pro Tools TDM software already supports Tiger for Pro Tools|HD systems; non-HD systems have been unsupported for some time. So, what’s missing? There’s no support yet for Pro Tools M-Powered, the Pro Tools variant for use on M-Audio hardware; Digi promises this in an upcoming release. It’s a little confusing that M-Powered would be different enough from LE to require a separate release; it’s too bad there isn’t one LE version that supports both. How about a unified release of LE/M-Powered for Pro Tools 7, Digi?

Details and free download from Digidesign

Contrary to popular belief, Digidesign ain’t the only game in town when it comes to hardware DSP for effects and instruments. Universal Audio writes us to say that today they’ve updated their UAD-1 DSP system; version 3.9 adds support for Mac OS X Tiger. Users of Logic Pro 7.1 and the upcoming Live 5 will enjoy better support for the UAD-1 on their end, too, thanks to new latency compensation in each of those packages.

There’s a goodie in the new release, too: an emulation of the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble stompbox, for creating analog-style, wide-stereo effects. The CE-1 was developed by UA in partnership with Roland, the first of three promised stompboxes. For those of you who sing the Song of Roland, I’m sure you’ll crave this. (The update includes a 14-day demo; you’ll have to shell out the US$99 for chorusing after that. If you’re buying a UAD-1 new, there’s a free compressor promotion through the end of June.)

By the way, two things I like about the UAD-1. First, it’s got just one, big vector chip for DSP, saving some of the typical bottlenecks on DSP cards. Second, their slogan is “Analog Ears, Digital Minds,” which seems in keeping with the spirit of CDM. Or . . . wait . . . are we more “Analog Minds, Digital Ears.” Or . . . “Analog Ears, No Mind.” Well, something like that. So, any UAD-1 aficionados out there? Give us a buzz.

Deja vu, anyone? The same day that plasq has released their solution for sending audio over a network, Wormhole2, the new Tiger-ready version of Jack is out. Unlike Wormhole, Jack is Open Source, though it’s also Mac- (and Linux-) only; no Windows. Mac users, you don’t have to choose between the two: Jack is great for connecting audio apps to one another, not just computers, so you might use Jack for inter-app audio and Wormhole2 for network audio, if, like me, you’ve got a PC around, too. Jack developer Dan Nigrin writes that the new Jack is “compatible with Tiger, including its distributed audio devices feature… and including audio-over-network capabilities as before.” Read more for full specs (and a call for developers!).

Dan writes:

“There’s a few additional bug fixes, as well as the ability to now use Tiger’s “Aggregate Audio Devices” – this is helpful if you had a previously incompatible USB Audio device – please see the documentation for details.”

“I’d like to acknowledge the beta testing team that helped us in
testing this version, as well as to recognize the efforts of
Stéphane Letz, who is now essentially single-handedly updating the
Jack OS X code! (If you are a developer willing and able to assist
on future versions, please contact us!).”

Download and more info

Stay tuned as I look at the various network-audio / MIDI solutions available. So far, this is a bit apples-to-oranges: Wormhole has Windows support, Jack does not; Jack does app connections, Wormhole does not; Wormhole looks easier to configure for network audio. You may want both. More soon.

M-Audio lists compatibility with “10.4.1.” Interestingly, there’s nothing in the version history that suggests what was changed for Tiger support; many users had success with the previous drivers. There are other enhancements that are not related to Tiger, so users of 10.2.8 and later should upgrade. This includes issues after waking from sleep as some CDM readers had reported (not Tiger-specific).