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

Minor releases and bugfixes don’t generally make CDM news, but this is a special occasion. Ableton founder and CEO Gerhard Behles got everyone’s attention this week by making the rare public announcement that Ableton’s development team was temporarily halting work on new features to focus on fixing bugs. That has prompted some seriously impassioned discussion, on the Ableton forum but also here on CDM. Look past some of the hyperbola and name-calling, and you’ll see some insightful comments on both sides. In fact, the whole affair reveals a lot about how music software customers view bugs, updates, support, release cycles, and pricing – developers, take note. Naturally, some of the disagreement comes from whether or not users are experiencing bugs: those that aren’t, as always, are happier. But there’s some common ground, too.

Also sobering: read further into comments, and you’ll see who can really lose out in credibility when stuff doesn’t work the way people expect, even more than a developer – music tech journalists (so, um, yes, folks like me). Not to apologize for myself or my colleagues, but one challenge has long been that it’s difficult for one user to find reliability issues. As the comment thread itself demonstrates, some people are blissfully happy whilst others are in absolute agony; look through the specifics of the changelog, and you’ll see why. One person, based on their behavior in the software, could see dramatic, regular crashes, while another sees nothing at all. Now, CDM has an advantage there – we can operate 24/7/365, we don’t have a weeks-long delay waiting for print, and we have a complete feedback loop with you. If you’re finding issues, I want to hear about them.

New release: Late yesterday, the 8.1.1 release moved from beta to final release, meaning you can go grab it now from the latest releases download section. Synthtopia has posted the full changelog.

Some highlights:

• Fixes various problems with the integration of Novation’s Launchpad
• Fixes a number of somewhat specific but showstopper crashes, like “Loading a Max device would crash if Pluggo was already active. I count fifteen instances of the word “crash,” which is a serious issue.
• Begins to address some reliability/performance issues with Drum Racks; specifically, “Having a Live set with particular Drum Racks could increase the CPU usage of the main thread, which would result in very slow graphical updates.” Because of our fondness for Drum Racks, both Dave Dri and I have run into performance problems that would lead us not to use this feature onstage.

I think it’s difficult to make a sweeping statement about something as relative as the reliability of the software. What you can say is that Ableton themselves have acknowledged this set of releases isn’t up to their own expectations, they’re committed to working on improving the situation in exclusion of other factors, and bug fixes are now coming in a steady stream.

In fact, “beatsme” in comments counts up the fixes since the Live 8 release on April 2 of this year, marking 42 improvements (0.16/day) and some 261 bug fixes (nearly one per day). You can read into that whatever you like, but the bottom line is, those issues are now fixed.

8.1.1 is apparently not the release to which Gerhard was referring when he talked about halting forward development; we expect fixes to continue to appear over the coming weeks.

Of course, all of Ableton’s DAW competitors release similar point updates, so any question about the relative reliability of Live should also be asked of other software, as well.

I do have one concern, too: with so many fixes relating to the integration of Ableton’s Launchpad and APC40, why not focus controller features on tools that will work with any hardware? And why not allow users to customize scripts? Many in the Ableton forum are capable of devising their own solutions and providing their own support for those solutions. I don’t think that’s unreasonable to ask, because many applications have focused hardware controller support on generic solutions in this way. I don’t believe there’s a “right answer” to that question – Ableton has made a decision they think makes sense, and that allows them to devote resources to supporting certain hardware units above and beyond what they previously had basic MIDI controllers. But I would still like to see controller support in Live in general mature beyond where it is today.

About those new features… Many readers have asked whether the emphasis on bug fixes will have any bearing on announcements at the NAMM conference in January. I haven’t heard any indication of that; Ableton is planning a party with Serato, and I still expect we’ll see an Ableton-Serato announcement on Thursday, January 14. I’ll be meeting with Ableton at the show to talk about that and any other news.

Other releases: We’ll keep an eye out for other releases, and will check in with Ableton for a big picture of the situation in a couple of months after some of the development dust settles.

Your mileage may vary: Please, if you’re testing new Live versions, let us know your experience. Be specific. And be sure to follow up with whether a thread tracking this bug is open on the Ableton forums.

New features are great, and yes, it’s often us users asking for them. But reliability and stability are more important to most of us. It’s therefore a welcome surprise to see Ableton’s CEO post the following message on Ableton’s forum today, announcing that the company will put new features on hold until some reliability issues are fixed. For developers other than Ableton, it should be telling to see how users respond — if this kind of frankness inspires confidence rather than concern, it could mean that talking more openly about bugs and how to fix them could open up more dialog between developers and users:

Update, 12/29: One release with some fixes is already available, in the form of 8.1.1. It appears to address a showstopper bug I personally encountered with Drum Rack performance under certain situations. I’m testing that fix and others. I don’t believe this is the only update to 8.x that Ableton is planning, or the one to which this message refers, but it is a start. Check out the downloads page.

Some of you have experienced and reported problems with Live 8 several months ago that we have still failed to fix. This is both painful and necessary for us to discuss. We owe you sincere apologies, as well as an explanation and outlook for the future.

Ableton values quality over innovation. Our engineers will stop whatever they are doing to fix a bug when they become aware of it. They must, however, rely on a process that prepares the incoming information and funnels it to them appropriately. Establishing and maintaining this process is the responsibility of management — particularly us, Bernd and Gerhard — and this is where things have gone wrong while we let our attention divert to ambitious new projects.

Our apologies also extend to both the Ableton developers and tech support colleagues because they want to be proud of software and service that users love.

We have now decided to:

• suspend all development towards new features while the whole team joins forces to address the current issues. This effort is open ended and will result in a free Live 8 update;
• make process changes to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.

We hope this plan finds your understanding and agreement. We’d like to wish you a very happy holiday season and a wonderful 2010!

Gerhard Behles, CEO
Bernd Roggendorf, CTO

Pausing forward development to focus on bug fixes in and of itself is not an unprecedented move – it’s just usually not something you talk about. So I have to applaud not only Ableton making the sacrifice to focus on reliability first, but also that they’re being frank about acknowledging issues. I’m honestly not entirely certain just which issues they’re describing, because I don’t have the benefit of the big picture that comes from handling Ableton’s own tech support. Once Ableton does make progress on this upcoming free update, though, I’ll be sure to share what changes are included.

As seen on the Ableton forums, via Bjorn Vayner / The Covert Operators on Twitter.

Clarification: I should hasten to add, as I realized this post could be misread — talking about and fixing bugs is a good thing, but having bugs is not. Ableton, as any music developer, depends on the goodwill and trust of its users. If in fact bugs have made current Live versions less stable, or have adversely impacted the perception of Live, that leaves the ball in Ableton’s court to resolve. To me, the proof is in the release. If you have issues you’ve fully documented that have not be resolved, to which this post may be referring, we’d love to hear about them (emphasis on “documented” and “fully” — let us know exactly the issue and how to reproduce it). Likewise, we’ll watch for fixes. All software has bugs, and being a computer musician means being able to manage reliability and stability to make the computer an effective instrument.

If you are unable to read CDMotion, you’re not alone. createdigitalmotion.com’s domain was not properly renewed by our previous registrar, 1&1, because of a foul-up with closing out an account with them for hosting. (Early in CDM’s history, the site – small at the time – was hosted by 1&1.) I’ve verified with 1&1 that this domain isn’t getting sold to anyone or anything like that — it’s in the ICANN’s redemption period, so I’m working on getting it back. It’s an embarrassing situation, and my apologies to readers. All the rest of CDM’s domains are happy and healthy in one place; the transfer of this one had simply been botched (by me). We’ll certainly correct the issue and keep you posted.

Question for Internet geeks out there — I am a bit disturbed that while 1&1 says it’s in redemption, they say it’ll take up to five business days to get it back, AND they appear to have parked a search page there. I thought that the domain simply shouldn’t resolve. Got any tips on expediting or what this shady business is with Sedo Parking and DomCollect? Let us know. Maybe, as with other things we’ve learned over the years publishing online, we can at least guide others. -PK

The tricky thing about introducing a new feature is that you almost immediately hear from users about other features that would go well with that feature. (There’s a children’s story that goes this way.) The folks at Cakewalk have done what I think is a pretty amazing job of working through a big feature list, and throwing in additional goodies users get without even asking. They’ve also listened to users and been thorough in fixing issues – some quite particular – in 8.5. The result is that SONAR 8.5.2 brings a mature version of some significantly-changed features, and an unusually significant amount of stuff for a “point” release. If 8.5 was beginning to feel like 9.0, 8.5.2 definitely does.

Flash back for a moment to SONAR 8.5 and updates, which made enough of an impact among die-hard Cakewalk lovers that we started to see bizarre fan videos about it. As previewed back in September, 8.5′s banner features were a step sequencer, an arpeggiator, a Matrix View grid for triggering MIDI and audio clips (yes, reminiscent of a program that rhymes with Sable Bun Drive), a new sampled drum instrument, AudioSnap for tuning the timing of audio, and nice new effects strips.

Matrix View, an ambitious new feature, was admittedly not entirely baked when it shipped, and saw a set of performance and functionality fixes with 8.5.1. But with 8.5.2, nearly all of those banner features get improved, with additional bonuses, to boot. Some of my favorites:

• 70+ new impulses for the lovely Perfect Space convolution reverb
• Swing individual arpeggiators
• Combine Matrix View cells with probabilistic Step Sequencer patterns for some generative music-making
• Drag cells from Matrix View into Track View – a bit like going from Ableton Live’s Session View to Arrange View, but in a more conventional DAW workflow

The full list of enhancements, tweaks, and fixes is utterly enormous. Now, of course, it would have been nice to see 8.5 ship with some of these issues, but I will say Cakewalk has shown some attention to detail and gotten quite a lot right. I’m finishing up a review of 8.5x based on the 8.5.2 version now. So, as I polish that off – any remaining questions you’d like answered?

Rather than just review the tool, as well, I’ve been working in my own material and with the folks at Cakewalk to share some tips, so stay tuned.

SONAR 8.5.2 Update Changelog
SONAR 8.5.1 Matrix View Update
8.5.2 Update on the Cakewalk Blog

Not all users upgrade to the same version at the same time – least of all when it’s a paid upgrade. So, it’s welcome to see that a number of improvements and fixes are making it to the previous version of Live, 7.x. Not only does CDM count numerous Live users among its readers, but users of 7.x are especially frequent, and we’ve been getting your questions – like whether you’ll be able to use the Novation Launchpad controller.

John Kuan, DJ and “culture industrialist,” alerts us that release 7.0.18 brings a lot of improvements, including:

• Support for the Novation Launchpad, Akai MPK line, and improvements for the APC
• Major bug fixes for the APC40 and Novation Remote SL under Mac OS (something I think I’d seen people complaining about in comments)
• Major, bug fixes for show-stopper crashes

There’s even an M-Audio Axiom Pro fix in there. In short, if you’re using 7.x, it looks like you want this upgrade. Full details on the Ableton forum:

Live 7.0.18 change log

And yes, this news is from last week, but it’s news to me.

Laptop musicians are feeling out of sync — literally. But we can work together to help the situation.

Computer music making can be an isolating experience. But when users try to use their eminently-mobile tools to play together in the same room, they often find that the technology resists. MIDI, as a serial protocol, isn’t designed for networked environments. Software interfaces are designed to be visible to only one user. Sharing between users rarely figures into designs. Input points are made to be single-user only.

And most importantly, just getting a couple of computers to sync can be a Herculean task — one that seems to have gotten worse with advanced computer software rather than better. In short, for all the technology we have today, we’ve actually regressed from the state of interoperability 20 years ago.

I’ve been hearing more and more frustration over sync, as people begin to collaborate with multiple computers as they would with a small ensemble of instruments. Ableton Live is the most frequent example, but it’s only one case – and I suspect part of the fault is that people are more likely to try to sync multiple copies of Live. When I spoke to Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore in the spring for Keyboard, Martin complained that they had trouble syncing his Apple Logic sessions with other band members using Pro Tools and Ableton. This weekend in Los Angeles at the DubSpot sessions, Glitch Mob’s Justin Boreta talked about the issues that group has had with multiple copies of Live.

Synchronization is, by definition, a tough thing to do. But musical engineering is replete with challenges; it’s no longer acceptable to simply say “live with it” and walk away. It seems we need both better shared knowledge about what sync is how to make it work, and better engineering solutions on the software and protocols side to support the way users want to work. And yes, we need a new sync standard that goes beyond what’s presently available in MIDI alone.

Focusing this discussion, I just got an essay in my inbox that I think focuses the issue. I will try to speak to Ableton’s engineers about the matter, but this isn’t really about Ableton alone, so I’m posting it here first. We could use more data about how you’re working with various software and hardware, what techniques you’ve developed, and what frustrations you’ve had. We have a wide community here of users and developers (and a whole lot of you are both).

Mark Kunoff writes:

I’m writing to you today about an issue which I believe has been a sore spot for many Ableton Live users – *reliable* syncing of two or more computers – particularly for those of us who are attempting to sync for the purposes of *live performance*.

My musical partner Patrick Petro and I (together we perform as “Othership”) have been struggling with this issue for several years now. At present time, we have a decent solution using midi time code. Initially we attempted to use Midi “clock” but our friend Steve Duda (partner of Deadmau5 in BSOD) informed us, “using Midi clock is as reliable as syncing to a boat motor.” He informed us that in BSOD, he and Deamau5 have reliable sync between their 2 laptops using MTC, although the main drawback is the inability to fluctuate tempo – you must run at a consistent tempo the whole time. (You may be aware of this already, but Steve is the person responsible for ‘Molar’ the incredible step and loop sequencer for the Monome, was a programmer for Devine Machine and has worked for many renown artists in the music industry such as Trent Reznor. We are very fortunate to benefit from his consultation!)

Currently we are both using Macbooks and syncing via Ethernet with Audio File Engineering’s “Backline” app to generate MTC. This method has been about 95% reliable, but after reading an article on Ableton Tweets (http://abletontweets.com/post/126300941/why-midi-sync-over-ip-may-not-be-a-good-idea and our response – http://abletontweets.com/post/224247258/midi-sync-in-ableton-live-why-so-complicated) we are going to acquire a dedicated external device to generate MTC such as a Motu Timepiece.

I feel strongly that Ableton has not addressed these issues sufficiently and could do a better job of educating their user base as to the challenges that face performers in achieving reliable sync. I’m not expecting a walk in the park, but as of yet Ableton has not provided comprehensive documentation regarding these issues and places most of the responsibility on users to figure it out for themselves. We are (and have been) perfectly willing to educate ourselves but for the most part this issue remains elusive to the majority of Ableton Live users.

The Ableton Live forum posts regarding sync are fraught with dissension and are excruciating to read to say the least. I feel I’m empathetic to the complexities of programming audio applications, but in my estimation Ableton tech support’s explanations toward this issue have been mostly open ended. Many users report these issues only to report back that Ableton’s tech support doesn’t respond. I have experienced this as well. Certainly there are enough customers who want a better solution.

I feel it’s time to launch a concerted effort to organize users and demand that Ableton addresses this issue once and for all. Perhaps this solution wouldn’t even involve midi at all. Ideally this would be an open protocol such as OSC, but I wouldn’t be opposed to a proprietary solution – just as long as there is a reliable one.

The main purpose of this correspondence is seek your and CDM’s assistance in sponsoring an effort to encourage Ableton to address this issue once and for all. I feel CDM could be quite helpful in garnering leverage toward this effort (a simple blog post, or ideally a dedicated section) to organize users and to demand better sync ability between two (or even multiple) laptops running Live – even from unlike computer manufacturers. I’m sure you know artists with valuable expertise in this area.

Even if the issues regarding sync via midi are insurmountable, there have to be CDM readers who have developed reliable methods of two or more persons performing with Ableton Live and it would be great to have one centralized portal where discussions of working methods can be discovered.

Thank you for your time.

Again, my personal intention is not to single out Ableton — I’ve heard similar complaints about other scenarios, and moreover, I think the “open-ended” tech support response occurs when there isn’t an easy solution. Tech support alone often can’t deal with something as multi-faceted as sync, so it’s time to engage other users in this, as well.

I’ve also spoken to Owen Vallis and other folks about how sync could be executed more effectively over network protocols, and specifically how the time stamp feature in OpenSoundControl might be used in conjunction with MIDI clock messages.

To kick things off, let’s comment here, but I’m also setting up a special Noisepages group for users to share experiences and tips:

Sync or Swim Group [noisepages]

(Incidentally, CDM contributor Matt Ganucheau is joining me Saturday at a WordPress developer intensive here in New York, so we’ll be picking up development techniques to work on the Noisepages community, too.)

Jump in, say hello, and let’s talk about how we can make sync work in real-life musical situations.

I’ll also be talking to more artists and developers about their experiences and suggestions, and will pass along your feedback, so expect a report back. In the meantime:

1. Are you routinely trying to sync multiple musicians?
2. What software (and hardware) tools do you use?
3. What have been some frustrations?
4. What techniques have worked, or what have you learned you might want to pass along to other users at various skill levels?

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

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

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

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

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

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

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

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

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

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

So… relax. And enjoy your weekend.

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

http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Compatibility Statement

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

Please note the following non-critical issues:

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

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

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

Hardware Note

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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