M-Audio has actually gotten in touch in response to frustrations about incompatibilities with OS updates — updates which, admittedly, have recently been frequent and sometimes troublesome on both the Windows and Mac sides. Niels Larsen, General Manger at M-Audio, responds in comments with some specifics on where drivers are, some new drivers that were released literally today, and some comments on the OS situation in general.  (I’ve copied it here just in case you missed it in comments.)

I’ve also heard from Digidesign/M-Audio public relations; I hope to have additional updates soon.

This is well worth reading whether or not you own M-Audio hardware.

Speaking of drivers, PreSonus announced today that they’re allowing users to register for open beta drivers. They’re hardly the first to do this — M-Audio has done the same historically, even if I’m not thrilled with their pace at the moment. But this raises an interesting question: could opening a beta help improve driver quality and get updates in users’ hands faster? Do audio users really want to "beta-test" drivers in the first place? (I guess that depends on how mature the "beta" release is.) We’ll have to see how PreSonus fares.

How is PreSonus doing with released drivers? Reasonably well from what I can see — and what I’ve heard. But they do have some blips. There isn’t a Vista driver for their FaderPort or V-Fire, and there’s no Leopard driver for V-Fire though the rest of their product line is up-to-date with Vista and Leopard.

How have PreSonus drivers treated you? I see a number of improvements in terms of stability on Mac OS on their downloads page via recent releases.

There aren’t many positive ways to spin this: if you’re a user of Digidesign and M-Audio products and looking to use current operating systems, very often you’re out of luck. In some cases, this isn’t so surprising — given issues with Leopard, I actually suggest running Mac OS X Tiger if you can until some issues are resolved. And while I have one machine here running Vista happily, suffice to say Windows XP remains the choice for many, as drivers from a variety of vendors mature.

Still, I think it’s bad to see drivers missing altogether this late in the game — especially in the case of Windows XP SP3, a minor update to a six year-old OS. Maybe some of this isn’t M-Audio’s fault — maybe OS driver development needs to be easier. But either way, when a major music hardware vendor is this far out of sync with the software shipping on new machines, it’s a problem. And while their loss may be good for their competitors in audio hardware, it’s not terribly good for the music tech industry in general.

(Okay, Digidesign/M-Audio — before you start throwing things at me, I’m not saying this to be mean or to single you out, I’m saying this because I hear this all the time from your customers. I think if there are problems on the Apple/Microsoft side, then that’s worth examining, too. But I do think this is a situation that could stand some improvement.)

Native Instruments is releasing some cheaper ways of getting at their software guitar modeler, Guitar Rig, in the form of a cheaper software version and a hardware bundle:

• Guitar Rig 3 XE is a "lite" version of Guitar Rig, focused on the basics — 5 guitar/bass amps, 12 cabinets, and 21 effects. It also some of the "helper" modules from Guitar Rig, including a metronome, tapedeck, and tuner — but no looping module, which is one of my favorites. (See the full list.) US$99 on its own.
• Guitar Session bundles the LE software with Cubase 4 LE, some pop drums for KORE player via a soundpack, and the Session I/O audio hardware. US$250 for the bundle, available June 1 worldwide.

It’s been almost a year since Windows Vista was released to consumers. We know that nearly half of our readers use Windows, so the future of the OS is something we take very seriously — even if many of you, for now, are staying cautious and working (happily, in many cases) on XP. We’ll be examining Vista from various angles over the coming weeks, both measuring the OS and telling you how to make the most of it if for music you are giving it a go.

To start out, we’ve again caught up with Noel Borthwick. Noel CTO of Cakewalk, and one of the most knowledgeable experts on Windows technical details. (He’s also a veteran Linux developer, so his perspective on operating systems goes beyond those from Redmond.)

When we talked to Noel this time last year, a lot of what was new still hadn’t been tested in the real world. Now, Vista has been in the hand of users, and there’s both some good news and bad. A year of Vista has meant a year of improvements, both from Microsoft and third parties. In my own testing, for instance, what began as a disastrous experience running Vista earlier in the year has now become more comparable to XP. (I’m currently on Vista SP1 release candidate on a modest PC desktop.) But there are still areas that could use improvement — and while general Vista improvements were welcome, I think there’s still the real question of whether Vista offers enough that’s unique to compete with its real rival, XP.

We’ll revisit some of those broad issues, but first let’s actually get the technical story, and clear up some misconceptions.

Wavosaur is a free audio editor for Windows that just hit version 1.0. It’s really good stuff: not only is it free, but the whole app is tiny (488kb), it’s designed to fit on a portable USB key, it hosts VSTs, and it’s an elegant waveform editor reminiscent of early versions of SoundForge. Even if you’ve got a wave editor of choice, might be worth sticking this on your USB key when you’re on the go — especially since it supports Windows 98, XP, and Vista. And it doesn’t have an installer or touch the Registry.

I just gave it a spin on my Vista install, and really enjoy it — clean interface, lots of features.

Basic features:

• Multiple file editing
• All the editing and processing you need (convert channels, normalize, cut and paste, trim, fade in / out, the usual)
• Pitch shift, vocal removal (karaoke, whoo!), loop points and markers
• ASIO, VST support
• Support for MP3, Akai, Amiga, and many other file formats
• Analysis features (2D, 3D)

Hmmm, look out — some more popular wave editors might get a run for their money. Thanks to Art from Russia for the tip!

Wavosaur Site

Bless Nintendo for making the Wii controller: inexpensive, lots of internal sensor data (motion sensing, tilt sensing, buttons), elegant design, and standard Bluetooth support allowing it to be used with Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Now there’s free and open source software for making the most of your Wiimote as a musical instrument. First up: Wiinstrument, a multi-purpose percussion instrument, now available for all three operating systems (a Windows version was recently added).

• Plays percussion / drums with gestures
• Use an (in-development) internal sampler with WAV files, or trigger other software via MIDI
• Use tilt for control changes
• Supports tilt, velocity (how much force you use when you move your Wiimote), with acceleration from both the Wiimote and nunchuk
• It works with Mac, Windows, and Linux, via a standard OpenGL-based interface, thanks to the awesome 2D OpenGL library Gosu. (Programmers, take note.)

Of course, drums are just the beginning — you could use this to trigger clips, grooves, visualist videos and animations, whatever. And it comes with demos, tutorials, source code, the lot.

Wiinstrument Release Information
GarageBand tutorial (relevant to other apps, too)
Support information for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux
Via thread with the creator on our forums

Here is in action.

But, you say, that’s all well and good, but it’s not … air guitar. Today is your lucky day:

I consider myself operating system atheistic: I refuse to believe in an operating system unless solid, empirical data is presented proving it exists works. Okay, actually … I spend a considerable amount of time doing production on both Mac and Windows, and even some time working with Linux (not to mention administering Linux servers).

But we’d like to know more about what you use in your music. Our site analytics don’t tell us a whole lot: they tend to sample random users, not regulars, and if you use a work PC to browse, we may not know what you use at home for music.

For that reason, we’d love to have you tell us more about how you work. This isn’t a race, so no need to stuff the ballot box for the OS you like. (And we already know you use some obscure OSes — and some of you even browse CDM from your iPhone, Nintendo Wii, Sun Solaris workstation, Amiga, and PSP, based on our server stats). Anyway, an OS is just as interesting if few of you are using it as if many are. No, the idea is to get an honest metric of what you’re using. We’ll happily share the results.

The survey is now closed. Thanks for your help! We’ll have results up soon.

Much of the OS discussion tends to devolve into generalities, philosophical debates, and religious wars. We’re going to try something different: wherever possible, squash the bugs. Here’s a tip for Windows Vista that finally allowed many of my USB devices to work properly.

Many music devices, including simple audio interfaces and (in particular) USB MIDI keyboards, don’t require drivers. These are sometimes called class-compliant devices, as they’re covered by standardized classes that describe what they do. There actually are drivers for them, but they’re provided by the operating system. And that’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, many people have found that Windows Vista has problems finding the drivers for these devices. Here’s a fix that works for me (and, apparently many others):