I know some people were wondering about this – it’s now official. Digidesign reports Pro Tools 8 is actually shipping now, with the integrated MIDI edit window, score notation editor (via recently-acquired Sibelius) right in the DAW, bundled instruments and synths, some amp simulation, “Elastic Pitch,” and additional insert slots.

None of this is huge news to users of competitive products, with the notable exception of Sibelius notation integration. I’m very keen to hear how people actually use that, because the score facilities in tools like Logic aren’t competitive with favored tools like Sibelius and Finale, in my experience. On the other hand, many people are perfectly happy keeping their scoring and audio editing workflows separate from one another – particularly if you’re using Pro Tools for audio editing and Sibelius to write that new string quartet. So as this ships, do let us know how you’re using it, or if it’s a non-starter.

So, what does it cost to upgrade?

Pro Tools HD 8 Upgrade: $249 US
Pro Tools LE/M-Powered Upgrade: $149 US
Pro Tools M-Powered Full Version: $299 US (for use with M-Audio audio interfaces)

If you bought Pro Tools systems or upgrades since October 3, the new release is (rightfully) free.

Of course, that still means you might still be tempted to just go buy one of the cheaper Mbox products with Pro Tools LE included. There are also upgrades for the Music and DV bundles.

Note compatibility: Vista SP1 (32-bit only, still no 64-bit) is supported, as is Mac OS X 10.5.5. 10.5.6 isn’t ready yet, and Vista requires Business or Ultimate, which as I said in the past I still find pretty odd given that Home Premium is basically identical from a support standpoint. (Digi’s choosing to be a bit literal with that.) On the other hand, only Leopard support is available, whereas on Windows XP Home and Professional remain supported with XP SP3.

Once this arrives, I’ll be curious to hear about you. I’m happy doing my work in SONAR and Live at the moment, so I don’t think I’d be a fair judge, but someone who uses Pro Tools daily would be. Be in touch.

Pro Tools 8 Shipping [News @ Digidesign.com]

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

Any computer – Mac, Windows, and Linux – can experience degraded audio experience pretty fast if a background task starts stealing CPU or a driver is misbehaving. In contrast, a fully-tweaked Windows machine, equipped with a set of tools to diagnose potential problems, can be rock-solid for audio performance. That’s an especially big deal for those of us using computers for live music.

I think a lot of people’s Windows experience is especially colored by bad drivers, overzealous antivirus and security software they don’t actually need, and the crapware installed by many PC vendors. I know I had that experience when I came back to Windows a few years ago, following a long hiatus. (I’m now cross-platform.) I did what many people do: installed some ridiculous, bloated security suite from Symantec. I was blown away by how fast Windows was when I just turned the darned thing off. Linux and Mac OS are happily not cursed by these beasts, but any computer music setup, regardless of platform, can benefit from tuning what’s running and making sure music software comes first.

I recently put together a list of essential Windows tools for Rain Recording, one of a handful of custom PC builders that focus on music and audio customers. The first part of the list doesn’t include any music software per se – these are just essential parts of my PC tool belt to keep things running smoothly.

All of these tools are free, so they’re well worth a download.

The quick list:

1. Microsoft Process Explorer, at SysInternals: This should be your first stop for keeping an eye on CPU activity, watching what processes are active, and keeping your CPU fully free to focus on audio processing. The whole SysInternals site is an essential resource for Windows troubleshooting and information, too.

2. DPC Latency Checker: Getting unexplained audio glitches and dropouts on your PC? A lot of the time, hardware problems with other hardware may actually be the culprit. DPC Latency Checker performs a metric on Deferred Procedure Calls, a symptom of misbehaving hardware and drivers. Even a slightly-unseated PCI card can cause issues, so software isn’t always to blame.

3. Enabled/disabled VST folders: For VST plug-ins, I maintain an “experimental” folder of everything I’m playing with and then a “known safe” configuration. Then I keep a stable, installed directory I can point my hosts at.

4/5. Revo Uninstaller, Absolute Uninstaller: Getting rid of software is always a liberating experience. Revo wins points for being insanely thorough; Absolute has a nice batch-installer for quickly removing a lot of stuff.

6. Comodo Firewall Pro: This free firewall is well-behaved, light on your CPU, has powerful features, and can actually be more effective than traditional antivirus and anti-spyware software at protecting you from online threats. (And since, unlike those products, it doesn’t do resource-intensive scans, it has less of an impact on performance.)

7. Not Problematic Antivirus: The most important advice here is what you don’t run — namely, overaggressive security suites set to consume more resources than they should. If you must run antivirus, AVG8 Free is a good way to go — that is, after you turn some features off; see TweakGuides.com’s tweaked install configuration). See comments for some discussion on this point, and I think I may in fact revise my advice to go back to Avast. See also: avast! Home Edition, the free version. I’ll be testing this resource-wise versus my mostly turned-off AVG8 Free and will let you know how it goes.

8. Quick Startup: While removing software, you’ll also want to keep an eye on annoying processes that launch when you boot – or, alternatively, add stuff you do want to load. Quick Startup is an especially friendly way to do this.

9. Microsoft Management Console: Not all services have an impact on performance, but I have found some that do. services.msc can help you run a lean, mean system setup.

10. TweakUAC (Vista only): User Account Control does have some security benefits – or it can be one of the major annoyances in Vista. With TweakUAC, you can remove annoying (and audio glitch-causing) prompts while still retaining some of those security benefits, or temporarily switch off UAC for compatibility with certain tools (like old installers that haven’t been updated).

I’ve got some other tips and usage ideas in the story for Rain. Let me know what you think of this

advice. Got favorite tools of your own I missed?

Essential Toolkit for Windows – Part 1: Non-Music Tools You’ll Want for Music [Rain Recording]

More installments are planned in this series – next up will be (finally) actual music tools, so getting into the fun stuff. And I’ll have some configuration tips, as well. I think parallel lists for Mac OS X and Linux may also be in order, although the needs are a bit different on those platforms.

The Asus Eee PC is unlikely to be your first choice of laptops for music. But it’s small, it’s cute, and it’s ridiculously cheap. Some CDM-reading computer enthusiasts are biting, as we found out in March when we asked you if you had turned the Eee PC into a music box.

On the Linux side, you’ve got lots of options. Best among these, CDM reader Dan Stowell has put together a comprehensive tutorial on using SuperCollider, the powerful, free sound synthesis engine. You can even add custom GUIs using a free Java-based tool. There are also plenty of DIY environments for music working nicely (Csound and Pd included, as well), meaning the Eee can very quickly become a programmable, dedicated sound machine and synth for the price of the cheapest closed-box, name-brand piece of music gear.

Linux also supports various music tools that lend themselves to a lower-end machine, like music tracker MilkyTracker. Check it out in videos on the Eee: Eee-PC MilkyTracker Xandros, more. (Thanks, emrox!)

The surprise is, full-blown Windows software holds its own. From the NI forums, a group of intrepid Guitar Rig 3 users have fired up XP and have a pretty usable, self-contained Guitar Rig computer:

Guitar Rig on Eee PC [Native Instruments forums; thanks to Jahmal Tonge for the tip!]

The trick is, you do need modded video drivers to make use of 1000×600 resolution, thus accommodating the user interface. Forum members also suggest avoiding the newer Atom model as they believe it will be slower. Then again, while this proof of concept is tantalizing, I’d probably hold out for more-powerful mini PCs coming out — and the fact that music works this well on this machine means it only gets better from here.

Computer Music Magazine did do a review of the Eee, and were a little more practical about the Eee’s downsides (though the resolution hack here helps at least with that problem). But then, the other way of looking at this is that the Eee is just the beginning. Plenty more budget mini-laptops are coming; already machines from HP and others close the gap with “conventional”, pricier laptops. Linux distributions may soon target these configurations (Ubuntu has promised a “remix”), and Microsoft has committed to keeping XP and Vista going on these machines, as well. And that means the price divide with computer music is getting erased fast.

It’s also important to note, however, that there’s really an apology to users. That almost never happens with any software developer. It’s impossible not to make some mistakes with the complexity of software development; everyone does that. Not everyone apologizes or communicates openly about the situation. This represents a real change in the level of communication from Digidesign and M-Audio, and I think they deserve some applause for that — it makes a difference. It doesn’t mean you can’t continue to be frustrated by specific support you may want, but at least it’s a step in the right direcition, and it means you can make informed choices with your production setup.

And as for Leopard, given the reports that we’re hearing, it might be more accurate to say Apple isn’t adequately supporting music rather than the other way around. There are some details on that situation, as well.

I’ve reproduced all of this, because there’s quite a lot of information here:

I’m Bob Langlie, the head of Customer Support and Services for Digidesign. I saw your blog post on createdigitalmusic.com discussing the current state of Digidesign and M-Audio driver development as well as OS compatibility, and I wanted to thank you for your input, as well as to respond directly to some of the important issues that you have raised.

First off, I think that your opening sentence sums things up pretty well: “There aren’t many positive ways to spin this.” We are behind in releasing a supported version of Pro Tools on Leopard, as well as on supporting Windows Vista on our HD systems. Additionally, it is more than fair to state that M-Audio is late with needed driver updates for Vista and Leopard. We at Digidesign and M-Audio want to apologize for these delays and let you know that we completely understand the frustration and disappointment being expressed in your post and the subsequent comments from your readers. It’s our number one job to provide quality tools to our customers that can help make them creative and successful in what they do, and it’s very frustrating (as well as damaging to our business) when we fail to deliver on that.

As you know, the Leopard release and its subsequent updates have been problematic for demanding real time applications. That said, we are working hard with Apple on Pro Tools Leopard support and should have a supported version out very soon pending the release of a much-discussed-on-the-rumor sites dot release from Apple and a few final days of testing. You can trust that we will publish a hard release date just as soon as we can.

Regarding communication around Leopard, we did post an apology and information on our User Forum from Dave Lebolt, our general manager in April, which explained the situation in detail; at that time we said we’d likely ship by June; we’re still on track for that pending Apple’s release. Just recently, David Gibbons (Digidesign’s VP of product marketing) posted to reiterate and update this news. If your readers haven’t seen that info, this is the link:

<http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1259137&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=186&fpart=1#1259137>

You’ll find the info starting in the second post down from the top.

As for Pro Tools|HD support on Vista, we don’t expect to be able to announce something on that front for a few more months.  We look carefully at the needs of the largest groups of our users, and try to fix the most widespread needs and problems first.  Unfortunately, the setbacks we have encountered with Leopard compatibility (and having to spend a lot of our resources and time on that) have caused significant delays to our plans for Vista and Pro Tools|HD.  We are at work on it, however, and will take the same proactive approach to providing info as early and as often as we can.  As mentioned by at least one of your posters, some high-end pros are not as focused on using the latest OS versions because they want to have a stable, non-changing environment (and will make changes only when things have settled).  Many of our higher-end Windows-based customers work in post production and have this mindset regarding Vista at this time.

With Vista Home Premium support, it is true that we say that it is not officially supported or tested, but we also have noted in the same compatibility document that we currently have seen no issues from the field with the Home Premium version.  Frankly, this is really driven by our desire to best utilize our testing resources well; doing so gives us greater reliability for product sets that do get qualified on what is a very large test grid.  We made a conscious decision to do our full regression testing on Vista Ultimate and Professional knowing that there was an extremely good chance that the benefits would filter down to Vista Home.  While this positive is indeed turning out to be the case, we still want to err on the side of caution, and have taken this position with our compatibility documents.

One poster mentioned that he thought that Digidesign clearly wasn’t focused on entry-level customers (and that we don’t realize that many of our customers aren’t higher end pros who would be more willing to sit tight on OS versions, etc.). We have many thousands of entry-level customers, and focus closely on their needs — that’s one of the reasons this transition is particularly painful.  A very significant portion of our business is in the home hobbyist/project studio market and we want to create the best possible experience for everyone — I want to assure folks that we’re committed.
As for driver development on the M-Audio side, I think Niels has given a pretty good overview of M-Audio’s path forward to correcting some of these delays, and on getting M-Audio driver support back to a level that meets our customers’ needs.  M-Audio has grown rapidly, partially due to their flexibility and the ability to get a large number of cool products into the hands of customers quickly.  As with any fast-moving company, it can be a difficult balancing act to provide for the needs of a base of committed, passionate users who want or need their products to work well with the “latest and greatest” computer and OS technology as soon as it becomes available, with the desire to continue to quickly produce new products that your customers are asking for. There are plenty of challenges, but we can assure you and your readers that the focus is not purely on new business; as you can probably tell from Niels’ posts, the M-Audio team are also motivated and passionate folks that really have a desire to do right by their customers.
So, while this e-mail unfortunately doesn’t provide instant solutions for you or many of our frustrated users, I hope it does offer an insight into our thought process and our plans going forward, as well as our commitment to listen to our customers and to engage in productive discussions that can be beneficial to all of us. Thanks again for your input, and for keeping us on our toes. Please let me know if you have any additional questions or comments.
Regards,
Bob 

Bob Langlie

VP of Customer Support and Service

Also, in case you missed it, there’s still more from M-Audio’s Niels Larsen, via comments:

Sebastien Orban raised the issue of MIDI controllers and 64 bit support: all our current Keyboards and MIDI devices are USB class compliant and therefore work without any additional installation requirements (immediately “out of the box”) with new versions of OS X and Windows XP/Vista (including 64 bit versions). We embrace class compliancy wherever possible because of the straight forward installation experience and, of course, forward compatibility.

Monot asked about the Fast Track Pro. We have release versions of both Vista and Leopard drivers for the Fast Track Pro so its possible that what you are struggling with is a simple setup issue. If you would like assistance I can have tech support contact you. Just send an email to feedback@m-audio.com

Regarding Vista 64 a few questions where raised about making the beta drivers available. Its very likely we will do that once we are confident they are in a state to release without causing further frustration. We typically want to know what outstanding issues our customers are likely to experience and message that in release notes so users themselves can decide whether to install the beta drivers or not. With Vista 64 we are not at that point yet but hope to be soon. I should also mention that we are getting good XP64 results from this development so its possible that we will be able to give a commitment very soon to new drivers for this version also.

Derek Pegritz and Dead_red_eyes both raised the issue of what it takes to write drivers for new OS versions. There isn’t necessarily one straight-forward answer to this but I can tell you that our struggles with Vista and Leopard have been a combination of having to rewrite firmware (you may have noticed that the firmware updates in our Firewire products for instance when the Leopard drivers install), older driver framework needing updating and frankly that we underestimated the amount of work required.

As General Manager of M-Audio I have to take responsibility for this and make sure we don’t make the same errors of judgment going forward. I am sorry that we have frustrated our users by not getting it right but I hope to show you our commitment to support current products in the future as well as being more transparent about activities within the company.

Best regards

Niels

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.)

Digidesign + Vista

Digidesign Windows OS Requirements

On the Digidesign side, the good news is Pro Tools 7.4 LE and M-Powered are now supported on Vista — sort of. The bad news is, you need 7.4, there’s still no support for Pro Tools HD, and Digidesign hasn’t yet qualified SP1 for anything. (M-Audio has made the same statement.) Now, I’m used to Digidesign’s lagging OS support, and to be honest, I think being cautious about support is a good idea. But in this case, SP1 largely involves fixes for Vista — some of them very significant issues. It’s a little odd that you could qualify Vista without SP1, containing most of the same fixes installed as HotFixes, but not SP1 itself, even though the latter is more likely to be stable and compatible in almost every other respect.

Then it gets odder. Vista Home Premium is still not supported by Digidesign, despite being identical to the supported Ultimate and Business editions in regards to music, audio, and driver support. Maybe Digidesign has some reason for doing this, but I can’t imagine what it is, and they’re not saying.

M-Audio + XP SP3

If you’re using M-Audio hardware, I recommend holding off on updating to Windows XP SP3. For starters, SP3 doesn’t really offer anything essential to audio users to begin with. But more importantly, I’ve seen a number of reports that M-Audio hardware refuses to install on SP3. That’s a major oversight. Unfortunately, there’s not even any information on M-Audio’s site other than a general statement that their drivers haven’t been "qualified" for SP3 (which I suspect means very little to users trying to get specific fixes):

M-Audio XP SP3 Statement

What makes this so odd is that this is what Digidesign has to say about Windows XP Service Pack 3:

"There are currently no known compatibility differences between systems with XP SP2 or SP3. All compatibility information regarding Windows XP Service Pack 2 also applies to systems with Windows XP Service Pack 3." [Emphasis Digidesign's]

Yet despite massive incompatibility with SP3, a minor service update that’s been available to developers for many months, M-Audio condescendingly tells users in a support document that we should "rest assured that supporting Service Pack 3 is a top priority for us."

M-Audio + Vista

M-Audio’s support for Vista, which had been lagging badly, has now improved somewhat:

M-Audio Vista Driver Development

Among the drivers still missing as I write this, though, is M-Audio’s flagship audio interface and control surface, the Project Mix I/O. And while Roland/Edirol, MOTU, RME, and others have supported 64-bit Windows, M-Audio has no support whatsoever.

M-Audio + Leopard

Mac OS X is slightly better off, but a significant number of drivers are lagging. The entire FireWire line and Project Mix I/O, among others, remain in beta.

M-Audio 10.5 update

Got experience with drivers on current OSes? Let us know.

My friend Ilia, aka Tonearm, has released his set of Windows XP-compatible shortcuts for Ableton Live. (Got to play out with Ilia last month and hope to do it again.) Ableton, if you’re listening, here’s another argument for more customization of the program.

Even if you’re not on XP, it’s worth having a look and even downloading the ZIP and readme for some inspiration as far as what could be possible with Live shortcuts.

Install the executable for Windows, and you get:

Keyboard assignments, including lots of handy shortcuts for manipulating clips on the fly, adjusting envelopes — everything you ought to be able to do. That includes changing gain, transposition, and BPM on the go (the last being especially nice)

• Single-key shortcuts: Those shortcuts can be manipulated with one key. Where a modifier is used, it’s “shift” — so you can use caps lock and get one-key access to those, as well.
• Mouse wheel and power zoom: Mouse wheel actions are contextual, so you can quickly scroll through the browser, session, plug-ins, etc.
• Faster navigation on the timeline: left, right, page up, page down and shuttle around your timeline, and you can nudge clips left and right using the keyboard. “Sticky-click” mode makes it easier to grab and manipulate selections on the timeline.
• Automation shortcuts
• Multiple takes
• Instant samplers: Grab a clip or a section of a clip and with one shortcut create a MIDI track and Simpler with that sample.

Multiple takes, more flexible keyboard assignments, and more direct access to clips — Ilia’s implementation here is a bit idiosyncratic, and it only works on XP, but it definitely overlaps with some of my wishlist. Live 8, perhaps?

(Note: I disagree with Ilia about Live on Vista. I’ve found Live on Vista can work exactly like Live on XP; if your experience isn’t that under SP1, odds are poor drivers are the problem. Prior to the various hotfixes of the last year, rolled into SP1, that’s another story, though.)

Thanks to Ilia for sending this in, and Ronnie at Rekkerd for reminding me.

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

That didn’t take long. Just days after the games’ release, someone is already using controllers for the Harmonix game Rock Band with their computer software. Cyrus Thomas-Walker writes us:

Looks like someone thought outside the box with their Rock Band drum set. Hacking the little kit could prove to be a cheap way to set up a little midi drum studio if someone happens to already own the game and interested in hooking the hardware up to some software.

Xbox 360 Rock Band drums on Windows [dxprog blog]

dxprog has also posted custom software developed in .NET/XNA for Windows. Also for Windows: MidiJoys, joystick-to-MIDI conversion software, apparently works, as well.

What about Mac? It seems the PS3 controller works out of the box with the Mac — presumably standards-compliant hardware (which would also mean you could have luck with Linux). No confirmed reports, though.

The controller itself is pretty simple: think single piezo triggers in each pad, though having the mount and the pedal is awfully convenient and, compared to other controllers, affordable.

In case you’re wondering why you’d want to do this in the first place, it comes down to either a) you’ve got the hardware and want it to do double duty as a performance kit, or b) you’re interested in playing indie games on your PC, not just the official Rock Band game. Or, c) you want Rock Band and now you have additional rationalization. The PlayStation 2 game is on its way out; I’d guess those controllers would be even easier to work with on Mac and PC — and you can get your Rock Band on for a lower price.

If anyone can make this work on the Mac, it’s the readers of this site. So if anyone’s got it down, let us know!

Updated:
We’ve got our answer: PS3 + Mac = success. Xbox 360 + Mac = could work, though not fully tested yet:

How to Use Rock Band Controllers (And More) with GarageBand, Mac

To prove the point, Steve Paine, from UMPCPortal.com writes in with video evidence: a clip from him running a vintage version of Fruity Loops from the late 90s, plus another featuring an M-Audio Ozone keyboard plugged into an Everun hosting a synth and sequencer in the not-very-old Cakewalk SONAR 4.

First up, a little Fruity (now FL Studio):

And thanks to Sophocha from the UMPCPortal forums for this SONAR clip:

It’s clear how beneficial it is in this case being able to run full-blown Windows, and take advantage of the USB port and stylus interface, to boot.

Any other UMPC lovers out there, or people working with other micro-PC models?

UMPC News : Electronic music tools on-the-go with the Everun UMPC [UMPCPortal]