Windows 7 improvements to help audio recording
Most of the audio engineers I've met--both home and professional--are Mac people, and Avid's ProTools running on a Mac is often cited as the industry standard. But there are Windows loyalists out there.
In late 2007 I took an introductory audio production class taught by David Huber (who wrote one of the bibles on the subject, "Modern Recording Techniques") and Scott Colburn (who has produced albums by The Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, and Sun City Girls, among many others). Both of them used Nuendo from Steinberg (which is basically the upmarket version of Cubase) as their primary digital audio workstation (DAW), and they ran it on a Windows PC.
Windows 7 should offer better performance for digital audio than Vista.
A Windows XP PC, that is. Both were very diplomatic when discussing software and other gear, but they expressed pretty serious reservations about Vista. Microsoft made a ton of changes in Vista that were supposed to improve performance, including moving certain audio capabilities out of the kernel, but these experts--whose livelihood depends on having a high-performing DAW--thought it was too untested and unknown.
Although they didn't say so, I imagine that the driver incompatibilities reported with other hardware could have been an absolute nightmare with all the gear in a professional recording rig. There were also reports of unstable MIDI timing, drop-outs, latency, and other problems (many of which were addressed by Service Pack 1). They weren't alone: the general advice for audio engineers on Windows was stick with XP. (If anybody had a success story using Vista to build a DAW, I'd love to hear about it in comments.)
In case you haven't heard, Microsoft releases a new version of Windows next week. I've been using the RTM version for a few weeks now and find it far more stable and inviting than Vista was at launch. (Although a colleague did uncover a gnarly power-management problem in Media Center related to a faulty audio driver.) Now, some of the audio experts are starting to weigh in, and it looks like the work Microsoft did to improve performance and compatibility with Windows 7 are paying off in the world of audio production.
Noel Borthwick, the chief technical officer for Cakewalk--which makes a wide variety of audio software for Windows, including the Sonar DAW line--has posted a blog entry describing how the new OS should dramatically reduce latency, particularly on x64 multicore processors. (Borthwick also went into more obsessive detail on Peter Kirn's Create Digital Music blog.) His conclusion: "I will be building a new DAW soon and Windows 7 X64 will be my OS of choice."
The long and short of it? If you're building a new recording system, Windows 7 sounds like a more reasonable choice than Vista. But if you've got a system that's already working well, don't mess with it--there still might be driver incompatibilities with older gear, and upgrades from Windows XP require a clean install, meaning your old settings will be lost and you'll have to reinstall your apps.
Correction, 2:34 PDT: This post incorrectly characterized the audio-related changes that Microsoft made in Windows Vista. Microsoft moved certain audio functions out of the kernel and into the user stack.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
most of the audio engineers are Mac because they do not no computing."
Don't believe everything you hear or read. For the most part, that simply is not true unless you can prove otherwise. I have known plenty of people who use both platforms for recording, mastering, sequencing, etc. Based on your logic, I guess they don't know about either one hardware wise.
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ProTools in my opinion the only program that was ready for the Vista changes due to Avid tight lock down and intergration of the hardware and software. After Vista SP1, I started noticing more companies starting to play catch up. Too many companies was relying on XP. Don't get me wrong Vista does do a better job at reducing the latentcy. Vista x64 works fine with powerful enough hardware.
There was a general and understandable reluctance by audio vendors to work on compatibility when major PC OEMs and video suppliers -- all shipping drivers that could interfere with audio work -- hadn't delivered.
If Vista x64 works, generally so will x32. Aside from memory addressing, they're nearly identical in most respects under the hood.
This is good news for a couple of my friends w/ working studios that run Cakewalk's Sonar.
@ blafouille--btw, if one is using a computer to perform tasks/do work, isn't that computing? or is running a recording studio that charges $150.00/hr-$300.00+/hour not work? you can't be an audio engineer w/ understanding audio & how to put hardware/software in a signal chain & tweak it to achieve the desired results. i started out 30 years ago doing live sound, then got into some bands & started working w/ 4-trk. analog to record us & others, then moved as the technology(& my wallet allowed) into hard-disk stand-alone systems & now computer based DAWs. i even have a Yamaha AW16g for live 8-trk recording of bands & events for when i do multi-cam video shoots. the computer platform one uses is a choice--Windows or Mac. use whatever you like & be happy, find a groove & make a joyful noise.
As for the questions about whether this is an OS issue, it certainly is in part. Changes to both the graphics and audio subsystems in Vista necessitated changes on all fronts. Drivers were initially out of sync, it's true, but Microsoft delivered their own share of updates, including some pretty significant fixes that addressed USB performance (rolled out in the leadup to SP1) and MIDI. To a lesser extent but certainly also significant, there were changes that necessitated work by application developers.
No one was especially happy with the Vista transition, though I use Vista on one of my main machines for production. It's encouraging that Microsoft is getting more success with Windows 7. At the same time, these are not unrelated to issues you see on other operating systems.
- by cjamc October 23, 2009 6:14 PM PDT
- I personally use Pro tools M- Powered on a Vista machine without any problems. Actually in some ways, Memory being one it's better than xp. With service pack 2 i get 4 Gigs instead or 3. As far as mac's are concerned, they really are designed around audio, and video production on their higher end. But IMac's are not the best audio DAW machines at all. The other end of the comparison is PC's are designed how ever YOU want them to be, basically from dirt cheap to unbelievable and that causes a problem with driver's hardware and DAW's to be compatible with the majority of them. Mac's are Mac's just which one your willing to pay for is the question. A G5 for serious audio production will run you 9 -10 thousand dollars. Go on apple and price one.
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(19 Comments)Sorry for rambling