Windows Vista or hasta la vista?

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 4:59 pm

tomperson wrote:Unfortunately I can't seem to find any info regarding if there will be a decent alternative to ASIO

This is the point of fixing the audio stack, make it work better. There's no real difference between ASIO and whatsitsname, DirectSound? Windows Native Audio, whatever... It's just that ASIO is better at it..

Also, moving it out of the kernel will mean an error in the audio stack can't bring the whole system down, which I'm guessing it can now seeing as it's in the kernel. That's why it's not supposed to be in there in the first place.

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:22 pm

If I think correctly, moving the audio processing out of the kernel means it will run slower, isn't it? I'm sure I'm missing something, but don't know what.

A lot of the tech talking I've read so far aims at how the "average user" experience will be better in Vista, but haven't read a single line that said something like "we will have ultra low audio latency", "we will have audio streaming from one app to another" or whatever. That is what we need in order to make the audio processing in windows closer to "pro".

Am I right?

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:39 pm

forge wrote:well, I used to write programs in Basic that would make a dot go from one corner of the screen to another on a Spextravideo in the 80s, and that seemed cool.

I could write a program that was a clock.

I even got it to beep for all notes of the scale by pressing keys on the keyboard.

All of that shit was cool to me once.

So I Like all of these computers, because they can do a fuck of alot more than move a dot from one corner of the bloody screen to the other.

lol Forge.

When I was in High School I took data-processing for two years as part of a vocational program. I learned basic the first year, ended up writing an accounting program to handle payroll as part of my final exam. COBAL and FORTRAN were the subject of the second year and that was when I lost interest.

This was back in.. '87 - 88 or so. I remember a recruiter from the N.S.A. came to our class promising bright students a government job upon graduation. N.S.A. was then, and still is I believe, Maryland's largest employer. I must have looked like a rather attractive prospect at the time, sitting in the back of the class, stoned, with my long hair, and cccp & russian sickle and hammers drawn all over my notebook.

I hated that program. Everything was oriented towards business. Or maybe I was just an impatient pot-head teenage revolutionary... Anyway, I dropped it after the second year. I should have stuck with it, I could have been a high-flying espio-crat with America's biggest spy agency by now.

***edit***

/threadjack

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:49 pm

Threadjack, but fun

Alien Leg · Post by **Alien Leg** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:34 pm

If Vista really needs 1GB of Ram then it doesn't make sense for me. Ram is very important and the switch to 64 bit will take a while.
Could someone check how much Ram Vista takes at startup with Aero on and disabled?

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:53 am

tomperson wrote: but haven't read a single line that said something like "

dude there's a line in this very thread from someone who's actually using it

what more of a testament do you need?

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:55 am

here's the link to his entry in the performance test thread

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 104#329104

veggieryan · Post by **veggieryan** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 2:16 am

thanks forge,
yes.. i am on a core duo 1.66 with 1.5 gb ram and its smoking.. there is no comparison to XP.. especially at 64 samples latency.. you can have any apps running you want....
also, i have a 4gb sd flash card i got for 70 bucks on newegg.com.. my tecra m7 has a built sd slot.. so, I pop it in.. vista says "use this device to speed up my system" .. so i did... and it WORKS... makes a big difference when you max out the page file.. ie: use up all your physical ram.
this feature is called readyboost and its really intelligent.. it keeps a cache of your virtual memory and really speeds things up and gives your hard drive a break. when you click on something there is an index that tells the hard drive where to go to get that file... with readyboost that index is on the sd card.. that way your hard drive does less work.. and the system is much snappier... newer pc laptops will have flash built in to the hard drive which will make startup very quick...
one more point.. windows has about a 3 gig page file for 1.5 gb of ram... when i had a macbook pro it was more like 7 or 11 gigs!!!! whats up with that? google about the "mach" kernel which osx is based on.. its VERY inefficient with ram and page files...this explains why OSX is UNUSABLE with 512mb or ram.... its also the main reason OSX is not used for webservers... there is alot of talk that apple will be dropping the mach kernel... they fired the guy who was its main cheerleader... rumours? another major change to the os?
paaahhlleease.. with osx's crappy ram performance versus vista's new readyboost feature .... which would you choose?
I am running 64 samples of latency and vista is smooth, solid, sexy and stable.. its the shizzle for rizzle.
can someone else load rc1 build 5600 and see what I mean??

cool.
ryan.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 4:19 pm

veggieryan wrote:also, i have a 4gb sd flash card i got for 70 bucks on newegg.com.. my tecra m7 has a built sd slot.. so, I pop it in.. vista says "use this device to speed up my system" .. so i did... and it WORKS... makes a big difference when you max out the page file.. ie: use up all your physical ram.
this feature is called readyboost and its really intelligent.. it keeps a cache of your virtual memory and really speeds things up and gives your hard drive a break. when you click on something there is an index that tells the hard drive where to go to get that file... with readyboost that index is on the sd card.. that way your hard drive does less work.. and the system is much snappier... newer pc laptops will have flash built in to the hard drive which will make startup very quick...
one more point.. windows has about a 3 gig page file for 1.5 gb of ram... when i had a macbook pro it was more like 7 or 11 gigs!!!! whats up with that? google about the "mach" kernel which osx is based on.. its VERY inefficient with ram and page files...this explains why OSX is UNUSABLE with 512mb or ram.... its also the main reason OSX is not used for webservers... there is alot of talk that apple will be dropping the mach kernel... they fired the guy who was its main cheerleader... rumours? another major change to the os?
paaahhlleease.. with osx's crappy ram performance versus vista's new readyboost feature .... which would you choose?

Just a few clarifications -

It's perfectly possible to put your swap file (Virtual Memory) on a flash drive in OS X, and yeah, it will speed things up. I hate how Microsoft are calling this a new feature as it's really quite simple... I can put my swap file on a network drive if I want to, and I could on any UNIX, and I've been able to since the mid-80's if not before.
One thing though, using your sd card to keep your swap file on will probably kill it quite quickly as that is A LOT of writes something that flash memory doesn't like.

I personally do not at all find OS X unusable with 512MB of RAM. Maybe I'm not pushing it hard enough, though.

And Avie (Mach's "Cheerleader"), former Vice President of Software Engineering att Apple, was not fired, he just left. He's been with Apple since it was called NeXT:) and wanted to do something else after having overseen 5 odd very successful releases of MacOS.

And Mach is not OS X's kernel. OS X's kernel is called XNU and it is a hybrid of Mach and FreeBSD's kernel. But it is arguably a bit shit, granted.

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 5:43 pm

forge wrote:
tomperson wrote: but haven't read a single line that said something like "
dude there's a line in this very thread from someone who's actually using it

what more of a testament do you need?

Dude, assuming vista really smokes regarding performance, we still need more stuff built into the OS. No one can deny that having midi or audio streaming between applications, and low latency audio built-in are some of the things that make OSX more suitable for audio usage.

Granted, you can get good latencies right now with XP too, but we are still away from fine-tuned linux kernels or OSX, and we have to install third party apps for some of the services that the OS should provide. I love my XP install, it works just fine, but i'd also like it to have some of the stuff i find missing.

Having said that, i really hope that the figures veggieryan got with his setup and vista remain when it finally goes public. I couldn't be happier