Ableton Forum

I take all your info as

1) As long as all your hardware supports XP and you are fine
with 2GB RAM there is no big reason to go Win 7.

2) If there are stable drivers for all your hardware and you need more
than 2 GB RAM it is safe to go Win 7 - but there is no big advantage yet.

Would you agree ?

Now that W7 has been around for a while, most of my driver issues have been solved. The only outstanding issues I have are:

Rewiring Ableton to Reason doesn't work (64 bit or 32 bit, YMMV). I blame Propellerheads for this, not Ableton.
Drivers for my Xone 4D are still sketchy on 32 bit apps running under W7 64 bit.

If you don't need more than 4GB RAM, I would suggest running Win 7 32 bit until 64 bit support improves. Other than that, I'm very happy with it.

Oh, and get an SSD drive. That is all.

To the OP: I'm running Live 8.0.8 with a UAD-2 solo and a FF400 on Win 7 x64 and everything works just fine. Occasionally, Live will hiccup. But, I think that's a more of a Live stability issue (speaking anecdotally here, no hard data to back it up) than an OS issue.

My system specs:
ADK Pro Audio Core Xtreme, i7 920 2.66gHz Quad Core, HT, 8MB cache, Intel X58 chipset, ASUS P6T SE Mobo OC to XMP Profile 1, Corsair 12GB DDR3 1600 (6 x 2GB) Windows 7 x64 PRO Hard Drives 3 x 500MB Seagate 32meg SATA II Perpendicular Graphics: nVidia PNY Quadro FX 3800 v.197.03, Audio: RME Fireface 400 (or M-Audio Transit dongle for PTMP) Software: Ableton Suite 8.0.8, Pro Tools M-Powered 8.0.3, Melodyne Editor, various VST, Avid Media Composer 4.0.5, Quicktime 7.6.0

Coupe70 wrote:I take all your info as

1) As long as all your hardware supports XP and you are fine
with 2GB RAM there is no big reason to go Win 7.

2) If there are stable drivers for all your hardware and you need more
than 2 GB RAM it is safe to go Win 7 - but there is no big advantage yet.

Would you agree ?

+1

I absolutely love Win7! No problems at all with Live. Had a few problems at first with my Firebox, but they released Win7 drivers and got it sorted out. Some old plugins don't work so well. Had quite a bit of trouble getting them installed at first. The trick was to turn off UAC and to right-click the install file and choose "Run as Administrator". That helped most plugin problems.

Another thing to note is that Windows 7 handles security a little different than XP. A program that's not running with administrative rights can't write to the Program Files directory. Programs are supposed to instead write to the Temp folder and the User/App Data folders. This can be a problem if you install your VST plugins in a folder in the Program Files directory, since sometimes Live will need to be able to write to them. (Note: you can always elevate Live, or any program to that matter, to administrative if you need it to be able to write to the Program Files directory, though technically its not advised for security reasons.)

Coupe70 wrote:I take all your info as

1) As long as all your hardware supports XP and you are fine
with 2GB RAM there is no big reason to go Win 7.

2) If there are stable drivers for all your hardware and you need more
than 2 GB RAM it is safe to go Win 7 - but there is no big advantage yet.

Would you agree ?

For the most part yes, although I haven't tested Win 7 with full rigor to be certain that every set and every plugin will work on the x64 system. There *are* some advantages to the Win7 UI, like the new taskbar, which I like, but maybe not directly for audio.

The divide between 32-bit and 64-bit os-s is not exaclty 2Gb per app. I've seen large address aware hosts with LAA plugins (and you can use LaaTiDo to make everything LAA) use nearly 2.7Gb of my 3Gb ram.

Win7 made a MASSIVE difference with my i7 processor. MASSIVE.

There are obvious speed and memory management advantages if you have 4GB or more installed and an i7 processor or quad core with win 7, however, these can be negated using a DAW if the drivers and plugins nause it all up, which is a possibility. Running 32 bit versions of DAWS (if there is a 64 bit version, such as Cubase 5, Sonar PE, Reaper etc) can help at present.

In fact, Live users running win 7 are noticeable more satisfied with it because there is no 64 bit DAW option, which is mostly where plugin issues and driver issues have been occurring.

Let's face it - as much as I am cautious about upgrading an o/s because DAW software is always way behind gaming and video apps to embrace newer tech, XP will be a dead platform in a year or so. Win 7 is 6 months old now. I usually prefer to wait for at least one SP before changing over, but if you have all the drivers, and know how to do a clean install - or set up a dual boot partition, you're going to have to make the move sooner or later, at least if you have any plans on buying upgrades or new plugins etc. I mean, I know people still running Cubase VST on windows 2000

Has anybody seen better latency from using 64 bit?

XP still has the best latency for audio performance in many cases. Vista and win 7 have higher inherent system latency.
Win 7 has better memory management. So what you gain on one, you lose on the other ...

For example the RME Fireface UC at BEST (this typically means a really powerful computer, and in windows cases, cleared of all the crap that loads with big box purchases, streamlined and optimized fully ...) can go as low as 32 samples on win XP, but 48 samples is the lowest win 7/vista. Having said this, 128 sample performance is more than adequate for most things.

Then again on the Mac Pro octacores 2.66 or faster, the RME can run at 14 samples latency, which is almost like using Protools HD/TDM systems.

latency: some drivers are able to get lower latency under w7, for example the echo audiofire series are optimized for the w7 audio architecture.
24 channels i/o with 64 samplesn w7 32bit is not a problem.

for problems with access rights i'd suggest keeping uac enabled and changing the security settings on your plugins folder so that your user account can write to it.
Works with nearly every plugin and is much safer if you connect to the internet.

Good info. I think I will choose dual boot with XP 64 and Win7. I was using Win7 today with the new Focusrite usb6 and it all worked great. I was not able to get under 10 ms with 48khz, but it still worked great.