I said we'd close out this review with testing Sonar 7 on 64-bit Vista, but although we still need to cover some additional aspects of Sonar 7 (the export and delivery enhancements, for example, and some of the "smaller" updates), I wanted to move up the Vista aspect a bit in the review because I'm finding it pretty interesting.
First, the basics. I'm running Vista Ultimate in 64-bit mode on a PC Audio Labs computer with dual quad-core Intel 3.0 GHz processors and 8GB of RAM. In other words, if this was a car, it would be a Lamborghini. However, the graphics card is a Matrox triple-head, which is great for audio but is not deemed sufficient to run Aero (the Vista feature that gives fancy, glassy graphics). In fact, solely because of the audio card, this computer scores a "1" on Microsoft's "Windows experience" scale of wonderfulness. No matter; I'm more interested in performance than the Windows experience, and the Matrox performs very well. Besides, once you've used multiple monitors, you don't want to go back.
Second, about Vista. It has not been a smashing success the way XP was, and I doubt that its sales (and the number of people upgrading) have met Microsoft's expectations. This is both understandable and unfortunate. Understandable because XP has proven itself to be a reliable, sturdy system with a huge amount of hardware and software support. And, Microsoft didn't help matters by releasing several versions of Vista with varying capabilities (not to mention 32- and 64-bit versions), thus confusing the marketplace, and pricing the software relatively high. Nor did they fully manage to communicate what advantages Vista offers over XP, which I believe in some ways is due to the "moving target" nature of Vista: What it was promised to do several years ago falls short of what we actually have in our hands. As one example, the whole premise that Vista would have a database-driven file system that would radically change how we find and manage files turned out to be unattainable for now. The reality we're left with is a search system that just barely manages to catch up to the Mac's spotlight function, and even then, doesn't organize the search results as elegantly as the Mac.
The unfortunate aspect is that Vista doesn't deserve the way it's been dismissed. Although some of it reeks of "Mac envy" (Sidebar is just like the Mac widgets), overall I find it a cleaner, more developed (albeit initially more confusing) system than XP. The built-in speech recognition capabilities are excellent, the search function is at the very least a big improvement over XP, the system is much more secure (I actually felt okay hooking my music computer up to the net), and some of the consumer-oriented aspects--being able to make movies, DVDs, and organize photos--are convenient. Stability is as good on this initial release as it was with XP, if not better. Furthermore, you know Microsoft isn't going to go down without a fight. When the service packs start arriving, and there's more support, people will feel more comfortable with Vista.
But what's of real interest here is the 64-bit aspect, MMCSS, and WaveRT-all of which hold great promise for the future for pro audio, even though that potential is not yet realized. At present, 64-bit computing represents a transitional point, and transitions are never easy (just ask the Mac fans who endured the switch from System 9 to OS X, and from PPC to Intel--yet despite the difficulty of the transition, I don't think anyone would want to go back to the way it was). 64-bit Vista requires 64-bit processors and drivers designed specifically for 64 bits. I certainly didn't like seeing my beloved Creamware SCOPE system become useless in a 64-bit world, nor did I like not being able to use the Line 6 KB37 interface (a very, very cool songwriting tool)--sorry, 32-bit Vista only.
However, support is on the way...here's what I experienced.
First, the basics. I'm running Vista Ultimate in 64-bit mode on a PC Audio Labs computer with dual quad-core Intel 3.0 GHz processors and 8GB of RAM. In other words, if this was a car, it would be a Lamborghini. However, the graphics card is a Matrox triple-head, which is great for audio but is not deemed sufficient to run Aero (the Vista feature that gives fancy, glassy graphics). In fact, solely because of the audio card, this computer scores a "1" on Microsoft's "Windows experience" scale of wonderfulness. No matter; I'm more interested in performance than the Windows experience, and the Matrox performs very well. Besides, once you've used multiple monitors, you don't want to go back.
Second, about Vista. It has not been a smashing success the way XP was, and I doubt that its sales (and the number of people upgrading) have met Microsoft's expectations. This is both understandable and unfortunate. Understandable because XP has proven itself to be a reliable, sturdy system with a huge amount of hardware and software support. And, Microsoft didn't help matters by releasing several versions of Vista with varying capabilities (not to mention 32- and 64-bit versions), thus confusing the marketplace, and pricing the software relatively high. Nor did they fully manage to communicate what advantages Vista offers over XP, which I believe in some ways is due to the "moving target" nature of Vista: What it was promised to do several years ago falls short of what we actually have in our hands. As one example, the whole premise that Vista would have a database-driven file system that would radically change how we find and manage files turned out to be unattainable for now. The reality we're left with is a search system that just barely manages to catch up to the Mac's spotlight function, and even then, doesn't organize the search results as elegantly as the Mac.
The unfortunate aspect is that Vista doesn't deserve the way it's been dismissed. Although some of it reeks of "Mac envy" (Sidebar is just like the Mac widgets), overall I find it a cleaner, more developed (albeit initially more confusing) system than XP. The built-in speech recognition capabilities are excellent, the search function is at the very least a big improvement over XP, the system is much more secure (I actually felt okay hooking my music computer up to the net), and some of the consumer-oriented aspects--being able to make movies, DVDs, and organize photos--are convenient. Stability is as good on this initial release as it was with XP, if not better. Furthermore, you know Microsoft isn't going to go down without a fight. When the service packs start arriving, and there's more support, people will feel more comfortable with Vista.
But what's of real interest here is the 64-bit aspect, MMCSS, and WaveRT-all of which hold great promise for the future for pro audio, even though that potential is not yet realized. At present, 64-bit computing represents a transitional point, and transitions are never easy (just ask the Mac fans who endured the switch from System 9 to OS X, and from PPC to Intel--yet despite the difficulty of the transition, I don't think anyone would want to go back to the way it was). 64-bit Vista requires 64-bit processors and drivers designed specifically for 64 bits. I certainly didn't like seeing my beloved Creamware SCOPE system become useless in a 64-bit world, nor did I like not being able to use the Line 6 KB37 interface (a very, very cool songwriting tool)--sorry, 32-bit Vista only.
However, support is on the way...here's what I experienced.
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