Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?

[Innuendo]

...(musician software wasn't running well on Win7), ...

-superboyac (November 08, 2009, 12:46 AM)

This I can believe especially if you are running older versions of your software as Microsoft totally re-wrote the audio stack for Windows Vista & Win7 just builds upon those changes. You'll probably have to keep dual-booting or upgrade your software to something Win7-aware. And since it's specialized software...that probably won't be cheap.

[superboyac]

...(musician software wasn't running well on Win7), ...

-superboyac (November 08, 2009, 12:46 AM)

This I can believe especially if you are running older versions of your software as Microsoft totally re-wrote the audio stack for Windows Vista & Win7 just builds upon those changes. You'll probably have to keep dual-booting or upgrade your software to something Win7-aware. And since it's specialized software...that probably won't be cheap.

-Innuendo (November 08, 2009, 10:06 AM)

Yeah, something is definitely not working there.  The problem with musician stuff is that it takes soooooo long for them to update anything or keep up with current technology.  All the way from their hardware to their software.  For example, pretty much nobody sells a PCIe soundcard even though it's been years since the format has been around.  and if you find one that does, like you said, get ready to pay big bucks for it.  It's one of those industries that is pretty old-school and quirky.  It messes with the whole supply and demand balance.  All the professionals use expensive hardware instead of software.  So not much attention is given to the software.  Ugh, it's such a crazy world once you get caught up in all the music studio stuff.

[40hz]

Ugh, it's such a crazy world once you get caught up in all the music studio stuff.

-superboyac (November 08, 2009, 02:41 PM)

Not always.

I had a copy of Gigasampler running very nicely on a dedicated PC. The PC was bought used. I spent a huge amount of time getting Windows tweaked and stripped down as much as possible. Once I did, I loaded and tweaked Giga - and that was i!

I worked beautifully after that because I never changed anything once it was working to my satisfaction. And I've followed that same approach for every other piece of music software I've ever used:

• Set up the OS as cleanly as possible
• Install the app and get it working correctly
• Leave everything strictly alone after that - and just use it.

Think appliance.  

That means absolutely NO upgrades or changes to the OS. And as few as possible to the app itself.

Once you stop chasing all those upgrades for features that sound cool on paper but are seldom needed, your music apps tend to work great.

( BTW: I did the same thing with Cubase too! )

Just my 2¢

[superboyac]

Ugh, it's such a crazy world once you get caught up in all the music studio stuff.

-superboyac (November 08, 2009, 02:41 PM)

Not always.

I had a copy of Gigasampler running very nicely on a dedicated PC. The PC was bought used. I spent a huge amount of time getting Windows tweaked and stripped down as much as possible. Once I did, I loaded and tweaked Giga - and that was i!

I worked beautifully after that because I never changed anything once it was working to my satisfaction. And I've followed that same approach for every other piece of music software I've ever used:

• Set up the OS as cleanly as possible
• Install the app and get it working correctly
• Leave everything strictly alone after that - and just use it.

Think appliance. 

That means absolutely NO upgrades or changes to the OS. And as few as possible to the app itself.

Once you stop chasing all those upgrades for features that sound cool on paper but are seldom needed, your music apps tend to work great.

( BTW: I did the same thing with Cubase too! )

Just my 2¢

-40hz (November 08, 2009, 04:00 PM)

I think you and I are thinking the same way on this one.  So on my laptop, I have XP set up on one of the partitions as a dual boot system.  XP will ONLY be used for playing live music.  I use Kontakt rather than Gigasampler, and the only real purpose of using a sampler is to use a grand piano sound that is halfway decent.  I play through my Roland RD700, which has plenty of pianos on it by itself, but they sound like crap.  So, Kontakt wouldn't even start up in Win7, that's why I'm doing all this.  Anyway, I got Kontakt set up on XP and it worked really well actually.  I was worried it might struggle with the sample piano since it's an old laptop.  So now I can use my laptop at live gigs!

Like you, I've also stripped the XP installation of anything that I don't really need.  It will only be used to play music live.  I will leave it alone now!

If I need to do other things, I can use the Win7 installation.  Isn't that great?!

What I meant about the musician stuff being a headache is the whole experience of getting what you want as a hobby/budget musician.  Very few serious musicians are going around playing pianos through their computer or anything like that.  Most likely, they are using some $xxxx piece of hardware.

[40hz]

What I meant about the musician stuff being a headache is the whole experience of getting what you want as a hobby/budget musician.  Very few serious musicians are going around playing pianos through their computer or anything like that.  Most likely, they are using some $xxxx piece of hardware.

-superboyac (November 08, 2009, 04:14 PM)

Boy do I hear you.

But, I think most aren't doing that because a laptop is generally too unreliable a solution when you're on the road. (Not that I haven't done it.) But it is fraught with a significantly greater degree of risk than traveling with something like a top-of-the-line Kurzeweil/Nord/Korg setup.

In a bar, you can joke your way through ten minutes of computer downtime. On a stage in front of 5,000 fans who each paid $150+ to get in, it gets ugly really fast.

<***OT ramble follows - feel free to skip***>

Spoiler

Maybe that's why I've been gradually going over to as low-tech an approach as possible for playing out.

We just heard a terrific little group* last week that was completely acoustic - 2-guitars/string bass/violin/vocals - and a pile of things (cans, hubcaps, wash tub, etc) to bang on. And it worked. They were great. Entertaining even. Amazing what musical talent alone can do.

I used to be a heavy-duty customization and tweak freak. These days, all I use is my instrument, a cord, and an amp.

Oddly enough, I've discovered I can accomplish everything I'm trying to accomplish musically without needing any of the technology I used to lug around.

Friends used to joke that I'd be happiest if my bass had nothing but a volume control. But that was before some companies started coming out with artist signature basses that just had a volume knob so I guess I wasn't the only person thinking along those lines.

I have no intention of scrapping all my electronic toys. They're too damn useful to completely walk away from. But until the software gets to the point where it can be run reliably on a general purpose OS, I'd rather leave my laptop at home.




---
*BTW: The band is called  Caravan of Thieves ( www.caravanofthieves.com ) in case anyone's interested. They do an odd-ball gypsy swing/cabaret type thing. Funny, slightly sinister lyrics with a lot of visual humor thrown in. Really nice people offstage too! Definitely worth seeing live.

[Lashiec]

For example, pretty much nobody sells a PCIe soundcard even though it's been years since the format has been around.  and if you find one that does, like you said, get ready to pay big bucks for it.

-superboyac (November 08, 2009, 02:41 PM)

What? It's not a professional sound card, but those are expensive by default anyway.

[Carol Haynes]

I agree with music apps - not that I am doing that much these days.

I went to see the Indigo Girls a couple of weeks ago. Two girls, 11 stringed instruments. The only hiccup was the guy they used to change tuinings between songs (3 times they had to retune themselves). Nothing like simplicity for a happy gig (and it was very happy).

Went to see We Will Rock You (touring in Edinburgh) last week and had to wait nearly half an hour before the doors were opened because of technical problems. I know there isn't much comparison but there was a fair amount of grumbling outside the door before being let in. Having said that it was an absoultely cracking evening once it got started.

[myarmor]

I've completely switched to W7 Professional x64 Retail after a 2 day trial.
For some strange reason just about everything worked out of the box (I had to install the proper drivers obviously) except Sacred 2 (securom is apparently to blame for many of the bugs encountered in it with W7).

Things that never worked properly with XP on my system (sleep/standby etc) works perfectly, and just about everything else does too.

Hopefully I won't encounter too much difficulties with it for some time.

[superboyac]

Dang 40hz!  Is there anything you don't do?  You are quickly becoming my phone-a-friend lifeline...

To continue the off-topic discussion:

Spoiler

I, too, prefer to keep it as low-tech as possible for live gigs.  But to be more accurate, my goal is to keep it as simple as possible.  Here's the problem, even with the most basic setup that we have (drums, acoustic bass, piano, vocals) you need amplification.  For that, we have the absolute simplest setup with a little portable PA/speaker system so we can have all the inputs go to one place and control the sounds somehow.  Now, here's the problem with the piano...everyone else can use a real instrument and just amplify it, but the piano player has to use a keyboard (unless the venue happens to have its own grand piano).  Initially I would just use the onboard sounds on my Roland RD700.  But here's the problem...the onboard piano sound is shit.  It's just barely tolerable.  I try to be calm about it because you just have to be prepared to play in non-ideal situations as a musician.  However, if you want a better sounding piano, you have to get a whole new freaking $2000 keyboard.  So, I can't afford to get a new keyboard for every subsequent version that comes out (RD700SX, GX, etc.).  All I want is playable piano sound.  So, if I were a pro, I'd keep trying keyboards until I found the right one.  But I can't do that.  You can't tell from just playing in the store.  It's like a mattress:  you need to use it for a couple of months to see if you like it or not.

This is where my complaint of the slow-moving, old-school musician industry thing comes into play.  90% of the manufacturers out there will do this:  when they want to improve the piano sound of a keyboard, do they offer it as some kind of downloadable update to be flashed on the keyboard through USB or something?  No.  They make a whole new keyboard and add a couple of buttons and interface changes.  Not to mention the 3 years you had to wait for them to even attempt to improve the sound.  In the end, it's a very easy fix if someone wants to address it in the company.

The problem with this situation is that the owners of hardware (me) are at the mercy of the manufacturer's schedule for changes and improvements.  That's why I turned to PC sampler software.  What I have relative to most of the musicians out there is an aptitude for technology and how to use it in practical situations to solve a problem.  So, there are tons of great piano samples out there that you can try out very easily and cheaply, without having to commit to buying thousands of dollars of equipment.  So I started trying them out.  Here's the great thing about samplers:  multiple gigabytes of samples means nothing to the computer.  Hard drives are peanut cheap.  But these keyboard companies (to this day) brag about their 64MB or 128MB onboard sound.  Why?  because they get away with it.  To me, anything in the megabytes is shit.  What the hell is 64MB?  64MB hasn't been anything to brag about for over a decade.  Anyway, with the sampler, you can use huge samples and you can find something very easily that sounds WAY better than anything Roland has on their keyboards.  Now, granted, some of these sample companies have gone a bit crazy with their enormous samples (50GB?! 200GB?!!!).  In my case, I found a sweet spot with a 2GB sample that I have.  It's awesome.  In fact, I can find a 500MB sample that will blow away anything the Roland can offer in the way of playability and sound.

But now, I need to add a laptop to my rig.  That's a pain, let me tell you.  It's one thing to bring a keyboard and two wires to plug into the PA...it's another thing to add a laptop.  First, like you mentioned, you worry about stability.  I'm over that right now, I've never experienced any issues in many, many hours of playing to date.  but the thought always lingers in the back of your head.  Second of all, your setup immediately becomes very complicated with additional wires and stuff.  I need a midi cable now going to the laptop and the laptop needs to be connected to the PA.  Then, there's a very loud humming buzz because of a ground loop (very common).  So, I needed to buy this little box to put between the laptop and the pa that gets rid of the buzz (works amazingly well, by the way).  Then I needed to setup a dual-boot on the laptop so i can run a bare-bones XP installation for just musician stuff.  Then you have to get the settings just right and easy to use.  All in all, a pain in the ass!  But worth it.

All this so that I don't have to be tied to the manufacturer's old-school ways.  I'm not buying a new keyboard unless it physically offers something I want like a better action on the keys or something...and significantly better.  And I know what you're thinking: "Why don't you just buy a midi-only keyboard".  Well, it's because there aren't many midi-only keyboards out there that have a good feel to them.

Rant...over.

[40hz]

Is there anything you don't do?

-superboyac (November 09, 2009, 11:08 AM)

Yes. I don't write computer programs. 

(Which is funny considering the number of posts I have up on DonationCoder.)

[tslim]

Not really accurate - a 32-bit CPU and OS can only address 4Gb at any one time. You can use an offset to point to that 4Gb if you want to but, for example, when you are looking at the 4Gb starting at 64Gb you can't see the 4Gb at 16Gb.

-Carol Haynes (November 06, 2009, 08:04 PM)

Hi Carol Haynes, your example is not right.

No matter how hard I try with my eyes, I can only see about 120 dgree of the world in front of me, but if I turn around I can see the whole world... well, even if I don't turn around, with a mirror, I can see what is in front and at the back of me at the sametime 

[Carol Haynes]

So you are saying my example is right because you can only see behind you when you turn round and then you can't see what you were looking at Using a mirror is cheating (swine)

[40hz]

So you are saying my example is right because you can only see behind you when you turn round and then you can't see what you were looking at Using a mirror is cheating (swine)

-Carol Haynes (November 09, 2009, 06:20 PM)

 

 

(Remind me not to get into a debate with you should the occasion ever arise! )

[tslim]

So you are saying my example is right because you can only see behind you when you turn round and then you can't see what you were looking at Using a mirror is cheating (swine)

-Carol Haynes (November 09, 2009, 06:20 PM)

Hi Carol Haynes, still, your example is NOT right.

4G is the limit of 32bits, at a particular point of time. But even for a time=t, this limit does not have anything to do with how the 4G is laid. i.e. if I have N mirrors in front of me, I can see N+1 different angle views, though they all add up within the 120 dgree limits size... (when a mirror is placed in front of me, it blocks what is behind it)

Well, may be mirror is kind of cheat, but it is useful... and the world can't do without mirror, right?

[Carol Haynes]

Sorry but 32 bits can only address 4Gb - you can fudge it by adding offsets (mirrors) but it is a fudge. PAE is a fudge. You aren't physically addressing more than 4Gb at any one time it is like having a book - you can view any double page but you can't see 4 page at once - unless you use mirrors!

[f0dder]

Sorry but 32 bits can only address 4Gb - you can fudge it by adding offsets (mirrors) but it is a fudge. PAE is a fudge. You aren't physically addressing more than 4Gb at any one time it is like having a book - you can view any double page but you can't see 4 page at once - unless you use mirrors!

-Carol Haynes (November 09, 2009, 07:18 PM)

And, technically, x86 doesn't have mirrors - only a single 32bit address space, where multiple parts can be mapped to a larger physical pool... but no mirrors.

[Deozaan]

I've switched from XP to Win7 on both my Desktop PC (built in 2005) and my netbook.

I probably shouldn't have put it on my netbook as it can be choppy at times, but it runs well enough, and on my desktop PC it runs great.

I did somehow end up with a BSOD on both my desktop PC and netbook on the same day, but I have no idea what those were about. I actually wasn't using either computer at the time. They were just idling.

[40hz]

I did somehow end up with a BSOD on both my desktop PC and netbook on the same day, but I have no idea what those were about. I actually wasn't using either computer at the time. They were just idling.

-Deozaan (November 10, 2009, 02:14 AM)

Now that is truly bizarre! And pretty cool too. (Or will be so long as it doesn't keep happening. )

[tslim]

Sorry but 32 bits can only address 4Gb - you can fudge it by adding offsets (mirrors) but it is a fudge. PAE is a fudge. You aren't physically addressing more than 4Gb at any one time it is like having a book - you can view any double page but you can't see 4 page at once - unless you use mirrors!

-Carol Haynes (November 09, 2009, 07:18 PM)

I agree 32 bits can only address 4Gb at any one time. But this has nothing to do with how many portions that made up the 4Gb and where each portion is laid. I could have N portions that add up to 4Gb but they all are just part of a 400Gb physical memory.

i.e. the fact that "32 bits can only address 4Gb at any one time" should not restrict a 32 bits O/S from handling more than 4Gb physical memory.

It is like if I can only eat one chicken at any one meal, that does not mean I must cook only one chicken for every meal. I could for example cook 3 chickens and eat 1/3 of each of them...

[f0dder]

i.e. the fact that "32 bits can only address 4Gb at any one time" should not restrict a 32 bits O/S from handling more than 4Gb physical memory.

-tslim (November 10, 2009, 07:18 AM)

Except buggy drivers that assume that PHYSICALADDRESS.HighPart is always zero - and those did exist, and Microsoft used that as reason for changing XP SP1 from supporting 4GB of physical memory (located wherever) to only supporting the low 4GB of physical memory.

Only supporting 4GB physical memory is an arbitrary limitation, but is obviously done to differentiate server and workstation 32bit Windows editions.

[tomos]

I have a couple of questions (more generic I guess)

Re software that works on XP - will it (probably) work on Windows 7 or will it have to have been specifically updated for 7 ?

My other question was about pros & cons of 32 & 64-bit OS's. But I think I got answers for that in this thread: How much trouble is a 64-bit OS right now? (I think 32 bit would suit me fine)

[Carol Haynes]

Re software that works on XP - will it (probably) work on Windows 7 or will it have to have been specifically updated for 7 ?

-tomos (November 19, 2009, 05:59 AM)

If there is a Vista or 7 update it might be worth trying.

Lots of XP software appears to work without much problem. If not try using XP compatibility mode - just right click on the shortcut that starts the app and select XP compatibility (not the VM which will only work if you have Hyper V support in your CPU).

Some XP software may have problems with UAC in Vista and 7 if it expects to have the free run of your system. You can either turn off UAC (probably not the best solution) or give the software Admin rights (right click on the shortcut again and choose run as administrator).

I'd guess most normal apps should work without too much problem but low level tools and utilities may have more conflict issues.

[40hz]

Re software that works on XP - will it (probably) work on Windows 7 or will it have to have been specifically updated for 7 ?

-tomos (November 19, 2009, 05:59 AM)

Most (or much) probably will, but the only way to be 100% sure is to check.

Microsoft just published a 5K+ item list. I previously mentioned it here:

www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=20651.0

For anything not on the list - or to see the most recent information - you can always go to Microsoft's Compatibility Center and do a look up. Hardware compatibility info can also be found there.

Link: http://www.microsoft...7/en-us/default.aspx

Note: While pretty much anything that works for Vista will Work with Win7, I'd rather not chance doing that with any software that messes with system functions. I'd be very cautious about using any utility app (disk tool, system tweaker, registry editor, etc.) unless the developer specifically says it is compatible with Windows 7.

Just my 2¢

<Addendum> YOIKS! - Carol beat me to it while I was composing! (And said it better than I did too. *SIGH*)

[tomos]

thanks Carol & 40 -
I was curious in general but also that I have some software that isnt being developed any more - those tips will help, & if not I can always have a go at setting up a virtual XP.

not the VM which will only work if you have Hyper V support in your CPU

-Carol Haynes (November 19, 2009, 06:41 AM)

are you talking about the Win7 virtual XP option - that's only in ultimate, isnt it? - I've read that you're as well off setting it up yourself anyways (in windows secrets I think)

[Darwin]

not the VM which will only work if you have Hyper V support in your CPU

-Carol Haynes (November 19, 2009, 06:41 AM)

are you talking about the Win7 virtual XP option - that's only in ultimate, isnt it? - I've read that you're as well off setting it up yourself anyways (in windows secrets I think)

-tomos (November 19, 2009, 07:08 AM)

It's in Enterprise and Professional as well... Setting it up yourself is fine, but you'll need a licensed copy of XP that you can activate on the VM. Of course, Win2k would likely do as well.

OT (a bit) - what settings are people using for the XP VM? I'm at default, which assigns 512MB of RAM. Performance is not brisk!