Considering a new DAW

I've had mine awhile, but I have concerns.

I'm 32 bit, XP, Sonar 8.3 Pro, and I have a buttload of VSTs, instruments, FX, etc...

I'm concerned with the whole 32/64 bridge thing.

I'm concerned with leaving Sonar and going X2.

I'm very happy with my present system other than I can max the Quadcore on a big project. So I'm wondering/thinking about a nice bigger faster machine, maybe ruining Windoze 7 (in a 32 bit config?) and just installing my 8.3 Pro and migrating everything over to it. Can anyone tell me why this is a bad idea? 

Are you happy with the music that you're making?

I know people who are happily making great records with 1960's-era equipment. To them, the quandary over migrating from 32- to 64-bits is a laughable non-issue.

I do, however, agree with Jonesey (I can count on one hand the number of times I haven't agreed with Jonesey) that the migration needn't be traumatic. Install both versions on your new machine and continue to use the 32-bit version for projects that need it. Use the 64-bit version for sample-heavy projects that need the extra RAM.

Whether or not to upgrade to X2 is a separate issue. I have no intention of moving from SONAR 8.5, which is better suited to my way of working and does not constrain me in any significant way. X2, OTOH, would impose new constraints due to the way automation has been implemented.

It was 99% painless for me too. All I got was a few warnings that some plug ins might sound different. And a couple of old freebee's from KVS showed as greyed out. So you could see what they originally were at least. All easily replaced. All the Sonar plugs work the same as before. 

There was a huge improvement in overall performance for me. The new CPU was not much faster than the old one, But having more RAM and the 64 bit thing made working with VST's like Session drummer run without issues. 32 Bit never worked for me,,, ever. 

Do it...

Took a call from support today on my DAW (it died 3 days ago) they said the C drive is not a happy camper... I asked if they could recover? Because if they can't I have to reinstall all of my SW (lots) I have my projects saved on a USB drive, so they should be OK. I'm just hoping they can get a new C drive in there and salvage all of my licences, etc. Should know by tomorrow if I'll be recording next week, or installing SW :-( People who don't do this "have no idea."

I traded in old projects and old vsts that I once thought were awesome for windows 7 and 64 bit.
i always keep up on the os as soon as it comes out.
the switch though from 32X win XP was the biggest jump by far.
but like i said, the trade off was well worth it.
windows 7 is smooth, win 8 even smoother (im not concerned about a start menu)

timidi


Everything that bit said is what I think and do.
Check that all drivers are available for your hardware and win7-64.

That should be the first step.  I tried to load Windows 8 and ran into driver and software issues.
 
Windows 7 is loaded and running fine.
 
-JJ

If it works.... I'd ride that horse. 

As long as mine works and does what I want.... I'm good with 32bits. When it dies, then we'll be looking at the new 64 bit.... well, it'll probably be 128bit by then.... 


On the c drive thing... I had a C drive crash on me on a different computer. (2 diff times) 

On the first one, the boot sector was damaged some how.... I installed a new drive installed the OS and then took the old c drive and connected it as a slave drive.... back in the days of jumpers.... I was able to read the data on it and salvage/copy/paste the files out to another drive. 

On the second..... the drive didn't hard crash, but was flaky and would boot sometimes and sometimes not.... so I got a new drive and it came with some cloning software.... I followed the instructions to the letter. Literally 15 minutes later, I had a fully functional new C drive which was a clone of the old one. I only had to reinstall 2 of the applications, everything else cloned and ran perfectly.