Yeah its really neat how they arbitrarily cripple products in order to get you to spend more money. C'mon folks, the binaries are the same - this is a scam. And then, to get you to spend more money, they slap some screen savers and other useless utilities in with the same binaries and label that version "ultimate". Of course, you're going to feel cheap if you don't get the biggest baddest version. Makes me sick.

Thats one way to look at it. Or you could chose to see them trying to offer levels for people that may not be able to afford the highest costing version. Also the basic version is not going to tax less then optimal hardware as much as the top version. Not unlike CW with Home Studio. 

Rothchild


Jose, you should try Ubuntu, if you think dressing up the calculator to match the UI is cool Ubuntu will knock your socks off!

Most of the apps mentioned are installed by default (calculator, image manipulation and notes) it's just that there's a free software store built in from which you can install tens of thousands of different applications with nothing more than a couple of clicks, this could be a simple weather widget of a full blown LAMP stack. All of these apps are essentially 'part of the OS' as they are all compiled and packaged specifically for it, it's just that there's so many that they just ship the default install with the most useful stuff for a desktop computer and leave you to add or remove any extra ones you want to play with or take out.

Also by default it installs 'ready to rock' there's the office suite, a web browser, graphics apps, chat client and media player all there waiting.

Child

 
A friend of mine has Ubuntu installed in his system.  And I agree that it has very nice eye-candy features like the way you can literally have multiple desktops and switch between them from a cube.  This enables you to have various applications opened in their own environment (as if they were each opened in different computers at the same time).  It's hard to describe, but it is certainly a nice features to have.  I'm sure it has other really cool features like that.  However, Sonar doesn't run in Ubuntu, so it renders it worthless to me. :-P

Hi John

Yes it has an Aero equivalent, it's called Compiz. It works by default on Intel GFX (because they have a proper Free driver) if you're using Nvidia or ATI there's an additional step to agree to their Non Free license terms - There's a GUI'fied wizard to guide you through this step (and to install any other Non-Free drivers your system might need).

You can see a bunch of the desktop FX here: http://www.youtube.com/wa...y8&feature=related

Caution: the music may not be to your taste! (didn't really hit the spot for me I gotta say!)

No, it doesn't run Sonar (it does run the R brand though, and there's a native DAW called Ardour too)

As I've mentioned elsewhere that's why I'm happy to track W7 developments as I know I'll end up with it, or one of it's derivatives, for audio work. But in that respect I'm not a Windows user, I'm a Sonar user. I'd be very happy for it just to boot in to Sonar and not to ever think about the underlying OS.

However, for my day to day desktop needs I find Ubuntu far more productive, easy to use, flexible and adaptive to the way I want to work. Not to mention that it is doesn't cost anything and is Free.

Sounds like it may be time for you to give it another go? :-)

Child

Wood67


Snipping?  Now I understand.  I saw it on the task bar and read it as Sniping Tool so left well alone.

 
:-D

Hi John Yes it has an Aero equivalent, it's called Compiz. It works by default on Intel GFX (because they have a proper Free driver) if you're using Nvidia or ATI there's an additional step to agree to their Non Free license terms - There's a GUI'fied wizard to guide you through this step (and to install any other Non-Free drivers your system might need). You can see a bunch of the desktop FX here: http://www.youtube.com/wa...y8&feature=related Caution: the music may not be to your taste! (didn't really hit the spot for me I gotta say!) No, it doesn't run Sonar (it does run the R brand though, and there's a native DAW called Ardour too) As I've mentioned elsewhere that's why I'm happy to track W7 developments as I know I'll end up with it, or one of it's derivatives, for audio work. But in that respect I'm not a Windows user, I'm a Sonar user. I'd be very happy for it just to boot in to Sonar and not to ever think about the underlying OS. However, for my day to day desktop needs I find Ubuntu far more productive, easy to use, flexible and adaptive to the way I want to work. Not to mention that it is doesn't cost anything and is Free. Sounds like it may be time for you to give it another go? :-) Child

Very nice and thanks for the heads up but I am and have been for a long time a PC sort of guy. LOL  I like Windows. Its really as simple as that. I can see why you or others use something else and that is fine. Heck I have dabbled in just about all the OSs that can run on a PC. I always come back to Windows. There is no reason to explain why because I am sure you already know. I do wish you well with your choice though. The important thing is keep on computing!

Razor,

I have Sonar 8.3.1 x64 also installed in this system and it seems to be running fine.  I haven't done any extensive testing on it though, but I did open it a few times to test other stuff and it was working.  No, it's not the 32 bit version, but if anything the 64 bit version would be the most finiky as far as plugin compatibility, and such.

Take care!

Don't mention it Strat :-)

hard to believe we're up to page 2 and freddie hasn't jumped in yet

John

Hi John Yes it has an Aero equivalent, it's called Compiz. It works by default on Intel GFX (because they have a proper Free driver) if you're using Nvidia or ATI there's an additional step to agree to their Non Free license terms - There's a GUI'fied wizard to guide you through this step (and to install any other Non-Free drivers your system might need). You can see a bunch of the desktop FX here: http://www.youtube.com/wa...y8&feature=related Caution: the music may not be to your taste! (didn't really hit the spot for me I gotta say!) No, it doesn't run Sonar (it does run the R brand though, and there's a native DAW called Ardour too) As I've mentioned elsewhere that's why I'm happy to track W7 developments as I know I'll end up with it, or one of it's derivatives, for audio work. But in that respect I'm not a Windows user, I'm a Sonar user. I'd be very happy for it just to boot in to Sonar and not to ever think about the underlying OS. However, for my day to day desktop needs I find Ubuntu far more productive, easy to use, flexible and adaptive to the way I want to work. Not to mention that it is doesn't cost anything and is Free. Sounds like it may be time for you to give it another go? :-) Child

Very nice and thanks for the heads up but I am and have been for a long time a PC sort of guy. LOL  I like Windows. Its really as simple as that. I can see why you or others use something else and that is fine. Heck I have dabbled in just about all the OSs that can run on a PC. I always come back to Windows. There is no reason to explain why because I am sure you already know. I do wish you well with your choice though. The important thing is keep on computing!

Hey John

I kinda knew that anyway but I wanted to make sure you were clear that there is no technical reason not to use Ubuntu on the desktop, apart from the previously acknowledged areas where it doesn't compete (mainly running Sonar) It does everything W7 does, as well if not better, and is free.

By the way the new version is out today: http://www.ubuntu.com/pro...atisubuntu/910features

Happy computing
Child

Thanks.
 
I had to run SONAR in Administrator mode in order to register it, and I've just left it there.
 
I had a lot of trouble installing Photoshop Elements as well. The pattern seems to be that Win 7 doesn't like installing things when there are bits and pieces of of a previous installation left in the install directory. Dim Pro, Tassman, Finale 2010, Photoshop all installed OK once I started from a pristine empty folder. This was never an issue in Vista, and is a bit of a pain (assuming I've interpreted events correctly!)

Blades


A few things:

The deskscapes thing went away.  It's not in any Win7 version, AFAIK.

Here's a handy tip for the Snipping tool (Windows 7 or Vista)

1.  Click Start (or press the Windows key)
2.  Type snipping (don't click anywhere, just type it)
3.  Drag the resulting Snipping Tool icon to the taskbar and make it the first icon next to the Start orb
4.  Use WindowsKey-1 combo to launch the snipping tool any time.

You can extend the idea to other apps as well.  The WinKey-# combo will launch the things that are in your quick launch on the task bar.  So if you put Sonar's icon there in position 2, then WinKey-2 will launch it.

HTH

 
Blades,
 
Thanks so much for this tip.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work with the Numeric Keypad :-(
 
Still, it's a very useful tip, thanks!

By the way, the Disk Defragmentation Tool in Windows 7 is much improved.

It'll do more than one Pass if needed and it's fast ( though it's probably because I always maintain my drives).

I hated the one in Vista because it never seem to want to defrag my hard drives.  So I appreciate this improvement :-)

Microsoft finally did it right guys.  I'm very impressed!

Now I bring you the quirks I've found so far in one of my Sonar projects under Windows 7 x64 that did not appear in the same project under Vista x64:
.
.
1- The rest of my projects seem unaffected by this, which indicates there's something specific to this project that causes the issue.  The only thing I can think of is that I have multiple instances of EWQLSO Gold XP in it.  But I will do further testing to confirm this.  What happens is that, whenever I open this project, I get a divider line in Sonar's Toolbar that looks like this:
.


It's that blue line that goes across my Toolbar.  Not a big deal, but it's somewhat annoying to look at.


2- The second quirk involves the CPU meter in Sonar.  I'm not sure why, but I'm getting a CPU spike on core #1 in Sonar's CPU meter, yet all cores in the Task Manager seem to be working evenly.  This was not the case in Vista, where the CPU meters in Sonar and TM would coincide.  I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this, but this is what I'm seeing:
.



Like I said, notice the big spike on core 1 in Sonar's Transport bar, which reads a peak value of around 75%.  Also notice that the Task Manager shows a lower CPU reading hovering around 47%.  I have the ThreadSchedulingModel set to "2" in the AUD.INI file.  I also deleted all the Registry keys for Core Parking (or at least I think I did that right).  Nonetheless, the project plays fine and, even with this, I am still able to play it one buffer size lower than in Vista...go figure!

3- Using the LP64_EQ makes some of the samples in the project drop.  Actually, what I think it's doing is making them load slower into RAM, which is why I don't hear some notes during playback.  As soon as I disable the LP64_EQ, everything plays normally.  This was not the case under Vista x64.


The next step will be to recreate a project in Windows 7 using EWQLSO Gold XP and seeing if these quirks still show up.  If they do, then I'll be sending this project to the Cakesters so that they can figure out what's going on.  My other projects seem to open just fine.  So far, this is the only project that was affected by the change of OS environment.  I'll keep you guys updated if I find anything else.


Take care!



By the way, thanks for stopping by Michael Five.  It's funny when things like that happen :-)

It's the same plugin, except I'm using the 64 bit version on Sonar 8.5.1 x64.

Transcending Music


Yeah it seems that the 64 bit LP64 is buggy in a few ways. For one, it seems to create instability for other processors. However, it's still my guess from what I've seen so far.

This is interesting.  I did disable the LP64 in the project, but I did not remove it.
 
I never use the LP64 because it's so hard to tweak due to the silence produced when you're moving the filters.  But I wanted to give it another go this time.
 
Guess what though?  I found the culprit of my high CPU spiking issue.  The problem was solved by removing Ozone 4 from the Master Bus.  As soon as I did this, I was getting even readings among all cores as shown below:
.
.

.
.
Everything is the same in this project, except I removed Ozone 4 from the Master Bus and viola!  No more core spiking.  Big difference, huh :-)
 
I guess Ozone 4 needs to be optimized for Windows 7, which I'm sure they'll provide an update for it soon.  I need to specify that the above snapshot includes the presence of the LP64 EQ in the Master Bus.  So this plugin does NOT produce CPU spiking.
 
Also, to my surprise, I sometimes don't see the blue line in this project.  It magically appears and disappeared :-S  This could be a video card issue, so I'll check my video card settings.  But, for now, I'm just happy to know what was causing the CPU spiking issue in this project.  I feel much better now.