In my opinion, the only compelling reasons to switch from XP to Win7-64 are: 

• You need more than 3.5 GB memory for your projects;
• You want more CPU grunt and you have to upgrade your DAW hardware

My XP-32 DAW was rock solid and had lower latency with Delta-66 WDM drivers than my Win7-64 DAW with Echo Layla 3G ASIO drivers, to the point where I seriously started regretting the upgrade. Eventually things settled down but I can't honestly say I am more productive now than I was then. (But then, I didn't have RAM or CPU grunt constraints either).

On the SONAR front, again IMO there is NO compelling reason to switch from 8.5.3 to X1.

As always, your mileage may vary. Generalized statements about OS or RAM just don't apply in this business.

daveny5


+1 for stopping any grouping of Vista and Windows 7. Vista was a disaster. Windows 7 is the best Windows OS ever.

That is hogwash.  So what you are saying is I am lying and have been for some time. That is more then just insulting. One needs to fully understand and know what one is saying to another.

Davy have you ever used Vista?

I always felt Vista to Win7 was like Windows ME to Win 2000, the beta version (sound familiar?) before the streamlined version came out.

...and yes, I did use it.

John, I will respectfully disagree. Lexmarks’s web site says that their Vista printer drivers will work in Win7. They did not work on my 64 bit win7 Pro system. I had to buy a new printer.

That happened from 98/Me to Win2000, Xp to Vista as well ...and it always SUCKS. I've had to replace wireless KEYBOARDS (a big F.U. to Logitech btw) because they didn't want to write simple drivers for it.

John

 hogwash.

Hey John, get your own words......

FastBikerBoy

John

hogwash.

Hey John, get your own words......

But I like yours better!

keith


...
Stop trying to spread this urban myth that a "modern DAW app" of the complexity of SONAR can't operate efficiently and effectively on a XP system. Heck, SONAR 8.5.3 blows that falsehood out of the water. You don't have to look too far.
 
 

Maybe I shouldn't state this here, but Cubase 6 won't run on XP.  (Not officially anyway, as the minimum OS supported is Windows 7).

Just saying... Support for XP in general is quickly vanishing, so why cling so tightly to it?  I care less about some benchmark in a magazine article than the reality of what we know will happen in a year or two...

All this gnashing of teeth makes little sense to me... Oh well.

Yeah..that is the only problem. XP is being not supported by MS in 2014 totally. 

There is a service pack for Windows XP that will buy users a bit more time with this operating system. Service Pack 3 is available for consumers who just aren’t ready to make the switch over to Windows 7, but support for that will end April 8th, 2014....taken from....http://www.worldstart.com/when-will-they-discontinue-support-for-windows-xp/

Now, it does not really matter to those of us who archive our computer systems..we have a PII system here that runs a couple of tracker programs as well as host several old VST's . And they still run....

// What does X1c do that 8.5 didn't do... that makes WinXP old and outdated?
Nothing that I can tell. However that doesn't mean that one wouldn't want to do the upgrade to X1 and Win7.
I tend to think of OS upgrades as being similar to getting a new car. Essentially I am going to go through a lot of effort and cost to still go from point A to point B. That said, I may be travelling in a safer more reliable set of wheels.
So while I tend to avoid the process of upgrading an OS, when I do see a compelling reason to do so I don't have any problem proceeding. I look forward to years of productive effort using X1 and Win7. For me the upgrade was worth it and necessary.
 

yorolpal

Do any of you folks that still use XP and it's 4gig RAM limit use ANY RAM intensive instruments or plugs?  I think that some folks continue to confuse "performance" of an XP 32bit system versus a Win7 64bit system with "headroom".  Without freezing tracks, which IMHO is both a nusance and a time waster, how many mutitrack instances of (yes, I'll say it again) Omnisphere can you get in any project even one that doesn't have much else in it?  I'm pretty sure the answer is probably 1...maybe...depending on how many channels of Omni you're using in that one instance.  How many instances of Guitar Rig 4?  How many instances of Amplitube 3.  How many separate convolution reverbs?

You really should be freezing your tracks for more reasons than just freeing up your CPU/RAM. Hard drives fail, paths change, VST's get moved, samples get updated and no longer have the same file name or location (did anyone notice all the Session Drummer 3 samples being updated in the X1C patch ... hmmm?), and when you go to open up an old project you need, there's a real good chance that your project will not open and sound the way it did when you originally finished it if you've made any kind of change to your system or updated any of your DAW software. If you have frozen everything you never have to worry about that.

Are you sure you're system is configured properly? You have a much heftier system than I do and I can freeze an entire 4 minute long 96kHz/32bit track with Guitar Rig 4, Pro Channel, Sonitus EQ, and Sonitus Reverb in 12 ~ 15 seconds running X1 32bit. If that's too long for you to wait for a track to freeze, I dunno what to tell ya olpal. :)

As for drum samplers like Session Drummer 3, you Archive the outputs you don't want to use so you don't waste time freezing empty tracks. How ofter do you have a full set of drum samples in use anyway? And even with freezing 12 outputs of SD3, it only takes 2 ~ 2.5 minutes. I'm willing to go take a leak, or get a soda while it's pumping along.

I don't think anyone is "knocking" XP.  It was and is a great OS.  But it is yesterday's OS.  And Tempus Fugits!

Actually yes they are knocking it and for the life of me I don't see how a sane rational person could do that, so I'm not even going to engage them because they've already lost the argument.

XP is not yesterdays OS. All of the IT people I know (or knew when I was in the networking field) installed XP on their new equipment and are just reluctantly forcing themselves to go to Windows 7 because support for XP is ending in a couple of years. I was just in the emergency room at my local hospital 3 weeks ago and they had new PC's ... all running Windows XP.

The only businesses where I saw Windows 7 were in places that bought assembly line hardware from Dell and HP.

If I could do it over again, when I built my last DAW, I would not have wasted the money on Windows 7 and would have just put my existing copy of Windows XP on instead. There's no real need for more than 4GB RAM and 64bit unless you are a power user who likes to say you have those things, and there's nothing wrong with that. I was that way when I was in to gaming on a PC.

Everyone has over the years and still can work very successfully on XP 32bit w/3.5GB usable RAM.

The only thing I will comment on that I've read here is the crazy notion that you don't have to tweak Windows 7. There's volumes written on how to tweak Windows 7, just like there were written on Windows XP. That's just crazy to say something like that.

did anyone notice all the Session Drummer 3 samples being updated in the X1C patch ... hmmm?)

But that doesn't change file locations, all that happens is Sonar installs them in your chosen path. That's what happened here anyway. I have all my samples on a separate drive and that's where the updates went.

djtrailmixxx


1 - Xp does not and will not have UEFI BIOS support. The latest motherboards are starting to use UEFI more often. All but the AM3+ Gigabyte motherboards in the 990FX chipset line are UEFI New Intel z68 motherboards are ramping up UEFI 2 - SSD Support. XP and SSD together is a hack. 3 - Embrace our new X64 overlords. My system has 256 MB in disk local cache, 256 MB in raid controller cache, 256 MB in UAD cache and 1000 MB in Video cache, all of which has to be addressed BEFORE you can be allotted system RAM for OS use, which on XP 32 bit is max 4 GB. I have some Sonar projects that have Sonarprd.exe using 2.5 GB. I think you can see my personal need for X64. I used to run XP X64 as well, driver support was the weak sauce. 4 - Development Support. Why make developers support 11 years of legacy software, it distracts them from making the latest and greatest all that great. XP was supposed to have been dropped all together when Windows 7 came out. MS had pity and extended it. Same for driver developers. The only reason enterprises still rock XP on any new systems is because of legacy applications. Just a few reasons Edit: Firefox 6 makes my comment all jumbled together...

I've got the new UEFI Bios on my Asus Crosshair V Formula 990FX board.... 1 word. AMAZING!

FastBikerBoy

did anyone notice all the Session Drummer 3 samples being updated in the X1C patch ... hmmm?)

But that doesn't change file locations, all that happens is Sonar installs them in your chosen path. That's what happened here anyway. I have all my samples on a separate drive and that's where the updates went.

Didn't say it did ...

But I can tell you some older projects (Older meaning, ones I started in early January of this year) that I used drum loops in, no longer find 'some' of the samples and all I've done is install X1 patches. And since I don't have the track frozen, I can't go back in and hear it, and I don't remember what sample I used, so I'm S.O.L. on that except for the wav I exported that I'm not happy with which is the reason I reopened the project.

Many reasons to have a w7 machine, including:
 better multi-core support
 use of new CPU instruction sets
 hardware drivers not available for new stuff
 
Some programs (dragon nat speaking) require specific CPU instruction, but not w7.

XP has not turned into a pumpkin. But, 'tis getting close to midnight.

Vista's performance was fine in the end. But the interface was crap: lost functions, hidden features, multi-level menus, extra clicks everywhere.

The search feature interface introduced with vista was and is still total garbage. XP's interface was quick and easy with clickable options. Now one has to remember dozens of control words, and cannot easily search ONLY the current folder. And requires lots of attention to indexing options,.... And it often misses what is visually observable.

And the windows explorer bug, and the KVM bugs, and the losing of printers, monitors,....  Stuff that will not be fixed as w7 is now in mantenance mode, annoys me daily.

At least in wV there was a "show all shared resources" feature. Nothing in w7 to quickly identify a shared folder,...

I have dozens of clients that still use wXP. Some that use wV. And because of new box purchases, increasingly w7-64. Often unhappily when they learn some of their most used programs do not work with 64.

Many of the applets, and tools I use for audio will not work on 64. So, not yet for me.


Might finish moving to Sonar-X before wXp support is ended.

j

I gave up keeping upi with computing a long time ago, it's getting mad and in the way of making music.  BuB relax, most of these people are not going to agree with your argument and you will just get banned by the trolls again.  What you are saying is the truthno need for 64 bit "yet", 64 will "eventually" become the standerd and norm but not for a couple of years, still got thunderbolt to implement and will see what this technology will do in terms of thruput and 32 bit computing.

As for the argument of XPvsVistaVs7 unfortunatley BuB and everyone else saying XP is fine we should be able to still use blah, blah, blah.  Windows 7 bombs all over XP and Vista, I understand some of the technical jargon but not all.  What I can say is this: Once upon a time there was a program called XP, it was great, it was everthing "98" was but for the first time we had NTFS instead of fat 32, we could actually afford 4 gig's of ram and if we were lucky an $800 2x DVD burner, nice.  Now don't forget SATA, USB 2/3 and even Firewire support was non exsistant, I even think most hardrives were of the IDE 100 type the only 133IDE types were the Maxator and they wer crap.  Oh and another thing no multi-core, although they did introduce multi-threading and tacked that on to "98" no sorry XP.

Are we all keeping up with the story, fast forward to I think 96-97, Sata became all the rage, instead of AGP video cards we now had PCIexpress and most soundcards became audio interfaces and DSP cards became PCIexpress, then there was the new DDR1&2 ram.  Vista was needed but, this was a rushed out program, to keep up with the changes.  You needed 4 gigs of ram just to run Vista.

Ah fianlly Windows Seven arrives, is it perfect, no, will we need to up grade again yes!!! But Windows Seven works, for the first time in my musical making history, I was able to to take a generic 1000 dollar laptop and turn it in Abbey Road, lets get this straight, all I have is a first generation i5.  Normally I would spend hours, days, months, years configuring my operating system, my bios just to record some tunes.

Now this was partially my fault, I was trying to run a hi end system with a crap mother board, then when I fixed that my sound card technology was too old.  Sounds like a viscious circle.

Now though with W7, the only tweaking I ever do is turn off all the automatic updates and a whole heep of **** that starts with the computer and off I go, I can make music and download porn at the same time.

Ok the moral of the story and please correct me if I am wrong.  XP was an alalgam of 98 and 2000, it was a bunch of tacked together programs and features and I think it was always intended as a stop gap.  It was and never would work brilliantly unless you had a top of the line computer with the components as well and even then, these computers and programs were only at the begining of the digital revolution, so they were always going to be problems.  "We design stuff in our own image"  so if we are not perfect how can anything else be?

Vista was a dogs breakfast and the only ones that I can see here who are saying it was alright had Vista 64, Vista I suspect would have been fine if you had the memory but if not=dogs breakfast.  I have used and configured Vista, never again.

Ok  so does anyone have any questions???
Sorry Bub, don't let the Sonar masses rile you!!!
Peace