yorolpal

Bub, ol pal, while there is much truth to what your saying regarding "performance" there is just no question whatsoever that 64bit gives you more "headroom" when building projects with RAM hungry VSTs.

I agree 100%.

And when you say (I'm paraphrasing) "well, you can always just freeze and unfreeze" you are 100% correct...but who the heck wants to do that??  I don't.

Me either, although I do prefer to have my drums frozen so I can manipulate the wav's to my liking. I use the Percussion Strip a lot and different reverbs on different drums. Doing that on an audio output of SD3 on a lot of outputs can bog you down quick.

People complain on the forum all the time and occasionally in very bellicose fashion about having to make ONE extra click with their mouse to do something now.  Yet you're advocating (I think) that freezing and unfreezing all the dang time is just a triviality.  It's not.  At least to me.  I'd never go back to 32 bit.

I'm not advocating freezing, I'm just pointing out that freeze is there to free up your CPU/RAM and therefor you should never be in a position to where you are constrained by the RAM limitations of Sonar x86. Even if you were full 64bit and bitbridge never came in to play, and you had 20 GB of RAM, and your project got large enough to occupy the full 20GB, eventually you would still end up using freeze or bounce, even in a 64 bit environment.

I've been freed by the constraints of 32 bit.  Free at last, free at last thank gawd almighty I'm free at last!  Of course, YMMV:-)

Oh if it were only that black and white. :) HEHE!

So far I haven't run in to any situation with any of the synths I have where they sucked up all my RAM. Honestly, I wish more of them would go in to memory because most of the ones I have seem to stream off the HDD.

Now ... if Cake would update the 32bit only things that come with Sonar and go full 64bit and completely avoid Bitbridge, I wouldn't hesitate to use 64bit.

One thing is clearly apparent.  Even if the posts are wrong, all of them.  The answer to the title question is yep.

I have to add my 2 cents.. I recently made the switch to 64 bit Os and Sonar 64,  I am one to tell it how it is ,no sugar coating here.. 
 Windows 7 is new to me.  had it for 2 years but just installed it 2 months ago, I must say the windows are sleek looking and thats about it for me as far as what I like about windows 7 beside some of technical aspects/improvements under the hood..   
:The Good 

:I see a slight improvement in overall performance / responsiveness 


:Cleaner looking ( W7 ) over my Windows Xp

:More Ram Usage if needed, ( I agree with John why freeze when you dont need to) , to freeze and unfreeze makes me **** the bucket, Freezing and unfreezing is a big command and I have had several crashes related to freezing in the past. So I Tend to say away from freezing plus when I edit I dont wanna stop the transport to unfreeze to edit/ arrange ,Thats a Pita. 

:The Bad

: Stuck Notes/and other related issues just in 64 bit. ( Fixs on the hopefully)

: 32 bit plugins are a toss up.

:Bit bridge if it dosn't work you forced to buy a 3rd party App <--- Pretty Pathetic (jbridge) something I will never buy Cause Cw should of either built a superior bridging Software that works with everything or licensed it from Jbridge just as they did with the Izotope algorithms. Cheap skates >>

Final thoughts:

Its here its installed it works as good or better than 32 bit in most cases. And If your willing to start over with a new install and dont mind losing some older plugins why not.. 64 bit wont be here for ever 128 is on the horizon ..its just like VST3 and USB 3.0 gotta move on with the times sooner or later. 

I could never go back to 32 bit/ Xp . Its like going to xp from windows work group 3.1. then back noooo..
 But I will say Bub makes a very good point.. There mostly all marketing Bull behind 64 bit. By no means will it make your productions better. But just like buying x1 or any other toy your inspiration gets a renewal. 

 **I will add this the best upgrade you can do that I see a major difference is going to an SSD.**

under 64 bit .. if you are now able to have multiple instances of RAM hogging programs like Superior, Garritan, Kontakt, etc.  which usually in my case results in high track count, without having to freeze any tracks... how is that not a performance improvement?? thats major from an arranging standpoint. we can be more ambitious with our productions, and thats why it matters..

John


One thing is clearly apparent.  Even if the posts are wrong, all of them.  The answer to the title question is yep.

Freddie KNEW this...

Bub

Unfortunately I have, and the reality is there is no noticeable improvement when going from Sonar x86 to x64 and the Teleport Server crashes are just one more annoyance on top of the many confirmed bugs in X1 so I just don't even waste my time with it anymore.

There is absolutely no need for Sonar x64 on any DAW ... period. If you have fallen for the marketing hype and feel the urge to play with it by all means go right ahead. You're just another one in a long line of beta testers who got duped in to thinking x64 is better.

That may have been the reality for you in the short time that you used it until you gave up. But I converted tox64 in Feb 2008 and have already produced one album at 24/96. We used x64 samplers like Play extensively and song projects took up as much as 14GB of RAM. No freezing. Even mixing I can still see RAM usage of over 8GB these days, and the wide selection of x64 native samplers and plugins show that your opinion is simply outdated and inaccurate. 

Bub

John

Bub you are coming at this backwards. It would normally be one is "forced" to work in a 32 bit environment because of legacy gear.  Not unlike it was back in the 16 bit era. If you need to know the real benefits of a 64 bit environment do a little research on it.

I have. There's very little improvement when running Sonar when going from 32 to 64 other than being able to access more ram.

Overall performance is better in a 64 bit OS. More importantly though is the fact that most high end audio and video apps have migrated over to 64 bits not because of marketing but for the advantages 64 bits offers.

Everyone except one of the largest ones ... Apple Quicktime.

Anyone that has a system that can handle 64 bits and has the options of dual booting to a 32 bit OS and a 64 bit OS on the same machine will notice a performance gain with the 64 bit OS.

Are you talking about system speed or Sonar? I've been running 64 bit Sonar since Windows 7 came out on a dual boot XP/Win7 setup. There was no improvement whatsoever that was noticeable in Sonar. Windows 7 boots up faster than XP, the GUI is smoother, but that's the only improvement I saw.

This is not pie in the sky but real world experiences from nearly all that have taken the plunge.

Again, are you talking about the OS or Sonar? Sonar, I see no improvement except for being able to access more ram, which technically is not a show stopper if you don't have it because you can freeze to free up CPU/RAM.

Read the threads I have posted on this in the past and then make your view known here. Better yet try it yourself.

I have tried it. I've been running 64bit since Windows 7 (and M-audio released 64 bit drivers.). It has only caused problems because of Bitbridge. That's why I recently switched back to 32 bit.

If you don't have the same experience that most have I will be surprised. But you must have the right gear first. Yes it will mean some things will need to be left behind but that in the end will allow suitable new things to will come along and more than make up the loss.

Where is Freddy  when you need him?

On my system, an i5 Quad Core 750 Win7 x64, 4GB RAM (I had 8GB but saw no improvement and ended up swapping it out for a lesser quantity of better quality RAM) running 8.5 and X1 both in 64 and 32 bit ... I see no difference whatsoever for the projects I do when switching between 32 and 64 bit. I only see improvements because I don't have to deal with Bitbridge crashing.

The discussion between John T and myself is ... he said he has projects that will not run at all in 32. All I'm asking is, prove it which he has been unable to do. You always have the option to freeze to take the load of your CPU/RAM if things bog down.

 
 
Bub!
 
To rap it up, you are saying that the earth are flat, everyone else trying to tell you its round. It is round and there are only benefits using x64bit, period. Its matter of physical and mathematical calculations. Everything in your computer, CPU, Memory, Chips are in x64 or higher.
 
Quicktime are in full x64bit too...has been for many years but only on MAC OS.. Apple softwares and OSX has been in x64bit in  many years...
 
 
 
 

Everything always come down to the weakest link. The waekest link in a computer is x32 or lower....

veeeennnffft.

I'm still on X4 so there...