Anyone interested in trying Windows 7

I've been using Windows 7 since early beta. The last beat release was very stable. The release candidate seems even more polished. Probably what Microsoft should have delivered with Windows originally, but hey they're Microsoft :-)

I am planning on upgrade my Sonar 8 Producer system to Windows 7 64-bit. I run Vista 64-bit now. I was planning on using this thread to give those interested in hearing my experience updated. Stay tuned.

If you just want to rant about Microsoft, or Windows - please do that somewhere else.

Very very interested & intrigued. I was just going to post a thread asking about Windows 7 RC experience as DAW OS.
Keep us posted.

I have been using windows 7 x86 for awhile now...after changing the firewire driver I couldn't be happier...a couple of visual tweaks to make the UI "snappier" and I am very happy. If they continue to improve upon this one we will have a real monster IMO.

ORIGINAL: sgerick

I've been using Windows 7 since early beta. The last beat release was very stable. The release candidate seems even more polished. Probably what Microsoft should have delivered with Windows originally, but hey they're Microsoft :-)

I am planning on upgrade my Sonar 8 Producer system to Windows 7 64-bit. I run Vista 64-bit now. I was planning on using this thread to give those interested in hearing my experience updated. Stay tuned.

If you just want to rant about Microsoft, or Windows - please do that somewhere else.

Hi!

I haven't tried WINDOWS 7 Release candidate or VISTA SP2 Beta, but had my eyes on feedback on different FORUMS about this, so to rap it up, everyone seem reporting:


1. GREAT experience on both OS.

2.Lower Audio latency

3.Less “clicks & pops” working on Audio with SONAR 8

4.Less interference with Video-driver and Audio-driver on both VISTA Sp2 and Windows 7 platform (Windows Areo)

5.Better “Audio / CPU” and overall CPU performance!

6.Better overall memory performance (it was some Memory leak in first Windows 7 BETA)

So All good!!!

Best Regards
Freddie

ORIGINAL: Freddie H

2.Lower Audio latency

3.Less “clicks & pops” working on Audio with SONAR 8

4.Less interference with Video-driver and Audio-driver on both VISTA Sp2 and Windows 7 platform (Windows Areo)

5.Better “Audio / CPU” and overall CPU performance!

6.Better overall memory performance (it was some Memory leak in first Windows 7 BETA)

Is this in comparison with XP?


I've checked out Microsoft's website to see what to expect from Windows 7 and I haven't seen one feature of interest. I'm not saying it isn't better then XP because I have no idea. I'm just commenting on the features they've chosen to market it with so far.

Improved taskbar

Jump Lists

Desktop enhancements

Windows Search

Internet Explorer 8

Better device management

HomeGroup

View Available Network (VAN)


I already have Internet Explorer 8. Seems like Internet Explorer 7.

Perhaps there's more under the hood which would be most important to me. I'd be interested if anyone that's tried it can explain some of its better features other then what Microsoft shows on thier website.

Thanks for the feedback from everyone so far. I will be installing tonight. By the way I failed to mention that I had 8.1 running fine of Windows 7 beta on my laptop a few months ago. I do see that many other posts I see in the past day are from people switching to Win7.

I thought the feedback about the firewire driver. I having been experiencing some annoyances with my Profire 2626 on my current Vista 64-bit setup. The symptoms are three fold.

1. After replay a track several times I randomly getting a sort-of scratchiness from the audio. I close Sonar and reopen and that goes away.
2. Sometimes when stopping a track I will hear a distant pop. Like a champagne cork opening.
3. I will get Sonar crashes where it say something like "the Teleport Server has quit working". Then I have to halt Sonar. I've learned from experience to reboot the computer at this point. When I do the shutdown process goes on and on. If I turn off the Profire during this event my system continues with the restart normally.

I wonder what that is about. I have reinstalled the Maudio driver, but with no success.

Finally, I saw that some people had already gone to W7 64-bit. My question would be:

Did you do an upgrade to your existing Windows, or a clean install and reinstall Sonar, et al over the clean install?

ORIGINAL: sgerick

Finally, I saw that some people had already gone to W7 64-bit. My question would be:

Did you do an upgrade to your existing Windows, or a clean install and reinstall Sonar, et al over the clean install?

Hi

Clean install of W7 x64 on a new partition to give a dual boot - best of both, a production system (Vista32) and a test system (W7 x64).

Best of luck!

SB

ORIGINAL: sgerick
3. I will get Sonar crashes where it say something like "the Teleport Server has quit working". Then I have to halt Sonar. I've learned from experience to reboot the computer at this point. When I do the shutdown process goes on and on. If I turn off the Profire during this event my system continues with the restart normally.

Teleport server=bitbridge

ORIGINAL: Freddie H

You forget one great feature in Windows 7! All your drivers and native XP programs + all your VISTA drivers and programs (even Windows 95 programs) will run and work perfectly in WINDOWS 7! Think about that, that is the most awesome about it all!

No matter what old piece of s-hit / drivers and programs, it will still RUN / work inside Windows 7 no matter what! Talk about flexible universal platform!

Ok...that's one that I'm going to need explicit confirmation and clarification on...

I have a MOTU MIDI Express XT Parallel port interface that presently doesn't have driver support for XP x64 or any flavor of Vista. Are you implying (or saying explicitly) that I will be able to run this device under Windows 7? Do you have a link to some claim on a feature list to back this up?

ORIGINAL: WDI

ORIGINAL: Freddie H

2.Lower Audio latency
3.Less “clicks & pops” working on Audio with SONAR 8
4.Less interference with Video-driver and Audio-driver on both VISTA Sp2 and Windows 7 platform (Windows Areo)
5.Better “Audio / CPU” and overall CPU performance!
6.Better overall memory performance (it was some Memory leak in first Windows 7 BETA)

Is this in comparison with XP?

I've checked out Microsoft's website to see what to expect from Windows 7 and I haven't seen one feature of interest. I'm not saying it isn't better then XP because I have no idea. I'm just commenting on the features they've chosen to market it with so far.

Perhaps there's more under the hood which would be most important to me. I'd be interested if anyone that's tried it can explain some of its better features other then what Microsoft shows on thier website.

It is odd that Microsoft Marketing mentions very little about audio performance improvements in Windows 7. The re-design of the Vista kernel to support up to 256 processors resulted in substantial internal operating system performance improvements. The main point is that many locks that caused bottlenecks with multiple threads waiting were eliminated. This means that individual threads can finish their work faster because they are not slowed down by the actions of other threads. This translates to lower latency and better multithreaded Sonar 8.3.1 performance.

Microsoft does claim that streaming multimedia performance has been improved. You certainly don't see Microsoft claim that DAW latencies have been reduced. I expect to see improvement details published for gamers but not DAW users.

The Cakewalk development experts should contribute their experience concerning the details of Sonar 8.3.1 running on Windows 7. They know the details important to DAW users since they have collaborated with Microsoft on audio performance design issues. Microsoft is aggressively advocating Windows 7 RC downloads to general users. Now is the time for the Cakewalk experts to educate their customers.

The Cakewalk development experts should contribute their experience concerning the details of Sonar 8.3.1 running on Windows 7. They know the details important to DAW users since they have collaborated with Microsoft on audio performance design issues. Microsoft is aggressively advocating Windows 7 RC downloads to general users. Now is the time for the Cakewalk experts to educate their customers.

FWIW, You're not going to notice any kind of night vs. day performance improvement moving from XP or Vista to Windows 7.
Take Vista SP1, lower the DPC latency (straight out of the box), make the UI a bit snappier, and you've pretty well described what you can expect from Win7.
Win7 is going to be a nice DAW platform... but it's more evolution than revolution.

ORIGINAL: Jim Roseberry
FWIW, You're not going to notice any kind of night vs. day performance improvement moving from XP or Vista to Windows 7.
Take Vista SP1, lower the DPC latency (straight out of the box), make the UI a bit snappier, and you've pretty well described what you can expect from Win7.
Win7 is going to be a nice DAW platform... but it's more evolution than revolution.

This presentation describes details of changes to Windows 7 deep internals that should have a very positive impact on lowering latency and increasing multithreaded app performance. Yes, Windows 7 is an evolution of Vista, but the Microsoft developers have taken a few very big steps.

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7/

I would agree that Vista SP1 is pretty much already good enough. The improvements in Windows 7 combined with the new intel I7 architecture should provide almost non-existent latencies.

Of course hardware drivers matter a lot. nVidia just released a new version of drivers for all their graphics cards that they claim improve workstation performance.

bump

ORIGINAL: jamescater



Please don't get excited about the XP within windows 7 feature. It is only really suitable for legacy applications that cannot run in Windows Vista/7

When you run XP applications this way then Windows 7 will create an entire Windows XP operating sytem that will run in a virtual machine within Windows 7.
As you can imagine this is not the most efficient way to run applications

a) There will be a significant performance hit for any applications running within the virtual environment
b) You will effectively be be running Windows XP, so why bother running Windows 7 at all
c) You will have to maintain 2 separate operating systems - install applications twice / tweak registry settings twice etc etc


So bottom line is it's totally unsuitable for DAW applications.


The Windows driver model changed for Vista and is identical for Windows 7. If your sound card drivers do not work on Windows Vista then they will not work on Windows 7

If your sound drivers only work on Windows XP then stay with Windows XP or get a new sound interface before trying out Windows 7.

Hi friend!


First off! Your info is not true, have look yourself!

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7/




Windows 7 can use kernel32 on top of WINDOWS 7, new 64bit core layer.

Secondly you need to upgrade to Windows 7 64bit OS not another way around!
XP 32 is dieing like the dinosaurs once did and thank god for that!!

Regards
Freddie

So I decided to go the route of doing a clean install. However, I didn't have enough disk to create a partition of sufficient size so I bought a second hard drive. Seagate 500GB barracuda SATA drive. I now switch in BIOS between the two drives for booting to my "production system" install and my "window 7" boot drive.

1. Windows 7 installed fine. It even automatically installed the right video for my card and extended my desktop onto my seconday 20" monitor. I thought that was pretty cool.
I do get a fairly frequent screen jubmle and jump to bluescree whenever I shutdown, or restart. I'm not sure yet what is causing this, but I suspect the video driver that
Windows 7 installe for me is not as compatible as I thought. Still more testing to do there.
2. Aftering installing the base OS I installed my Profire 2626. I used the 64-bit Mudio drivers. I had to set the properties on the install file to have it run in WIndows Vista
Service Pack 2 compatibility mode.
3. I installed Sonar next. 8.01 then Dimenson Pro, Beatscape 1.0 then 8.02 then Beatscape 1.02. The I installed the 8.30 patch - then the 8.30 content patch. Finally I
installed 8.3.1. I DID NOT run these in VIsta compatibility mode just to see if it would work and it did. I think installed the Session Drummer Hip-Hop Pack I use.
4. I then ran Sonar with the WDM driver- default SOnar settings. I pulled up a composition I did on my production drive and althought it had some errors from pluging and instrument not yet installed - in play fine.
5. I was able to install Antares AVOX 2 with the usual errors (ones I had before, but it still worked). However, I am having trouble now with my ILOK dongle. I can seem to get the driver to install no matter what I do.
6. I've decided to try to stay as 64-bit as I possible cant on this Windows 7 install. So, I looking for advice of effects and instruments that run in native 64-bit mode. I'm trying to avoid the bit-bridge issue - though I am testing specificallt one instrument in particular to see if bit-bridge is more stable under Win7. Plus I love the old Moody Blues sounds and MTRON is the closest product to reproducing that sound that I have seen.

To be continued............