Hi

I know that 64bit system read a lot of RAM compaired to the old 32bit system, but what are the benefits execpt from that?

Asking because Im about to buy me a new computer for audio!

Please inlightning me

 

64bit os is a must. you can use 32bit AND 64bit within. with 32bit you stucked to install only well.. 32bit stuff (daw)! :D

 

I installed Win7 64/bit on my 5 years old computer intel core2duo 3 gb memory i find that latency has increased compared to when i used XP.

That can of course be the Audio interface driver which is only made for Vista 64 bit and still in beta

I own a EMU 1616m PCI and to use a driver that work for win7 64 i must upgrade to their PCIe card which is kind of Apple/Digidesign oohps! sorry Avid like marceting that really suck for us customers..

I also noticed that Win7 64 is not any faster compared to XP (atleast not on my machine) i have even striped it down so i dont use any graphic shit like aero and done all other tweaks to make it more audio friendly..

Also is not as stable as XP i have alot of error and bluescreen (well most is due to my audiodriver so i cant really tell if it is more stable with a driver that is stable)

I also hate the USB universal drivers which is even worse then in XP

Another thing i dont like is that in win 7 i cant take control of the OS especially how i want the icons and wallpaper and stuff like that chage to the way i like them..

Atleast i havent learned how to do that yet if its even possible to do that..

I gonna build me a new PC soon and i gonna have atleast 16 gb of memory so i can take benefit of it when i use Kontakt but i also gonna install XP and Mac OS

So i can decide which system i want to boot on on startup..

That way i can have it all
A fully 64 and 32 bit system and a Mac system what more can you ask for?

I use Cubase 5 32 bit in win7 64 and many other 32 bit software they work nice but i much rather go for a clean 64 bit and a clean 32 bit system..

I am a little concerned when it comes to hackintosh and audio interface though my EMU dont support MacOS but i have a M-Audio USB card i use for Pro Tools M-powered so i might use that or buy a new card maybe a firewire..

So i say go for it as it is the future anyway but read all info you can about driver and software compability before you upgrade and if you vcan have a dual boot system why not have XP on one and Win7 64 on another..

 

The answer is quite short and clear: The only benefit of using 64-bit OS is using more than 3GB of RAM on the OS level, and more than 2GB of RAM on the application level. Everything everybody else say is just snake oil. Windows XP 32-bit have the best and most solid performance for either audio or video applications of them all. It's quite logical since it's the leanest of them all, too, and is the most patched and "service packed" one. There are still many bugs left in it, though, but greedy companies like to do it that way. Companies like Microsoft will use every persuasion method available to persuade you differently, to go for the latest and "greatest" for quite obvious reasons - MONEY. Essentially selling snake oil to gullible people, and huge majority of people is exactly that.

I didn't pull these sentences out of thin air. I test computer systems for multimedia applications. I lied a little that there are no other benefits about going 64-bit, because there are some much less important other benefits, but if you want a stable, reliable, fast OS to work with audio or video, XP 32-bit is still the best, and judging from what Microsoft is doing lately, it will stay that way for quite a while. If I needed more memory, I would install Windows XP X64, actually. It's an OS that is very reliable and stable. It's essentially Windows Server 2003.

Now for some numbers: In my XP 32, I can work with latencies down to 64 samples, and using 90% of the CPU reliably. The DPC latency of the system stays within 13 micro seconds to 21 micro seconds at all times. I've never seen a Windows 7 based computer that can do that. NEVER.

Think before you jump sounds so very true with today's computing. ;)However, if you don't need to use such low audio latencies... and if you don't need to use your CPU fully without hearing crackles, which actually most people DON'T, then use whatever works good for you. I'm not saying that anything else but XP 32-bit *doesn't* work. I'm just saying that it works better. ;)

About Mac OS-X. good luck with the Mac OS-X. It's not more reliable, it is not more stable, it is not more efficient, nor easier to work with. Updating OS breaks compatibility with programs that were new just months before. All these benefits of OS-X, and fanboys claims are all marketing BS. I have a Mac OS-X computer [Hackintosh] to test all these claims. I actually *had* one, but not any more since I needed that computer for other stuff, so I wiped it... plugins on OS-X are all from 50% to double in size, or even more, compared to Windows binaries, they're generally about 20-30% less efficient, too. So The same project I made on Windows XP 32-bit with Reaper will consume about 20-30% more CPU with Mac OS-X. So, there's no clear benefit for going Mac OS-X route, either. ;)

Edit: actually, it's better to run Win7 either 32-bit or 64-bit than Mac OS-X. And it really, *REALLY* hurts me to say that, since I've been a fan of Mac OSes since the 90s. I always wanted to use Mac OS for music, but I never had a chance to try OS-X which I wanted to adore until I assembled a Hackintosh. And then it disappointed me with performance and other glitches... shame. I like it that people use OS-X more though, because in essence it's FreeBSD with a fancy Apple interface that must be the main culprit to better OS-X performance, so one day when Windows and OS-X die, developers could easily transfer their code to some other Unix OS. FreeBSD is great, for instance, or Linux. I think the future of audio and video computing is not bleak at all if this trend of using OS-X continues. But not me, thanx. I like to draw as much performance as I can from my plugins. One day, though...

Cheers!

 

With computers and audio I like to go by the philosophy of staying as up-to-date as possible. Technology is always moving forward and a lot of times companies will abandon support for older technology. So if you stay on an older OS like XP or Vista I think you run a greater risk of finding things to be incompatible or not supported down the road.

All things are headed in the 64 bit direction and that is the future. That's why any new cpu you buy these days will have a 64 bit OS installed out of the box. That alone should tell you all you need to know. And the increased memory performance is a MAJOR thing if you are doing heavy audio production or composing.

Assuming you are using a DAW that is 64 bit compatible, then I'd HIGHLY recommend making the leap to 64 bit and not looking back. Most plugins are now 64 bit compatible w/ the exception of a select few and a lot of those can be bridged. I personally would suggest going w/ Windows 7 as it's probably the most problem free experience I've had w/ an OS since I've been doing computer based and I've been doing it since Windows 95.

 

yeah sinewave, it's a big sh** to producers that we go buy win7 and xp is more stable, and audio drivers run smoothly and cpu/memory is so much better. 32 bit maybe 64 if like to play the games too..but i tell you in win7 home what i bought my the asus xonar essence stx driver dows not even work no matter what latency..in asio 4 all i can get 512samples..wtf?? the most high end soundcard wrecked by a shit windows. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! asus have not updated the driver since mid 2011 very pissed off on them too. going to use XP again for music production only SSD will buy a 80/128gb dedicated to XP and well i will be more happy without this false sense of Win7 is better for everything attitudes...booooooooooo hooooooooooooooooo

 

i dont know whats wrong with your setup. my win7 64bit works great and stable as hell.
..i dont use asio4all btw. since i have a rme.. ..sorry.. couldn't resist but you talking absolute bs here.

 

I have to agree.

I have not long made the switch from xp to win7x64 and I couldn't be happier.

 

When your DWA (and plugins) can use more then 2GB memory this increases stability.
Nothing more nothing less. Familiar with crashes? On 64bit this is very rare!!!
Don't think it will boost performance..
Using a 64 bit DAW will only take effect if you have more then 4GB installed.

 

In general the only real difference in 64 bit is raising the memory limits (RAM, hard disk size, USB memory, etc.)

Win7 is extremely stable....the number of unrecoverable errors is tiny, as opposed to XP (which needs reboot at crashes, whereas generally Win7 does not often BSOD - you can invariably get your desktop back without reboot).

You could dual-boot. Install XP32 and then add W7/64 (in that order - and on NTFS). Programs will need be installed twice (one for XP, one for W7), but they can use the same data. So, it's a little costly on disc-space, but not much.

All other things being equal, I think you'll find W7 to be by far the better option......and be wanting to remove XP from your dual boot system. :D

I suspect any benefits from using XP for audio are marginal. I'm just a hobbyist but I've not seen anything to suggest better XP performance. Your processor and motherboard etc are surely more important factors. As are device drivers!

Moreover, as XP is old you'd be reliant on manufacturers making drivers for it, whereas W7 drivers are probably the default, today. Want to add USB3 device? SATAIII? A new audiocard? Are they going to make XP drivers for it? For how long? etc.

Anyway - satisfy your own curiosity and dual-boot? Dual-boot helps for all sorts of problem-solving too (if your OS goes down, you have another to use - to get the other working again and look for advice on net etc)

 

yah i think it's my asus setting i have to change win7 has nothing to do with it. it's the driver original setting that is causing the issues. btw that rme company looks amazing but i checked the snr on a $500 card is 110db and mine is 124db, what's with that?...i think it means mine can go much louder or something.

 

Having an RME card or Lynx card if you're in US [they're cheaper there] for audio, has a lot with stability of your audio programs, and efficiency, smooth crackle-free performance. It is not a great idea to pay attention to the manufacturer's hardware specifications only, especially S/N ratio, as everything beyond 100db A weighted is great. More relevant is dynamics and linearity of the DAC/ADC converters, balanced inputs and outputs, but the best is to use digital inputs and outputs from the computer if possible. But the most important thing of all is - DRIVERS. How stable and efficient they are? Nothing is as important as good drivers, since they make your hardware work or not work.

RME ASIO driver weights 23Kb. Audio driver weights 69Kb... it is written in assembly. RME drivers are an example of how audio drivers should be written. ;)

Cards like RME HDSP 9652 can be had for fewer than half the price second hand, and it's OK to buy them second hand since they're built almost exclusively in SMD and solid state technology and believe me SMD components last a looong time. Same goes for Lynx cards. This is also how you can recognise a good performing, professional, and long lasting audio card.

 

The Xonar Essence STX works fine for me. I can produce a full orchestral piece with one track per instrument (40+ tracks) without much latency. The card doesn't work well with Asio 4 All though. Use the specific Xonar driver. If you have a good CPU, you may be able to play with really low latency. I can play a virtual piano at 1ms lat. There's no need to go to XP unless you use older hardware/software. It'll just decrease your options for newer software down the line. Windows 7 is actually more stable than XP. When you get a BSOD in XP, you're pretty much screwed. Windows 7 recovers almost every time, though. Plus it has better SSD support.

As far as 64-bit, it depends on what you're doing and what samples you're using. Due to the nature of my template, I was running out of memory with 8gb so I now have 16gb. There's no way I'd be able to do my work in 32-bit windows. Even in 64-bit: if your DAW program is 32-bit, you're limited to around 3.5gb for that program. After that, the program will crash; potentially ruining your project file.

For me, there's no question that 64-bit is a NECESSITY. If you're just putting little loops together with basic instruments and percussion, don't worry about it. 32-bit is fine for you.

 

Hi all

Thanks for all the great feedback on my issiue! I guess I now have a pretty straight picture of what Im gonna do. I guess my solution will be a setup with a double OS (WinXP 32bit & Win7 64bit).... That´ll suit all my needs!

 

that's one headache gone. the xonar is now working fine with it's own driver in win7 32 bit..all i did was switch it from a pci-1 express slot to the pci-16 express slot and pulled out a wireless adapter i had sitting in that pci-16 slot..now there's no drama i will not put XP on since it's resolved. i'll see how i go with the 3gb ram limit..i'll be streaming my projects off my new corsair force 3 ssd 120gb, and that'll be my music project ssd as i have 2. One for everyday operation is a 60gb patriot pyro. Update you soon.

 

Hmm, a few people mentioned losing XP drivers compatibility in the future. I don't believe that will happen any time soon, especially if your card is RME, Lynx, SSL, Focusrite, T.C. ... you know - companies that make good audio cards! ;) but if your card is Fing-Chew inc. of course you cannot expect them to make drivers for every system out there and optimised, stable and reliable at that. But what is actually happening is that professional companies [except DigiShitDesign and M-audio which got bought by it btw.] are actually encouraging users to use XP if they can, if they don't need more memory, because of the performance problems with W7, not to mention Vista. These problems are easy to trace, as I said somewhere already, just make a project that uses around 90% CPU and you'll see that you can run it without crackles on XP and lower latency than on W7. In my opinion, XP is already not good enough for real time applications, but we can't use anything better like Linux with real-time kernel since not even Reaper supports it, so there is lack of good and professional programs on Linux, and even more plugins, and even more - VSTi plugins. I find myself very restrained in Linux regarding that. And that's such a pitty, but what the hell... my philosophy is to buy the best computer you can, 16 core if you will, and run as minimal OS as you can on it to have a freaking great performance. I don't run XP because I have a PC from 1997... however, if I had a PC from 1997, it would certainly run better with nice and minimal XP than bloated W7. ;) What's more sad is that such a PC would run even better with real-time Linux, but... what I said earlier. You only have Ardour with Harrison Mixbus on Linux as far as I'm concerned, and a pile of LADSPA plugins to work with, and Linuxsampler. Really, the choice is incomparable to what you get with bloody Windows.

I'm glad you finally resolved the issue Dan01! A wireless adapter in PCIEx16 slot!? No wonder you had problems with your audio card. If I knew that I would immediately tell you to try pulling it out first. Pulling out the wireless card in itself would help immensely, but putting the audio card in the PCIEx16 should help even more, since it gets the most priority of all the slots.

Cheers!

 

yeah i am releived, could not have known that was the issue unless i pulled it out. silly of me to put it in when the mb has a lan port anyway. good thread i also did a test. i loaded 3 battery sampler and my memory usage was 40%, this is in cubase. cpu was 0 as i had no audio playing. i'm thinking the war should be not to have more memory to use..maybe smarter working inside the sequencer. i actually have 8gb on the board. see how i go..i know xp is the latency winner indeed.

also if you have more then the 3gb shown in 32 bit it is stored as 'virtual memory' and can be used automatically on the hardware of your pc. so it's not wasted.

edit - cubase 5/4 still not working driver crashes after 1 minute. wavelab, pre-sonus and reason all work fine so it's def a issue with the driver and cubase. so i making a xp boot option and will see how i go.

well i'm using presonus with asio4all, about 8 instruments and 2 audio tracks and memory is at a consistant 50% useage. very happy. just wish asus would make a better driver. latency locked at 10ms..ok but for recording 0 would be nice indeed.

 

Cut a long story short, big VSTi shit yes go all the way to windows 7 64 bit.

If you want serious low latency LESS Services running and low system resource usage then how on earth can windows 7 running so much crap compared to xp can keep up with XP?

Forget the virtual reality, down here on earth Windows XP is still the #1 OS out there this is 12 years after it got released.
What consumer OS has gone this long and worked pretty stable all these years ? NONE only XP

The problem with XP is not ram limits it is application limits.

XP can handle 128 gigs of ram with PAE. Intel came up with this back in 1995 for god's sake!!at that time the pentium processor was a 32 bit processor but had 36 bit registers so it could handle 64 gigs of ram. All processors ( 32 bit) have the 36 registers now at 48.

The Problem with PAE is it has always been used in the server area. The issue is the applications have to be aware of PAE using the 36 bit registers.

This is why we did not need to go to 64 bit !!!
We needed the OS vendors to stop licencing ram limits, yes even apple is guilty of doing that.
Windows 7 64 bit has different ram amount support based on each version , home, premium, pro
So why is microsoft licencing ram limits LOL

And the software assholes out there never bothered with apps with 36 bit register support.

So in the end we all ended up in this charade of upgrading all the hardware to "64 bit" even though our PCI cards are still 32 bit!!!! only the drivers are 64 bit

So for now if you need applications that need access to large amounts of ram then stay with windows 7 64 bit. Oh wait .. but there was Windows XP 64 bit!!!!!! So why the hell XP 64 bit was killed? If you remember Windows XP 64 bit came out for AMD EMT systems only. Intel was pissed off and forced Microsoft ( assholes) to drop XP 64 bit support, only later for Intel to fuck up Vista due to their cards being shit and incomplete for the Vista Launch.

 

Advantages of 64-bit DAW over 32-bit float Digital audio workstation