Cubase rocks on Vista! | The Coffeehouse

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop
Seven of Niner! Resistance is Futile!

It looks like Cubase works a lot better on Vista compared to XP, probably thanks to the new Vista audio stack.

yes, I know, nobody cares... but I do! [6]

jamie

thanks for the link (forwarded to brother "vista too buggy" jono)

Smiley

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

The article wrote:
When XP was written multi-core processors and multi-threaded applications did not exist.

Multi-core processors, yes. Multi-threaded applications (and also multi-CPU systems, which aren't that different from mult-core) have been around far, far longer.

JasonOlson

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop wrote:
It looks like Cubase works a lot better on Vista compared to XP, probably thanks to the new Vista audio stack.

yes, I know, nobody cares... but I do!

If this is true, it's AWESOME. The only reason I haven't upgraded my home machine to Vista yet is because of the threads earlier about problems with SPDIF. I'm running all digital audio when I use Cubase, so I didn't want to take the plunge just yet. Also, I'm not sure if my audio card has stable drivers out for it yet, either.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

JasonOlson wrote:

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop wrote: It looks like Cubase works a lot better on Vista compared to XP, probably thanks to the new Vista audio stack.

yes, I know, nobody cares... but I do!

If this is true, it's AWESOME. The only reason I haven't upgraded my home machine to Vista yet is because of the threads earlier about problems with SPDIF. I'm running all digital audio when I use Cubase, so I didn't want to take the plunge just yet. Also, I'm not sure if my audio card has stable drivers out for it yet, either.

All my problems with SPDIF have been solved with Creative's latest audio driver update (from March 8th). Also note that using PCM audio with SPDIF (which I assume Cubase also does) has always worked for me, it was only AC3 and DTS passthrough that I had trouble with (which is now solved).

EDIT: The last time I used Cubase, it was on an Atari... I feel old now. Tongue Out

JasonOlson

Sven Groot wrote:

JasonOlson wrote:

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop wrote: It looks like Cubase works a lot better on Vista compared to XP, probably thanks to the new Vista audio stack.

yes, I know, nobody cares... but I do!

If this is true, it's AWESOME. The only reason I haven't upgraded my home machine to Vista yet is because of the threads earlier about problems with SPDIF. I'm running all digital audio when I use Cubase, so I didn't want to take the plunge just yet. Also, I'm not sure if my audio card has stable drivers out for it yet, either.

All my problems with SPDIF have been solved with Creative's latest audio driver update (from March 8th). Also note that using PCM audio with SPDIF (which I assume Cubase also does) has always worked for me, it was only AC3 and DTS passthrough that I had trouble with (which is now solved).

EDIT: The last time I used Cubase, it was on an Atari... I feel old now.

Woot! Woot!

Unfortunately, M-Audio has not released Vista drivers yet Sad

. I really wish they would get their act together.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

Sven Groot wrote:
EDIT: The last time I used Cubase, it was on an Atari... I feel old now.

Some people still use old computers for music. I know Fatboy Slim still uses a 20 year old Atari 1040ST.

dentaku

I know this is an OLD post but do you currently use Cubase in Vista 32bit?
If so, what kind of audio hardware do you use? Is it an external USB/1394 box or do you use an actual card?

I know someone who needs to buy a new computer soon and if he gets something with Vista on it I'd like to know what kind of hardware he should get to make Cubase work right with as little latency as possible (isn't that what we all want) when he's using many tracks and lots of effects.

JasonOlson

In reply to dentaku

#Jun 4th, 2008 @ 4:05 PM

Hey Dentaku, I'm actually running Vista x64. If this person is buying a new computer, I _highly_ recommend running x64. You can get quite the affordable machine from an OEM like HP that is a monster of a machine with at least 6GB. If he is doing a lot of audio work, the extra RAM will be much used.

I actually switched from Cubase over to SONAR and am loving it. Sonar is very 64-bit friendly too and works very well with Vista. For an audio interface, I'm using the Edirol FA-66. It's a firewire interface that has perhaps the _most_ rock-solid Vista drivers out there for any audio interface. Between the driver support and the firewire bus, you can achieve _very low_ latencies. But the FA-66 only has two (or four) inputs. So if this person is wanting to do a lot more extensive of live recording, they will need a different interface with more inputs obviously.

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

I must have missed this article the first time around.

The performance increase probably has nothing to do with Vista's audio stack. The Firewire audio interface they tested with uses an ASIO driver (as most such interfaces do) that completely bypasses the Windows audio stack.

They also don't say in that article (unless I missed it) whether they do all of the typical audio workstation tweaks like turning off themes (and the dwm on Vista), networking, other sound cards, search and other background services, and set processor scheduling for background services (otherwise the ASIO driver can cause audio dropouts). I would like to be able to fire up my audio software (Sonar in this case) on my main desktop machine running Vista without having to disable all of this stuff that makes my system a pleasure to use for every other task. Instead I've had to repurpose my old XP machine as a dedicated audio workstation to get reliable performance.

Also, MS introduced a low latency driver model in Vista called WaveRT. Unfortunately it only supports PCI cards and not the Firewire and USB interfaces that seem to be more popular.

dentaku

In reply to JasonOlson

#Jun 4th, 2008 @ 4:57 PM

Yeah, his wife will be using the machine too and I doubt all the other software the family will want to run on it will all be prefectly 64 bit friendly. He's not a computer guy and I don't wouldn't want to confuse him more with a 64 bit operating system.

He seems to be more interested in using Cubase (I much prefer Sonar just like you) and I know the newer Cubases are Vista compatible. The hardest thing now is finding a soundcard with good Vista drivers.

That Edirol FA-66 looks nice but maybe a bit expensive for what he wants. Thanks for the info JasonOlson.

I'm thinking that maybe the M-Audio Fast Track Pro or even just the Fast Track USB are enough for him. Of course, the Fast Track Pro is very similar to the FA-66 anyway.