Optimising your PC for Audio on Windows Vista

Riaan-Combrink

Hi guys,

It's fairly well-established that the prevailing view is that Vista is NOT the greatest OS for audio recording, and that XP (SP2) is the way to go:
http://www.guitarforum.co.za/recordings/studio-pc-build/
http://www.guitarforum.co.za/recordings/first-time-pc/

I have, however, found this article on "Optimising your PC for Audio on Windows Vista". So if you're stuck with a preloaded Vista and you can't yet change back to XP (or need Vista for its other features), this may help with some of the resource hogging Vista issues:
http://www.novationmusic.com/answerbase/en/article.php?id=384

sepheritoh

I think it is now an fact that XP is on the way out and Vista is the only way to go. Mainly for the 64 bit and the fact that you can use more than 3.1 GB memory.

Vista SP2 seems to be as efficient as XP for audio now.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1599252

The Windows 7 beta seems to be absolutely rocking. I am a bit of a chicken and will usually not install any beta versions on my production machine, but I think I am going to make an exception with Vista SP 2 (when I actually buy my new machine).

Riaan-Combrink

Thanks for the link, Seph ...

Gonna look into it now! ?

AlanRatcliffe

Bear in mind that Vista is officially being dropped as soon as they can get Windows 7 out. SP2 addressed a lot of issues, but there are still issues with the way certain things are handled at the core that have a major impact on performance. You'll notice that the tester in the Cakewalk forum link is using 64 bit versions of both OSs and a quad-core machine and that if you read further, there are still problems with certain drivers.

Unfortunately isolated people reporting that MS "finally got it right" doesn't mean it will work for everyone. I usually wait until the audio PC manufacturers start punting an OS as safe to use.

CDee

I am using Vista. The only way I got it to perform the way I need it to was to replace the 2gig DDR2 ram with 4gig DDR3 Ram. That made a huge impact on performance and now it runs better than XP did, IMO.
I do have a spare PC and I just might be tempted to load a version of Linux on there so I can see the recording side of that. Any of you guys use Linux to record?
?

Riaan

Bear in mind that Vista is officially being dropped as soon as they can get Windows 7 out.

And here I am, waiting for the optimal moment to change from XP to Vista...one simply cannot stay current in the IT world!