Any issues I should expect from Windows Home Vista 64 bit? Will I still be able to run Ableton, Native Instruments, hook up my equipment etc?

Make sure you have 64 bit drivers for any external equipment, PCI cards, etc. 32 bit drivers will NOT work. Also make sure all this software supports installation on a 64 bit environment.

Seems that everything but my MAudio Axiom49 will work ok. They offer a beta test application for 64-bit Vista, but I'm not sure I have enough stuff in my studio to qualify. Does anyone have any experience with this keyboard and running off of 64-bit Vista?

turns out nothing is guaranteed to work with 64, so I switched my OS back to 32... It's unfortunate that I won't get a chance to use the 4GB of memory to its full capacity, probably only 3.5 will be usable.

Anyone have any experience producing with 64 bit Vista and can offer opinions?

Honestly, man, this discussion has been had on this board before. The performance gains you may get from running 64 bit versions of the operating system would likely be far outweighed by the hassles of trying to make sure everything worked properly.

64 bit drivers, if even available, are likely to be buggy and unstable, in a studio environment that has stability issues even in 32 bit environments. I think you'd spend far more time messing with your environment trying to get it to work properly then you would actually writing music.

I'm not even sure why you need more than 3GB of RAM unless you are loading up massive sample libraries. You are far more likely to get huge performance gains by running a faster or multiple core processor(s) then by trying to get into the 64 bit game.

I'm sure there are some people who have moved to 64-bit and are having a go at it, but personally, I'll take a slower, stable 32 bit environment over a SOTA 64-bit unstable environment any day. Your welcome to try it, but 64-bit really isn't ready for the majority of the studio market right now.

Last edited by Eric J on Jun-12-2008 at 20:20

upgrade to xp

heh

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upgrade to leopard

mang

Since I'm very good with PC's, and keeping things working, and I don't have much exotic gear or software, I figured I'd be safe with my move to Vista 64 Ultimate. I wanted to really utilize my new quad core +4 gigs.

So far everything works incredibly well, very, very stable. The first thing I did was turn off Aero, switch the view to classic windows look, turn off all the silly extras I could find. Then I installed all my stuff, and it all worked like a dream. I've had no issues...

Except for one: When Vista SP1 came out, M-Audio didn't come out with drivers to work with it's products. As a result, my FireWire 410 audio interface wouldn't work, denying me use of my reference monitors, relegating me to headphones, and lower audio fidelity. I know that sounds terrible and all, but it's actually not so bad. You can still compose a good song on headphones and motherboard audio. Once I'm done arranging something, I'll need my audio interface back, but until then, it's unimportant. Fortunately M-Audio will be releasing their Vista 64 SP1 drivers soon. Good thing...