IS XP ready for music production?

**NukleoN** · July 24th, 2002, 03:39 AM

Hi there,

I was wondering if Windows XP is ready for music production yet. I know most of my devices have supporting drivers for XP now, but was wondering how it is in general and if there are any issues I should know about. I am currently using Windows 2000 and it's been great so far.

Should I upgrade to XP? Is there a reason to use this OS?

I am using Sonar 1 (2 coming soon) as my sequencer.

Thanks.

Dan

**KissTheStar** · July 24th, 2002, 03:50 AM

I had to use the tweaks at the Steinberg website for XP to get Cubase to run efficiently. Here is the link:

http://www.us.steinberg.net/FAQ/platform/winxptweak.htm

~Craig

**NukleoN** · July 24th, 2002, 04:12 AM

Thanks Craig...did you notice any improvements with XP as opposed to other OSes?

**PTInc** · July 24th, 2002, 04:15 AM

Yo Nukleon... do you have a striking resemblance to Daniel Myer? Or do you use a pic of him as your avatar?

**PTInc** · July 24th, 2002, 04:17 AM

After all this time ��in around trying to get my digi 001 on ME... they go and make the xp version complete with an upgrade to 32 tracks as opposed to 24.

Now that it is finally running.... i don t know if I want to mess with it.

:brickwall:

**KissTheStar** · July 24th, 2002, 04:33 AM

Well I upgraded to a MOTU at the same time so I cant give you an honest opinion on how much impact the new OS had.

~Craig

**NukleoN** · July 24th, 2002, 05:04 AM

PT: Hah...no that's my real pic.

Craig: Good to know..I may stick to Win2K for now until I hear about XP being stable with at least some equipment I use.

**PTInc** · July 24th, 2002, 05:12 AM

YOu mind if I call you Daniel from now on?

**NukleoN** · July 24th, 2002, 05:37 AM

THat's my name.

Actually, just call me Dan if you like.

**intro** · July 24th, 2002, 05:43 AM

XP sucks. Still too unstable. I've got Windows 2000 Professional, and I plan to stick with it for a very long time. Cubase SX runs like a dream in it, as does Reason and just about every soft synth and plugin I try to use. There was one that gave me trouble, I forgot which one.

Anyway, I'm planning to stick with Win2k as long as possible. It's been the most stable Microsoft OS I've ever run. Once I got some motherboard issues worked, it's been solid and has never crashed. Not even once. That and it's fast as hell, especially if you do some speed tweaking (I found an article in some mag recently about it... Recording maybe?).

-Mark
www.djintrovert.com

**PTInc** · July 24th, 2002, 05:48 AM

Originally posted by NukleoN
THat's my name. Actually, just call me Dan if you like.

Its either Daniel... or Ill be forced to call you Myer all the time..

**pop** · July 24th, 2002, 06:04 AM

Me is worst Win0s.... It is designed for wind surfers ....
Xp is prime time... no more 10 midi port limits. ... Unlimited virtual and physical midi drivers.... Also, 2000 and Xp are WDM ready.....

**pop** · July 24th, 2002, 06:08 AM

2000 runs faster than Xp... because of less GUI overhead... smaller gui dll than Xp.... but 2000 have 10 midi port limit just like older brother WinNT4. If have 512 megs or above speed between Xp and 2000 should be the same....

**matrix** · July 24th, 2002, 06:09 AM

i agree with pop. i used ME for a while and it was a nightmare. i like XP! it's a very stable os and even though cubase sx uses more resources in xp than in win2000, it seems that it can go up much higher in the resource meter before clicks and pops occur.

**The Funz** · July 24th, 2002, 02:47 PM

Yo,

I have been using XP for my music making for about 4 months I guess. I use Logic Audio Platinum 5.01, and I have not had any problems so far, yesterday we recorded 24 Audio tracks at the same time we had about 14 MIDI tracks running, it worked without a hitch, and please bear in mind that i still only have a ��ty soundblaster live card.

Here is a few links which might help you, or not!

http://service.steinberg.net/knowled...io_performance

http://www.musicxp.net/

And one final tip, never use a 3COM netcard, it will probably cause cracks and fallouts with audio, after i changed mine to a Netfinity/Intel netcard I have not had a single problem.

Uhh, I'm sorry I haven't got any more links/tips, I guess they are bookmarked at my work, sorry.

BTW; My performance have increased a lot after i installed XP

**NukleoN** · July 24th, 2002, 07:24 PM

Wow this is very useful information...exactly what I was looking for. As for the 10 MIDI port limitation under Win2K, I use an AMT8 so I don't seem to be having any limitations yet, as well as Sonar's 1 port MIDI limitation I keep hearing about..of course, unless you mean internal midi ports for use with soft synths? I don't use soft synths (yet) so perhaps I haven't encountered many of these limitations.

I am glad to hear some are using XP successfully. I do like the cleaner GUI of 2K and WDM support rocks. I'll be interested to see what other opinions surface regarding these OSes.

Yep I agree as well that ME sucks!

**ZuN** · August 13th, 2002, 06:17 PM

XP Pro is running rock solid on my Sonar 2 DAW and as far as all that GUI Overhead goes, it can be disabled to free up resources. Last time i looked I ran 24 simultaneous stereo Tracks each with 2 plugins and some midi tracks all with out any pops or crackles. And i only have a P3 700Mhz with 512 Ram so Im sure people with higher cpu's can get better results.
-Raf

**cliffwalk** · August 13th, 2002, 06:30 PM

I run XP on a 1GHz box with 1 GB of RAM. It's a rock.

Anything less than 512MB of RAM and I was suffering. Especially with Sonar 2.

Frankly, since I upgraded my RAM it's been a thing of tranquil beauty.

Offloading your long term storage to a different hard drive on a different controller helps also (I use a pair of large USB hard drives as a quasi-backup solution)...

I'm demanding as all hell about performance (by nature). I was very close to entirely switching platforms to Mac until, luck would have it, it was my year to upgrade my desktop PC and I got a heckuva a deal on Sonar.

I get a lot of bang for my buck in my desktop studio right now. I probably have 2-3 K worth of equipment right now and it's creating stuff I wouldn't have been able to do for anything less 10K a year ago.

**ZuN** · August 13th, 2002, 07:34 PM

Good point I have 2 hard drives on my system both are ATA 133 and controlled by a Promise Card 1 HD is for the OS and programs and the other is for Audio only.

**NukleoN** · August 13th, 2002, 08:34 PM

Hey there,

After installing XP I can safely say that it is definitely ready for prime time music/audio work. I've got a dual 1 gigahertz PC running XP with Sonar 2, two 60GB IDE hard drives and a gig of ram. I'm using the Delta 1010 and the drivers seem to like XP quite a lot.

I use the 2 processors mostly for 3D graphics but it's nice to know that Sonar is multi-threaded.