Re: best operating system for audio

rainydayglory wrote: hi,
the reason for my question is that i've heard XP will only use 2 gigs of RAM effectively. so that means i'm stuck with vista? i can't go with os x because i can't really afford the hardware.

32 bit XP or Vista will utilize 3 gig officially. 64 bit versions will utilize as much as the mobo will recongnize. If you have XP and 2 gig and a low latency machine then you have plenty of ram. Latency is the real issue and has more to do with your hardware than the OS.

As to Vista, there is nothing wrong with Vista SP1. I am beta testing Win7 and I would say if you could wait for that version you should. I currently have one XP Pro, 2 Vista 32 SP1, and one Win7 machine and they all work fine.

I notice you have no linux option in the vote ;)

Anyway.

Vista has a stange limiter on it's Audio system which might get in the way. Kristal crashes on mine a lot.

XP is solid, stable, has a host of apps that are maintained for it.

OSX, yawn.

Linux, too finicky and footery to actually get anything done - but things like JACK/Ardour seem to be incredibly powerful (Rewire-esque audio, complex DAW).
All free.

IMO, Mac has been the true leader in audio until recently. OSX isn't making me a believer anymore.
The idea of a system that allows the world to build hybird audio computers like PCAudioLabs, ADK etc is powerful thinking and why I feel this way. They make great audio systems. The PC's I have right now are killer and smoke on my Mac running OSX. I've just received a new i7 and can't wait to test that baby out.

I'm definitely migrating from Mac to PC for a variety of reasons. Mass 3 party support is a big factor.
10 years of Mac is enough testing. However, Mac has been solid but expensive.
I have a feeling things go in cycles and PC is on the rise again. Keep your production PC off the net and it should be awesome.

XP pro.

(y)

IMHO, it really depends on what software you're running, and at what level of operation you're running.

If you're running a little project studio operation... you can get by on XP.

Personally, I wouldn't pee on a Vista box if it was on fire.

AFAIK, when you have a Vista box, it doesn't matter what you do to it, unless you physically do not connect it to a network, it WILL phone home... and therein is a major nasty. Because ET phone's home, that means that nasties WILL get in.... THAT is an absolute MS documented certainty.

You can break XP of this habit, but it's not pleasant to do it the right way... and it's no picnic to light up internet access once it's done.

If you're gonna run a shop where you will be running PT HD, then quite obviously a Mac under OS-X is the way to go.

MadMax wrote: IMHO, it really depends on what software you're running, and at what level of operation you're running.

If you're running a little project studio operation... you can get by on XP.

Ooo, this comment should get interesting :wink:

I know it might seem inflammatory, but having seen 100% failure of every XP box I've ever dealt with....

In a critical professional operation, if I gotta have a choice between a box I KNOW is gonna fail, and a box I KNOW is gonna work...

I've got an XP box... relatively solid. Less than 2 years old... already failed on boot... ate itself all up... Format, reinstall, restore from tape... STILL doesn't work the same as the 1st install.

Same thing with the other 200 I deal with... and all 186 lappies.

100% OS failure is not acceptable.

Well, as always, PC/ Mac topics are interesting. I've always sided with Mac, but nothing lasts forever and I do believe things go in cycles.
I'm personally entering unknown PC territory so I'm not the person to remotely rely on when it comes to PC world. So far, I'm very impressed on what I have right now. Lest hope they stand the test of time. I am planning on using both Mac and PC in my new studio. Mostly PC though.

I would like to learn how we can avoid what you are calling "Calling Home". Maybe this is a topic we need to discuss in detail, yes?

Well I don't manage 400 computers but I do maintain my four laptops 2 desktops and about 40 pc's at my business. The only failure I have had has been power supply related and about two HD's. I've only had one cooked mobo in the last five years and that was user error from a buddy setting his laptop down on a big blanket and blocking the air channels. So I haven't had your experience of 100% failure. YMMV and obviously has.

Near as I can tell, Mac's have power supplies and mobos too.

Re: best operating system for audio

rainydayglory wrote: The reason for my question is that i've heard XP will only use 2 gigs of RAM effectively. so that means i'm stuck with vista?

Hundreds, nay, thousands of people have used or are using XP 32...ever since it came out. Vista has only been out a couple years and most people in the audio community that I know are not using it. Before Vista all (or most) PC audio machines were running XP.

So, with that in mind think about your memory comment. It worked for so many people for so long, why can't it work for you?

Where memory become a big concern is when sampling is used. If you use programs that use lots of samples, then the more memory you have and can use, the better. If you are simply recording audio and processing it, memory is less of a concern and speed is more of a concern.

As has already been mentioned, a lot depends on the programs you are going to use. The only way to get access to more memory is to use a 64 bit operating system. But 64 bit drivers and software is still a bit behind the times. Sonar and Cubase have 64 bit versions but are all of your plug-ins 64 bit as well?

For now, go with XP.

Not to take this too far off topic... ET Phoning home is of course Windows Update Service and Window's Security Updates on the Win platform and Software Update on the Apple platform.

On a Mac, you just turn it off in the preferences... On XP, it's similar but to stop it completely, you have some registry keys to switch and a few more to kill. Maybe 10 minutes.

It simply cannot be done with Vista at this time... unless you upgrade to XP. :)

In a general business situation, I've seen Windows come full circle and has actually matured to a tolerable OS... and it can be fairly well locked down to be a pretty secure box.

The thing that I consistently see fail with Windows is the ability for the OS to deal with memory management and drive fragmentation and thus, rendering the OS as fairly unstable with non MS written code.

Supposedly the modern memory manager takes I/O calls and renders them into complete routine calls that are open for software vendors to access. These routines are supposed to be initiated by the software vendor, and the OS is supposed to manage the operations from end to end. The problem is that somewhere in the OS, the operations fail to do proper cache management of both RAM and drive I/O.

After a reasonably short period of time, 6 months or less, you have such poor performance that you cannot work - problematic software operation (crashes/hangs), fragmented drives, corrupted files, missing or corrupted drivers and/or complete OS failure.

That qualifies as a failure of the operating system.

If you dig fairly hard in the MS knowledge base... you might now need to be a registered MS Admin... you'll find that the dirty little secret is that MS themselves recommend a complete rebuild of a box every 6 months.

That qualifies as a failure of the operating system.

I've got one last OS9 box at the day gig... it's an original installation of OS9... never been re-installed, same drive as the day it came in. The next to the last OS9 box died from a HDD failure about 4 weeks ago. It was originally an OS8 box from way back... probably 9-10 years ago.

I have 20 other OSX boxes in a variety of flavors... Only MS Office and Firefox 3 are problematic packages.

In case you're wondering... we process over 12 million images a year... so we are definitely pushing some hard data through the OS and it just doesn't stand up.

Giving the Redmond Retards a bit of kudos, XP is far superior in our environment than Win2k or 98 ever was... but then you look at Vista's poor implementation of trying to look like OSX and all I can do is chuckle.

Hardware is hardware... some is good, some is bad... all of it is man made and you just plain get failures.

I've had 1 CPU failure from a dual G5, 3 HDD's, a video card on a G5 and 2 NIC's go bad in 15 years.

I've had 3 CPU's, 11 mobo's, 35 NIC's and 32 or 33 HDD's (drive 33 is on the bench at this time for eval) fail on the Window's side. Percentage wise, the hardware failure is about the same... except when it comes to drives. I chalk a lot of the drive failure up to the relentless hashing of drives dealing with fragmentation.

When you discuss platform wars, you also have to look at TCO. Last year, a staff of 3 techs spent just under 3700 man hours maintaining 200 windows workstation machines. We spent roughly 500 hours on repairs and 400 hours on reinstallations and rebuilds.

Our field support staff of 2, spent nearly 4000 hours supporting maintenance and related issues on the laptops.

We had less than 10 hours on maintaining the Apple boxes.

There is actually a budget for anti-malware/AV that we have to deal with for the Windows boxes... I have a budget of zero dollars for the mac's... it's free.

A lot of young folks get on a Win box and love the things... because it's so customizable and "fun" to tweak... and break.

When you've had your fun and it's time to make money and just plain get product out the door... gimme a mac. I don't have a lot to tweak... I don't give a crap about customizing or any of the bling... I'm paid to do a job. I want to do it and get paid.

I don't have nearly the back end cost with a mac. I don't have 2% of the maintenance issues. I have fewer security issues.

In a professional environment with ProTools, I just don't see the balance sheet in favor of Windows. To me, it's not worth the risk.

For someone else, who's maybe a smaller operation, or is doing this part time... sure... go for it... and good luck.

If I could afford two separate, very nice computers, I'd use a PC with XP for everyday stuff: internet, documents, file storage, games, etc..., and I guess it really wouldn't matter if I used a Mac or PC for the audio, because that's all that computer would be doing. It's tough to get viruses if the computer never goes online... However, I really would prefer a Mac if I had to do everything on one computer. Unfortunately, circumstances forced me to buy another PC, so we'll see how long this one lasts before it needs to be reset. :lol: :?

My DAW is an XP internet virgin. Amazing how well a Windows machine will run when everything has been stripped out of it. As said above - works well for a small project studio at a nice price.

OT, but boy, what Max say about windows OS degradation after about 6 months rings true. It has certainly been the case with the last three boxes I have had. I got the wife an iMac for Xmas, so we are gradually returning to the cult. (We had very early versions of the Mac back in the 80's.) I'm up for a new computer at work and switching to a Mac. No way that I can justify a Mac when I compare initial price/performance, but if performance degrades over time...

The OSX superiority is a myth now. That perhaps used to be true when Windows was in its 95/98 and ME days. Also the lack of a real powerful CPU kept Windows away from serious music. Also a Mac used for music should be kept of the net. It also needs maintenance. There is fragmentation on OSX too, but it occurs under different circumstances.

Nowadays, it doesn't really matter what you do. I'd have to say, seeing a Powermac repeatedly loosing USB connections with midi devices I don't trust them more than I would a Windows machine. My MacBook drive was severely fragmentend and took ages to boot. For a Windows machine it would have sufficed to defrag. For a Mac you have to buy an app to do that.

Having both, they all have their cons and pros. On a laptop it is also different. Thinking you need to make no adjustments is false. The MacBook cannot sleep, neither can the screen or the HDD. It won't just magically work for you because it is a Mac. With the dissapearance of the FW port on the vanilla MacBook, I wasn't exactly tempted to upgrade. It needs a FW port and eSATA to be a serious contender for me. How hard can that be, Apple? I see laptops around 600-700 euro's with these features, also with reasonable amounts of RAM and a decent CPU, HDMI out etc.

My wish: MS and perhaps Apple too, will come up with a profile that gears the OS towards DAW tasks in a simple way, like AMD's Overdrive can do it for games.

We all will want to go 64-bit at some time because of the sheer amount of RAM you can address. 8GB RAM sticks are not imaginary. It however needs to be a full fledged 64 bit environment: OS, DAW, drivers and plugins. Can't wait.

MadMax, yes - Windows hardware fails more.
Apple however, if I understand correctly, are completely anal and have 12' brick walls against 3rd party hardware in their machines - Windows runs entirely on low end crap with insufficient cooling and gets dropped into cupboards with no airflow.

hey codemonkey, i TOTALLY included linux but somehow the poll didn't set it up right, ie, EYE messed it up. but i MEANT to put it in, for sure.

hi everyone...

if you're all still there, this response was exactly what i was looking for. thanks a million for all the responses, i'll need to do some more reading when i have time to digest all the info.

does anyone want to test some these theories in the real?

i'll buy a new system this week, and set up a webcam and take some instructions from the community on tweaking and we'll see what a $2500 home system can do.

my band has a backlog of over 12 years of material. this could get REALLY interesting.

if you can help us avoid latency on a mackie onyx 1620, we would be forever in your debt.

PM me, or we could start a new forum topic, all about OS choice, RAM choice, graphics card choice, motherboard choice, CPU choice, and DAW host program choice too.

but let's test it in the REAL. i have $2500 and a full band and an interface. let's do this. this week.

thanks again and good luck to all, check my profile soon for some great links to good gear choices based on community research. oh, and there are some rough mixes on my webpage.

cheers

cfaalm, (et al)

I agree that the gap has certainly narrowed between Apple and Microsoft. But, IMHO, given my longstanding history of extreme success with Apple hardware, I still have to choose the less expensive box.

True, no good should be expected by taking ANY box on the internot. I just find it sorely noted that exploits are so readily observed just by turning on a Microsoft OS powered device.

As you noted, to get deep root defragmentation software, you have to purchase it for a Mac.... but let's be fair and point out that the defrag routine which MS incorporates in their OS is a leftover, lightweight string of code that only does cursory, static file header reorganization... that was left over from the lawsuit with PC Tools, under DOS 5.0.

To get deep root file defragmentation for a Windows OS, you too must purchase said software as well. And I might add that the same holds true for Linux, and UNIX... but wanna guess which platform has the more reasonably priced utility?? It ain't MS or Apple, I'll tell ya. Although supporting a HPUX box ain't exactly the cheapest on the block either. But I can assure you that you get what you pay for... and you use the right tool for the right job.

Not sure why anyone would attempt to do any heavy data lifting on a lappie... but hey... you do whatcha' gotta do.

But with any high performance expectation, you do many of the same "tweaks" on all 3 platforms...

No Sleep on a drive
Long screensaver times
No hibernation
No wake on Network
Undock/decouple uneccessary Tray/TSR and background operations
and a few other odds-n-sods

While I can't wait for a solid 64 bit OS, I really wanna live long enough to see a 128 or 256 bit OS/hardware.

Once we get to that level of horsepower, I think a LOT of things come off the table and SOOOO many wonderful things then finally come to the table.

rainydayglory wrote: hey codemonkey, i TOTALLY included linux but somehow the poll didn't set it up right, ie, EYE messed it up. but i MEANT to put it in, for sure.

I think I know what happened - you need to add the last option before posting - means you get another blank box at the bottom of your post before submitting it, but it's fine once it's posted.

Not like I would've voted for it anyway, it's too "let's grab a zillion parts and put it together".
To hell with my passion for audio, let's build an operating system!

oh man, wouldn't that be awesome

just push an "on" switch, and then it's an audio station, no OS, no parts to mess with, just pure audio standards.

something that did drums machines, samples, reason-esque things, AND tracking, NO latency

ah, dreams

I added the linux poll for the OP and also added 2009 to the topic title. Since we do this every year :) , and things are definitely changing year by year... I thought adding 2009 to the title helped define this current year opinions as we look back one day.

thanks a million audiokid

i didn't even know that could be fixed

good deal !!

"what is the best os for audio?"

If you want to know which one is the best, then it has nothing to do with money and more to do with what it is capable of. In the end if you can afford good hardware, and good equipment, and know how to properly set up the drivers, it doesn't really matter what OS you're running. If your money is limited and you're wondering if you should invest in a Mac or a PC, that's a completely different question. Then the question should be:
"What's the best type of system for this much money: $$$ ?"
and in this business you get what you pay for.

Also I'm confused about why you think you need to buy a defragmenter for the Mac? It automatically defrags any file under 20 MB. This keeps the disk very organized through a process called "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering". When you have files bigger than 20 MB they're not terribly fragmented like they are on Windows. Windows doesn't automatically defrag everything, and then it gets really disorganized, and that's when you have to let it run overnight to reorganize everything. But OSX doesn't have this problem.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375

Also, OSX manages ram completely differently than Windows does, and it's actually much more efficient and that's why you need to restart Windows every couple of days while OSX can go weeks without a reboot and run just fine. Also, Leopard is already 64 bit (application wise). With Snow Leopard the entire OS will be 64 bit. I also find OSX to be more pleasing to look at. You'll also notice that the Mac has been slowly gaining marketshare over the last few years:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpdt=1&qpct=4&qpcustom=Mac&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=99&qpnp=25
They're up to 10% and if you include the iPhone, which also runs on OSX, they're actually well over 10%.
Their marketshare is greatly expected to increase over time, especially when the economy rebounds.

I have an iMac and it does more than everything I need it to and it's been a much better experience than I ever had using Windows. Also, I've looked into the development plans for Microsoft and Apple over the next few years and it seems that Apple has a few clever things up their sleeves.
So really, as a computer science major, I'd say that buying a Mac and running OSX gives you more options and is a more stable platform to run your applications on. I also think that with OSX it's much easier to install and configure drivers. Time Machine is endlessly useful!! Granted Macs are more expensive, but much more thought is put into how they're designed and I think the investment is very much worth it.

I agree with the first (real) paragraph above.

If you want a Defrag program for Windows, download Defraggler - it's free and far faster - although some problems have been noted with certain RAID setups on Vista. YMMV.
Besides, if you don't delete any files from your drive then the WAV files themselves won't get horribly defragged.

The way I use a DAW/PC it'd never run for ages. If you want a PC that runs solidly for a long time then install linux on it.
(FWIW, I know a guy who ran an XP machine for almost 10 months with very few restarts)

I have a Vista machine here, that does almost everything I want it to (third party junk designed for XP breaks it).
(Last sentence is the problem with Windows - it allows more junk to use it and break it)

Can you run : Cubase or Sonar on Linux?

You can do anything on Linux, you're only boundaries are your programming skills.

Can _you_ run Cubase or Sonar on Linux?

Isn't Linux open source, meaning there is no way to limit people from taking your product for free? So in the open source world there is no way to pirate anything because its all shared with everyone anyway?

I don't know if I am right, just seems to be the way someone explained it to me.

Close enough. There are some things with closed-source and commercial licenses but the good stuff and the linux core is all free and open.

Williams, what you say is true but doesn't tell of the many hours you'd spend getting Sonar to LOAD and RUN compared to the few hours you'd spend tweaking XP to make it load and run BETTER.

My musician friend told me that OSX is based on UNIX and that Apple is having some kind of issue with the open source world about taking UNIX and putting a GUI on it.

I don't know more about the issue than that.

Hmm...

UNIX (and BSD which is involved somehow) are different/older than linux which evolved from unix. I think both did...
Who cares, I consider OSX to be made of fail and I consider Linux to be about as useful as the "do not remove" tag on your mattress.

I own both platforms, for me it's a matter of TIME.

More time is required to gain the knowledge to build, maintain and research a PC.

Time IS money.

In the end it's about the software, and the software I prefer is Mac only.

8-)

I am standing by my Apple. Making the switch was expensive, but I believe it was one of the best decisions of my 20 years, and there haven't been a lot of them :). OSX is just more stable as an operating system. Say what you want about PC customizability and 3rd party compatibility, but you'll think of me the next time your project goes blue screen.

8)

Guitarfreak wrote: OSX is just more stable as an operating system.

To an extent, much of the problem with Windows IMO is that it is too customizable, i.e., much easier to screw up. Apple locks down OSX so that it is harder to mess up.

Computer illiterate people are the people that make Windows look bad, and OSX look great.

In my experience, which is about as non-opinionated as I hope to be, they both have issues, but Windows issues just get more press.

If you get a BSOD because of an audio project you have more problems than can be fixed by a change of OS.

THe best OS is not on your list. It would a OS designed to do one function -Audio. Like the OS is the IZ Radar products.

Know having said that:
I use both MAC and Windows XP SP2

The difference is XP works poorly out of the box, but you can tweak just about everything.

Mac works right out of the box, but tweaking it to get more is not always straight forward.

Both systems require time to get set up correctly. Like anything once you've done it a few times it becomes easier and quicker.

I bought a MacBook Pro 6 months ago. I'm using PT 8 with no major issues other than a PT issue that DIGI is working on.(sp/dif issues) I record to an external Glyph firewire drive and have a partition on the hard drive running VM Ware's Fusion and Windows XP.
I have to have Windows for 90% of what I do in the school I teach in. Office, updating internet pages, grading, etc... There are workarounds but it ain't worth it when colleagues/ parents/ students have trouble with documents and turning everything into a pdf is a PITA. Its much easier to play by their rules with the apps they all use.

My MacBook pro has not had an issue. 4 major recording projects from rolling tape to CD/DVD production and duplication and all the day in/day out activities (many online via school wireless,LAN or home network) with XP.

With some tweaking on the PC side I can run virtually any major recording app, save it as a WAV file and work on it in PT on the Mac side or keep it in the PC world. I'm just beginning work on a project trying Samplitude in PC on the partition. Will let you know if it all works. In researching the Magix forum others are doing what I describe.

I've had 2 XP machines designed and built into rackmount server cases for remote recording in the last 3 years. Both of them crashed, 1 at a critical time during a senior recital when my back up system was not available. 5 - 30 second gaps in a recital requiring restarts. Guess how happy the student and his parent's were? How much money did I save by going PC?

The XP machines have been repaired and functional but they don't go out on remote gigs anymore. The laptop has been flawless, lighter and better on all counts.

Total set up time on the MBP was a few hours including the fusion partition and installing and updating apps. That is all I have spent on it, the rest was making music or doing work - neither have been interrupted.

Phil

Are pro audio boutique PC's better for recording

Phil,

What product of PC were you using?
I wonder if this has any baring or... are all PC prone to instability and simply just unreliable? Is this a Windows issue or more the PC you used?

The next big question here... Are pro audio boutique PC's like example: ADK any better at handling Windows for recording?

"THe best OS is not on your list. It would a OS designed to do one function -Audio. Like the OS is the IZ Radar products."

You mean, like the kind of OS which you find within the Yamaha LS9 series mixers?
Seems to be a very dedicated thing although it may be based on some form of Linux kernel. Who knows!

Radar is definitely nice. Made in Canada too. :wink:

And there also is Soundscape

who used to have a forum on RO. Man those where fun days. Anyone remember? They never seemed to take off but I see they are still in production. http://www.soundscape-audio.de/ Reasonable as well.

iamfrobs wrote:
To an extent, much of the problem with Windows IMO is that it is too customizable, i.e., much easier to screw up. Apple locks down OSX so that it is harder to mess up.

Agree. With Apple doing the choosing for you it is very hard to run into trouble. Of course that is something you pay for. Aside from a couple of lock ups my MacBook has been a good experience so far.

The beauty with PCs is that you can purpose build anything from home server, gaming machine, household PC, HTPC to DAW PC and select specific parts. That is not an option with an Apple. You are somehow stuck to a couple of designs, like Dell was your only Windows PC shop. If you don't like something about your Apple you are stuck with it.

There are a couple of software titles out there that are either Mac only or Windows only. That will partly decide which way to go. No Sony Vegas on a Mac, no Final Cut on a PC. While Windows will run on the Intel Macs, I don't see it as a professional's choice. It's more of a "nice to have".

My MacBook has that option now and I will be trying it out. I run Tiger and XP, no bootcamp except for the drivers. I used rEFIt, which I think looks better.

My PC has a dual boot of XP, one for surfing and trying things out (I have a fresh install backed up), and one for recording and video editing. That's the easy way to separate things.

Knock on wood: my PC never BSOD'ed on me.

So what's the best? I couldn't tell you until I got really fed up with either OSX or XP. I held off Vista and might upgrade to W7 SP1 when it arrives. I like to try out stuff musically but not spend my days as a PC whiz.

Another thing about the out of the box experience for both:
No automatic updates until your main software or hardware manufacturer tells you it's OK. Either can be very picky about updates.

after 15 years of windows pc (from 3.11 to xp) i switched to mac 1.5 years ago because of logic, which runs only on mac since it has been bought by apple a few years ago.

with my pc's i had to competely reinstall windows every couple of months because it slowed down with every application installed/uninstalled, or because of a virus. i've learned a lot about windows xp just by having so many problems with it.

on my macbook pro i've reinstalled the os just once, when i switched from tiger to leopard. that was 15 months ago. since then it's running fine and without any major problems. i'm running logic, mail and firefox at the same time, so i can surf the net or check my emails while logic is bouncing a project.

it was expensive (2100 euros) but i've never regretted the switch. and i can run windows together with osx at the same time with vmware fusion, although i don't do that very often.

both have their flaws and their advantages, a mac can crash too, but not as often as a windows pc. for me osx is definitely the better os. if you want to tweak your os, go with windows, if you want to work with your os go with osx.