pcrecord, post: 406397 wrote: In a recent post, I said I just change my audio interface for a Liquid Saffire 56 and an Octopre and was testing recording at more than 44.1khz.
I had 4 m-audio delta cards and it took me 2 weeks to tweak audio recording and ended up not using asio drivers because it was unstable.

Upon testing 16 tracks at 88.2 and 96 with the saffire, I found my system crashing after some measures (12 at first and 38 after many windows and sonar x2 tweaking)
So after too many dropouts, I was discourage and did a little search and found this :

[[url=http://[/URL]="http://blog.cakewal…"]The Cakewalk Blog » Blog Archive » Windows 8 – A benchmark for music production applications[/]="http://blog.cakewal…"]The Cakewalk Blog » Blog Archive » Windows 8 – A benchmark for music production applications[/]

There's a lot of talks on the page, but the results of the benchmark surprised me.
I was using windows 7 x64 for a while, but I admit I always had doubts and a crashes here and there...

So I tried it, windows 8 pro x64, not driver install other than windows install and saffire software/drivers.
Wow, up to now, it's stable and faster..

I'll let you know in the next weeks how it work out. !thumb

Yup. Windows 8 isn't just ugly to look at. I've been using it since launch. It's considerably faster than 7. I never use the "metro" interface however. I downloaded Classic Shell to maintain a functional desktop mode. The only issues I have with it are some of the frustrating security gates that may prevent you from installing alternative OSes. But, that's sheer geek. Most people will never encounter this.

Glad I'm not the only one. What surprised me is that it seem much more stable.. I took a fullly mixed project (24 tracks) added 16 tracks and the recording worked, no dropout.
I then added a ampsimulator and addictive drums and recorded while both in realtime : I started to hear some artifacts while recording. But the play back was ok.. And oh, I had t-racks on the masterbus with izotope EQ + voxengo soniformer.. Wow, I never could do this with windows 7.

This weekend I'll have a full band project to record.. Hope everything will run smooth..

I run 8 and 7 (2 daw systems) and also install "classic shell" on the 8 system. To me 7 is better. At least untill all I can buy is a touch screen monitor. :)

Little update : I tested addictive drum will playing live, I can barely feel the latency.
With my prior installation it was not playable, I used to patch my td9 for the head phones and record only midi. Then play back in Addictive...

So great improvement on Latency !!

Another update !
My recording weekend went very well. The only bug I encounter was a graphic bug (I guess it is) in sonar. With a new created project, when I rename a bus in the mixer (displayed on my second screen) and I click back to the main window, sonar x2 crash.. The weird thing is I did record a few songs without the second screen until I had 5 min to test it and in the fully recorded song it's ok .. but in the empty project it still crashes... anyway I doubt it's a windows 8 bug, rather a sonar one..

Other than that, The Liquid Saffire and the Octopre are HOT !! I like the converters are much better than my old m-audio delta cards and the preamps do the job.
And my Focusrite ISA two did a great job on the electric guitar.. We still have the vocals to record and I'll post a sample for you to here !