Best Recording Gear / DAW for Vista

My advice, good luck. I haven't found much of anything that supports Vista SP1.

Upgrade to XP.

 

I've got a presonus firebox. I just plugged it in after a while of not using it. Totally didn't even think about me having vista SP1 now (home premium 32 bit). Right now I'm getting low input volumes (I have a post asking about this). Not sure if this is vista's problem, or something else. Either way...it is basically working with SP1. Give me a few days and I may figure out what the problem is. -Nick

 

If I'm correct, Sonar supposedly works pretty well with Vista.

 

Aren't you going about this backwards. Pick your software/hardware then setup the computer up to its needs. Dual boot the computer if that what it takes.

 

+101

 

Ableton live light? never heard of that. If you buy new, it comes with Cubase LE. I don't have that though. I'm using it through Reaper (reaper.fm).

I just got it working properly again. For some reason SP1 was causing something with low input volumes. I rolled back that install and all is working well again. SP1 is made mostly of prereleased updates anyway, so it's not a huge deal in my opinion to get rid of it. Just make sure all the other windows updates are taken care of.

 

I use sonar 7 with good results. I don't really know how to use the program right but Through my Edirol UA-25 My basses come through pretty clear and the software doesn't seem to have any issues running multitracks. McAfee causes a bump here or there.

Actually Sonar works better than most programs like firefox and Itunes They just don't get along with Vista.

 

I would say go back to XP Pro. Still should be able to find copies. The other option is what I did. I decided I needed a new PC but I did not want Vista so now I have a sweet 24" iMac and it is amazing. No looking back (and I also run PT LE with an MBox 2). I guess the main thing is I would resist changing DAW/SW (with the cost and learning curve) merely to match a crappy OS.

Later
Rob

PS - However, one would assume with some time they will get the kinks out of SP1 and ProTools. I had to wait about 2 months after I bought my Mac for PT LE to be ready for OS X Leopard. Maybe you just need to wait a bit. What does the DUC say about SP1 compatibility?

 

Having recently done this myself, and having to work 'backwards' like you are, I decided upon my software and interface, and simply made sure they work with Windows.

The software will work with Vista, but the interface I ordered isn't yet guaranteed to work with it. So if I have to, I'll load XP on my machine (It's too spec'd out to ditch). And there's a chance that Vista will read the 'inferior' OS (XP) and give me the option of doing a dual boot. And if that doesn't work, I'll simply load XP in place of Vista.

This has caused me quite the headache, but I've figured out a line of approach. Vista simply isn't the OS of choice when it comes to high performance DAW systems. Period.

 

This is especially true if you're talking about maximum performance at ultra low latency settings (<6ms).

Vista results in higher DPC latency on a given system.
Higher DPC latency makes a DAW more prone to dropouts/glitches/etc.