operating system paranoia

larry-peter wrote on 4/12/2004, 8:44 AM

O.K., I'll admit I've always been suspicious of Microsoft's OS upgrades. I'm just a paranoid kind of guy, I guess. My priorities have always been "performance over eveything else" and upgraded only when the tools I use call for it. I've been running vegas on ME for several years and actually had a system that performed well with M-Audio hardware, if you can believe it. The wave drivers worked well, WDM worked with the apps that supported it and ASIO was, well, flaky in Vegas but usable in other apps.
I just purchased and installed Layla 24/96 and running on the 95/98 drivers immediately got better performance from Vegas, although ASIO latency increased. When I tried the WDM drivers (which they don't really support under ME, but claim has much better ASIO performance), performance dropped enourmously.
2000 and XP audio implementation puts another few extra levels of software communications between the apps and the device drivers. So, my question - Is it worth the extra OS overhead to install 2000 or XP and use Echo's WDM drivers? Does it make a difference? Am I just nitpicking nanoseconds? Any one out there have experience with both OS's?
Stop making new operating systems! There are two things we already have too many of - operating systems and FONTS!!!

system - 3.2 P-4, Intel 865 PERL MB, 1gig RAM, GV-N52128 graphics

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 4/12/2004, 9:53 AM

Just for my own two cents, you'd be far better off upgrading to Windows 98SE than sticking with ME. Many of us consider ME to be the absolute pit of OSses. But, if you're going to change OS at all then go for XP. It is far more stable than 98SE or ME. I was a staunch 98SE supporter for many years, but from my experience now, i can say that XP just plain works.

The other issue you'll probably have to deal with soon (if not already) is that most newer software versions coming out will require XP (or at least 2000) to run. You'll find very very few new releases that will run under 98SE/ME.

larry-peter wrote on 4/12/2004, 10:16 AM

I've heard the same about ME from a lot of people. Seems that with my rig, it actually made things BETTER than with 98SE. Could be the ol' M_Audio driver issues. I don't use my system for anything but audio (90% vegas), so I'm not aware of flakiness with other apps. It just annoys me that we have to suffer through convoluted audio/timing schemes within Windows just so Joe Consumer can have an interface that looks more like a Mac. Anyone out there remember how sweet Vegas Pro ran on Win 95?

MrPhil wrote on 4/13/2004, 6:28 AM

Do you actually recommend to upgrade from ME to SE?
It's the other way around, as ME is newer.

Chienworks wrote on 4/13/2004, 7:04 AM

ME is worse than 98SE was, so ME could be considered a downgrade. From that line of reasoning 98SE is an upgrade from ME even if ME is newer. It would be similar to upgrading from an '03 Ford Festiva to a '99 Lincoln Town Car ... much better beast even if it is a few years older.

Rednroll wrote on 4/13/2004, 11:07 AM

Go directly to XP, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. There are many band aids, to make audio apps function on win98,ME,SE. Win98,ME,and SE are not true 32 bit OSes, some of it was based off of win16 code. So you can tell if everything in the code is not calculating at the same bits, then things are not going to be fully correct and problems are going to happen. Win2k, and WinXP are true 32bit OSes and give you a more stable system.

zemlin wrote on 4/13/2004, 4:35 PM

I beta tested ME and never got any closer than that. It sucked from before the word GO. I'm an XP fan - I have 5 computers at home that all run it - 3 on XP home and 2 on XP Pro (including my DAW). There's a ton of stuff you can distable and turn off in XP for optimal audio performance.

That being said, the old "if it ain't broke ..." rule still applies.

drbam wrote on 4/13/2004, 5:01 PM

Once I got it optimized and locked in, XP is has been as stable as any mac I've used and better than some. I wouldn't even consider anything else at this point.

drbam

MrPhil wrote on 4/14/2004, 4:13 AM

I have the opposite experience. Running SE my system crashed almost every session. UPgrading to ME solved the problem. So it's the old truth again. Different systems work different with different OS. It's equally important that your hardware is functioning, as your OS or software.
I'm sure XP is stable once you got an up to date comp, and disable all the stupid built in functions that does different things without your consent or knowledge.
But for how long will XP be the standard?

cosmo wrote on 4/14/2004, 8:52 AM

XP is built on the same NT infrastructure as the original NT and NT2000. 95, 98, ME - they all blow considerably when compared to NT2000 and they blow completely compared to XP. The architecture for XP will be here a while I'd say. As for stability and updaets etc - I've been running a stable XP Pro(NOT Home version) for well over a year and I haven't updated squat. It rules. It's the best operating system I've ever used. I have yet to try OS X but it's probably a good competitor.

MrPhil wrote on 4/16/2004, 7:33 AM

L O N G H O R N

reidwriter wrote on 4/16/2004, 12:31 PM

Another XP advocate.
More stable and more reliable and much better at handling memory.

stakeoutstudios wrote on 4/16/2004, 1:47 PM

if developers only have to focus on winXP we'll all have a more stable, easy-for-them-to-maintain product.

By far and away XP is the best OS so far, but still not ideal.

I can't help wishing there was a stripped down OS that was designed soley for media manipulation. Kind of like BEOS which never took off.

Jason

Chienworks wrote on 4/17/2004, 5:28 AM

I can agree with you there. I always feel kinda like i'm being raped when i install Windows. I thing a typical XP install uses something like 500MB of drive space, yet i get the very strong feeling that i only need and use about 50MB of that. I wonder how much more streamlined, faster, and stable my systems would be without all the extra crud.

*sigh* When you look at all the security holes and constant patches, it seems like the extra crud is worse than useless. It's actually downright harmful.