Windows For Audio Production Packs It In?

Microsoft have recently released service packs for both Vista and XP, the former being a much-anticipated update intended to resolve many significant issues. XP Service Pack 3 is a relatively minor update by comparision, yet a number of musicians are reporting severe problems with it…

What’s The Delay With Digidesign?

Digidesign (who now own M-Audio) are quite notorious for their driver support lag; some M-Audio interfaces still don’t have full drivers for Vista, and with the release of Vista SP1, none of their drivers are officially qualified on that platform. They may (and should) still work, of course, but it’s good to have full support on these issues.

You can find M-Audio’s Vista driver development info here; this is all 32-bit, so running Pro Tools LE or M-Powered on a 64-bit Windows platform is still not an option.

If you’re thinking of buying a new audio interface (particularly if you’ll be running it on a laptop) make sure to check all driver compatibility first. It’s also advisable to check that your Firewire controller plays nicely with the rest of your system.

By the way, I tested Pro Tools 7.4 on the M-Audio Projectmix under Vista, and found it to be extremely unstable (it’s still a beta driver). However, changing to XP SP2 resolved these instability problems.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe…XP SP3

Although XP’s latest service pack is supposed to be a minor update, with nothing that should impact on music performance, some users are reporting that their M-Audio hardware refuses to install on XP SP3. Considering that there’s no theoretical DAW performance benefit under SP3, it may be best to hold off on ‘upgrading’ from SP2 for the moment – regardless of whether you’re running M-Audio/Digidesign hardware or not.

Update: M-Audio posted a reply to Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music, which reveals the latest driver versions available for various M-Audio products.