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I had been running a Windows XP Pro 32 bit machine for the past 5 or so years as my main recording studio pc, using two M-Audio Delta1010LT cards for input. The processor was an AMD XP3000, RAM at 3GB, SATA RAID at 7200RPM. It worked fine for it's time, but with my expanding usage and heavier DAW software, it started to lag, crackle and pop at about 11-15 tracks depending on how many and what type of effects I was using.
So looking to update, I built a hardware configuration of a Biostar Motherboard, an AMD Phenom II Quad core 965 at 3.4Ghz, 8GB PC8500 DDR2 RAM, the two M-Audio cards mentioned above, GB network card, DVD burner, a case with temp gauges displayed on the front so I know if it is overheating, SATA 3.0 and 7200RPM drives.
Ok now for the OS, I first installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. It seemed to work great after tweaking it not to look like a fish tank. Got my classic style menu back, shut off all the eye candy, turned off user access control, etc etc, and more etc.
Installed my DAW products, plugins, players, converters, burners, tuner and everything else I need to record with.
Again seemed to work great for the most part. Windows 7 was definitely worlds above Vista in this respect.
And now the dreaded "but"…. After recording a drum track using my live kit and 12 simultaneous tracks, I found that when adding the bass track, it was out of sync, on any DAW. I played with the M-Audio ASIO drivers, wav, wavrt, asio4all to no avail.
After 2 days of trying to fix it, I decided to use Acronis true Image to make a clone of the hard drive, then install Windows XP Pro 64 bit and see how it performed.
After getting everything installed to the new XP OS, I did some of the same tests I was doing with Windows 7, and to nobody's surprise, the problems were gone. Once again Microsoft has failed to release an OS that is actually better than Windows XP.
Windows 7 may be fine for some of you who record one track at a time, or just use loops or whatever. But if you plan to record your band, or start a recording studio, go with XP Pro x64.
I have now transferred all my projects from the Acronis clone I did before installing XP, and since deleted the entire clone being 100% sure I will not be going back to Windows 7 on any recording pc.
As an added note, I have Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit installed on a brand new gateway laptop, tried recording at a friends house with it, terrible latency issues, tracks dragging behind others, noise that made recording absolutely unachievable. You name the problem, I had it with this OS.
Final word from this engineer = Windows 7, avoid it.
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