Thinking of going up to Windows XP; looking for feedback

  • Thread starter Thread starter Whoopysnorp
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Whoopysnorp

Whoopysnorp

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Here's the deal: my university (the University of Iowa) has an agreement with Microsoft whereby any student or faculty member can buy certain of their titles on the cheap. One of these is Windows XP (not sure if it's home or professional) for a mere 5 pezzutos. I'm going to buy it, no question, but is it a good OS for a DAW? I have Windows 98 right now, and I use a Delta 66 and n-Track. Is it going to be a headache in the ass going to the newer OS? Will I get the dreaded clicks and pops, and if so, will I be able to get rid of them?
 
I've had no problems running XP and using n-track, although I didn't do an upgrade, it was a clean install all around.

-J
 
You shouldn't have any problems, and I think you'll be quite pleased with the stability and responsiveness of XP. Be sure to apply all available Windows updates as well as turning off all the special effects (transparency and whatnot).
 
I'm using XP with Logic Audio and it works fine so far. XP is a faster OS than 98. In theory the features of the OS should make it a better fit for audio than Windows 98. However, there is s difference between theory and reality. The thing is most DAW related companies that make products for PCs have been writing Windows 98 drivers forever, but NT is new to them. So there's growing pains involved for many companies.

For example, two e-magic products that I use, SoundDiver and Unitor control for my MIDI interface both suffer from XP related problems. When I first encountered the problems, I immediately went to the e-magic web site figuring any reputable company would post info and a fix, but couldn't find the answer (even though they know of the problem and the workaround, I guess they have a different view of customer support than I do). So I spent a couple hours doing web searches to find an e-mail list archives where an e-magic rep hangs out. Turns out all I had to do to work around the problems is set the MIDI buffer size to 1K, which worked great, but there was some aggravation getting to that point where I had a fix.

Thats the kind of thing I'd expect when it comes to XP. It will be a while before most companies catch up and have XP support comparable to that for Windows 98.
 
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