When Ableton 8 dropped I instantly had issues cropping up on my old XP computer in the studio. The computer is great on specs, however I’ve been running 32 bit Windows XP Professional since the get go and have broken one of my old school rules of formatting and installing the OS freshly every 2 years or so. The computer doubles as my main PC, so naturally I have everything under the sun installed to this box that I need to accomplish a multitude of tasks (web dev, coding, photography, movie ripping, games, and more) on top of my audio producing environment. It’s no wonder that Ableton Live!, Reason, and my audio hardware sometimes has issues with my system.
I decided that I was going to try Windows 7 64 bit and see if I could configure it to be a dedicated music production environment. Sure enough after an effortless registration, download, burn, and install of the OS, I had Windows 7 up and running. I was already impressed by the breath of life it gave to my computer. Fast, seemily less bloated than both Vista and XP, and thus far pretty stable, I have hope that Windows 7 will be a viable alternative for music production.
Installation and operation of Ableton Live! 8.0.3 and Reason 4 has been smooth sailing. I still encounter the ocassional problem with Ableton Live!, but the memory management and process management in Windows 7 is far superrior to that of XP so I don’t lose much time if Live! crashes on me (which has only happened once so far). It seems that Live! still has trouble with my Alesis iO 26 when initializing, but a reset of the iO 26 takes care of that.
It wasn’t all peaches and cream when it came to getting my music hardware to work, however. First off, not all of the music hardware vendors have Windows 7 64 bit drivers available. To my absolute dismay, Alesis was the only brand I have in my set up that had a beta Windows 7 driver available.
With some minor system configuraiton, the Alesis iO26 driver for Windows XP and Vista 64-bit worked along with the software and I haven’t had much issue with the unit at all. It works better in Windows 7 than it does in Windows XP (a lot less fussy). If it gives you trouble, try the following:
- Windows Key + Pause/Break for Computer Properties
- Click on Device Manager
- Expand Firewire Devices
- Click on the host controller and update the driver to, “1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)”
My Korg padKontrol, sadly, it not 100% operational. While I was able to have the driver working in no time at all such that I can use the unit with Live! or Reason, the padKontrol’s librarian (which is used for programming the device) does not work. I continually get device communication errors even though the unit responds appropriately in music software.
My Midisport 2×2 by M-Audio does not work at all. I tried to use the Vista or XP compatability modes, as well as manually plucking the driver from the temporary folder during install, but it was all in vein. The device isn’t supported in Windows 7 and M-Audio does not appear to be turning out the drivers quickly. It’s a shame. Right now I have my old school MIDI keyboard plugged into my padKontrol’s MIDI-IN, and the WaveIdea Bitstream PRO is going to have to be plugged into the iO 26′s MIDI-IN. Thankfully I don’t intend on buying any new controllers or synths soon.
Playing around with some Silver Standard music in Live! has shown me that Windows 7 really does perform very well for my music production so far. It feels smoother, faster, and more stable. Jeff and I will give it a good test tomorrow night in our recording session and I’m crossing my fingers it shines.
I’m trying to leave this installation of Windows 7 alone and separate from a personal OS. XP will reside on the main partition for quite awhile since it has all of my personal stuff (or “clutter”) which probably gets in the way of my music production.
I’m not going to lie: I hope that Windows 7 is a viable, stable, stage performance alternative to Apple. As much as I pine for a Macbook PRO like every other ‘professional’ out there.. I firmly believe there should be alternatives. Besides.. not all of the VSTs I use are available for Mac. ;P
November 13, 2009 at 8:40 pm
In case you have not gotten your padkontrol working properly yet their is a beta driver out that will fix it so it works on a 64 bit system.
http://www.korguksupport.co.uk/upload/USB-MIDI_Driver_for_Windows_V1.2.0.zip
that’s the link right there.
November 16, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Sweet! Thanks for the tip, Bob. I’m going to check this out in my next recording session at home. I will post the results and your comment in a follow up on my blog here.
January 7, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Hey Bob, I’m posting a follow up here;
I tried the driver you linked me to, but it turns out to be the Vista 64-bit drivers. Those don’t work for me– Well, the DRIVER for the device works, however the padKontrol Editor Librarian software won’t communicate with the padKontrol, so I suppose it 1/2 works ;)
I have to program the device in Windows XP right now.. I will do some more digging since it has been a few months since I have looked properly.
April 23, 2010 at 7:37 am
Hello,
I cannot find the beta (or not beta driver) for the Alesis IO26 under Windows 7. Where did you find it ?
On Alesis website there is only the Windows XP and Windows Vista drivers.
So I guess there is a special place for the beta versions ?
thnx !
Christophe
April 28, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Whoa.. bizzare! I went to the Alesis website, poked around Google, and I can’t find the driver *anywhere*. Now, unless I was sorely mistaken back in July of 2009, I am 99% sure I downloaded a beta Win7 driver. The iO26 monitor/control pannel and configuration GUI is all different, and I specifically remember downloading ‘beta’ drivers. Perhaps Alesis removed them?? I can’t find anyone who has reference to the drivers, but a slew of people are posting that they can’t use, or have problems using, their iO26 in Win7 with the Vista 64 drivers.
I will take a look at the driver install I’m using to see what’s up, and post my findings back here.
I saved the download and installed the driver again when I upgraded to Win7 Ultimate retail.
May 2, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Well now I’m confused. I suppose I mis-typed what I had been installing after the fact. My driver appears to be the Vista + XP 64-bit driver. However, I have some special configuration notes that got the iO24 to work properly.
1) Windows Key + Pause/Break for Computer Properties
2) Device Manager
3) Expand Firewire Devices
4) Click on the host controller and update the driver to, “1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)”
April 24, 2010 at 5:41 am
You wrote – it crashed only once. Please write when and how do u feel about your setup right now (after a while using it) Any new things you noticed? Tips?
Thanks
Greets
April 28, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Thus far I’ve managed to find out that Ableton Live 8 only has issues with my hand-recorded samples. My small low-fi recorder uses WMA format, then I transcode it into a .WAV file. If I don’t encode it into a 16-bit/44kHz file, Ableton 8 crashes when I try to change projects. It’s strange. Otherwise, I don’t encounter any issues until I load the CPU to 100% or bog down my memory with too many plug-ins! The way it should be, hehe.
Otherwise: I’ve had great success using Windows 7, Live 8 and Reason 4. I’ve used various plug ins and other soft synths, recorded tons of live audio with my iO26, all with no issues.
I use this setup as my main PC, too, so I also have a slew of other non-music related development software installed. Win7 seems to be doing fine multi-tasking the duties of a web development, photography processing, multi-media hosting, and audio recording/producing machine. Gone are the days of “needing” to reboot to get a fresh set of memory and cpu.
I would always recommend you have a dedicated recording/workstation computer, though, as you won’t have to worry about what you’re installing conflicting with your audio setup and bogging your system down.
I am now curious about how Win7 and a well built laptop would handle a heavy tour schedule. I’m considering it greatly, as I don’t own a performance laptop yet.
June 11, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Hi! I’m having similar problems trying to fix up Alesis IO26 with Windows 7. I changed Firewire into Legacy driver, but it had no effect on IO26. Hardware monitoring and IO26 Control Panel programs aren’t working though sounds are working properly. Thanks for tips anyway, i’m really amazed of how smoothly Windows 7 operates compared to Vista.