Smooth Operators
Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jason Blum and Markkus Rovito
PRIORITIES, PRIORITIES
Another important advance in Vista's audio handling is the Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS), which is essentially a traffic cop for all of the processes on your machine — implemented properly, it prioritizes processes such as audio streaming over other system processes, giving it a straight pipe to your sequencer and theoretically reducing the possibility of those annoying pops and glitches that often plagued unoptimized XP systems. MMCSS can also make good use of dual or multicore systems by assigning specific multimedia tasks to certain processor cores or relegating background system tasks to a percentage of a single core while giving audio apps free rein over the remaining resources.
Like WaveRT, MMCSS is something that manufacturers will need to add to their products via patches or ground-up redesign. Most pro audio apps such as Cubase, Live and Sonar are already multithreaded to take advantage of multiple processors, but adding MMCSS to the mix should allow these programs to use resources even more efficiently and deliver a rock-solid, glitch-free recording platform.
UNDER THE GUN
Tech specs aside, I put Vista through a standard array of tests on my machine by loading Cubase, Live and Wavelab projects I'd created in XP to see how they'd fare. To be honest, I was expecting a significant performance hit with Vista. The general consensus out on the street is that it's a bloated memory hog, and while I was happy with the shiny new user interface, I did harbor a little apprehension about getting the same performance that I had with my old XP rig.
One rumor is confirmed true — Vista is a memory hog and will chew through RAM quickly. My mere 1 GB of RAM (admittedly not a large quantity) was dinged at more than 60 percent usage even when idle, and after loading a Live set with 16 tracks, it shot up to near 90 percent capacity. Clearly there's more background stuff happening in Vista, but somehow even with the additional workload, Vista managed to deftly keep total usage under 100 percent, and performance never suffered as a result.
My experience with Cubase was similar — though it actually used less memory than Live — and Wavelab also performed flawlessly, as did all of my VST plug-ins. Recording and playback through both applications with a 256-sample buffer size was glitch-free, even in complex projects with multiple plug-ins, and while Vista does seem to tack an extra one or two percent on the CPU usage bar in both Live and Cubase, it's a negligible difference that doesn't seem to affect playback in any way. Reducing the buffer size did introduce some glitching on more complex projects, but I would expect the same behavior in XP.
The only instance where I did notice some glitching was during window resize operations. Even with my accelerated GeForce 7950GT video card, Vista still didn't prioritize audio tasks above screen refresh jobs, causing irritating little pops and clicks while dragging or resizing windows during playback. I always had the same issue with XP, and it is still easily fixed by disabling some of the window-animation options under System Properties > Performance Options. However, I was hoping that Vista would fix the problem. Hopefully as advances such as MMCSS are implemented in audio apps, such things will have less of an impact.
I also noticed that all of my music applications seemed to start a bit faster than they did on XP, no doubt a result of Vista's propensity for pre-caching commonly used programs and firing them out of RAM when executed. I don't typically switch programs a lot while working, but it does add a little boost to the overall user experience.
BUENA VISTA
Windows Vista is a robust operating system with plenty of little enhancements over earlier versions of Windows. The new user interface is beautiful, there are a few under-the-hood enhancements targeted squarely at the pro audio world, and most major hardware and software manufacturers have finally released drivers or Vista-compatible patches (although 64-bit support is still sorely lacking).
But is it really worth the upgrade for XP users who are perfectly happy? For professional music applications alone, probably not. Vista currently doesn't offer much aside from a few usability and efficiency tweaks that may — depending on your hardware — offer increased performance. Improvements like WaveRT drivers and MMCSS will help audio performance as manufacturers adopt them, but that hasn't happened en masse, so you can probably get by just fine with XP for another year or two. Besides, XP will eke out a touch more raw performance on an older machine.
Regardless of whether you're upgrading an old machine or buying new, the fact is you'll be faced with the switch to Vista at some point within the next few years as XP is eventually phased out of Microsoft's lineup. Don't fear change! Vista is a great OS for audio applications, and as more products take advantage of its powerful multimedia tools, you'll wonder why you didn't make the switch sooner.
MICROSOFT
WINDOWS VISTA
$199/$99 (upgrade) Home Basic: A stripped-down version that lacks the new user interface. Avoid it if possible.
$239/$139 Home Premium: Offers a few bonus features such as Windows Media Center, some basic games, a DVD authoring tool and other entertainment-focused add-ons. Neither Home versions are good for networked business environments.
$299/$199 Business: Keeps the revamped Aero interface but ditches the games and media apps in favor of useful features including Remote Access, domain-level network integration and the excellent Complete PC Backup and Restore.
$399/$299 Ultimate: The flagship version crams in every feature from lesser incarnations with a few exclusive bonuses such as file-system encryption and Ultimate Extras.
Selecting the right version is a matter of taste more than necessity for most users, as the differences from a pro-audio standpoint are negligible. You'll get the exact same stability, functionality and performance with each version. A slight edge goes to Vista Business for a studio PC: It does away with superfluous fluff like games and media players and includes useful tools that you'd probably wind up purchasing separately anyway.
Pros: Revamped user interface. Good backup tools. Great search functions. Low-level OS improvements for audio streaming and multimedia prioritization.
Cons: Slight learning curve. More processor- and RAM-intensive than XP. Feels slightly overpriced.
Contact: www.microsoft.com/vista
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