More Win7 x64, SONAR x64, BitBridge, and DXi Shell experiences
Rick Paul
x64 environment. In no particular order, here are my latest experience
along these lines. Some might even be applicable to Reaper users. ;-)
I installed the SONAR 8.5.2 patch. Had a session yesterday from about 11am
to 4pm, and then was using SONAR beyond that (without stopping it or
starting it all that time) for another 3+ hours. Didn't notice any hiccups
in all that time. Not that I was doing anything all that complex. There
was audio guitar track recorded at another studio, then I was overdubbing
various softsynth parts, doing lots of stopping and starting while trying to
figure out what the client wanted, then some editing, and eventually a rough
mix. I will say, though, that it took me FOREVER to actually get the 8.5.2
patch to download on my DSL. It's not that the DSL is slow (though it is
compared to cable), but rather because the connection got lost pretty much
every time, sometimes with only a little more to go, other times soon after
starting. I tried IE, IEx64, and FireFox, all with the same results. The
only difference was FireFox actually has a pause and resume control on their
download thingie, and, if I noticed the connection wasn't doing anything
soon enough after it stopped doing something, I could hit Pause, then hit
Play, and it would resume. However, that was really touch and go on how
long I could wait, and I missed getting it at least somewhere in each
attempt through the first 12 or so attempts before finally getting one to
work. No fun on a download that takes something like 40 minutes of real
time on my connection. (I think it was 372 MB.) Why couldn't they provide
it on an FTP site or something so I could just use a program that would
automatically resume!!!
Unfortunately, the 8.5.2 update did not fix the problem with EZ Drummer
loading its sounds. So I guess that means relying on Toontrack's fix,
hopefully coming soon....
Antares was offering a pretty good short term upgrade price promotion on
AutoTune Evo, so I broke down and bought that as a fix/workaround for not
having been able to get AutoTune 4 VST working with BitBridge or the DX
version of it working via DX Shell. I haven't had the occasion to actually
try the new version yet to see how I like it compared to the older version,
but there are a lot of useful enhancements, and the upgrade price ended up
being livable.
I think I'd mentioned previously having issues with Dimension Pro not being
able to locate its samples. It turns out this is a known problem with a few
potential workarounds. The easiest one is to run SONAR as Administrator.
That worked, so I didn't bother with the other alternative which was much
more complex to set up. I still didn't get the VST version working, though,
and that is the one where I thought I might have screwed something up in
moving directories around. I'm not going to worry about it for the moment,
though.
I'd also previously mentioned using DXi Shell to get some 32-bit DirectX and
DXi plug-ins working as VST plug-ins in SONAR x64, but also detecting some
sound-oriented problems in iZotope Ozone 3 when working that way. Messing
around with that a bit more today, I think I have a somewhat better idea of
what is going on, and it isn't unique to Ozone. In particular, on the
parametric EQ within Ozone (and possibly other modules, but that is where I
noticed it), if you drag the gain on an EQ band past 0dB in a positive
direction, it snaps to the lower extreme of the control, not allowing
positive gain values at all. This almost certainly explains the dull sound.
I also tried a Sony Sound Forge Plugin (Smooth Enhance), and saw the same
exact thing happen with its single control, which should go from -5 to 5 for
enhance (with smooth being the negative values). As soon as you get past
zero in the enhance direction it snaps back to -5, which should really be
called "dull" instead of "smooth" at that extreme value. This is not unique
to SONAR. I found that the same thing happens in Ableton Live, which is a
32-bit application, so it's also not unique to 64-bit host/plug-in
interfaces. Just thinking about what could be going on there behind the
scenes, it wouldn't surprise me if it does relate to assumptions being made
in the size of floating point numbers inside the plug-ins and/or how data
gets passed to the plug-ins through the VST/DX shell/plug-in chain. In any
event, that is a real hassle for any plug-ins affected (it did not affect
any of the Waves plug-ins I tried, so it's not like it affects every
plug-in).
Also installed and working now via DXi shell are:
- Timeworks Compressor X and Equalizer from the SONAR 2 XL CD (including
patches -- that needed some special handling to install because of the
DirectX 8 expectation and the patch's wanting SONAR 2 to be installed)
- iZotope Trash and Ozone 3
- Cakewalk FX3 Soundstage
- Waves RennMaxx suite
- Tassman 3
- Sony Sound Forge plug-ins (note, though, that some of these behave
flakily, though perhaps no moreso than they did in 32-bit SONAR)
- dB-audioware's original suite of dynamics processors
One other note on DXi Shell: I'd originally just put it in SONAR's VST
directory (which I also use for Live and Sound Forge), to not have to do any
special per-plug-in setup. However, because it didn't change, new DX
plug-ins added weren't getting scanned. So then I'd move it out, start
SONAR, move it back, start SONAR again, and have to do a similar thing with
Live, but that was a real pain. They also have a utility to wrap plug-ins
individually, so I set that up, moving the DX shell VST and the rest out of
my SONAR VST area, then just moving individual wrapped plug-ins into the VST
area. The utility still scans every plug-in any time it's run, but then I
only have to copy the ones that are new, and I can organized them however I
want instead of having them all be under a DX submenu.
The other reason I decided to do this was I was temporarily having a problem
with scanning the Waves stuff due to something that clobbered all
iLok-protected plug-ins on my system, and made the VST scans on Live, SONAR,
and Sound Forge hang when scanning the Waves stuff. A reboot cleared that
problem, and I think it probably had something to do with my attempts to
install additional Antares plug-ins (see below), though I'm not positive at
this point.
I tried installing Antares Mic Modeler, one of my all-time favorite
plug-ins, which is also DirectX, and it got to the point of installing and
trying to register with PACE Interlok and hung. Since that is now an
unsupported plug-in, with no upgrade available to something with similar
functionality, it looks like that one will be lost for good. Bummer.
I also tried installing some Antares AVOX plug-ins (THROAT, CHOIR, PUNCH),
and they installed fine, and work fine in Live (as 32-bit plug-ins).
However, they hang both Sound Forge 8's VST scanner and SONAR's VST scanner.
Not sure what is going on there, though those are also now old, unsupported
plug-ins. I think they do have upgrade versions, but I've never used these
to any significant degree -- I only got them because they were freebies as
"upgrades" when they discontinued support for other plug-ins I had (Kantos,
Tube, Mic Modeler).
On the 32-bit VST front, I installed the entire ElektroStudio suite of
freeware vintage synth emulations, as well as the TAL Juno 60 emulator
(U-No-62) and a freeware Mellotron emulator called TapeWorm. All seem to
work just fine.
I've still got a fair number of plug-ins to go, though most of those are
ones I don't use all that much, and some of those are ones I'm
procrastinating on reinstalling due to their having big sample libraries
(read "long installation times"). With the exception of the Toontrack
stuff, I think most all my mainstream stuff is installed and working.
I still have not gotten around to trying the Win7 Professional XP
compatibility mode stuff. There are a couple of large downloads for the
components of that, and I still haven't determined whether they do or do not
attempt to resolve the problem with running 16-bit Windows applications. I
think I've gotten most of my old 32-bit stuff working without it, but would
like to run a few particular utility programs that I have (and in some cases
are only available) as 16-bit apps.
Rick
--
=======================================
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
=======================================
Martin Holmes
I'd just like to thank you for posting this, especially all the careful
detail. I just took delivery of a brand-new 64-bit Windows 7 machine and
a VStudio 100 yesterday, and I'm just getting going with installing
stuff; it's really helpful to see what you've been experiencing, and be
able to avoid some headaches for myself.
Cheers,
Martin
Rick Paul
suite with DX Shell yet, having given up on the idea earlier since it was
DirectX-only, and people were saying the registration facility wasn't
working anyway. Well, I decided to give it a try. Not only did it install
just fine, but the registration came back within less than 5 minutes. And,
from my quick test of one plug-in (Aural Activator, the one I used the most
these days), it seems to work just fine via DX Shell! Yay!!!
Rick
--
=======================================
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
=======================================
"Rick Paul" <rick...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:RPCdnfowVpeE6KzW...@earthlink.com...
Rick Paul
news:tJeYm.116752$gg6.1...@newsfe25.iad...
> I'd just like to thank you for posting this, especially all the careful
> detail. I just took delivery of a brand-new 64-bit Windows 7 machine and a
> VStudio 100 yesterday, and I'm just getting going with installing stuff;
> it's really helpful to see what you've been experiencing, and be able to
> avoid some headaches for myself.
Glad you've found it helpful. I'll be interested to hear how you like the
VStudio 100. It's not something I'd be likely to look into in the very near
term, but maybe someday as a mobile rig -- have to get a laptop first! ;-)
Martin Holmes
> I'll be interested to hear how you like the
> VStudio 100. It's not something I'd be likely to look into in the very near
> term, but maybe someday as a mobile rig -- have to get a laptop first! ;-)
It took me a while to get it installed and working, because it was
released without 64-bit drivers for Win7; the forum info suggested that
the driver was built into the Sonar 8.5.2 update, but this proved not to
be the case, and I actually had to download it from the site. There's
still a firmware update to do which I haven't got around to yet.
The documentation also tells you to switch it over to using the ASIO
driver, which I duly did, but found the latency was pretty high. I
switched it back to using the WDM driver, and started pulling down the
latency; it seems to work fine at an amazing 1ms, but I haven't really
tested that with a big project yet. Running the audio profiler gives you
a very high latency (about 16ms round-trip), so you really have to
intervene and pull it down manually.
The control surface stuff seems to work as advertised. Haven't tried any
recording yet. Waiting till I get a few days off work to play with it.
Physically it's a very robust, professional-looking unit. So far I'm
very happy with it. It's replacing an M-Audio FW 410, for which there
are no Win7 64-bit drivers.
Managed to BSOD Win7 itself once, during a round of updates and
installs, but just the once. That's not bad for a Microsoft OS.
Cheers,
Martin
Rick Paul
about the kind of real life stuff you're mentioning here, and, if course,
how it holds up in real use will be even more interesting.
I'm surprised to hear about the Win7 BSOD. Haven't seen anything of that
sort to this point. XP was generally pretty stable for me, but Win7x64 has
seemed considerably moreso, and a lot more responsive on just about
everything, from bootup and shutdown times to just general operations.
Rick
--
=======================================
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
=======================================
"Martin Holmes" <mholmesDE...@uvic.ca> wrote in message
news:RsBYm.46628$DC2....@newsfe02.iad...
kitekrazy
You must be out of the loop. I've been running my M-Audio FW 410 on
W7x64 and it runs fine.
Martin Holmes
>> Physically it's a very robust, professional-looking unit. So far I'm
>> very happy with it. It's replacing an M-Audio FW 410, for which there
>> are no Win7 64-bit drivers.
> You must be out of the loop. I've been running my M-Audio FW 410 on
> W7x64 and it runs fine.
My understanding was that you could only get it working with some beta
drivers for Vista, which were no longer being developed. Have they now
released proper Win7 drivers, with a commitment to support them?
Cheers,
Martin
kitekrazy
Yes. I guess you didn't know they have their own forum either and many
people bitched about driver support.
Rick Paul
Toontrack's Superior Drummer 2.2 x64 public beta, which also allows
accessing my EZ Drummer/EZX kits!):
I finally got to installing XP Mode on my Win7Pro x64 system. The idea was
to try and get a few old 16-bit applications to run, since those would not
run at all with the native compatibility support built into Win7 (at least
in the x64 version). It took me awhile to figure out how to get it
configured as there isn't any obvious clue once you install it, so I had to
do a fair amount of scouring the net for "how to" info. However, I have at
least now got it running with my American Heritage Talking Dictionary, which
dates back to Win 3.x days.
Here are a few quick pointers in case you need this mode:
1) You first download and install the XP Mode and Virtual PC stuff from
Microsoft, in that order. That's not exactly intuitive, and apparently it
was the reverse order with the RC, but it did work. That requires a reboot.
2) Once you have it installed, the only thing I found visible at the top
level menu was a Windows Virtual PC icon, which brings up a tool for
managing Virtual PCs. That was my initial point of confusion as that really
isn't very helpful. I later found you have to dig down into sub-menus to
find the Windows Virtual PC program group, then some sub-items under that,
one of which is Windows XP Mode. That is the one you want to invoke.
3) The first time you bring up the Windows XP Mode, it will go through some
startup stuff, such as configuring a login, downloading updates, telling you
you need a virus scanner (I.e. "your PC is at risk"), etc. I went ahead and
got it updated and installed the MS Security Essentials package in the
virtual machine to get rid of the nuisance icon. Might nor might not be
critical depending on how you'll use your XP Mode virtual machine. Probably
isn't in my case as I suspect I'll only be using a couple of local
applications, but just to be safe...
4) Once you've got the XP Mode configured, you can load applications more or
less however you see fit, depending on how you have those applications. I
initially was hoping to just run my dictionary application from the files
I'd already had installed on my old XP system, which were still accessible
on my Win7 hard disks. Those disks can be accessed from the XP Mode, but
they look like network disks, not local disks, and this caused a problem
with the specific application I was running. I next tried installing it off
the application's original installation CD, which initially seemed to work.
However, I'd configured it in a way that was meant to not need the CD for
reference, and don't remember what all I did way back when to get around any
issues with doing that. Once I removed the CD in XP mode, things started
going haywire. One expected thing was the audio pronunciation feature
wouldn't work, since the voice files were on the CD, but then the
application hung in a way that wouldn't let it close down, and when I
succeeded in killing it and getting it back up initially text was distorted,
then I couldn't even get any text in the dictionary side of the application
(though I could in the thesaurus side). Ultimately, I ended up deinstalling
it, then using the files on my Win7 disks to copy that installation to the
WinXP virtual disk, adjusted path names there, and ran it just fine. I'm
still not sure why the installation from the CD didn't work.
5) At this point I was just getting it up within an XP Window, and had no
clue how to get it outside of that, which was my ultimate desire. Some
reading on the net suggested there should be a sub-menu for XP Mode
applications under the above-mentioned menus, and there was, but my
dictionary wasn't in there. Turns out you have to copy the shortcut for
that into the All Users menu in XP mode, then, once you reboot XP mode, the
shortcut will be available in the relevant submenu within Win7. From there,
I could copy the shortcut to my task bar (or wherever else I might need it)
to make it more accessible. The only downside is it looks like a Virtual PC
window icon, not the icon from the application. You can change the
properties there, but I haven't yet found a way to get it to use the actual
application icon. (I can probably work around that by capturing that icon
to a .ico file and placing a copy somewhere on my Win7 system, but it's been
awhile since I've done that sort of thing, so I need to figure out how to do
it. Just referencing the relevant files off my Win7 disk within the browse
for icons facility did not do the trick.)
Bottom line is I now have a one-click icon that gets me to my
dictionary/thesaurus program running under XP mode. It takes longer than a
normal icon to start because it's basically recovering from a hibernated XP
session, but it still comes up relatively quickly. And it seems to behave
just like a Windows 7 application in most ways, including use of the
clipboard, being in its own window, etc.
Next thing is to see if I can get my rhyming dictionary working that way.
That may be trickier, though, as I think I might actually need the
installation media on that one, and my floppy drive isn't working at present
(not sure if the drive failed, I got the wiring screwed up, or there is some
OS-level issue).
The other question mark in my mind at the moment, once I get another XP mode
application running, is if I'll be able to run multiple XP mode applications
in parallel within their own separate windows, or whether the only way to
run multiple XP mode apps in parallel will be to run an XP mode window with
the applications running in them. The info I found on configuring an XP
mode application did say to close any XP mode windows before starting an
application running in XP mode, so that leads me to speculate it may only
allow one virtual XP system to run at a time (or perhaps one from any one
given virtual machine).
kitekrazy
I found XP mode to be pretty useless. The "integration" part at startup
doesn't work and the cure isn't to be found yet.
I haven't been able to drag and drop from 7 into XP mode.
Wise thing to do is to keep a previous license of XP on the same system.
I'm finding W7x64 can be very fragile compared to XP in so many ways.
Rick Paul
news:hhdhqo$fdu$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> I found XP mode to be pretty useless. The "integration" part at startup
> doesn't work and the cure isn't to be found yet.
That is definitely not true in my case. XP Mode is absolutely mandatory for
me to run some 16-bit applications I use regularly on Win7 x64. Those
applications would not run without it. They might well run in the 32-bit
Win7, but I definitely want x64.
I now have two applications configured to run under XP Mode, but from an
icon on my Win7 taskbar. One is the American Heritage Talking Dictionary,
and the other is RhymeWizard. The latter is not even available in newer
versions, and the company went out of business, so it's get it running as is
or have to find something else, and I really like the way it works much
better than anything else I've seen to date, not to mention cost is a
consideration at present.
I've also found that I can actually run both of them at the same time in
separate windows under Win7, so that is a good thing and something I was
concerned might not be possible yesterday.
I'm not sure what isn't working for you, but you might check out the
step-by-step info I posted in my previous note on this for the general steps
to set something up, as that stuff definitely was not intuitively obvious to
me.
On RhymeWizard, I couldn't just copy the files over from my previous
installation. Thankfully, though, my floppy drive actually did work, and I
was able to get the files off there, make a hard disk directory from that to
use as an installation source, then install from there. Note that I did
have to have the installation files on the XP subsystem's virtual hard disk,
not on a Win7 "network" disk, though I think there would have been a way to
mount it and use it differently than it is available by default. But it is
a simple matter, within Explorer on the WinXP subsystem to copy from the
Win7 "network" disks to the WinXP virtual hard disk. (I don't think you can
go in the other direction -- I.e. from copy to the WinXP virtual hard disk
from within the Win7 Explorer.)
> I haven't been able to drag and drop from 7 into XP mode.
I'm not sure what specifically you are trying to do here. I have copied
from XP mode apps to Win7 apps and vice versa. For my part, though, I
really only want to use XP mode to run a few applications that won't run at
all under Win7x64. Besides the dictionary/thesaurus and rhyming dictionary,
there will also be a brainstorming program called IdeaFisher that I haven't
tried making work yet, but I believe that one was pretty easy to move from
system to system in the past as I moved disks or migrated between systems,
so I'm hoping it should be straightforward here, too.
> Wise thing to do is to keep a previous license of XP on the same system.
Not for me. I don't want to have to be rebooting all the time, and want to
use my 16-bit tools (e.g. rhyming dictionary and thesaurus) alongside my
64-bit tools (e.g. SONAR) and 32-bit tools (e.g. Word).
> I'm finding W7x64 can be very fragile compared to XP in so many ways.
That has definitely not been the case for me. However, there are definitely
certain applications that do not run under it, at least for me, including a
number of old Antares plug-ins. For apps that do run, though, things seem
to work plenty well.