Vista 64 Compatibilty

[Calvert Dayton]

We're starting to hear from a few folks out there who (against my best, heartfelt advice) are taking the plunge early into Vista 64. I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread for people to share their experiences with that and what they're finding works or doesn't work in terms of hardware.

Unfortunately one thing we already know won't work is SmaartLive 5. It uses a little third-party utility as part of it's registration procedure that turns out to require the 16-bit subsystem in Windows, which Vista 64 has dropped. But let's not dwell too much on the past.

I have heard from folks who were running Smaart 6 successfully under Vista 64, including one guy who has been nice enough to call back with progress reports. He had landed on the RME Fireface 400 as his input device, which seems to be working well for him so far -- pricey, but nice to know.

Anyone else have anything?

[Ben Clarke]

Yep - Vista64 here...

runs very well, and has for 12 months. Couple of crashes, but have no idea where they originated and everything was fine apon relaunch of SmaartV6.

used both ASIO and windows drivers, no discernable difference in my applications

RME Fireface400 was all i could find at the time that had 64bit drivers, so thats what i use too - love it, great piece of gear that sound good too when using as playout device. Digital (numeric) steps on the mic pres useful for setting up levels of calibration for SPL and using different mics. Mix/Matrix useful too.

interestingly, i always get really good data on impulse response of subs, regardless of room (those whove seen our warehouse may understand) whereas others using other kits (smaart5 and USBPre) cannot get it.

Cheers, Ben.

[Arthur Skudra]

interestingly, i always get really good data on impulse response of subs, regardless of room (those whove seen our warehouse may understand) whereas others using other kits (smaart5 and USBPre) cannot get it.

Cheers, Ben.Interesting observation Ben. Would you say this is a result of using the Fireface, or using 64 bit drivers? Have you tried the fireface on another computer without the 64 bit drivers and get similar results?

[Ben Clarke]

I thought so too. Havent really experimented that much Arthur. I'd lean toward the 64bits (thinking out loud...), but i have good feelings about the fireface being a really linear piece of gear. doesnt matter if i use the M30, TR40, UMX96 or the rare out of phase SIA/Smaart/RTAMic.

when i get back to work next week (we've just had new baby at home - Imogen :) ) i'll see if i can get some time to look at it a bit further.

[Calvert Dayton]

Hey guys,

I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but all internal processing of audio data in all Windows versions of Smaart -- going all the way back to version 1.0, which was a 16-bit Windows 3.1 application -- is and always has been done at 64-bit resolution. Also, there are no 64-bit A/D converters in the world of audio as far as I am aware. Every audio input device I have ever seen outputs integer (PCM) data at word sizes between 8 - 24 bits. There is a 32-bit float data type in the ASIO spec, but I've never heard of anything that uses it. I don't believe the Wave API supports float data at all (even if there were such a thing).

If the RME is superior to other devices for measuring the impulse responses of subs, it simply can't have anything to do with the base word size for the OS. Smaart isn't doing anything any fundamentally differently when running on Vista 64 than it did when running on 16- or 32-bit versions of Windows and the incoming audio data would also be arriving in the same form regardless.

My guess is lower noise, better frequency response in the analog section and higher-performance anti-aliasing filters would be the more likely heroes in this case -- all of which are things I would expect a $1200 interface to do better than a $200 one. It's a dirty little secret that for most knock-around live sound system work, those kinds of differences really end up being almost superfluous for the most part. But since getting decent sub measurements is one of the most demanding applications for Smaart (or any other audio measurement system), it kind of makes sense that this would be the kind of place where that extra performance you pay for in a top end piece of gear like RME would really stand out.

[Ben Clarke]

hey, no bubbles bursting here....

All i care about are good results - see attached recent concrete bunker warehouse demo of EAW NTL system (8 x NTL720 plus 4 x NTS22) which aligned, measured and sounded freakin amazing.

[Arthur Skudra]

hey, no bubbles bursting here....

All i care about are good results - see attached recent concrete bunker warehouse demo of EAW NTL system (8 x NTL720 plus 4 x NTS22) which aligned, measured and sounded freakin amazing.Diversion alert! Gotta love the NTL720, I optimized an 18 box per side system for a trade show demo last summer that still gets plenty of raves from friends who heard it. Wished I had some NTS22's back then, as we had SB1000's for subs, and there was a small gap in the response that the NTS22's would have worked well to fill.

I think the most remarkable part of this system was that I started work on this system at midnight on a typical summer night here, so the temperature/humidity changes were significant over the course of my optimization work, enough that I had to update the temperature & humidity settings twice an hour! I think I started at 28 C 60% humidity, and when done it was 18 C 100% humidity! I was a bit nervous with the results the next day of the trade show, but the crew updated the settings on a regular basis throughout the day, I was very impressed with how consistent the array sounded throughout the day! My temperature/humidity measuring device is a must-have for all UX8800/NTL setups now. A good investment of my $20.

[Ben Clarke]

yeah great system - on topic, thought it would be appropriate to show a measurement!