Waves V9

[Chinagraf]

Anyone using it 64 bit yet?
Should I wait for others to test pilot it first?

[jkhuri44]

i wish i never got a 64 bit machine...what a head sore!

[Chinagraf]

Really? I'm lovin 64 bit on Win 7. I have some of the bigger East West progs, like Hollywood Strings, QL Pianos etc and man they run soo much better. I'm sporting 24 gig ram. I still run a 32 bit version of Cubase for waves and the odd time use Reason but now they are both 64 bit I will be moving to all 64 bit no bridging soon. Except for BFD2 I think.

[jkhuri44]

yeah, the "some programs work in 64 and some dont" is annoying as hell. when im running the all 64 b with no bridging, its smooth sailing

[Manning]

I moved from Logic on Mac to Cubase 6.5 on W7 (still running PT on mac), and moved all of my VIs to 64 bit at the same time.

Best move I ever made, I'm just loving Cubase. Kind of what Logic could have become if Apple had put the effort into developing it further.

I'd read that Windows 7 had been optimised for multiple monitors. I had a pair of 19" monitors sitting around unused, so I bought an extra video card for $40 and am now running four monitors. The extra monitors are for having my VST windows open, and it is great.

Since the move I haven't had any trouble with any of my VIs, except for EWQL choirs which required downloading an update.

For reference the VSTs I'm running in 64 bit are...
EWQL: Symphony Orchestra Platinum, Symphonic Choirs, Pianos, Ra, Silk, Goliath, Gypsy
MOTU: Ethno2
Fxpansion: BFD2
Spectrasonics: Omnisphere, StylusRMX, Trillian
VSL: Special Edition Vols 1 & 2
NI: Komplete 8 Ultimate

Sidenote: If anyone wants to have a play with any of these and doesn't mind a drive to Epping (NSW) then let me know. Conversely if anyone has any VSTs I don't have and feels like letting me play around with them (and they live in Sydney), also let me know.

[Chinagraf]

Yeah Manning, multiple monitors rock. I'm running 3 x 24" widescreens on my desk plus a 42" tv on the wall behind them with the desktop spread across all 4.
Are you running BFD2 bridged as a 32 bit VSTi?

EDIT : Scratch that, I just logged into my FXpansion account and saw the update is 64 bit. I should probably keep up to date on updates.

[DaleRoyce]

So apart from the amount of.. or size of things..

What audible benefits are... well..audible.

[Manning]

There's no difference in the audio quality between a 64 bit and 32 bit system, as this change only impacts the operating system and the interaction between software and the hardware. The audio quality will still be at whatever you set it to (eg. 48Khz @ 24 bit or whatever).

What gets changed is how data is pushed around on the motherboard, and how operations can be allocated to the various cores of a modern CPU. All this is then combined with the ability to use more than 4GB of RAM, so as a result it is vastly more efficient. (Of course if you have a single core CPU and 4GB of RAM or less, your performance will actually go backwards).

I've been 100% 64-bit for a month now (using an 8 core i7 and 24GB of RAM), and for composing/arranging so far the performance benefits are just massive. On the weekend I did pre-prod for a song with a 70's "MOR" sound to it. I fired up a BFD drum kit, a Trillian bass patch, a few keyboard parts and a VSL string section, and I was already using 8 GB of RAM. On a 32 bit system that would have required constant streaming of data from disk, and I would have had to freeze the parts to get them to play smoothly.

I haven't tried Waves on 64 bit yet, but I expect that it will be equally brilliant in terms of performance improvement. Again, there won't be any sound difference, but you should be able to have many more instances running simultaneously without overloading the CPU.

[jkhuri44]

performance performance performance. i havent changed my playback buffer in months, busy or not busy sessions, that is such a godsend.

[Manning]

I can't say I'm missing Logic's wonderful tendency to crash as soon as the disk streaming got a little intense either.

[Chinagraf]

Cubase is awesome,yeah, but ya know what I hate? Livin in dongletown. I basically have exactly the same setup on my studio pc and Macbook Pro. Dongles for Cubase, Waves and Nexus. If I want to do stuff out of the blue on a weekend. Guess what, dongles are at the studio. If I take the dongles home just in case, guess what. Don't end up doing anything and forget my dongles when I go back to the studio after the weekend.
Can't I just get a chip implanted instead?

[Kurt]

Use dongle free software at home. It never hurts to learn to use another recording package. I'm sure others can add to the list of fully functional non-hardware dependent software.

Reaper
Protools
Sonar

Cubase is awesome,yeah, but ya know what I hate? Livin in dongletown. I basically have exactly the same setup on my studio pc and Macbook Pro. Dongles for Cubase, Waves and Nexus. If I want to do stuff out of the blue on a weekend. Guess what, dongles are at the studio. If I take the dongles home just in case, guess what. Don't end up doing anything and forget my dongles when I go back to the studio after the weekend.
Can't I just get a chip implanted instead?

[Chinagraf]

I've thought about logic on my mac but the great thing with the setup I have, even having to use dongles, is that I can work anywhere on the laptop, then hook up to the wireless network at the studio, drop the project on my pc and open up and it's all there, no bouncing, consolidating etc, just mix away.

[Kurt]

A Mac is the costliest dongle of all

[mylesgm]

I've never understood the mac bashing. All my macs over the years have been rock solid, very well built, have lasted years passed the normal tech upgrade cycle and apple themselves have given me excellent service at all times. ok, they are more expensive but I've seen numerous fellow professionals waste hours upon hours servicing, rebuilding, sort out driver incompatibility, reinstalling etc etc. when my computers have always just worked. Now if you are the kind of computer person who can sort out the pc issues or build a pc so there are none then good for you but I tell you that I'm pretty happy this side of the fence. In fact the only thing I'd like is for them to get along better and its one thing protools does have right and have had right for ages. I take a session recorded on a pc bring it over to my studio mac, open the session and no problems... Now why can't the platform be invisible like that in each instance?

[mylesgm]

And having said that I agree that Logic is potentially an excellent piece of software that totally fails to live up to that potential and I have never understood why. I teach it at NMIT so I have a lot of experience with multiple instances of the same project and it is thoroughly unreliable and I just can't understand how anybody would choose to use it regularly.

[Manning]

Myles

My Mac bashing comes from frustration - I think I've just been really unlucky because every Mac I've ever had (with one exception) has had serious technical problems. I've had to replace motherboards, I've had to replace bad memory chips, I've had a hard drive fail.

I've spoken to other people who've had years of bliss, so I can't explain it. I just know that I will never buy another one.

Meanwhile my PCs have chugged along with zero attention or maintenance for years. My latest PC has the latest i7 processor, 4.5 TB of disks (including 2 SSDs), 16 GB of RAM and it still cost less than my 11 month old i5 Macbook which crashes every 30 minutes.

[Chris H]

Myles, I would be interested in the particular details of Logic that you find thoroughly unreliable........maybe I don't demand too much of the software but I have been using logic for 15 years now and rarely have a problem with it. Admittedly, my work over the past few years has not included much midi. I would have a crash maybe once a year at the most. For every session i use multiple mix icons as the project develops and regularly use different computers for the same project. Usually my track count is 24 or less and if i'm using too much processing power for a song i will use the desk and outboard to take the mix further but that really never happens with the G5. I do think Logic going mac only was a big disadvantage for a professional application for the reasons of cross platform compatibility.

[Manning]

Chris - I can answer that. In my experience Logic does NOT play well with virtual instruments. If you ever run VIs from 2+ different manufacturers it seem to become highly unstable. Native Instruments in particular also seems to upset it very easily (and as they are one of the biggest VI vendors around, this is a problem).

I've used Logic since version 4, and for me switching to Cubase has been the best decision ever.

[mylesgm]

Myles

My Mac bashing comes from frustration - I think I've just been really unlucky because every Mac I've ever had (with one exception) has had serious technical problems. I've had to replace motherboards, I've had to replace bad memory chips, I've had a hard drive fail....
....my 11 month old i5 Macbook which crashes every 30 minutes.

Thats pretty poor luck Manning and if your current macbook is having that significant level of problems then take it to the apple store for service as it's still under warranty. Hard drive failure and memory failure should really be seen as standard possibilities on all computers. Not that it happens all the time but I kind of view them as consumables especially hard drives. Replacing motherboards on the other hand is a significant issue and I have known only one person who has had that failure and/or a logic board failure and I know a lot of mac users. That person had their macbook replaced whilst overseas by walking into a mac store explaining the issue, having it checked out and 4 hours later walked out with a new machine with the old hard drive and went on to perform the next day. If you are having that level of problem then I would be hounding the tech support until you got sorted.

As to logic reliability I have used 8 and 9 and have regular issues, some repeatable on my own machine and some purely random. There is also a lot that Logic attempts to do automatically and fails at. Take this one, it will load mp3 and m4a files but it wont tell you that it will only use them limitedly. So you import the file, edit it, trim and fades etc. Then save as new file. Load new file into exs24 sampler and lo and behold it actually hasn't altered the file at all and you have to do all the work again. You can only find this out the hard way. Another session was a straight up 16 track session. I would mix for awhile, tweak etc and save using the save as function allowing me to make several mixes. Discovered that every time I used the save as function on that file it would randomly displace the bass part in the arrange window. Every time a random amount. Didn't matter whether I used save as.. save a copy as.. or saved to new location etc etc. Or the time that during a performance it would play full scale digital noise on any track that had the logic adaptive limiter. File worked perfect the night before and I hadn't altered it. removed that plugin and the session worked fine insert that plugin full scale digital noise. Thankfully it was an extreme noise show and the director loved my 'new addition'.
There are so many instances every day in class that I couldn't catalogue them, sometimes simply closing the file and reopening it and now it works, sometimes close the program and reopen then it works, sometimes save a copy as open the new file and now it works, sometimes nothing resolves it and the students work is wasted and they have to start from scratch. Not isolated incidents, regularly. Does teach the students to back up their work though.

[Text_Edifice]

Logic just seems to have a voodoo thing all of its own going on.

It's too arduous to catalog the various glitches and niggles I've experienced with 8 and 9. It does do some things wonderfully and there are some wonderful creative tools / possibilities offered by the software but it is a pain in the arse to work with sometimes.

[Manning]

Myles

My Mac bashing comes from frustration - I think I've just been really unlucky because every Mac I've ever had (with one exception) has had serious technical problems. I've had to replace motherboards, I've had to replace bad memory chips, I've had a hard drive fail....
....my 11 month old i5 Macbook which crashes every 30 minutes.

Thats pretty poor luck Manning and if your current macbook is having that significant level of problems then take it to the apple store for service as it's still under warranty.<snip>

If you are having that level of problem then I would be hounding the tech support until you got sorted.

Oh boy, don't get me started on Apple's Tech Support.

Phase 1 - being told that Macs don't suffer from the problem I'm experiencing.
Phase 2 - being told it is software related
Phase 3 - being told the problem is my fault (the failed motherboard was because I "didn't open the machine and clean it regularly")
Phase 4 - Begrudging repair after waiting three weeks.

I'm just going to sell the Macbook. Anyway I'm pretty sure the problem is software related in this particular case.

[mylesgm]

That sucks! Nothing like S#&t experience to really piss you off...

[Ben M]

Just for reference...
I had a macbook pro go down last year (my first ever mac issue after many years running macs) and was recommended by a friend in melbourne to send it to "Fix Station" in melbs - support@fixstation.com.au
The issue turned out to be the logic board. They fixed it and had it returned to me 1 week later. Cost to fix was $300. Excellent service/communication. Highly recommended if anyone needs this sort of work done to their mac.

cheers

[Manning]

Ben - there's a couple of good Mac shops in Sydney as well, eg. I've had good service from Microseconds in Broadway.

My problems above were only in dealing with official Apple warranty repairs (through Apple Stores) for machines that were only a month or two old.

One time the Apple Store in Castle Hill told me I wasn't entitled to a warranty repair at an Apple Store because I bought the machine from a reseller (Sound Devices). They changed their tune eventually when I successfully argued that that was seriously illegal.

[Ben M]

Ben - there's a couple of good Mac shops in Sydney as well, eg. I've had good service from Microseconds in Broadway.

That's cool. It sounds like you've had some bad luck with the whole thing Manning.
My post was more as a reference to anybody having logic board issues.
When my macbook pro went down I immediately took it to 2 different mac places in Sydney to see if it could be fixed. Both places shook their heads and said I was better off getting a new mac for the price it was going to cost me to get it fixed. Quoting around $1200 or so (it was one month out of warranty). Microseconds was one of the places I called about repairing it.
Because I couldn't wait I bought the latest macbook pro while I was in the store. Then a month later a mate in Melbourne suggested Fixstation as he'd just had the same issue. So I sent the broken one to them and it was quickly and cheaply fixed.
My daughter has it now for school etc but I could've not fixed it if I'd listened to those Sydney mac shops. Probably would have gone in the bin or sat on a shelf for 5 years until I tossed it.

Back to normal programming...

[Sammas]

So apart from the amount of.. or size of things..

What audible benefits are... well..audible.

Like the others technically said, there isn't any audile difference... but I am going to propose that with the increase in available ram, CPU power and SSD's, we will be seeing a gradual move to 32bit audio conversion.

[Kurt]

Still seems somewhat pointless when the vast majority of people can't hear any difference whatsoever between 16 bit and 24 bit. More bits = more money for developers as everyone upgrades needlessly to keep up with the Jones'.

Like the others technically said, there isn't any audile difference... but I am going to propose that with the increase in available ram, CPU power and SSD's, we will be seeing a gradual move to 32bit audio conversion.

[GlennS]

When do people in the vast majority, other than those of us in studios, ever get to hear 24 bit, let alone to be able to compare it with 16 bit?

[Manning]

Cool. A 24 bit vs 16 bit discussion.

Hopefully we can roll in the "loudness wars" as well and turn it into a proper online pro audio s***fight