Patrick O’Neill points out that M-Audio has started to release new drivers with Vista compatibility: the Axiom 25, Fast Track Pro, MobilePre USB, and Jamlab all got new updates (the last three in beta). The Fast Track Pro is especially nice to see. Still no love yet for Wally and his Conectiv DJ interface, however. Updated: Conectiv drivers for Vista showed up today, though the Torq application itself is not yet supported (but presumably will be soon). The comparative situation on Linux in this case still makes me wonder, though. Imagine if this all would be easier if driver support more often lived at the OS level, so you’d automatically get supported audio devices when you upgraded instead of having to wait on drivers. (“Driver-free” class-compliant devices do that, but unless that category is expanded — and the specifications themselves are made extensive enough to support more devices — you’ll still be left doing the driver shuffle.) That’s an issue worth investigating separately, but if there were a way to make progress on that front, both OS vendors (Apple, Microsoft) and hardware vendors (like M-Audio) might benefit — to say nothing of users.
Let us know how these work for you if you try them out.