Echo are the maker of quite affordable, nice audio interfaces; they’re perhaps best known for their ultra-compact PC Card (CardBus) interfaces and, before that, PCI-based interfaces. They’ve gotten into FireWire, but initially in the 10×10 and 12×12 configurations, where there’s plenty of competition. There are far fewer FireWire interfaces that are smaller and less expensive, […]

No official changelog yet, but Ableton has released a 6.0.5 update to Live. (See latest versions to download, provided you’re registered.) This version appears to resolve some of the bigger issues with Vista. Given good experience from some users with SONAR and FL Studio 7 and audio drivers, that could make it worth trying out […]

In honor of post-Valentine’s Day weekend, the Love Philter. FL Studio, better known to PC musicians as “Fruity Loops”, is now available in its version 7 upgrade. (This release was announced last month but wasn’t immediately available.) FL Studio’s lifetime upgrades mean that, unlike your operating system, the upgrade is free if you’re a previous […]

Roland has published a compatibility list for all its current relevant hardware, under the BOSS, Roland, and Edirol brands. Windows Vista Compatibility Release The table setup is a bit unusual. “Yes” means “will be compatible” in the future tense, but that apparently translates to “it works now”; links are included to 32-bit and 64-bit drivers. […]

The short answer is, if you’re using Ableton Live, you’ll want to wait to upgrade to Windows Vista, period. The long answer is, there are some specific incompatibilities in Live that Ableton will address in a future release. Today, Ableton posted official information on their forum: In principle, the latest Live 6 version (6.0.3) works […]

`Em are ducks! Surprise! The one application with which I’ve had the most success on my Vista turns out to be Max/MSP/Jitter, the niche, Mac-first multimedia application built by a small handful of developers. Without so much as a single update, Jitter is running perfectly on Vista, running on an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 card […]

Vista for visualists is a problematic proposition. Typically, musicians have the toughest upgrade curve with any OS, but there’s a major incentive for musicians with Vista, as reported on CDM: the promise of significantly improved audio performance and stability. Right now, there isn’t enough software or hardware support for most musicians, though I expect that […]

Yes, I’m enjoying our new inter-post asides to create fabulous new non sequitur combination headlines. More on Windows Vista’s audio guts: MS developer Larry Osterman explains (well, sort of) the new audiodg.exe “host audio engine.” The DRM bit is nasty, but the good news is it doesn’t seem to have an adverse impact on music […]

At the risk of stating the obvious: now is not yet a good time to upgrade to Vista. That much is generally expected with a new operating system. What’s unexpected is that it’s some of the biggest partners who aren’t ready. Microsoft’s own developer tools for Vista are still in beta. Basic hardware drivers are […]

Peter has been busy on CDMu looking at Vista Compatibility. Unfortunately, some of us aren’t on cool PR lists and getting free copies of Vista at product launches, so it might be a while until I setup a Vista system and start testing things out. In the meantime: Bill Gates on the Daily Show.