DJ Cyder
After 100 hours of mixing audio, video and karaoke on Vista I figured it would be a good time to share some of my experiences with this fairly new OS.
First off some specs on my test machine
Amd athlon 64 4000+ single core 90nm (if you don't know what that means don't let it bother you)
1 gig of muskin pc3200 ram
Ecs/foxconn nforce4 motherboard
6600gt video card
Now that we've gotten that all out of the way I'm going to share some good advice with you that will save you hours of frustration. When installing vista only have your system drive and cd rom connected. Trust me its better this way, so rip out all of those hard drives and pci cards when you first install. An by all means do not try to dual boot vista and xp. I won't go into why but, just don't try it.
I got a copy of vista business (upgrade). Now when they say upgrade they mean it, you can't install a clean version with the upgrade or can you? Here's how, first time you install vista don't put your key in, then once its installed preform an upgrade with the vista disc then you can register it. Yes it seems silly and in hind-sight I'll buy and oem copy next time. But this little workaround allowed me to install a clean vista.
Once I got up and running, I found my vista score to be 4.3 which is decent for a system this old. Feeling quite proud I did the next logical thing and set up everything that needed drivers. Got the latest nforce drives, video drivers from nvidia for my 32 bit vista.
Next I ran into a bit of a problem, with my soundcard and wifi card. No vista drivers. Utoh! So I downloaded the xp drivers and ran their respective installs and guess what, it worked. My old wave termal 192l roared to life in all of its asio sweetness. And I was online with my wifi card, and before I knew it windows was asking if it could update. I said sure and then low and behold my onboard sound started working too. Wow 16 outputs whatever will I do with them all? Did I mention, nforce audio works in asio as well?
Whats next well Installed Cue/vdj/VV yep gotta test em all. So I started with cue because I wanted to use my shinny new dmc-2 controller, yes I know they will be out soon. Install went off without a hitch. Cue & the dmc-2 roared to life, installed all my skins and plugins as well. Yes the exe's are working under vista. Threw some videos on with my secondary monitor connected and was blown away at the video output quality, at least 5 times better then xp, and the sound under asio was perfect. I also noticed lower cpu when playing 2 vob files also loading time was decreased, and the normal 100% cpu spike on load was only about 60% now.
VV's turn up to bat, ran the installer as usual. Then shut down VV to connect the sound card vista knew what it was and installed it with no input needed by me. Ran the gen-3 timecodes through their paces, as usual perfect 100% quality a low low latency. I couldn't be happier.
All In all my vista experience has been very positive. I didn't do any tweeks on my last install and everything is working great. That's saying a lot using 3 year old technology in my test system. Honestly everything is better in vista for me it just works great, and I have far less issues then I ever had with xp.
First off some specs on my test machine
Amd athlon 64 4000+ single core 90nm (if you don't know what that means don't let it bother you)
1 gig of muskin pc3200 ram
Ecs/foxconn nforce4 motherboard
6600gt video card
Now that we've gotten that all out of the way I'm going to share some good advice with you that will save you hours of frustration. When installing vista only have your system drive and cd rom connected. Trust me its better this way, so rip out all of those hard drives and pci cards when you first install. An by all means do not try to dual boot vista and xp. I won't go into why but, just don't try it.
I got a copy of vista business (upgrade). Now when they say upgrade they mean it, you can't install a clean version with the upgrade or can you? Here's how, first time you install vista don't put your key in, then once its installed preform an upgrade with the vista disc then you can register it. Yes it seems silly and in hind-sight I'll buy and oem copy next time. But this little workaround allowed me to install a clean vista.
Once I got up and running, I found my vista score to be 4.3 which is decent for a system this old. Feeling quite proud I did the next logical thing and set up everything that needed drivers. Got the latest nforce drives, video drivers from nvidia for my 32 bit vista.
Next I ran into a bit of a problem, with my soundcard and wifi card. No vista drivers. Utoh! So I downloaded the xp drivers and ran their respective installs and guess what, it worked. My old wave termal 192l roared to life in all of its asio sweetness. And I was online with my wifi card, and before I knew it windows was asking if it could update. I said sure and then low and behold my onboard sound started working too. Wow 16 outputs whatever will I do with them all? Did I mention, nforce audio works in asio as well?
Whats next well Installed Cue/vdj/VV yep gotta test em all. So I started with cue because I wanted to use my shinny new dmc-2 controller, yes I know they will be out soon. Install went off without a hitch. Cue & the dmc-2 roared to life, installed all my skins and plugins as well. Yes the exe's are working under vista. Threw some videos on with my secondary monitor connected and was blown away at the video output quality, at least 5 times better then xp, and the sound under asio was perfect. I also noticed lower cpu when playing 2 vob files also loading time was decreased, and the normal 100% cpu spike on load was only about 60% now.
VV's turn up to bat, ran the installer as usual. Then shut down VV to connect the sound card vista knew what it was and installed it with no input needed by me. Ran the gen-3 timecodes through their paces, as usual perfect 100% quality a low low latency. I couldn't be happier.
All In all my vista experience has been very positive. I didn't do any tweeks on my last install and everything is working great. That's saying a lot using 3 year old technology in my test system. Honestly everything is better in vista for me it just works great, and I have far less issues then I ever had with xp.
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 5:08 am
l_rids
Thats awesome news! Maybe I don't need a mac lol.
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 5:57 am
socross
What sound card were you using?
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 6:10 am
DJ Marcel_1
hmmmm.
Maybe I won't wait for microsoft to work out the bugs. (sp2)
Maybe I won't wait for microsoft to work out the bugs. (sp2)
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 6:31 am
Steve Lynch
I installed vista home premium last week after cyder told me he tried it... i Upgraded my machine.
I'm using an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ with 2 gigs of corsair ram. shuttle sn25g ati radeon pci express video with 256 mb ram.
ok, now here's the psycho part.... I used it to gig on the same night I installed it. it's been running perfectly...
truthfully, it runs better on vista than it does on the mac. video is much better on vista.. it's tv quality, and smooth as glass..
cpu usage is minimal....
10% mixing two VOB files... Timecode is smooth as silk, and zero latency...
I'm a very happy vista user right now....
I mixed videos all weekend at my st. patty's gig without a single hiccup....
Vista is very nice... i'm very impressed!
I'm using an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ with 2 gigs of corsair ram. shuttle sn25g ati radeon pci express video with 256 mb ram.
ok, now here's the psycho part.... I used it to gig on the same night I installed it. it's been running perfectly...
truthfully, it runs better on vista than it does on the mac. video is much better on vista.. it's tv quality, and smooth as glass..
cpu usage is minimal....
10% mixing two VOB files... Timecode is smooth as silk, and zero latency...
I'm a very happy vista user right now....
I mixed videos all weekend at my st. patty's gig without a single hiccup....
Vista is very nice... i'm very impressed!
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 7:07 am
sbangs
same here running it on 2 machines now
one very good laptop hardware score 4.9
and one not so good laptop score 2
both run video perfectly even the 2 !
which coulnt run video in xp at all.
its all thanks to the new sound and video api:)
one very good laptop hardware score 4.9
and one not so good laptop score 2
both run video perfectly even the 2 !
which coulnt run video in xp at all.
its all thanks to the new sound and video api:)
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 12:00 pm
DJ Cyder
socross wrote :
What sound card were you using?
3 cards actually.
1) Wave terminal 192L
2) on board ac97
3) Virtual Vinyl interface
All three working great under vista. Like I said before the 192L did not have vista drivers and I installed the xp ones and they work great. It has all 6 outs and 2 ins working under asio.
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 1:40 pm
DJ Marcel_1
Anyone know If vista takes the DAC2 Drivers?
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 2:20 pm
andytaylor125
or DAC3 for that matter? :)
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 2:31 pm
DJ Cyder
Good question, I got rid of my dac-2 about a year ago and haven't heard any reports on vista with it. The dac-3 being hid should work normal without drivers, just like the dmc-2 does.
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 2:32 pm
mp3jrick
Just bought my copy for $108.00, got the home premium version.
http://www.directron.com/vist32hpd1pk.html
http://www.directron.com/vist32hpd1pk.html
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 4:29 pm
MUSIKGUATE
@ DJ Cyder
As you have played with vista a lot, do you know if you need to have a core duo processor for vista to run perfect or you can instal it usin a single core processor ?
I have a Toshiba Laptop, Intel centrino 1.66 Mhz, 1 gig ram 80 gb HD, Sound blaster Live, I don't mix videos, only Music.
Please let me know, I need feedback before installing Vista.
Thanks a lot for your help.
As you have played with vista a lot, do you know if you need to have a core duo processor for vista to run perfect or you can instal it usin a single core processor ?
I have a Toshiba Laptop, Intel centrino 1.66 Mhz, 1 gig ram 80 gb HD, Sound blaster Live, I don't mix videos, only Music.
Please let me know, I need feedback before installing Vista.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 5:02 pm
DJ Cyder
Honestly I read a ton of reviews they all said you need to have a dual core with 2 gig's of ram. While this may be true for ultimate I don't think it matters much in my copy of business, or home for that matter.
If you look at the specs I listed above I'm using a single core 4000+ My lowest score was the processor in vista. My advice would be if you are going to test vista make sure you you have at least a couple of weeks before any major events, just in case you run into driver issues.
You can also run this on your current pc
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx
to see if your computer will be able to handle vista.
If you look at the specs I listed above I'm using a single core 4000+ My lowest score was the processor in vista. My advice would be if you are going to test vista make sure you you have at least a couple of weeks before any major events, just in case you run into driver issues.
You can also run this on your current pc
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx
to see if your computer will be able to handle vista.
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 5:29 pm
djcel
A dual core is better:
* global faster reactivity in Windows:
=> you can load a song without skipping because it's not on the same thread
* to avoid a crash because the second processor can go on computing
* for video mixing
* TCV with the best quality of scratch
but it's useless for normal audio mixing and normal TCV use.
NB:My lowest score is the speed of my hard drive ;-)
* global faster reactivity in Windows:
=> you can load a song without skipping because it's not on the same thread
* to avoid a crash because the second processor can go on computing
* for video mixing
* TCV with the best quality of scratch
but it's useless for normal audio mixing and normal TCV use.
NB:My lowest score is the speed of my hard drive ;-)
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 5:49 pm
DJ Cyder
For sure my next system will be a dual core, but the 4000 is going to finish out the dj season for me this year. Vista was the best thing that ever I ever did to make this system stronger and more reliable.
Posted Mon 19 Mar 07 @ 7:33 pm
discobrian24
I am runnin the same CPU as you, but I have the ASUS A8N5X MOBO, I also have an ATI X1950 Pro video card, 2 Gig of Memory. Should I go Business if I go to Vista?? That is my main question with regards to Vista, shich version is best, I too plan on going Duel Core. Right now my MOBO is socket 939 and I see there is room for upgrade on the CPU. Is VDJ ever gonna utilize SLI??? If they even are thinking about it I my even upgrade my MOBO to one that has SLI. I know Cyder you are alomst GOD when it comes to video with VDJ so what are your suggestions???
Posted Thu 22 Mar 07 @ 7:47 am
DJ Cyder
I would say the home edition (not basic) would be a better choice, I got business because i wanted to check out the business tools, but nothing exciting there. As for sli I don't see too much of an advantage there for what we are doing here. Vista's new video api may have us all mixing video on internal grapics chipsets soon. I'm pretty excited about amd's first in house chipset design the 690 which allows for dual monitors right from the mobo. This is great if it works because we can use 1U cases if its true. My next system is going to use this new mobo to test my theory there.
not bad for 80 bucks huh...
not bad for 80 bucks huh...
Posted Thu 22 Mar 07 @ 1:43 pm
matt_black
do we think that Vista might make graphics cards that have not been good with vdj work better?
i have a dell precision under xppro, 2gz duo with 2g ram, nvidea quadrafx2550m . it DONT work with VDJ, video output flickers wierdly, which i have been told is down to the card..
Cyder, dya have a view?
Matt
i have a dell precision under xppro, 2gz duo with 2g ram, nvidea quadrafx2550m . it DONT work with VDJ, video output flickers wierdly, which i have been told is down to the card..
Cyder, dya have a view?
Matt
Posted Mon 26 Mar 07 @ 9:51 pm
DJ Marcel_1
DJ Cyder wrote :
... I'm pretty excited about amd's first in house chipset design the 690 which allows for dual monitors right from the mobo. This is great if it works because we can use 1U cases if its true. My next system is going to use this new mobo to test my theory there.
not bad for 80 bucks huh...
not bad for 80 bucks huh...
Dude - that's MY MOBO - I installed that and an athlon X2 3800+ and 2 GB ramm - assigned 265 mb in sys bios to video ram, and when I look it up in properties it actually says I have 512 operating as video ram.
One warning - the DVI will ONLY braodcast a DVI-D signal - It is Not Possible to convert the signal - digital only.
The T.V. out module that comes with the MOBO package - I couldn't get it to work, but you don't need it as there is no signal sent to it anyway if the second (old) VGA connector is pluged in and running.
Other than that - This board rocks - can do the video stuff N/P.
I would really like to find out if the DAC2 drivers will work with Vista - that's the only thing that has held me back
Anyone know about that?
Posted Wed 28 Mar 07 @ 2:26 am
l_rids
Has anyone tested serato's sl1 in vista with vdj?
Posted Wed 28 Mar 07 @ 2:44 am
