Has anyone messed around with the beta of Windows 7? I'm wondering how the audio is handled, if it's a step up from Vista or XP w/ ASIO4ALL.

Glad you started this thread.

I'm still on XP, with no intention of moving to Vista. I've tried to install XP-SP3 twice, blew up both times.

Waiting for Win7. Love to hear anyone's experiences with the Win7 beta.

Microsoft announced today that Windows 7 Beta would be out for use on Friday (tomorrow)

Some of the reports on 7 are interesting in that it is far less resource demanding than Vista and XP. I do not have a spare maching to try the Beta so I'll wait. It is supposed to be released by the end of 2009. If it is less resource demanding I might consider replacing the Vista OS on my laptop. It should make the old Vista machine scream.

The biggy apparently is that MS is opening up the code so that the 3rd party providers will have the drivers, DLLs available before it is released unlike what happened and still is with Vista.

I have talked to a lot of people that have used it and the overall feeling I get from everyone is that Windows 7... is awesome.

Even though it's a Beta, it's very polished and it behaves much better than Vista.

I just got a new computer with Vista and have yet to see what the problem is. Granted I have 4gigs of RAM, a 2.5ghz Dual Core Intel Processor based on the new 45 nanometer technology that can supposedly overclock well, and 500 gigs of memory, but this is hardly a performance computer, more of a good budget or home computer.

Anyway, with Vista Microsoft did away with the horrible XP K-Mixer which is a distortion nightmare from all accounts, and direct streams audio up to 24 bit 192 hz. This means great sound with no hassle (trying to use ASIO and such). Let's hope they didn't change this achievement on Windows 7!

Here's a great article on computer (server) audio that mentions Vista:

http://www.soundstage.com/digitaldomain/

I would worry about the Beta install. When it expires in August you will have to re-install XP or Vista and lose everything.

I would worry about the Beta install. When it expires in August you will have to re-install XP or Vista and lose everything.

Yeah, I wouldn't load it up with anything that can't be replaced from an archive/master copy.

Windows 7 is a very proper Operating System eventhough, it is a Beta.

However, I haven't seen any benefits using it for Audio purposes. If you are a Video person that likes a lot of pretty images (I am not) this Windows 7 will appeal to you.

Bare in mind, "Audio" is not at the forefront of Microsoft's agenda.

Best Regards,

I have talked to a lot of people that have used it and the overall feeling I get from everyone is that Windows 7... is awesome.

Even though it's a Beta, it's very polished and it behaves much better than Vista.

So it's only taken them 8 years to come up with a new version of Windows that works ok? :)

I would worry about the Beta install. When it expires in August you will have to re-install XP or Vista and lose everything.

Or, I assume, buy the official Win7 upgrade when it's released. I would guess that if the official release isn't ready by the date the beta expires, they'll extend the expiration date.

I hope.

I installed the alpha release and found it to be very stable and impressive...particularly as it was an alpha. It boots up faster than Vista (I'm using Vista Ultimate x64). It is sort of a major SP of Vista with cosmetic changes and some OS mods.

I have heard of some problems in the early downloads of the beta. AS they proceed to add to it, there are bound to be some teething problems...still I have high hopes for it.

They hope to put the Vista fiasco behind them with it...we shall see.:yes::scratch2::no::yes::scratch2::no:

Seriously, talk about a placebo effect. Windows 7 is fundamentally Vista Second Edition. Current implementations of Windows 7 are layovers of Vista SP1. With SP2 for Vista in the near future, Vista is running better than ever. Nobody seems to remember how long it took Windows XP to mature.

Windows 7 will more likely appear to be better since the manufacturers of hardware and software are starting to get their act together, not necessarily because its better.

I would not expect Windows 7 to be as big a departure from Vista, like Vista was from XP.

From everything I have read, the kernel level things are being optimized, not the subsystems like audio. Vista's audio subsystem is a lot better than XP anyway.

dew.

I have loaded Windows 7 on a spare HD and have been using it for about 2 weeks now and am impressed! Like a couple others have said...uses far less resources and much faster than Vista. (I am still an XP person but wife uses Vista) When I want to to go back to XP I just unplug the Windows 7 HD, plug the XP drive back in and start her up.
As far as audio...I see no improvements. Still use Winamp for the Audio and, yes, it runs fine with 7.
I also noticed less hardware & software compatibility issues with 7...it even runs my old HP 722C printer. When I did try Vista (briefly) it wouldn't even recognize old hardware.
I think 7 is a major improvement and I'll stick with it until the Beta testing is over in August anyway. Probably go back to XP then...doubt I'll be able to afford the price tag on 7!
Tom:music:

Jr. had a download of 7 so I decided to see if it would even load on my Compaq Evo N610c with 1 gig of ram. I had tried installing Vista and forget it. A great computer but not enough for Vista. 7 loaded on it and even correctly identified my Linksys wireless card and got me on the net during the install. No other MS OS has been able to do that. The Adobe reader, etc. installed as did Jave and Oxygen Office (an offshoot of OOo modded for businesses) and even Apple Safari. The IE must be 8 beta and while it works some of the functions are locked. I'll also try Opera.

As for the speed, it seems as fast as XP SP3 with one exception. The video card is showing its age and on the installed games, a flag comes up stating the accelerator is either turned off or the video card needs to be updated and the programs may run slow which they do. I'll start loading some of my apps next week to see how their speed is but, if things stay the way they are, other than the games, 7 may replace XP.

The Contact Manager, Calendar and E-mail client that was updated in Vista is not in 7 and here I think there is a glitch. MS should keep it in. Also, there is a mix of Vista and pre-Vista mixed in the system as to how to accomplish things like settings. While this may be a way to reduce the learning time for persons used to the pre-Vista systems, it is a might confusing as other things are either Vista and others are pre-Vista. Sort of a neither here nor there solution but, I guess a compromise to get IT departments on-side.

I'm still not convinced there is enough change to warrant moving from XP for many persons but, I actually can see the Vista owners moving to it as it really should may those Vista machines to scream. A way to update the computers without buying new computers, ay not be a good thing for the hardware guys. I'd buy it to replace Vista even though I'm not unhappy with Vista.

I'm hoping 7 is as good as I've heard people say that it is. Vista was the first MS operating system that I never bothered loading, and I'm itching for an upgrade.

Compaq Evo N610c with 1 gig of ram. I had tried installing Vista and forget it. A great computer but not enough for Vista. 7 loaded on it and even correctly identified my Linksys wireless card and got me on the net during the install. No other MS OS has been able to do that.

As for the speed, it seems as fast as XP SP3 with one exception. The video card is showing its age and on the installed games, a flag comes up stating the accelerator is either turned off or the video card needs to be updated and the programs may run slow which they do. What's the processor in your box? Also wondering what kind of a video card that you have -- hoping I won't have to upgrade that just yet.

It is a Radeon Mobile 7500 and think the processor is a Mobile Intel Pentium 4. It did quite well on the Compaq with no crashes. I did later clean off the computer and loaded up Win 2000 Pro as I wanted the computer for some work in the office and Win 7 is not as fast against it and does chew up much more HD real estate. 2000 Pro seems more stable than XP. I had the OS but never used it so 2000 is a new experience for me. It is more stable on the Compaq then XP is.

I too wish Win 7 was coming out befor the end of Jan 2010 as it will mean I will not have time to check it for stability before the start of the busy season meaning another year with XP for the business and Vista on the laptop that I will not use in the business as it is an orphan system at this point.

I have 2000 pro and it is one of the most stable OS that I ever used. I heard some horror stories about upgrading to XP and Vista, so I'm sticking with 2000. I will wait for the results for Windows 7 to see what happens.

I've been playing with the Win7 Beta for several week now. I like it much better than I ever did Vista.

The Win7 audio capabilities are largely determined by the sound drivers that are installed. The ones that ship on-disc are quite limited and don't offer any of the fancy sound processing or multiple outputs that custom drivers provide, but they do work.

There have been complaints that Windows 7 lacks a "Stereo Mix" audio input. The "Stereo Mix" input allows the output of the sound card to be recorded directly, which is useful for capturing program output. The reason there's no Stereo Mix is that the stock drivers do not have this option. Third-party/custom drivers may continue to offer Stereo Mix, What-U-Hear, or any other equivalent, time will tell.

All of Vistas DRM features are found in Windows 7. But just as with Vista before it, the vast majority of users will never see the DRM in any practical sense; the features are there just in case Hollywood decides to make use of them. The overblown, unrealistic, and just plain made up horrors of DRM in Windows Vista never came to pass, and IMHO so it will be with Windows 7.

The Protected Video Path—designed to provide a secure way of playing back Blu-ray and HD DVD video. When PVP is active, drivers must ensure that they keep the video safe. In particular, this means disabling high-resolution unencrypted outputs lest they be used to dump the decrypted, decoded video.

On top of PVP, a secure audio path called Protected User Mode Audio, or PUMA, which replaces XP's Secure Audio Path. The purpose of this is much the same as PVP; it is there to protect audio from being recorded or otherwise captured. Though there was plenty of outcry over PUMA and PVP prior to Vista's launch, the story is once again a familiar one: most people don't notice. Little or no media actually demands the use of the protected paths, so on most users' systems, Windows never invokes them. Play back unprotected media on a Vista or Win7 machine and the DRM subsystems simply don't get used.

My other opinion, do not waste you time with running Win7 in a 32bit environment. Spring for the 64 bit and load the machine with memory, it's simply time to switch and this for me is a good time.

IMO, no Windows OS is all that superior to another, at least from a general user's standpoint. People quickly over generalize that such and such OS is terrible and blame a whole OS for any problem that occurs with it without realizing or admitting that there are many other variables (i.e. software and hardware) that can interact with any OS in very detrimental ways and that they, not the OS as a whole, are often at fault.

I had, for instance, for over 6 years (I don't upgrade OS often because it's mostly a waste of money imo), a Sony Vaio with none other than "the worst" Windows OS on it: Windows ME. I had few problems with it. One major problem I had with it was that occasionally, when using my AOL integrated browser on it, it would crash. I switched from that browser (and Windows Explorer which isn't the best) to Opera and Firefox and never had another problem with the browser crashing or computer locking up when it did. It was obviously a software problem, not the OS itself, causing this annoying, but occasional, malfunction. Later on, when it became available in my area, I got DSL.

That's about the only major problem I ever had using Windows ME, and it was because of the crappy AOL software, not the OS (or at least that the AOL software didn't work well with the OS). I had various other minor glitches, but most were caused by 3rd party (freeware, shareware) dubious programs I had downloaded and installed for a variety of uses. I even had, for a few years at least, significant viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, etc. on my old Vaio, easily found with any virus scan I ran. I also about never did routine maintenance on the thing, like defraging the hard drive. Didn't matter, it still wouldn't die, in fact it ran well, quickly and accurately, the whole time. All with that "horrid" ME OS.

Later on I had an opportunity to install Windows XP for free and I did so (partly to get rid of all the viruses and detritus that I knew I had accrued over the years on my ME OS). No big change in performance over ME, even with my ME, again, riddled with viruses and the refuse of old deleted program files that weren't uninstalled properly and other such supposed catastrophes that supposedly no computer should work or last with, much less run well. I used the XP OS for about 2 years.

Finally, after 8 years of use, my hard drive(s) on my Sony started making noises so I decided to get a new computer before those simply stopped spinning. I got a HP with Vista on it. So far no problems. It is faster than my old computer with XP on it (as well as it should be, my old computer had a whole 800ghz processor, 40 gigs of memory, and about 250 megs of RAM), but not any different otherwise except a little more user friendly and cosmetically more appealing (although I had been using Windows Blinds with my old Vaio which renders any native Windows aesthetics bland in comparison). It is no significant upgrade over XP, just as XP wasn't over ME.

So I've been through 3 OS on my 2 personal computers ever since I first got a "real" computer in my early 20's (before that I had been using an old blue screen MAC to write my college papers on, being a poor college kid lol). I've seen no significant advantages with any of them, and all the problems I've had with them (which are very little) have been directly related to bad software which once I uninstalled it I suffered no more major performance problems.

Of course this is all merely anecdotal evidence which is virtually worthless in discerning the truth of a matter; one should not extrapolate from a limited sample (my own personal experience with various OS's) to a general overarching conclusion and claim it is a universal truth (that different OS's are not recognizably, to the general user, superior than others). But this equally applies to anyone else who infers from his or her personal experience to all-encompassing opposing conclusions in this matter as well.

IOW, the above has been my experience with 3 Windows OS's, but it is not supported by a large sample of data and thus commits the fallacy of a hasty generalization from a too limited amount of sample data. What we would need here in order to more closely approximate the truth in this matter is stats from a large sample of users with different OS's who have had major problems with the routine use of them, and whether or not this is due to the OS they were using or a fault with the computer's hardware or popular software installed on it. There are really too many variables to come to any solid conclusion on this matter imo, computers are so complex it's a wonder they work as well as they do.

So I'll stick with Vista unless I can get Windows 7 for free or if Vista starts to perform very poorly and I can determine this is due to Vista itself. More likely, if such a thing happens, it will be another occurrence of other factors such as faulty hardware and software, not the OS itself. However it is not always an easy task to determine the cause of a computer system's malfunction as I had the good fortune to with my AOL software. If I can not discern a source for a problem I may have with a computer, then I could just as well blame the OS failing to find out for sure what the problem is. But this doesn't mean I'd be right.

Having started my computer life during the days of the punch card and worked my way up from there including CPM, DOS, TR-DOS, Xenix, UNIX, OS/2, several flavors of Mac, Linux and Windows GUI starting with 3.0 (yeah, not 3.1), I hate to tell you that there are good and there are bad. I admit I never ran ME or SE as both seemed no more than a MS grab at dollars for an SP.

My first computer that I personally owned was the PET, oh forgot the Commodore OS in the list. I was using TR-DOS long befiore MS-DOS and IBM-DOS were birthed and moved on to Xenix before they arrived in the market. When they arrived, I looked at DOS and scratched my head wondering why anyone would want such a stunted child that did about 30% of what Xenix could do. There were attempts to correct it with daisey chains, DR-DOS, hubs and almost every other imaginable bandaid. Novell finally got it sort of okay. With Windows 3.0, well nothing there. Each time there is a release it seemed to other than the GUI not do a who lot better than UNIX except the pretty icons. Win98 seemed to maybe have a better integration and finally pull ahead of UNIX and by that time Linux that had been around since the erly '90s and growing in the Xenix/UNIX community.

Since Win2000 MS has been seemingly trying to build on the backbone of the OS, it was interesting to see that NT, the new Windows branch is based on UNIX, and I think XP was little more than bringing the hanging modules patched into 2000 to keep it current into a more integrated system and the with Vista, more of the same.

The horror was the driver issue and here MS has been untouchable in interfacing the OS to hardware through whatever agreements it has with manufacturers, I'm not sure how it works. The glitch of course was the switch between 95 and 98 and the 98 to 2000 and then from XP to Vista with the latter being the worse. However, mostly except for large environments not too bad.

Of course with each release, MS is increasing the need for ram, HD space and procesing power but it is more that these are available and MS is simply writing to them. Except with Vista most of the time it is backwards compatible except with a hit to speed. Vista finally had to break with the past and many programs I've tried that were released in the early 2000's will not load.

Contrary to what so many have written, I too have no problems with Vista except the old program issue so I will need my older machine for another 3 years for business and there are some databases I will need to do something with as the programs are not available any longer and hence no Vista version. However, my Vista machine was built after Vista was released and not one of the bridge machines and the maker only released it with Vista.

As for a favorite MS version, currently I am using 2000 Professional on an older laptop. I'm not into games, music, etc. and hence a lot of things built int Vista or hung onto XP I do not use or need. Loaded the computer is using about 1/4th the space XP SP# used and of course runs faster. I have recently run into the MS oh, you can not activate your XP on a reload of the machine it had been loaded on but a call to the activation number solved it. BTW, I have the same issue with Nuance and when you call about it they simply hang up so, MS is far more caring in this regard.

When Win7 comes out, I'm not sure what I'll do but, at this time I'll not surredent Vista. The only limitation with Vista is in the home edition I can not network in the office, this required the business edition and if I have to upgrade to business I might just buy Win7 instead.

Well you certainly know more about computers than I (I'm not that into them, if it works then cool, if not I don't consult a book, I just try to figure out on my own what is going on and then fix it if I can, and so far I have been able to, at least to my satisfaction), and you of course have more experience with them as well. My first OS was a Commodore 64 when I was a kid, then the blue screened Mac as a teen, then the Sony Vaio with ME/XP, and now my HP with Vista.

When I meant that all OS were about equal, I of course didn't mean that a 1984 Apple IIe, like the kind I used in grade school, could compete with Windows '98. And I also wasn't comparing different manufacturers OS's with others like Linux/Mac/Windows. The Mac OS in my experience (I have used one at work) is superior to the Windows OS, but not by the great margins many would have us believe. I've never used Linux.

I also wasn't talking about power or business users, but general home users (as I stated).

So, to qualify, what I meant was that in general, Windows OS's, from '95 on up (all of which I've used at some point in some capacity, just some have not owned or used for extended periods, but used for school/work), are simply much the same to the average general user. At least that is my experience.

And that was my point, this is a subjective judgement as are yours or anyone else's.

For instance, you say you've had no problems with Vista (neither have I), and like Windows 2000. Well many will totally disagree with you based off of their experience. Who is right? I'm not talking about which OS has what specs, but which one is "the best" for sitting down at and using for general purposes: web surfing, listening to music, photos/videos, writing papers, playing games. What is the fastest or most stable? The most user friendly? There are too many variables and subjective values here for anyone to be right/wrong imo.

IMO no Windows OS since '95 or at least '98 is better for any of these, save perhaps gaming (which I don't do, except sometimes I run emulators so I can play old Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari, Commodore 64, and Sega games lol :D). But even then doesn't the computer hardware matter most? (RAM, storage capacity, graphics card, processor speed, etc.). And the general user in my mind is not an extreme gamer.

Anyway that's my take on Windows OS's in the last 15 years or so: none are incredibly superior to any other, at least for the general home user.

But of course I'm no expert and could very well be incredibly wrong. My experience is otherwise, but again that's subjective and too limited to conclude that millions of others have similar experiences with the same OS's I have used, but then, again, this goes for all of us. We need more objective standards, but there are too many variables and personal judgements that imo will not allow us to determine objectively what is "the best" OS here.

I'm hoping for good things from Windows 7. I tried hard to like Vista on both of my machines but wound up 'downgrading' to XP. Fought like the devil to find XP drivers for my Compaq F500 but once I did find them its ran much faster and smoother than it did with Vista. I don't hate Vista, but it sure doesn't care much for machines like my Compaq. I tweaked Vista then bumped my RAM up to 2GB and still didn't care for the response time. As a previous poster mentioned, Vista machines going to an OS that requires less resources to operate should scream.

Well yea, it's true that if you don't have the hardware requirements needed for a OS then it won't work well on it. I have 4 gigs of RAM, 2.5ghz dual core processor, and 500 gigs of memory and Vista runs fine on it: smooth and quick. I was told that you need at least 2 gigs of RAM to run Vista, more like 3 to run it well. So I got 4 lol. My old Sony only had something like 250 megabytes of RAM, 800ghz single core processor, and 40 gigs of hard drive space. But XP still ran well on it, even though I think that OS was made to work with better specs that that.

I think a lot of people dislike Vista because it is a big OS and when they put it on their old computers that don't have the right hardware specs for it (like less than 3 gigs of RAM for instance), it doesn't run smoothly or quickly so they blame the OS instead of themselves for not upgrading. It's not the OS's fault, it's the lack of proper hard ware on the user's computer. I wouldn't try to run Windows 98 on an Apple IIe either! And if XP hadn't run well on my old Sony then I would have known it wasn't XP's fault, it was my computer's specs that weren't good enough for it. Then I would have upgraded, got a new computer, or gone back to ME. But I had no trouble with XP so I didn't need to.

I have talked to a lot of people that have used it and the overall feeling I get from everyone is that Windows 7... is awesome.

Even though it's a Beta, it's very polished and it behaves much better than Vista.

Its more polished since its a striped down version of Vista SP2. Basically its the same OS, slightly tweaked, with a different name since Vista is reportedly 'evil'.

In the eye of consumers it will appear to be a better OS since its basic function has been refined and renamed. But the real improvement will be that the third party hardware and software manufacturers have finally caught up and gotten their heads out of their asses -- their Vista development will transfer flawlessly to the new platform.

Word up.

dew.

Having started on a Univac III in Utmost (an assembler language) then to IBM 360 and assembler, COBOL, Fortran, PL/1 then much later to the brain dead 286 machines and assembler, Basic, etc. I have watched as the 286 gave way to 386, 486, et. al. and the OSs went from DOS to DR-DOS to Windows 3.0 through W95, W98, W2000 and finally XP I think this is where I will stay. I am on SP3 and auto update, does not crash and runs quickly enough on 768 to 1 gig. Sheesh, the Univac had 32K words of memory, the IBM 360 had 256K bytes. Any half-assed programmer can write an OS that needs 4 gig of memory, it takes a good one to fit it in much less.

Oh, the little old 286 was not such a bad machine. Add a 3 meg ram board for an amazing total of 4 megs and SCO Xenix and UNIX were amazing :). Back then, SCO also had Lyrix a wordprocessing program that ran circles around Wordstar and Wordperfect and a spreadsheet program that was somewhere between Visicalc and Lotus 1-2-3. Had an integrated law office management system that included a docket and accounting program, Westlaw, a model and ran 8 terminals off it.

My box was from this upstart company in Texas that was supplying SCO with its boxes, DELL. At the time, Michael was the order taker, builder, shipping clerk and complaint department. However the box was actually better than those from IBM and Compaq, the big names. I had tried both and could not SCO to mount of either.

It was actually one of the best of the Intel boxes I ever owned.

Jr. is running Win7 on an old P4 in his room, older than the Northwood based computer I have from about 8 years ago. Hes got 2 gigs in it and Win7 is running in it better than XP according to him. As for drivers for the hardward, he's located Vista drivers for everything and they are running well. He wants it when it comes out. For me I'll stick with 2000 Pro and XP but may move the Vista machine up to Win7 as I have Vista Home and it will not connect to the office network.

Having started on a Univac III in Utmost (an assembler language) then to IBM 360 and assembler, COBOL, Fortran, PL/1 then much later to the brain dead 286 machines and assembler, Basic, etc. I have watched as the 286 gave way to 386, 486, et. al. and the OSs went from DOS to DR-DOS to Windows 3.0 through W95, W98, W2000 and finally XP I think this is where I will stay. I am on SP3 and auto update, does not crash and runs quickly enough on 768 to 1 gig. Sheesh, the Univac had 32K words of memory, the IBM 360 had 256K bytes. Any half-assed programmer can write an OS that needs 4 gig of memory, it takes a good one to fit it in much less.

That is a pretty base comment. You cannot compare Windows 7 with the commodore kernel.

Anywho, I love windows 7. Great OS and is what vista should have been. The UAC is still fucked and needs to be tossed, but whatever. UI is clean and it is pretty responsive, I usually idle at around 700mb of ram used. I am on my powerful desktop at the moment, but it also runs well on my 4 year old desktop.

As far as audio, same old I guess. The beta drivers for my creative x-fi seem to work well, with the occasional hiccup. I am currently listining to a vinyl rip of wish you where here in 24bit 192khz (5500kbps) sounds outstanding (this is on my shire scl4's)

My Rig for what its worth:

Core 2 duo 2.66, OC'd to 3.8
4gigs corsair ram at 1066mhz
EVGA gtx 280 SCC 1gig GPU
Creative X-fi PCI express