I decided that I was going to try Windows 7 64 bit and see if I could configure it to be a dedicated music production environment.  Sure enough after an effortless registration, download, burn, and install of the OS, I had Windows 7 up and running.  I was already impressed by the breath of life it gave to my computer.  Fast, seemily less bloated than both Vista and XP, and thus far pretty stable, I have hope that Windows 7 will be a viable alternative for music production.

Installation and operation of Ableton Live! 8.0.3 and Reason 4 has been smooth sailing.  I still encounter the ocassional problem with Ableton Live!, but the memory management and process management in Windows 7 is far superrior to that of XP so I don’t lose much time if Live! crashes on me (which has only happened once so far).  It seems that Live! still has trouble with my Alesis iO 26 when initializing, but a reset of the iO 26 takes care of that.

It wasn’t all peaches and cream when it came to getting my music hardware to work, however.  First off, not all of the music hardware vendors have Windows 7 64 bit drivers available. To my absolute dismay, Alesis was the only brand I have in my set up that had a beta Windows 7 driver available.

With some minor system configuraiton, the Alesis iO26 driver for Windows XP and Vista 64-bit worked along with the software and I haven’t had much issue with the unit at all. It works better in Windows 7 than it does in Windows XP (a lot less fussy). If it gives you trouble, try the following:

1. Windows Key + Pause/Break for Computer Properties
2. Click on Device Manager
3. Expand Firewire Devices
4. Click on the host controller and update the driver to, “1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)”

My Korg padKontrol, sadly, it not 100% operational.  While I was able to have the driver working in no time at all such that I can use the unit with Live! or Reason, the padKontrol’s librarian (which is used for programming the device) does not work.  I continually get device communication errors even though the unit responds appropriately in music software.

My Midisport 2×2 by M-Audio does not work at all.  I tried to use the Vista or XP compatability modes, as well as manually plucking the driver from the temporary folder during install, but it was all in vein.  The device isn’t supported in Windows 7 and M-Audio does not appear to be turning out the drivers quickly.  It’s a shame.  Right now I have my old school MIDI keyboard plugged into my padKontrol’s MIDI-IN, and the WaveIdea Bitstream PRO is going to have to be plugged into the iO 26′s MIDI-IN.  Thankfully I don’t intend on buying any new controllers or synths soon.

Playing around with some Silver Standard music in Live! has shown me that Windows 7 really does perform very well for my music production so far.  It feels smoother, faster, and more stable.  Jeff and I will give it a good test tomorrow night in our recording session and I’m crossing my fingers it shines.

I’m trying to leave this installation of Windows 7 alone and separate from a personal OS.  XP will reside on the main partition for quite awhile since it has all of my personal stuff (or “clutter”) which probably gets in the way of my music production.

I’m not going to lie: I hope that Windows 7 is a viable, stable, stage performance alternative to Apple.  As much as I pine for a Macbook PRO like every other ‘professional’ out there.. I firmly believe there should be alternatives. Besides.. not all of the VSTs I use are available for Mac. ;P