• CPU Intel Core i7-930
• Motherboard Asus P6T SE
• Graphics HIS HD 5670
• CASE Lancool PC-K62
• POWER CoolerMaster Silent Pro M700
• MEMORY Kingston DDR3 1333 3x2GB (6GB)
• HD 1 Intel X25-M 80GB (SSD)
• HD 2 WD Caviar Green 640GB

First off, the case (pictured) is larger than I expected, probably to accommodate those 120mm and 140mm fans. I planned to get the less blingy K58 or K60 model (no window, and not painted black inside), but they were out. I’m happy with how quiet the case is – obviously a large consideration when making music.

I’ve decided it’s a good time to finally move to Windows 7 – 32-bit for now, which means that I can sadly only use half of the installed 6GB ram. I’ll make the move to the 64-bit version once current audio projects that rely on 32-bit plugins are out of the way.  Either way, I’m very, very pleased with Windows 7 so far.

All my installs went without a hitch with some noteworthy items. The Windows 7 driver for the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra worked out of the box, but crashed when I ticked the “high performance mode” check-box under “settings” in the FTU control panel. I had to roll back with System Restore and re-install the driver, this time leaving the “high performance mode” alone. I’m currently running at the lowest ASIO/WDM buffer size of 128 samples with no problems (I ran the Core2Duo machine at double that – 256 samples).

I’ve decided to upgrade to the latest version of Ableton Live  Lite 8 (8.1.3) – I tried Live 8 on the previous machine, but had it crash on me in a show, so I stuck with Live 7. I’ve played my  last three SL shows on the new machine and so far so good with Live 8 on this PC, except for the little weirdness you can hear from 4:23 to 4:30 in the recording of Live Online #66: Core. Some of my channels dropped out unexpectedly and I kinda expected Live to crash, but it picked itself up and kept going. No idea what happened there ;^/

Finally,  a mention about install times for LA Scoring Strings. It installs off 5 dual-layer DVD’s for a total of 40GB. The documentation warns of a long install, saying that each DVD can take up to an hour to install. That was certainly the case when I installed LASS on the Core2Duo PC 2 weeks ago. Total install time was close to 5 hours. In contrast, the new machine did the install in close to an hour!

Oh, and a note about PC versus Mac. When mentioning my plan to upgrade my PC a couple of people suggested that I move to Mac. I thought about it, but decided to stick with PC for the following reasons.

• My Cakewalk Sonar sequencing software is PC only – I can install Windows on the Mac, but that kinda defeats the purpose, right?
• You can’t get a similarly specced Mac for double the price.
• I’ve never had a problem with XP and I’m more than happy with Windows 7. Honestly, reliability and viruses have never been a problem here.

That all said, Macs are still beautiful ;^)

I’ll update this post if anything crops up with the new PC, but if you don’t hear from me you can safely assume I’m happy as a pig in mud.

For my own experience with the Windows 7 32-bit driver, have a look here: http://moshang.net/soundjeweler_blog/by-the-ways/new-pc/

***UPDATE*** M-Audio released a BETA driver for the FTU on October 13th. I’ll be upgrading to Win 7 soonish and will report on my findings then. You can download the BETA driver for yourself here: http://forums.m-audio.com/showthread.php?p=58296

I reported on a quick experiment with the Windows 7 Beta and my M-Audio Fast Track Ultra soundcard in January and have been following developments regarding a dedicated driver for the FTU with an eagle eye. Well, it’s September and the driver I’m waiting for is still in the development stage (read low on their list of priorities). At least they have added a handy page to chart progress on the M-Audio / Windows 7 driver front. Not sure if the image below will update, but here goes:

Happy 2009!

Having skipped on Vista, I’ve eagerly signed up for the Windows 7 Beta. It’s been getting good press and I think I see why. I’ve installed it in a dual-boot config. on both Em.’s 5 year old Ben-Q laptop and now on my own dual-core system. It offers a very smooth experience on both machines (the laptop has less than a gig of ram!), especially with aero running on my desktop system.

I’ve yet to experiment with my audio apps, but I think that’s going to have to wait for a Win 7 driver from M-Audio. I installed the Vista 32 driver for my M-Audio Fast Track Ultra in compatibility mode, and although it works (I have sound) I’m noticing a glitch in mp3 playback with the Win 7 Media Player and in Firefox every 10 seconds or so. While it’s good enough to play music with in the background while surfing the net (Win 7/Firefox is performing like a champ in this capacity), actually making music with this driver is another question.

I’ll probably go ahead and install Reason and Sonar soonish. For all I know the glitchy playback affects mp3′s only. Either way, I’ll be booting back into XP to do production work until Windows 7 is officially released and available in retail.

My desktop specs:

Asus P5B-E motherboard, Intel 6420 CPU (2.13 GHz Core2Duo), 2 GB ram