Honest question about productivity vs technical nonsense

[Jace-BeOS]

When i'm using my Windows setup (which i've mostly been dedicated to since i jumped out of DOS just after starting music), i find that 90% of the time i spend with my equipment is dedicated to technical BS, not actual music making. My life has pretty much been a joke of being a tech person who knows a lot yet seems to have more tech problems than anyone else. Among my peers in the real world, i'm the most knowledgeable. On the web in forums, i get "It's just you. No one else has these problems."

How about you folks? Are you simply more tolerant of "normal" computer BS than i am or are you all just somehow better off?

Part of it is surely my working methods. Somehow, i am able to find bugs that no one else finds (or gives a crap about). It makes me a great beta tester, if you really do want to acknowledge and eliminate bugs (mostly, my reports are acknowledged, documented, and then considered unimportant and "will not fix").

i am aware of the "inherent complexity" of computers and the process of testing with the politics involved (see "will not fix" above and add "cannot reproduce"). Consequentially, i learned, way back in 2000, to stop customizing Windows with plug-ins and even to stop trying to USE many built-in customizations (keep defaults) because they eventually fail somewhere for lack of testing and cause system problems. So i don't really do that.

i have always built my own systems by choosing best of breed components (so it seemed) and now i have sworn to NEVER EVER build a PC EVER again (it's like voodoo & every geek online has the magic answer to all your problems: "you bought the wrong [n]" and "you're doing it wrong"). i was a tech guy most of my employed life (and even a tech guy when i became a trainer), fixing everyone else's computer problems, and hating to maintain my own systems instead of using them as tools (because i've long grown out of the computer BEING the hobby, though it seems some great sin of computing to want to not have to do "regular maintenance" on your computer because it's just like a car -NO IT'S NOT!). Tech people exist so that everyone else can get some work done sometimes. i can't afford to hire an IT department to allow me to walk away from misbehaving apps or hardware, demanding "it better work by the time i come back from lunch!"

i'm tempted to say that i have more success using Apple products as actual appliances and tools, instead of tech nightmares, but i have some annoying problems there too. For example: Logic is designed such that plug in instruments aren't active until they're first demanded to produce audio. You start the track, it plays, you get to a region where an instrument starts for the first time, the CPU spikes and the engine drops out. You have to start over again. This is known in the community, but clearly there are enough people who do not suffer drop outs because it's very popular in studios with many published professionals swearing by it (are they just putting up with this annoyance over and over and not being bothered by it???).

It's not just audio. i experienced the same exact thing, maybe worse, with 3D graphics projects (gaming has been mostly ok; word processing has always been a cakewalk, no topical pun intended).

So what's up, folks? Is anyone with me, or am i really the singled-out, alien, crazy, conspired-against pariah of computing? i already know the simple answers, so please don't use them here if that's all you got

[monkeymanx]

I'm sort of with you. I'm pretty good with all this stuff. My latest build is pretty awesome. But, but, but... After time Adobe flash will cause my browser to crash in windows regardless of what browser it is. After that the computer can not kill the process no matter what and can not shut down properly. I have found various things online, tried a bunch of stuff to no avail.

Fast forward to now. My PC is now a dual boot with OS X Lion and Win 7. Win 7 for audio and Lion for everything else. I have no problems with flash and browser in OS X on the same box. So, with Win 7, I pretty much just install my audio stuff and nothing else. I don't do anything in Win 7 other than record audio.

Now, why use Win7 instead of OS X for audio? I'm glad you asked... OS X is a slug with the couple cross platform DAW applications I have tried and I do not like Logic and do not want to learn Logic. So I'm stuck dual booting, which isn't a huge deal and it is getting the job done.

It is true that bugs exists and go unfixed. It sucks but it is a way of life I guess. I just keep pressing on and work with what I have and work around what I must to get my music rolling.

[Mushy Mushy]

If it ain't broke don't fix it. I'm still on Live 8.2.6, Cubase 4.5 and FL Studio 9.
All work perfectly...

The last issue I had was a non responsive sound card. Before that I can't even remember

[Jace-BeOS]

The last issue I had was a non responsive sound card. Before that I can't even remember

Since you mention non-responsive sound cards: My SB X-Fi stopped being detected by Windows as anything other than a non-working "multimedia pci device." This was spontaneous after years of no such problem/no system changes. Juggling pci slots helped until the first reboot. i just removed it & activated the motherboard audio (games need one or the other )

Honestly, if i listed my tech issues, i'd fill a novel. It's ridiculous. See my post in "site stuff"

[Jace-BeOS]

p.s.:

If it ain't broke don't fix it

That's the problem: it's always been broke.

[Jace-BeOS]

My PC is now a dual boot with OS X Lion and Win 7.

Hackintosh?

The only reason i don't dual boot Windows/OS X on my MacBook Pro is the simple fact that the trackpad driver for Windows is a piece of crap (i tried it when Snow Leopard came out)

[ZenPunkHippy]

Sound Blaster cards (really the drivers) are not the best for audio production since they are designed for general multi-media duties (games, watching movies etc.).

You would be better off investing in a dedicated audio card with proper ASIO drivers. There are lots of low cost options available, so you don't need to spend a lot of cash and you might find this fixes some of the problems you've been having.

Peace,
Andy.

[Jace-BeOS]

Sound Blaster cards (really the drivers) are not the best for audio production since they are designed for general multi-media duties (games, watching movies etc.).

Trust me, i only ever used the Sound Blaster for games and movies

You would be better off investing in a dedicated audio card with proper ASIO drivers. There are lots of low cost options available, so you don't need to spend a lot of cash and you might find this fixes some of the problems you've been having.

i have an M-Audio ProjectMix I/O & Lightbridge, a t.c. electronic digital Konnekt x32, a V-Synth XT, a Virus TI, Pod XT, NI Kore controller...

The Sound Blaster becoming useless was the first of the recent problems. The system had been in storage. One hard drive was failing as of when i started using it again. i replaced it. Then the SB X-Fi went idiot on me. i thought i solved that problem by tossing it (& about two years previously, i removed the Echo Audio Layla 3G to cut on IRQ sharing). A few weeks without problems and lots of mostly trouble-free gaming went by with some audio work (involving many "missing plugin" problems with Sonar).

Then the BSODs started. The worst BSOD ever left my system so messed up that i couldn't even POST with a reset or power button. i had to force it off by switching the power supply off. One of the BSOD messages (out of the 5 i wrote down) specified the firewire driver as a problem (ohci1394.sys?). This crash happened upon trying to update the driver for the HD Audio chipset (hoping that would resolve conflicts with using it for Sound Forge, while i used the pro devices for Sonar and Renoise, etc). And before you ask: i bought the motherboard with the Texas Instruments firewire chipset in mind; there are no drivers for it other than Microsoft's Windows driver (the nforce chipset stuff not only left my system more unstable, back in the day, there were no firewire drivers included, so i reverted to MS default drivers).

i never had BSOD problems more than a couple per month (still too many) until a few days ago when it kicked into high gear. The only change to the system was moving the ProjectMix i/o to daisy chain off the Konnekt x32 (i know, i know, but i'm not putting another PCI card in the system because there is no way to deal with the IRQ nonsense, even with stuff disabled on the board -there's only a nVidia gForce 8800 GTX in there right now and Windows system info still reports shared and conflicted IRQs).

i could go on for pages and pages.

(Memtest-86 tested my 8GB RAM with no errors, btw)

People could go on forever about how i have things configured wrong, but i've tried it all. It's utter voodoo. i swear.

[ZenPunkHippy]

Eek. I don't know what to say about that!

Messing with IRQ settings in a PC is not something I've found necessary for at least 5 years ... all automatic, never causes a problem, but I have 1 dedicated audio card with the on-board sound disabled.

Some obvious tech support style trouble shooting ...

It's not going to be fun, but I would start again with a minimal setup required to do audio production: reinstall Windows and a single audio card + MIDI controller. Take everything else out / disconnect. Run with the minimal setup until you are sure it's stable. Then add in the other components. Eventually you should be able to figure out what is making the system unstable.

It could also be a faulty RAM module. Might be a good idea to download and run a memory test utility that boots from CD.

Peace,
Andy.

[metamorphosis]

50/50

[nix808]

hmm, damn
i have been lucky on the whole,
I had a graphics card die which meant I couldn't produce for a week,
until Dell sent a tech around to troubleshoot it.
That's all that's crippled my system,
since my CPU fried in 2003.
A cd drive and cooling fan have also broken->I got a new laptop eventually,
after getting new ones- which didn't work
Sounds like a right PITA man
It's not a bad idea to go with atop of the line dell,
the service is good. Mine never BSODs.
i think ur problems would worry any tech
Here's hoping for hassle free production,
sounds like you've had ur fair share of trouble

[UltraJv]

I find that people love to mess with stuff, just because they can or they believe that lengthy "Voodoo" is necessary in order to get 0.0001% performance increase. The worst culprits are ANY Windows utils you dont need them(Microsoft Security Essentials if youre on the net is all). Yea, they all claim to fix 99% of registry errors etc but they really dont need fixing and the damage they do may not show up straight away.

Theres a lot of outdated info on setting up DAWs on the net, they dont do much on a modern PC and cause more harm than good. If you feel the need to dive in and tweak every option in the BIOS and every tick box everywhere, if youve got 100s of programs installed, if you like tinkering - youre heading for trouble. Thats the biggest cause of issues I ever see. I never had to mess with XP, never had to mess with Windows 7. The only thing Id recommend doing is using GHOST or similar to make a clone of a working setup so that when you break it, its easy to fix. As has been said - if it aint broke, dont fix it.

[Jace-BeOS]

Messing with IRQ settings in a PC is not something I've found necessary for at least 5 years ... all automatic, never causes a problem, but I have 1 dedicated audio card with the on-board sound disabled.

I've never had a system that worked that way. Even pre-built systems (i think it was the first power-on boot of my newly bought Sony VAIO that crashed; yes, the FIRST boot).

Before this EVGA motherboard, i had a different one with different memory. It was totally unreliable (Asus Striker Extreme, a well knowns pile of [insert lots of profanity here]). The EVGA board was supposed to be a clean slate. So this isn't just one problematic build. Oh, and the new EVGA motherboard was DOA. As was the replacement. And its replacement was physically warped. Then i got one that worked. The same exact thing happened with my BFD gForce 8800 GTX video card: the first one was fine until a capacitor fell off during motherboard replacement (it was barely touched, these surface mounts are so fragile). Then i got a dud. Then an acceptable one.

See what i mean?? It's not like i asked for a DOA brand new motherboard and two bad replacements. It's not like EVGA is a known bad company either.

It's not going to be fun, but I would start again with a minimal setup required to do audio production: reinstall Windows and a single audio card + MIDI controller. Take everything else out / disconnect. Run with the minimal setup until you are sure it's stable. Then add in the other components. Eventually you should be able to figure out what is making the system unstable.

This is the plan, but i see no point in starting it until i can buy a new OS/apps drive & Win7 Pro. The drive is necessary so i don't have to wipe the existing one (for emergency use, i want to keep it intact). Win7, well, you know Vista is kind of a pimple.

It could also be a faulty RAM module. Might be a good idea to download and run a memory test utility that boots from CD.

Yep, done that. You missed it in one of my posts above No errors found.

[Jace-BeOS]

I find that people love to mess with stuff, just because they can or they believe that lengthy "Voodoo" is necessary in order to get 0.0001% performance increase.

i really don't care about that 0.0001%. i don't over clock. Hell, i couldn't even get my memory to run at the rated speed at first and almost just left it that way.

The worst culprits are ANY Windows utils (Microsoft Security Essentials if youre on the net is all). you dont need them. Yea, they all claim to fix 99% of registry errors etc but they really dont need fixing and the damage they do may not show up straight away.

The registry is a pile of crap. Always has been and always will be. Microsoft's worst OS architectural decision ever. Uninstallers do NOT remove everything installers and apps put in the registry. Just by installing software, you will never be able to revert your registry back to the base state it started in (without ghosting the drive or using system restore, but that doesn't solve removing a piece of software you demoed or are upgrading). Frankly, it's the inherent problems with the system as it is designed that INSPIRE all these registry tweaking products (just like the market for malware protection exists partially because of how vulnerable the OS is to so many types of attack). Then there're all the explorer extensions, system services, system tray apps, etc, that get dumped on the system without user-consent and often without a compelling reason to even design the products to work that way in the first place.

It's a rats nest even for normal usage without fooling with 3rd party system add-ons. Just trying to have a DAW leads to junk. My M-Audio driver installs a system tray icon that i don't want or need to run. Best part about it is that on 64-bit Windows, the M-Audio system tray app has a bug in which its own Exit command does not work and it must be killed from task manager. That's a pro audio product installed as part of the DAW computer and it's already broken on install. Frankly, the system tray shouldn't even accept third party addons and most developers use it without any real need to, without asking the user their preference. On the Mac, while there's an equivalent area to dump junk (the right half of the system menu bar), i've only seen one third party product ever install anything there (Little Snitch). So why is there such a cess pool on Windows system tray by companies that don't do the same on their Mac installs??

Theres a lot of outdated info on setting up DAWs on the net, they dont do much on a modern PC and cause more harm than good.

i'd like to see this statement backed up with practical examples/data. EVERY DAW and audio interface company i've dealt with link to or even provide a page advising their users to do this stuff (identify IRQ conflicts with the host controller for the audio device's bus, change Windows priority to background services, disable unnecessary system services, turn off Vista window transparency or even the entire Vista window manager decor service, etc.)

If you feel the need to dive in and tweak every option in the BIOS and every tick box everywhere,

The need? Yes (according to the tech services provided by the companies who's products i use). The desire? no.

if youve got 100s of programs installed - youre heading for trouble. Thats the biggest cause of issues I ever see.

Agreed. Same experience for me. That's the registry and the design of Windows i was talking about. Thing is, i once divided my computers into Audio Boot partition, Graphics Boot partition, and Games/Internet Boot partitions. To keep it all isolated and clean. It didn't make any difference. Each system eventually was a pain in the ass. It actually decreased my productivity because i never wanted to go through the time consuming process of rebooting just to change tasks and because it was impossible to trouble shoot audio or graphics apps problems without being connected to the web (the best thing for that is actually to have two computers, or more, around to cross-support each other!! RIDICULOUS!).

I never had to mess with XP, never had to mess with Windows 7. The only thing Id recommend doing is using GHOST or similar to make a clone of a working setup so that when you break it, its easy to fix.

Great idea except: 1. It takes tons of storage space to keep drive images of complete, ready to use systems (and money for those drives) and 2. That only gets you back to the last known good config. Windows system restore is already doing something similar and it's no more or less successful, IMO, when considering the practicalities of time, application installation, data storage, etc.

As has been said - if it aint broke, dont fix it.

Yeah, but Windows is broke from the first moment of use (i'm not sure about OS X). When you delete an item off of your start menu, does the menu refresh or does it close, forcing you to open it again to go back to whatever you were doing? When you drag and drop to rearrange items on your start menu, do the items stay where you put them or end up at the end of the entire list the next time you open the menu? When you download a file to your desktop, does the icon always appear when the download is done or do you have to choose "refresh" on the desktop? What about when you copy files? Do your Explorer views randomly change their view/icon mode? When you point to a folder in Vista and it shows you the tooltip "Contents..." does it actually list the content or state its own label instead? These are all bugs in the OS (as of Vista) and are there from the first use. i don't know a single person who will admit to these things or even notices them until i point them out (except for the Explorer view random behavior, my friend always rants about that one), but every system i've ever used is like this (i managed hundreds of XP workstations at various jobs, most of which i did NOT set up myself, so it's not just me). i could list a hundred more stupid bugs that persist since Win98 (i don't know which ones were fixed or just replaced in Win7). They compound each other (so many times i've seen users repeatedly re-download a file to their desktop because, hey, the first three downloads didn't show up and then, lo and behold, Explorer refreshes the desktop one time and there are seven copies of the download, which the user angrily leaves there to cause Explorer difficulty when it needs to refresh next time by the sheer number of files on the desktop needing to be sniffed for the ShellIconCache and then whoah, it freaks out and crashes). These problems do more than just cause irritation (how about that MIDI device limitation in XP or USB's asynchronous data transfer choice for MIDI causing jitter or the ridiculous growth of the winsxs folder in your Windows system folder, etc?).

Basically, i think computing sucks for anything more complicated than word processing and i wish i'd been a caveman instead.

[Jace-BeOS]

hmm, damn
i have been lucky on the whole,
I had a graphics card die which meant I couldn't produce for a week,
until Dell sent a tech around to troubleshoot it.
That's all that's crippled my system,
since my CPU fried in 2003.
A cd drive and cooling fan have also broken->I got a new laptop eventually,
after getting new ones- which didn't work
Sounds like a right PITA man
It's not a bad idea to go with atop of the line dell,
the service is good. Mine never BSODs.
i think ur problems would worry any tech
Here's hoping for hassle free production,
sounds like you've had ur fair share of trouble

When i was working as a tech, computer parts fell to me very often because no one needed/wanted them. Not only could i afford to buy parts if forced to, i could take other people's spare video cards and memory for troubleshooting my own systems (i've always kept more than one computer going). i stopped being a tech because it was making me hateful (can you tell???). My access to spares stopped & then so did my income. So i don't have access to that kind of self-support any more, even if i still felt content to do it.

If i ever buy a Windows PC again, it will be a pre-built DAW, from a company that specializes in building DAWs, and it will have a long term service plan. Then again, i'm poor. If i COULD buy a new machine, i'd migrate totally to Mac (dual booting to Windows for those Sonar projects that i should convert to Logic). My near 2 years away from Windows, using an older MacBook Pro & iPhone 4 as my entire computer and internet solution, 98% converted me (& i can't wait for Apple to finish "dumbing down" the rest of their OS, if that's what it takes to operate like a true appliance). But, like i said, i'm dirt poor. i should have converted six years back when i was well employed. Sometimes i think i'll give up computers entirely, but there's really nothing else for me to do outside the computer world. Every single form of art i participate in and every skill i have is rooted there in the damn computer industry.