Ableton Forum

Dear All,

The following are a few words concerning the Windows Vista
(32bit) compatibility of Live 6.0.5 & Live 6.0.3.
We have tested Live on only a few Vista systems so far so there may be other problems as well.

Therefore if you experience a bug or misbehavior on Windows Vista
which is different from the behavior on Windows XP, please let us know.



Current state of Live 6.0.5
-----------------------------

Live 6.0.5 wokrs on Windows Vista.
The only limitation is:

- The drawing of the status bar in the Splash screen does not work properly



Current state of Live 6.0.3
-----------------------------
In principle, the Live 6.0.3 works on
Windows Vista. But there are some limitations:

- Starting Live 6.0.3 will temporarily disable the AERO Glass

- The drawing of the status bar in the Splash screen does not work properly

- First time decoding an MP3 (or similar) file requires administrator rights


We are currently working to eliminate these limitations and hope to
address them within bug-fix updates as soon as possible.



Recommendation
--------------
Because of the known (and unknown) problems, our limited Vista experience,
and the current lack of Audio & MIDI drivers, we strongly recommend testing
Live and your setup before you completely switch to Windows Vista.

If you are currently using Live on Windows XP, we recommend waiting before
upgrading to Vista.



Support of native Vista features
--------------------------------
Windows Vista provides several new technologies that could be useful
for Live - for instance, a new audio I/O architecture. We are planning
to support such native Vista features within this year.



Kind Regards
/Alex

Thank you very much for the update, Alex.

Also, thanks for the carrot regarding native Vista enhancements in the pipeline!

Thanks, Alex. We've been waiting for this one, definitely.

I'm suspicious that users may encounter other problems as side-effects of the graphics incompatibilities, not necessarily Ableton's fault. For instance, I'm still waiting on final, stable drivers from NVIDIA for their mobile cards. The moment Vista kicks into its compatibility mode, things start to go very wrong -- think regular, random Live crashes any time you do anything. Disabling Aero first seems to help; turning Aero off completely seems to trigger a different graphics mode than the hybrid-Aero that Vista launches when it senses an Aero-incompatible app.

Actually, I'd say there are quite a lot of music drivers out there for Vista. In a truly bizarre twist, the music developers are ahead of the major graphics developers.

Once this settles down, Vista may be a great OS for music -- what is running seems to be running better than on XP -- but until then, I'll STRONGLY second the "wait to upgrade" advice!

please dont spend all your time working on live for vista!

I'm going to be on xp for a loooong time yet.

as an osx i second the above.

@Peterkirn,you are correct. Turning off desktop composition and Aero/Glass ditches the wddm, so there's no 3d acceleration of the desktop.

Just choose run as admin, Desktop comping and aero off for the live exe, and use the WHQL nvidia drivers [97.46 I think], the betas are still pants.

You can set admin controls for a whole folder, to work around the mp3 import limitation.

Just wanted to say that the Beta 6.06 release cleared up ALL my Ableton graphics issues. Thanks for getting that out so fast!!

Thinkpad t60p
ATi firegl v5200

"Wasting time on Vista"? Hey, Live is a cross-platform app. Don't expect the Windows gang would say "don't waste your time on Mac." But point taken. :)

Anyway, yes, just got a new NVIDIA build and the new Live release, and this seems to solve the major issues. I still imagine Ableton wouldn't *recommend* upgrading to Vista (nor would I), but on the other hand, no harm in setting up a second partition and starting to fiddle with it. That can often make the transition to a new OS easier ... by the time you make the jump full time, you've got everything working and tested.

thank you for making this announcement. i look forward to seeing what vista's improved audio stack can mean for live's performance.

Alex wrote: Support of native Vista features
--------------------------------
Windows Vista provides several new technologies that could be useful
for Live - for instance, a new audio I/O architecture. We are planning
to support such native Vista features within this year.



Kind Regards
/Alex

Just curious what the benefits of the new audio I/O architecture in Vista may be? Is it significant?

Deleted

corygilbert wrote:as an osx i second the above.

ey mate... they need to work on windows... =) hehe


osx just works =)

Hey that's cool... I just bought a Vista, and most of my sets aren't running anymore. Sometimes I just don't get any audio at all, like the demo sets aren't working

Oniels,

Sometimes I just don't get any audio at all, like the demo sets aren't working

Could you please explain a bit more detailed what happened and what your setup is?

Regards,
/Alex

I think that last thing was my mistake, I do have sound, sorry for that.
Some live sets I made

I seem to have the 'regular' vista problems, like Live reacting very slow, ore just crashing sometimes... i'm not an advanced user of Live, but I know quite good how to work with it.