Digidesign + Vista

Digidesign Windows OS Requirements

On the Digidesign side, the good news is Pro Tools 7.4 LE and M-Powered are now supported on Vista — sort of. The bad news is, you need 7.4, there’s still no support for Pro Tools HD, and Digidesign hasn’t yet qualified SP1 for anything. (M-Audio has made the same statement.) Now, I’m used to Digidesign’s lagging OS support, and to be honest, I think being cautious about support is a good idea. But in this case, SP1 largely involves fixes for Vista — some of them very significant issues. It’s a little odd that you could qualify Vista without SP1, containing most of the same fixes installed as HotFixes, but not SP1 itself, even though the latter is more likely to be stable and compatible in almost every other respect.

Then it gets odder. Vista Home Premium is still not supported by Digidesign, despite being identical to the supported Ultimate and Business editions in regards to music, audio, and driver support. Maybe Digidesign has some reason for doing this, but I can’t imagine what it is, and they’re not saying.

M-Audio + Vista

M-Audio’s support for Vista, which had been lagging badly, has now improved somewhat:

M-Audio Vista Driver Development

Among the drivers still missing as I write this, though, is M-Audio’s flagship audio interface and control surface, the Project Mix I/O. And while Roland/Edirol, MOTU, RME, and others have supported 64-bit Windows, M-Audio has no support whatsoever.

We can’t really make generalizations based on the state of drivers from Digidesign & M-Audio alone, but I have yet to see anyone perform a set with a Vista laptops.

Any readers performing with Vista laptops?