It Rains in Seattle: Microsoft's AMP Summit 2007
Our CTO of Rain Recording performed some preliminary testing of Vista on our latest multi-core pro series desktops. Our thinking was why not first test the latest OS on the latest hardware? Seems applicable as experience has shown that while MS OS in-place/overlay upgrades are executable, no sane PC technician or engineer would ever do that, right? Microsoft is notorious for making each rev of their OS (Windows 3.X, 95, 98, Me, XP) fatter not slimmer. And while hardware has enjoyed a substantial margin of advancement over software for quite sometime now, early beta tests of Vista showed that this new OS would be a heavy sucker. I mean the first few betas took upwards of 20 minutes to boot!
So with each tick of OS efficiency improvement adding a virtual pound or two of weight to the product, we opted to test latest multi-core CPU with the latest (mature) Intel 975XBX2 controller chipset. It was no surprise to me that both Vista 32 and 64 showed excellent performance on an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU. Legacy support was not Vista's charter. And believe it or not, dual-core is already a legacy piece of gear, at least as far as harnessing the Vista engine as efficiently as 4 or more cores do. As for the similarities in performance on both the x32 and x64 version of Vista, the 64 bit platform offers more in the area of memory addressing and bus management than actually getting more data in and out of the CPU. Bottom line, want more than 4 gig of RAM, then it is x64 bub! Otherwise go x32.
As for audio hardware drivers, life still sucks but getting better! But that was kinda what this whole summit was about. Making audio software and hardware apps run great on Vista.
Digital Media "Ask the Experts" Panel
A panel of 5 Microsoft engineers and one local Seattle audio producer sat on stage and conducted an open forum panel discussion on audio production on the PC. Johnny Bregar, Keith Toussaint, Tim Muscott, David Miles Huber, and Dan Moore. Unfortunately much too much time was spent on Media Center tuner limits and DVD-HD vs Blue-Ray for my liking. But eventually the audio producer, David Miles Huber on the panel asked if there was anyway to turn off or limit Vista's Aero overlay and other look and feel knick-knacks that might get in the way of the audio stream. Surprisingly the room went relatively silent. As George Washington once advised, "Unless one can improve on the silence, say nothing". Daringly I thought I could make an improvement; raised my hand and was called upon. I stated that we (Rain) had done some considerable testing with Vista and audio software apps and audio interface hardware drivers as well as selling a few Vista based systems to our clients. Looking at David I advised that in short, yes much of the top heavy resource hogging user interface enhancement modules can be turned off and in fact are on Rain Recording Vista based systems. At this time Dan Moore offered up a plug for Rain saying, "Bill, why don't you tell us all what Rain does and why you have a possibly unique view of Vista in this regard." So I gave the 5 cent verbal tour of Rain and its mission. After that I got some interesting questions from some of the Microsoft staff on the panel about our findings and thoughts on Vista deployment and performance for audio production. It was a privilege to address this elite group of developers, programmers, marketers and executives and share our information and perhaps truly fire the starting gun for real open discussion and merging of the minds between all attendees on Vista and it's usability with pro audio applications.
Other Interesting Sessions
- Xbox 360 and Gaming Industry Overview
- This session covered audio authoring for Xbox games. I was amazed to find out that the audio authoring tools for this platform were quite Spartan. I could readily hear the outcry of Microsoft to the DAW developers. "pisst, little help over here please."
- Silverlight & Expression platforms
- Microsoft's version of Flash. What does this have to do with audio? Well, if all goes as Microsoft plans this platform will empower end users to design their own elaborate, interactive and high definition video and audio content. Importing of off line produced audio and video content into Silverlight was covered as well as other really cool stuff. I would think an "export to Silverlight" option may show up on some of our DAWs soon.
- Windows Live Services
- All I can say about this session is that MS will be planting the seeds for the next makers of a MySpace and YouTube. Keep an eye out for this one
What if he could just speak into a mic and say "record guitar track one"? Well, he showed us just that very technology
I attended many of these other sessions below. All were fascinating and some were deeply technical. Thank God for these dedicated passionate developer programmers. Bless their souls.
ISV Breakout Topics: Vista Audio deep dive on MMCSS, UMA, and Pull-Mode/WaveRT, DRM technologies, WASAPI, and a round table on MIDI in the music industry.
IHV Breakout: Windows Driver Infrastructure, USB Audio Class Driver, Vista Audio System Effects (SysFx), Audio Endpoints, Windows Embedded (XPE), and Power Management
Business & Marketing Breakout: Microsoft Partner Program Logos and Certifications, ISV Partner Support, Partner Participation with Crossfader, and a Speech Recognition Technology Overview
The two that stood out the most for me were the Speech Recognition Technology and the Crossfader website
"Record my guitar please, HAL..."
To my surprise and extreme interest Speech Recognition Technology is built in to Vista and has many improvements planned for release this summer. After showing us the basics of this technology the presenter advised that he was a Flamenco guitar player. With a grin he commented that he considered himself an intelligent guy quite familiar with computer programming and user interfaces, etc. But when it came to using a DAW, he often would scratch his head. What if he could just speak into a mic and say "record guitar track one"? Well, he showed us just that very technology enhancement use of speech recognition. Via numeric template overlays, one could run a computer completely by voice. With a wink-wink nudge-nudge to the audience he showed us a new macro program that would allow one to assign specific voice commands to correlate with specific menu functions. This literally rocked my world. I can hardly wait to dive into this emerging technology that is sure to save a lot of gear being thrown across to room by a new DAW user in frustration trying to arm a track.
Rockin' with Microsoft.
The introduction to www.crossfader.com was one of the most obviously pertinent efforts of Microsoft to coddle the audio/video creation and production sectors,. Though not at all Microsoft looking, it is in fact a Microsoft asset. Check out the very bottom of the page.
Crossfader is an online community aimed at the professional and next generation digital artists. The main goal to create an online environment where artists could learn, share, and show their creative work started in early 2004 by a small team of music lovers at Microsoft. If you are an artist in the music, video or imaging space, Crossfader is the place where you can gain insight and perspectives from an array of professional artists. Here you will not only learn about how different artists create and produce their work, but will also be able to contribute and become part of the Crossfader community: sharing insight, comments and experience.
Rain Recording will be contributing their fair share of handy advice and instruction to this online community set to have a complete re-design this summer.
It does Rain in Seattle. The Microsoft AMP Summit turned out to be a tremendous opportunity to engage in a direct dialogue with Microsoft engineers and platform evangelists. I was amazed at the number of Microsoft staff that attended and conducted the presentations sessions were from the audio industry (Mackie, EMU, Roland, Etc) and personally played instruments, used the PC for audio production and had general all around genuine enthusiasm for computer audio on the Windows platform. Not one stuffed shirt in the lot.
All in all, Rain Recording left the AMP Summit with an enhanced view of
the present and future of the Vista platform, other MS platforms and a
wonderful bag of new tools, contacts and products to do our part in
taking a bite out of the Apple for professional audio production and
carry on with our mission of the demystification of audio production on
the PC. 
Pages 1 | 2