Hey Chris, Yeah, I bought a W7/64 machine from Jim. What a screamer.I definitely see more problems for folks running W7/64 rather than 32. But it seems to be a crap shoot, which I'm sure is the product of all the standards from Windows itself to programs and hardware being long gone, along with the 32 to 64 bit transition. Win 7 certainly has some quirks, bugs, and odd behavior that we naturally blame on our screen-readers. But I've been surprised how many of them sighted folks can duplicate on a system without a screen-reader. But of course over the years most folks have been pounded into submission on this front and just roll with the punches.
And as much as I gripe about Win 7 I personally have had very very few losses of speech. I've had problems with Window-eyes, and we've been hammering out a lot of them. But again, it's amazing how much things differ from system to system. I think the majority of my replies to bug reports that aren't a 100% across the board problem have been, I can't duplicate it on my system. So, as I said, it's like a crap shoot.
I'm using an external synth too. So I don't have to deal with that problem. And maybe it's ultimately why I don't lose speech. And I think the cause is due to an inherent instability of the entire audio system in Win 7. Sometimes, not very often, I get nothing out of my audio interface right from the get-go after powering up the system. It only happens every couple weeks or so, and just one reboot makes the world round again. So who knows what's up with that. Then again, I'm not really pounding it like you are either.
Tom On 11/13/2011 6:55 AM, Chris Belle wrote:
Hey tom, did you opt for w7 64 bit or did you go with 32 bit? Frfom the people I've worked with we get the iimpression that 32 bit is a bit more stable with window-eyes than 64 bit. Are you using your daw, did you end up buying one from Jim, or one of your older sonica labs machines before adk bought them out? Or some off the shelf machine? On this machine Jim built for me, I experience frequent lockups and losses of speech with w7 64 bit but pretty much rock solid under xp, and that's even using an external synth. I've done a couple of test projects, and managed to get through them, but you can bet it'll go on me at some point. But I haven't tried it since the last major update, which I did install, and then promptly putthe the drive back on the shelf 'grin'. Your probably running the latest private beta and I know you can't talk about that, but hopefully things are getting better. I think window-eyes is the key here since most of my students are running jaws, and they seem to be doing mostly ok. But I have had serious wrestling matches even getting 7.5 installed, and even had to ghost my system once because it got hung up in some strange way i don't know didn't have sighted help here, and half the time it won't talk, had to use narrator to get it installed. Of course diferent hardware, and combinations of drivers and such can make all the difference in the world. Under xp I get 7 us or less dpc latency which is a really good measure for daw performance, it's the dpc latency tool jim puts on all his machines and you can get it at http://www.thesycon.de/eng/home.shtml Be interesting to see if it gets better with w7 but man, 7 us is extremely fast. I've only got 6 gigs in this machine, but it's in tripple channel mode, at the time 4 gig 1600 ddr3 memory modules were very expensive. But 6 gigs is enough for most anything I'm doing, I'm not loading up huge east west libraries, and even if I was, these disks are fast, but if we gets stable enough with my hardware, I'll be able to take advantage of all my memory anyway. but then again, w7 will goble up that much more for itself, so we'll probably break even haw haw. At 11:08 PM 11/12/2011, you wrote:Yeah, I heard a podcast a while back too that showed the considerably expanded ability of Narrator on Windows 8. At least that will be a good backup we'll have right out of the box. And a lot of the new interface junk is ramping up paranoya for screen-reader users. It can all be turned off so you can get back to the standard desktop we're used to. It's just Microsoft's attempt to satisfy everyone and look cool; a.k.a. like a mac. Regarding the studio? The real test will be another cycle of the seasons. It's certainly manageable now. But the spring thaw is what will put it to the test. And I'll probably just leave it empty for the winter. Fighting mother nature is a tough battle. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I have Win 7. My mistake was not getting XP in a dual boot configuration on the system; my reason being that I figured I'd just cling to XP. So I know how much of a pita Win 7 is, that's for sure. But I am getting used to it. So I don't detest it with quite the same murderous intent any more. Ha! Ah yes, the age old cross-platform problem. Well, I guess that one will probably never go away. But who knows. It's the nature of the beast. And we're the hardest hit by it. Eh, I haven't played with HotSpot in ages. But yeah, I didn't like the all in one export either and had problems with it too. But I thought those were fixed. Guess not. Hope both you and Stephie are feeling much better soon. Tom On 11/12/2011 4:38 AM, Chris Belle wrote:I heard a preview alpha demo of windows 8 done by someone and even narrator is better. Lord's I hope you eventually get some situation where you can get back to doing some of this studio stuff. That's got to be such a bummer. Well, you ain't missing much by giving w7 a miss, except a lot of headaches. Others may be doing better, and I know it's better tech in the way of addressing more memory and such, but it's broken a lot of tools. It's weird, there was a huge technology change between 98 and xp and of course there are always growing pains but I never saw more problems and hardware abandoned type of stuff between xp and w7 even though those technologies are closer together. And our screenreaders just exaserbate the problem. Well, that's encouraging about ms and the guys, to have a real way in instead of having to hack around. I've read a little about ui and if it's something adopted widely by the industry, well, that could make things better for us. Let's hope it really happens. I understand that all the ms tools development tools use it, the big problem is that many of the vendors want to use cross platform tools, and much of that stuff is access unfriendly. They don't want to have to do the work twice if they're supporting mac and such can't blame them. But I guess we'll just have to see. Blessings. Stephie is home and resting, she's sore, but she's home now and I can look after her. Don't know if these botox injections they did more aggressive ones in my neck and head this time, are going to work, but they may take a while. My head is sore this morning 'grin'. Speaking of musical stuff again, I was trying to use hotspot to get a plug-in to be more accessible, and I got her done, but I can't export spots properly. Aaron says he can't duplicate the problem, but that seems to be the big show stopper with hs, everything seems to work reasonably well now except importing and exporting. At least for me. I always though a multi-file approach to hs would have been better, instead of shoving everything in to one file. I don't know what that would have intailed from a programming perspective, but snowy does it this way. I guess it's 6 of one half a dozen of another because parsing files is pretty standard stuff anyway, but maybe it would have allayed some export problems. Just a thought. I need to revisit that at some point. Have a great morning. At 09:32 PM 11/11/2011, you wrote:Hey Chris, Yeah, Win 7 is iffy at best. Not getting the dual boot option with XP on my system was a big mistake. I decided not to because I figured I'd cling to XP and never get around to tackling the hassle of a new OS. And I was under the impression that addressing the audio issues was a big part of SP1. Oh well. Live and learn. I haven't tried the X1 script because I didn't upgrade Sonar since my studio was trashed. Even after spending a fortune to have a huge amount of work done and having the contractors tell me that there was absolutely no way in hell another drop of water could ever get in I had water coming in about 3 weeks later; the first time we had a heavy wind-driven rain after all the work was done. It's not much, and it's actually manageable with a dehumidifier, but I've come to just hate that space, odd as it sounds, after hauling all my gear up and down for the last several years. Now I'm trying to talk myself into selling most of the gear I have racked and stacked and packed all over the house. Nothing like a bedroom closet full of drums and a sun room with 20 grand worth of gear boxed up and ready to ship. Groan. Yeah, I've been meaning to give NVDA a whirl myself. I just never seem to get around to it. I battled with LightScribe discs a few years ago and it was kind of a crap shoot whether I'd get what I expected or not. But I imagine the program has changed and there are probably different programs out there today. I'm glad it's working well for you. And I'm glad the mackie is too. I'd be tempted if I had anything I could do with it. I don't know much about Windows 8 other than that Doug and Ron have been spending a lot of time at Microsoft for quite a while now working on it through the development cycle. And according to them Microsoft seems to actually be trying to make it much more accessible right from the get-go. Of course they've kind of forced their own hand on that front because Windows 8 will use direct 2D rendering, which will in turn make every existing screen-reader absolutely blind to everything. But the last time Doug returned from a week at Microsoft he was very excited about the way in which they designed the hook for screen-readers. So, knock on wood, we might actually finally have a very fast and accurate hook into the operating system. And UIA pretty much takes the accessibility issue out of lazy and/or ignorant developers hands by incorporating MSAA like hooks into everything, only better in that UIA will provide much more detailed information about controls and windows. Of course I'm sure there will be the usual growing pains. So only time will tell. Regards, Tom On 11/9/2011 4:12 PM, Chris Belle wrote:Ah, a much missed voice. I need to call you soon, and just chew the fat. And i hope things are going ok on the beta team. I wrote gwmicro a private email voiceing my concerns about w7 stability and they said they were working on it. And there are beginning scripts for x1 have you tried them yet? I hope that keeps on being developed. I'm still using xp just because it works so well on everything old and new, and only venture in to w7 for my students who need help there. I haven't trusted any of my projects to w7 yet though. the ocr on jaws 13 is bitchin', and nvda that free little reader is really cool, it'll read things the bog boys won't touch. I've been using it for my lightscribe labels and such, I can actually do some simple printing for people now without help, we've gota dedicated machine in the front room for folks who want to play lightscribe artists 'grin'. Rest assured, our faith and praises are always weelcome on this list. YOu know, I compromised and didn't go with a control surface and got the mackie onyx 1640i a true analog board but with firewire sends and returns on each channel, man what a sweet board. Real analog goodness and the convenience of digital. Couldn't ask for anything better, except maybe a footswitch for my talk back, but i use the talkback on my headphone amp anyway, but man, is it easy to caress a sound 90 percent of the way there in a hurry and still have the ability to automate or do extra whatever in he box too. And absolutely no menus, what little control pannel there is is very accessible for setting asio buffer size and such. hey, since the bios is going away finally with windows heading toward w8, i wonder if we'll get talking installs like the mac has? I hope the flooding hasn't rered it's ugly head again at your house. We had to jack hammer the whole basement and put in new poop pipe, and we put in a back flow valve so hopefully this time is things back up with the city, we won't get a lot in the basement. Yuck. And we had to put a new roof on this year too. Always something, but god's been good and we've even managed to double up some payments on the principal on the loan, so we're gonna get this off our backs as quick as possible. Sonar 8.5 3 is still the sweet spot. I haven't made any real significant progress as a baby programmer 'grin', but the little skills I do have sure help to quickly whip up a macro to hit a button or so on a synth or what ever. Speaking from your great knowledge as a programmer, how easy would it be to integrat ocr with wineyes? It's amazing, I tried it with a familiar plug and it showed up everything, the menu states, even stuff that hotspot clicker wouldn't do, I think every screen-reader aught to have this feature? Ocr that sun of a gun and then present it so you can click on whateer and even with window-eyes very flaky w7 behavior, it still beats jaws for exploration with the mouse feaures. Atleast without jumping through a bunch of hoops. And it's weird because stuff that talks in xp doesn't talk in w7 and narrator even in w7 will rad stuff window-eyes won't. I guess it's those different video driver modes, dcm versus mirror versus ui. I just know enough about that stuff to be very dangerous. Well, off to la la land, they gave me morphine a plenty and stuck needles in my head and neck today and i think about 12 hours of sleep are called for. At 03:29 AM 11/9/2011, you wrote:Hey Chris, Good to hear from you. I've been out of touch for too long. I'm glad to hear so much is going well with your studio, students, your own music, and still having the drive to take up new instruments. It all sounds wonderful. And I can't wait to hear your new album. I wish you the best of luck with everything. And regarding Stephie's and your health concerns? You know my prayers are with the both of you. I don't mean to insinuate spiritual bribery, mind you, but I'll toss my two extra sense worth in with our loving Lord. grin. Wishing the two of you the love and joy of each other, your faith, and your music. And I'm thanking God that I can write this without being crusified; pun intended. God speed, Tom On 11/9/2011 1:20 AM, Chris Belle wrote:haven't posted here for a while, trying to be a good citizen and help the most folks by staying on the mag, but what with several album projects going right now, my wife and I both having medical procedures, and my load of students, I've decided to get off midimag and stay off for a while. So Tom, Sandy, Ramy, I haven't even checked who all is here, Meagan, Omar, Ross, Roy, I'll be putting a little more energy here, and of course the folks that seem to take great delight in throwing rocks at me aren't here. yeh i know, do I want some cheese with that wine. But maybe it's time to buckle down even more and get some work done. We've got our own album which just lacks a few songs being done, but I've had the pleasure of working on some wonderful albums this year, like our good friend Gudrun, what a treat, I wish we could all go back and live in the 1300s but take modern plumbing and our recording machines with us 'grin'. Stephie is learning flute, and I'm learning mandolin nd used it on my first track last week. We bought some new instruments, treated ourselves to a flute, a mandolin and a cat gutt guitar 'grin'. there's just so certain times you need some cat gutts in your music. and Nothing else will do. I've been playing with reason, and our good friend and giant brained roy is 3 jumps ahead of me as usual 'grin'. Reason has a lot of promise, even for us more traditional instrumentalists, and it can be made to work with sonar quite nicely through rewire. We've just got to figure out how to activate the rewire extra channels, I've been cheating by dumping down tracks and re-inserting the same synth. But there's a little something for everyone there, and in the demo you can't save your songs but that doesn't matter if you use it with sonar. Things tend to work best with xp of course, and or 32 bit w7 next in line, and all the issues so far are always with w7 64 bit since it's still green in the conservative studio environment where we're always the last to upgrade, I tend to use lots of older plug-ins that are just great and why loose great tools as long as these fast machines will run them. But time does march on, and fixes will hapen eventually. Ok, off to bed for me, just thought I'd pop my head in here. And update everybody, So the few of you here that are on the mag either write me here or privately. Blessings everybody. Chris and Stephie Belle. For all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web designFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web designFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web designFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web design
