The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

Bruce Wahler wrote:
> All,
> 
> I'm about ready to throw in the towel on Win2K.  An1xEdit has never worked with the onboard (joystick) MIDI adapter.  Media player isn't fond of my Midiman 2x2 USB.  Now, Cakewalk has also stopped working with the USB adapter, even though I haven't changed anything.  All of these items were fine under Win98, and all of them still work on my '98 laptop.

Sounds more like driver problems to me than anything else. Forget about 
the joystick MIDI adapter: this list has many archived messages of 
people who can't get their el cheapo joystick MIDI adapter to work with 
AN1xEdit.

I don't know the quality of the MIDIman Windows 2000 drivers, but a 
quick search on the web reveals that many people have problems with 
MIDIman and/or USB and Windows 2000, and many don't. It's probably the 
MIDIman driver being fussy about your USB interface.

If Cakewalk was working before and now it isn't, there's something else 
wrong. There's no such thing as "I didn't change anything", but it's 
probably something that you wouldn't think would influence your USB 
interface.

> So, I'm debating:  Should I drop back to Win98SE, or plunge ahead into WinXP?  Is anyone out there using XP for music?  If so, how do you like it?  How stable is it?  I'm concerned about Win98's long-term future, and it doesn't handle my 1GB of RAM as well as '2K does.  OTOH, XP is based on 2K, which was based on NT, which never had great audio support.  Is XP any better?

XP is a polished version of 2000, which itself is a polished version of 
NT. But whereas drivers for 2000 are omnipresent for recent hardware, XP 
isn't quite there yet.

Another issue to consider is that Microsoft has already announced when 
it will stop supporting Windows 2000, never mind 98. So XP will be 
supported for another couple of years, probably one or two years more 
than 2000.

I would give 2000 a closer look, because I'm not convinced that the 
operating system is the cause of your problems.

> Oh, and please:  no "get a Mac," "I use BeOS," or "What about Linux?" answers.  I use my main PC for more than music, and I have almost $15K invested in Windows-based engineering development software for my main gig.  It's just not going to happen in the near term.

I fail to see why BeOS (which is dead, anyway) or Linux (which is 
promising, but not more than that) would stop you from using Windows, 
quite frankly. They don't bite one another (although Windows tries to).

But using your music computer for other purposes is usually not a very 
good idea. You can't tune a computer for two different tasks. You 
install something for development purposes, and Cakewalk breaks. If it 
is an option, use a different computer. Hey, it could be a Mac for all I 
know. :)

- Peter