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DJ and Produce with Windows 7 x64
Anyone who calls themselves a DJ should have heard of Serato, and any producers out there should have heard the name Ableton Live. As a producer and a DJ I have heard these names mentioned in the industry but never used them in my workflow until recently. After getting a Numark NS7, and an Akai APC40, I decided to tested out Serato Itch 1.1, and Ableton Live 8.1.1. When running the programs on a Intel 2.0 GHz Dual Core, 3GB Ram, Windows Home XP SP3, the programs ran but were not responsive & stable enough to use during live shows. Reading through the forums at serato's website, I found some Itch users were reporting stable operation using W7 x64, and because 64 bit computing is the future I decided to build a workstation PC using that OS.
Although the driver and application for Itch (W7 x64) is a beta release I decided to test it.
1) Loaded W7 X64 drivers for NS7. Do not plug in the USB cable until prompted to by the software.
2) Loaded firmware that comes with the x64 driver-reboot
3) Loaded Itch 1.5 RC2 - reboot.
4) Uninstalled & reinstalled W7 x64 drivers
(Initially Itch was displaying "Hardware disconnected"; but in the NS7 control panel it stated the NS7 "is" connected)
...this reinstallation of drivers solved the problem - reboot.
5) Start itch normally under W7.
I was also able to run ableton live lite(APC 40 version), with the APC40 controlling clips, and playing back through the NS7 mains. Additionally I use NativeKontrol CL2+TC2 presets for ableton & APC40.
Ran GrandVJ and Itch simultaneously using the APC40 to trigger video clips with no crashes.
The system had no crashes when testing for 3 hrs, but at times when hot cueing, the waveform display of the cued audio would disappear for about 10 sec. Also when exiting Itch the program seems to hang for a few seconds, but these could be due to external Hdd write time.(I will be moving the commonly played media files to an internal Intel 160GB SSD for faster reads)
Computer specs:
ASUS P6X58D premium, i7 950 3.06 GHz, Corsair 12 GB Ram @ 1033, ASUS Radeon HD5870 Graphics Card, W7 and programs loaded on a 40GB Intel SSD, accessing media files through external eSata(1T Toshiba), IEEE 1394 Fantom Drives enclosure (WDC 500GB), CPU temperature controlled by Dual fans on Corsair H50 water cooling(<40 C for the entire time period), Graphics processor (<53C)
I built this computer specifically for these applications:
Ableton Live, Reason, Itch, Virtual DJ, Grand VJ, Fraps, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
and these controllers:
APC40, NS7, Total Control, Axiom 25
*at this time of this test the Total Control and Axiom 25 drivers were not installed
Look for tutorial videos on these controllers, and applications at http://www.youtube.com/AEYST
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