Spearing ahead is great... getting new stuff, feeling all refreshed and up to date. That is until you actually try to do some work. Getting the newest gadgets and software does feel and look great, but how much can you really get done when you're looking down from your ivory tower of technology? Quite simply... not much. You rarely do any work with a simple, single, independent  tool. Most things require a selection of tools to work in some kind of collaboration and when one of them is out of sync, the entire work flow is effected.

I recently got an Axiom Pro 61 (absolutely AWESOME!) along with a Desktop Konnekt 6 (absolutely AWESOME!) to give my scrawny studio a well calculated boost, but I also made an exceptional mistake... I installed Windows 7 64bit. A dear friend assured me with absolute certainty that Ableton Live 8 not only supports 64bit, it was practically made for it, with its plugins to boot. I made sure that the new (and beautiful) hardware had the drivers to support the new operating system before installing it, but my friend's contagious confidence left my software watch asleep.

After a quick format and a flawless installation of the OS (Windows 7 is absolutely wonderful, been using it since beta and I'm very pleased) I installed the new hardware, everything seems and feels good. But then came the onslaught  of the audio software installation... Ableton doesn't naturally support 64bit, it installs as a 32bit software which is superficially ok... but none of the plugins work. It seems to have quite a few security problems with the OS (the x86 Program Files folder seems to be even less privileged). Trying to install any other plugin that uses a sample library or any other external content (even an external INI file) results in great disappointment. Only native 64bit plugins (like Absynth 5) seem to work ok with the 32bit host... weird? you have no idea.

I had a lot of ideas and plans for this new setup... all now will have to wait. Now I'm waiting for a replacement 32bit Windows 7 to arrive (was using the RC version so far)... and another long night of installations and reconfigurations... *sigh* good thing I love doing this shit. ;)