Is anyone still using a Win 7 machine as their DAW?

shredhead7

shredhead7

Active member
I have a Win 7 machine that bought a few years back with the intent that it would be my DAW, but then quit my band and have never gotten around to doing anything with it (it literally has been turned on maybe five times). I would like to start messing around with it, but at this point I know the tech and specs are outdated. For those that are still using Win 7, what software and versions are you running and what interface? If I can save $700-1200 from not buying a new pC, that would be nice.
 
I have a computer that I literally tossed together off ebay with used stuff for $226 shipped to my door... It's an Asus with an i5 Quad Core and 8GB ram. The only thing special about it is I added a 750ti Nvidia card. I ran it on Windows 7 which is it's native OS for about a week and upgraded to Windows 10 and the machine actually ran faster with Windows 10. That should be something you really look into. 10 is not a resource hog like 7 was.

As for DAW, I use Reaper's most recent version flawlessly with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Interface. No lag or latency issues whatsoever.
 
Phil Jacques":3i78o2qz said:
I have a computer that I literally tossed together off ebay with used stuff for $226 shipped to my door... It's an Asus with an i5 Quad Core and 8GB ram. The only thing special about it is I added a 750ti Nvidia card. I ran it on Windows 7 which is it's native OS for about a week and upgraded to Windows 10 and the machine actually ran faster with Windows 10. That should be something you really look into. 10 is not a resource hog like 7 was.

As for DAW, I use Reaper's most recent version flawlessly with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Interface. No lag or latency issues whatsoever.
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Thanks! I built this pc as well, so that thought had crossed my mind. It's just the thought that I built this machine to collect dust. First world problems.
 
I am using Windows 7 on a crappy laptop from 2012 for recording song ideas. It has 1 gig of memory, and I use a Line 6 UX-1 into Reaper. I think Reaper is the best idea for anyone basically. It works for what I use it for (recording song ideas 4/5 tracks and practices/jam ideas). If you are wanting to do like 24 tracks with sequencing it will obviously not work.
 
sutepaj":29dgzizx said:
I am using Windows 7 on a crappy laptop from 2012 for recording song ideas. It has 1 gig of memory, and I use a Line 6 UX-1 into Reaper. I think Reaper is the best idea for anyone basically. It works for what I use it for (recording song ideas 4/5 tracks and practices/jam ideas). If you are wanting to do like 24 tracks with sequencing it will obviously not work.
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Can you do drum tracks, like EZ drummer or does that take too much memory?
 
The amount of ram and type of processor and speed are more important than the OS. There should be no issues running Windows 7.
What are the specs of your machine?
And bonus for all us computer guys, solid state drives are now pretty cheap. Having your samples on an SSD helps a lot, and is a cheap upgrade these days.
 
my recording rig is using Win 7. I just upgraded from XP about a year ago lol. I'm using Pro Tools 8.0.5 with a Digi Rack 002. the computer is a "Pro Tools" ready pc I snagged off Ebay for like $450. I'm running ez drummer 2 with no issues at all. This thing will do anything I need. I just loaded up on all the RTAS plugins I could find since AAX is now the Pro Tools standard. I really like tracks plugins and they have tons that are compatible with my system.
 
sutepaj":1zsts4gb said:
I am using Windows 7 on a crappy laptop from 2012 for recording song ideas. It has 1 gig of memory, and I use a Line 6 UX-1 into Reaper. I think Reaper is the best idea for anyone basically. It works for what I use it for (recording song ideas 4/5 tracks and practices/jam ideas). If you are wanting to do like 24 tracks with sequencing it will obviously not work.
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Actually there are plenty of people using Reaper with over 100 tracks including instances of Kontakt (etc.) and it works better than most DAWs. Reaper has better CPU handling than pretty much all DAWs, as far as people have been testing and reporting. There's the odd time you have to configure it differently for some reason, but once people get that figured out they're always saying how amazing it is in that regard.

It's an incredibly flexible program. It's simple to start with but it can go as deep as most people need it to go (in many different ways). A lot of that functionality isn't shown in the main toolbar (it'll be in the "actions" menu though and you can make custom toolbars). Also with 3rd party scripts, it opens the possibilities up for different workflows that Reaper wasn't even originally intended for.

The only things about Reaper I could "warn" someone about:

1) It won't have exactly the same workflow as every other DAW, and some people get really specific about their workflow, so maybe Reaper "won't be for them".

2) If you're looking for some hardware control surface compatibility that's specific to ProTools, maybe it won't work the same in Reaper (you should ask in advance on the forums or download Reaper to try it).
 
JamesPeters":3of5bilu said:
sutepaj":3of5bilu said:
I am using Windows 7 on a crappy laptop from 2012 for recording song ideas. It has 1 gig of memory, and I use a Line 6 UX-1 into Reaper. I think Reaper is the best idea for anyone basically. It works for what I use it for (recording song ideas 4/5 tracks and practices/jam ideas). If you are wanting to do like 24 tracks with sequencing it will obviously not work.
Click to expand...

Actually there are plenty of people using Reaper with over 100 tracks including instances of Kontakt (etc.) and it works better than most DAWs. Reaper has better CPU handling than pretty much all DAWs, as far as people have been testing and reporting. There's the odd time you have to configure it differently for some reason, but once people get that figured out they're always saying how amazing it is in that regard.

It's an incredibly flexible program. It's simple to start with but it can go as deep as most people need it to go (in many different ways). A lot of that functionality isn't shown in the main toolbar (it'll be in the "actions" menu though and you can make custom toolbars). Also with 3rd party scripts, it opens the possibilities up for different workflows that Reaper wasn't even originally intended for.

The only things about Reaper I could "warn" someone about:

1) It won't have exactly the same workflow as every other DAW, and some people get really specific about their workflow, so maybe Reaper "won't be for them".

2) If you're looking for some hardware control surface compatibility that's specific to ProTools, maybe it won't work the same in Reaper (you should ask in advance on the forums or download Reaper to try it).
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I was talking about doing it on under performing systems you dick! I swear it is time to invade Canada now!
 
sutepaj":gwk3ub2v said:
I was talking about doing it on under performing systems you dick! I swear it is time to invade Canada now!
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President Mr. Garrison already did. :)

Oh if you meant that your system with 1GB of RAM won't handle much, I totally get that.
 
So i should probably update my cool edit pro v2 running smoothly to record wav files on a win7 (wonky af) computer?

:D

The time is nigh ...
 
I run windows 7 on my studio computer, but I'm still using Sonar 8.5 PE. I use it with a Mackie 1620i interface. I use 70+ tracks on a regular basis and have absolutely no problems. I have an i7 quad core with 16GB of ram and 2TB harddrive.
 
Yeah man, use it. I had some laughable PC's running excellent with a shitload of plug ins. Drums VST's and IR's etc.

10 runs pretty good but I have 1 system that 10 keeps auto updating the interface driver causing it not to work. No easy settings to stop it.

Run 7 with no shame and no extra cost. Get the machine running good. Then if you want to add some RAM or SSD's just clone the drives.
 
sutepaj":r5kdgd6e said:
I am using Windows 7 on a crappy laptop from 2012 ...
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Hey Biney, what's your laptop make/model #? I have two x 2GB RAM sticks (total 4GB) from my Lenovo Thinkpad T420 (from when I upgraded it to 8GB). If they'll work in your laptop I'll give them to you. I can look up the details and see if they'll work for your laptop.
 
stratjacket":2txbtqzz said:
Agree with the other comments, should work fine. More RAM will make more difference than anything.
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More RAM (than 4GB) is only useful for running samplers or extremely large projects. With 8GB most projects that "we" (guitarists doing guitar-based music) would want to do would be fine, and that's assuming they'd have something like Superior Drums or EZdrummer using up to 2GB RAM. The DAW itself doesn't take up much RAM (maybe 100MB), the plugins only take up a few MB here and there, and even a track-heavy project will only take up a few GB RAM at most. The trick is when you're running samplers with huge sample banks and/or lots of them in a project; that's what separates "the men from the boys" in terms of how much RAM you need for your DAW.

Until 64-bit OS, 64-bit DAWs and 64-bit sampler plugins for that matter we were limited to 4GB RAM no matter how much we put in the mainboard. That 4GB was used for everything including the OS, the DAW, all the plugins of the DAW and all samples in the project (and any other applications running at the time). Some people still use 32-bit systems and/or 32-bit DAWs with no problems, limiting themselves to ~4GB RAM whether they know it or not.

So if you want to run lots of samplers or large sample banks in general, you might have to go beyond 8GB (and also be using the 64-bit versions of the OS, DAW and sampler plugins). Or if your projects are enormous. But otherwise there's not much point to have beyond 8GB RAM.

If you're also editing video though, you'll have to consider how much RAM you need for that. It may not be something you do in your DAW (some DAWs do video editing), but it's an overall consideration for the computer beyond what your DAW needs.

I'd argue that a SSD (instead of HDD) is more important than having more than 8GB RAM in the system. I'm surprised some people are still running HDDs with large sample banks in Kontakt etc. and wondering why it takes so long to switch between project tabs in Reaper for instance. :) (All the samples have to load to the sampler from the HDD, and HDDs are incredibly slow by comparison to SSDs.)
 
I'm running Reaper on a Dell Precision T7400 Windows 7 and It's Rock Solid. I tried to post a screenshot of all the plugs I'm running but there are too many to show on one screen. So here's a list;

Track 1; Addictive Drums
Track 2; Boot EQ mk 2 Density EQ mkIII
Track 6; Density EQ mkIII, Glaceverb
Track 7;Density EQ mkIII, Glaceverb
Track 8; Waves API-2500, SSL EQ
Track 14: OmniSphere VSTI
Track 15:Kontact VSTI
Track 16: Omnisphere VSTI
Track 17;VB3 Synth VSTI
Track 18;VB3 Synth VSTI
Track 19; Guitar Rig 5
Track 20; Guitar Rig 5
 
Ive be been using win 7 to run protools 10 for quite awhile. i7 processor with 64gig memory. High ram because its also used for graphics 2d-3d....

I personally dont like newer versions of windows. Mainly because I don't like Mac style interfaces, too much hand holding for my taste. I do have win 10 on my laptop and find it annoying more than not.
 
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