Should Musicians Move To A

64-bit OS?
64-bit Computing

Computer / Software
Mixing / Production

By Robin Vincent
Published November 2010

In theory, 64-bit operating systems allow us to use as

much RAM as our software demands. So should we all
be using them?

Computer technology
seems to be in
continuous transition.
Just when we think
we've got it all sorted,
something else comes
along and tempts us
forward into a new promised land of awe and wonder.
Some new technology, such as multi-core
processing, delivers on the promises and exceeds our
expectations. Some, such as Windows Vista, are more
like the Emperor's new clothes. The current carrot being
dangled is the 64-bit operating system (OS). With both
Apple and Microsoft offering stable and compatible
64-bit platforms, the time has come to dig around and
consider the promises. In this article we'll be looking at
the advantages of the 64-bit environment and running
some tests to show what this could mean for audio
production software. We'll also look at how to manage
the transition, mixing 32-bit and 64-bit applications,
and ask manufacturers about the challenges involved.

To take full advantage of a 64-bit environment means to

run 64-bit native applications on a 64-bit processor
within a 64-bit OS. On the hardware side, 64-bit
processors have been around for decades, but it wasn't
until AMD introduced the Opteron and Athlon 64 in 2003
that they made it into the mainstream desktop. Intel
followed suit a year later, and since then all desktop
architecture has been more or less 64-bit compatible.

On the OS side, Microsoft released Windows XP

Professional x64 Edition in 2005 to take advantage of the
64-bit hardware, but very few hardware drivers were
available, and compatible application software was
virtually non-existent. There was no 32-bit emulation
mode, so if it wasn't a fully coded 64-bit application, it
wouldn't run. At around the same time, Apple offered
command-line access to 64-bit processing through OS
10.4 'Tiger', but no one really noticed. The first sign of
a workable 64-bit OS came with the release of Vista in
2006, which shipped with both 32-bit and 64-bit
versions in the retail box. It triumphed over the XP version
because of its ability to run 32-bit applications within the
64-bit environment. Mac OS X caught up in 2007 with
10.5 'Leopard', and in 2009, OS 10.6 'Snow Leopard'
introduced Apple's 64-bit kernel as default, with all the
included applications migrated to 64-bit native. Like
Vista, Windows 7 shipped last year with both 32-bit and
64-bit versions.

Recent sales figures (from the second quarter of 2010)

indicate that about half of the Windows 7 installations in
use are 64-bit, and this is increasing all the time. Sales of
64-bit Windows operating systems now outstrip 32-bit
ones by about four to one. The consumer has been
largely oblivious to the resolution of their OS, or the
revolution within: browse any of the major PC ranges,
such as those of Dell or HP, and you'll find the 64-bit
version of Windows 7 installed by default. For the majority
of computer users, the move to a 64-bit environment is
seamless and uninteresting. It appears that it's only in
a few specialist markets that there's any debate or
trouble at all — and, unfortunately, digital audio is one of
them.

Any straw poll of audio software users or manufacturers

reveals that the key advantage of a 64-bit OS is the
ability to access more RAM. It's difficult to come up with
any other quantifiable factors. Differences such as wider
address registers, faster bus architecture and function
calls, and better scalability are tricky things to measure in
the field of audio, but, on balance, don't seem to yield
much greater polyphony, or the ability to run more
instances of effects
and software
instruments. Adobe,
who have recently
released 64-bit
versions of
Photoshop, Premier
and After Effects with
CS5, have been
quoted as saying that A good test subject for memory access:
Spectrasonics' Trilian features a 2.3GB
in some Acoustic Bass instrument.
circumstances, with
large and complex projects, Photoshop has been seen to
run 15 times faster on a 64-bit OS, but it's all a bit vague.
In an effort to mirror this sort of complexity, a test was
created to measure and compare the time taken to mix
down a large, high-definition audio project packed with
effects. In Cubase 64 on 64-bit Windows it took five
minutes and 24 seconds; in Cubase 32 on 64-bit
Windows it took five minutes and 39 seconds, and in
Cubase 32 on 32-bit Windows it took five minutes and 41
seconds. Not exactly demonstrating the awesome power
of 64-bit native applications, but perhaps an indication,
at least, that there are some gains to be had outside of
RAM access.

Where memory access is the most useful is in the area of

sample playback, or rather the use of samples in
complex, multi-articulated virtual instruments. When
Gigasampler demonstrated its ability to stream gigabytes
of sample data off a hard drive through Windows 98, the
era of hardware samplers came to an abrupt end, and the
era of the software sampler had begun. When it was
released in 1998, the recommended specs were only
a paltry 128MB of RAM, yet it was able to pull 64 notes of
polyphony from a 1GB piano instrument. Once the power
of the software sampler was understood, sample sizes
increased dramatically, but, probably more importantly,
so did the demands of the user. When Gigastudio was
discontinued in 2008, the forums were full of people
trying to squeeze a few more megabytes out of their
32-bit Windows XP boxes, with clever manipulation of the
memory management, in order to load that fully
articulated trumpet that they couldn't live without.

It's here that we find the biggest demand for a 64-bit

production environment: in the realm of orchestral
instruments and the loading of massive sample libraries.
This may also give a clue as to why many musicians who
deal mainly with either electronic instruments or live
recording are perhaps bemused at what all the fuss is
about. The last thing someone composing in
Propellerhead Reason is going to run out of is memory.
Similarly, recording mixing and processing multitrack
audio in Pro Tools is much heavier on the CPU than it is
ever going to be on memory. Both Propellerhead and
Digidesign have been running successful production
environments on the 32-bit platform for many years, and
being proprietary systems, they are not subject to some
of the excesses of the third-party VST plug-in
manufacturers. However, as the 64-bit advantages
become more apparent, users will be pushing for
greater compatibility, and our 32-bit friends need to be
careful that they don't get left behind.

In order to get some

broad brush-stroke
comparisons between
environments, we're
using Spectrasonics'
Trilian Total Bass
Module, which has
The current versions of Windows and Mac OS
a bunch of huge are fully 64-bit native.
acoustic and electric
basses that eat memory for breakfast. You can run
dozens of synthesized and real bass instruments in Trilian
without ever hitting the memory ceiling, but if you abuse
it in the right way, it does a superb job of showing the
limitations of the 32-bit OS and the possibilities of the
64-bit OS. Trilian comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit
flavours. The test machine is a Core i5 750 with 8GB
DDR3 RAM, dual booting in Windows 7 Professional
32-bit and 64-bit. Test hosts are Cubase and Sonar, both
of which have 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and Ableton
Live, which is 32-bit only.

Trilian has a couple of huge acoustic upright basses, over

2GB in size, each with a couple of different articulations
that load different sample sets. These are loaded into the
first four of the eight available slots. They load partly into
RAM and partly onto disk ready for streaming, and so
usually take up about 1GB of actual memory. The other
four are electric basses, each over 1GB in size, loading
about 600-700MB into RAM.

On 32-bit Windows, an application is allowed a maximum

of 2GB regardless of how much RAM is physically
installed. A 32-bit OS can only ever address a maximum
of 4GB per process. Cubase, Sonar and Live were all able
to load up a single full-range upright bass instrument.
Loading a second would get stuck at about 1.5GB, and
a message would pop up saying that we were trying to
load an instrument that exceeded what was available to it.
The first instrument could still be played, but that was as
far as it got.

With Windows XP, there was a much talked about '3GB

Switch', which could be enabled by a simple edit in the
'boot.ini' file. This forced Windows into allocating 3GB of
memory to an application, allowing the loading of a few
more instruments. Sometimes this would interfere with
how Windows was arranging resources for hardware, and
clashes could occur with video and DSP cards, but when
it worked, it was a great way to boost system
performance. With Windows Vista, the boot.ini file
vanished and this loophole was moved somewhere less
accessible, while in Windows 7, the 'bcdedit' command
can be used to turn on the 3GB switch by entering the
following phrase into a Command window that's been run
as Administrator: bcdedit.exe /set IncreaseUserVa 3072.
Upon reboot, a whole other 2.3GB bass could be loaded,
and this time it stalled on the third when it reached 2.7GB
in total. Not a bad tip.

As a 64-bit OS can
access more than
4GB of RAM, it makes
no sense for Windows
to artificially limit the
amount of RAM an
application can use.
This means, in theory,
that a 32-bit
application running on
a 64-bit OS should be
able to access a full The first 64-bit microprocessor was created
by MIPS Technologies back in 1991.
4GB of RAM
(assuming that further RAM is available for the system to
run). This certainly seems to be the case. Cubase, Sonar
and Live could all load four instruments, totalling around
3.7GB. On loading instrument number five, they all
crashed out with the dreaded Microsoft C++ RunTime
Error. So some caution is required, as is frequent saving,
but the test shows that even running a 32-bit application
in an emulated mode on a 64-bit OS gives much better
performance than running it on a 32-bit OS.
As expected, we finally get to break the 4GB barrier on
a fully 64-bit system. We loaded up a full Trilian with
eight instruments — nearly 7GB of samples loaded into
RAM — and each played perfectly. Things started to get
dicey on loading a second instance of Trilian, with
playback beginning to crackle as the total physical RAM
limit was being approached. It should be noted that when
polyphony was raised and more notes were played the
CPU would jump with the intensity of having to deal with
so much data. This suggests that the CPU is still likely to
be a factor when it comes to performance and sample
playback.

A major factor preventing people from moving to a 64-bit

OS is that there's much confusion over what will and will
not work in the 64-bit environment. In particular, even if
your chosen host is available in a 64-bit version, many
plug-ins are not. Vista, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard all
allow for 32-bit code to be run on their 64-bit versions,
albeit with a small overhead, so in principle this shouldn't
be a barrier to moving to a 64-bit OS. However, running
32-bit plug-ins within a 64-bit host or alongside 64-bit
plug-ins is a slightly different matter, requiring a clever bit
of bridging software.
The 64-bit versions of
both Cubase and
Sonar come with their
own 'bit bridge'
technology. It's not
flawless but it goes
a long way towards Steinberg's VSTBridge allowing us to load a
disappointing 1.5GB worth of Trilian
providing instruments.
compatibility while we
wait for the software
companies to pull
their fingers out and
come up with proper
64-bit versions.
Waves and Universal
Audio are two of the
32-bit culprits that setThe freeware jBridge breaking the 4GB
forums alight with barrier in 32-bit Ableton Live.
troubled tales of bit-bridging woes. With version 5.1 of
Cubase, many UAD users had trouble getting stable
performance from Steinberg's VST Bridge. With version
5.5, this is much improved, while for many others the
solution lay with a third-party bit-bridge called jBridge,
created by João Fernandes. João's motivation was that
he wanted to continue using 32-bit plug-ins, both free
and commercial, that would probably never make it to
a 64-bit version. In the writing and updating of jBridge
he's had to overcome some enormous problems relating
to compatibility and odd issues such as how the host
displays the graphical user interface. Hardware-based
plug-ins were particularly difficult, which may give a clue
as to why neither Universal Audio, SSL, TC Electronic or
Digidesign have come up with full 64-bit versions as yet
(although, at the time of writing, all except the SSL
Duende will now install and run on a 64-bit OS).

So, for the next stage in our testing we ditched the 64-bit
version of Trilian and loaded up the 32-bit version in
64-bit Sonar and Cubase. Sonar's BitBridge and
Cubase's VSTBridge load up as their own process
alongside the host. VSTBridge managed a disappointing
single instrument of about 1GB loaded. When Trilian was
set to unlimited memory, loading a second instrument
would cause a runtime error and crash. In Sonar, the
BitBridge happily managed four instruments, using 3.5GB
RAM, and got stuck on the fifth. Swapping VSTBridge for
jBridge in Cubase left it able to match Sonar's
performance in loading up four instruments. It's almost as
if VSTBridge is artificially restricted to the 2GB of a 32-bit
OS.

It's a little-known and rarely understood fact that jBridge

also works backwards. Not only can it bridge 32-bit
plug-ins into a 64-bit host, but it can bridge 64-bit
plug-ins into a 32-bit host. It may not be immediately
clear what this means but, for instance, Ableton Live,
a 32-bit application on our 64-bit OS, could use jBridge
to run the 64-bit version of Trilian. In our tests here, it
matched the performance of 64-bit Cubase and Sonar by
loading all eight instruments. But taking it further, this
presents an alternative to trying to bridge all those Waves
and UAD plug-ins into a 64-bit host so you can use the
odd 64-bit instrument: instead, you could use the 32-bit
plug-ins natively in a 32-bit host, and bridge the odd
64-bit instrument instead.

It's hard work having to maintain compatibility using

bridging software. A lot of the criticism Steinberg and
Cakewalk receive about bit-bridging is down to the
plug-ins themselves rather than the bridging technology.
It would be far better for all the hosts and plug-ins to
make the jump to 64-bit native so that the user gets
a more compatible and stable recording environment,
without all this mucking about with bridges. It could also
be said that the ease of 32-bit emulation in the 64-bit OS
and the cleverness of the bit-bridging has allowed
companies without 64-bit versions to drag their feet. On
the other hand, we are talking about complex
applications, built by relatively small companies, for
whom the change to 64-bit is a huge undertaking —
particularly where, as in the case of software such as Live
or Reason, there are very few advantages to the majority
of their users. In programming terms, it's not simply
a matter of recompiling using a 64-bit compiler; it's more
akin to a complete rewrite. For instance, Propellerhead
use an API called the Carbon Human Interface Toolbox to
create the windows, buttons and menus in Reason, but
it's not available on the 64-bit Mac OS X, so translating
that user interface over to a 64-bit OS is no small
undertaking. Then there's a lot of other third-party
functionality that forms part of the software and would
also need rewriting. In some respects, we're at
a remarkable place of conflict, where we have the current
32-bit environment clashing with the incoming 64-bit
future, but amongst the chaos and confusion, everything
actually works — almost.

There's no doubt that

we are heading into
a 64-bit future. The
hardware is already
compatible, there are
very few problems
outside the creative
industries, and the
forthcoming Windows 8
is rumoured to be 64-bit
only, although
undoubtedly with full No sign of a 64-bit Rewire... yet!

32-bit emulation. Some developers, such as

Spectrasonics, welcome the move, as it enables products
like Trilian to really shine and demonstrate why more RAM
is good. Neither Ableton or Propellerhead would be
drawn into suggesting any kind of schedule for a 64-bit
version of Live, Reason or Rewire, but it's certainly
something on their radar (João Fernandes of jBridge
fame suggested he might give Rewire a look). Avid
recently released version 8.04 of Pro Tools, which brings
official support for the Windows 7 64-bit platform,
making it the last of the major music applications to make
the jump to the 64-bit environment (though the
application itself is still 32-bit).

To push us to a fully 64-bit native environment would

probably take a killer 64-bit only plug-in that no one can
live without. In the meantime, whether your host is 32- or
64-bit, access to at least 4GB of RAM, the bit bridging of
plug-ins in one direction or another, the ever-increasing
realism of sample libraries and the potential for
performance gains are all advantages worth having.

Music production 64-bit 64-bit

software compatible? native?
Ableton Live 8.1 Yes No
Apple Logic Yes Yes
Avid Pro Tools 8.04 Yes No
Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Yes Yes
Cockos Reaper 3 Yes Yes
Image Line FL Studio Yes No
Magix Samplitude Yes No
PreSonus Studio One Yes Yes
Propellerhead Reason 5 Yes No
Propellerhead Record 1.5 Yes No
SSL Soundscape 6 Yes No
Steinberg Cubase 5 Yes Yes
Steinberg Nuendo 5 Yes Yes
 64-bit 64-bit
A selection of plug-ins
compatible? native?
Antares Auto-Tune Yes No
Arturia V Collection Yes No
Celemony Melodyne Yes No
EastWest Composers
Yes Yes
Collection
Fxpansion BFD2 Yes No
IK Multimedia Total Bundle Yes No
Native Instruments
Yes Yes
Komplete 7
Spectrasonics products Yes Yes
SSL Duende No No
TC Electronic Powercore Yes No
Toontrack EZDrummer Yes Yes
Universal Audio UAD Yes No
VSL Vienna range Yes Yes
Waves range Yes No

It's important not to confuse 64-bit processing,

applications or operating systems with bit depth in an
audio context:

Audio bit depth: 16-bit or 24-bit audio is to do with

the resolution of audio files.
Audio processing bit depth: DAW applications
typically process audio at a higher resolution than
that of the files themselves. For instance, Ableton
 Live has a 64-bit mixing bus, although Live itself is
a 32-bit application, and works with 16- or 24-bit
files. As with the audio files, the resolution of the
processing of audio is unrelated to the operating
system.

In version 1.2 of their STEAM playback engine,

Spectrasonics introduced a new memory addressing
option on the Mac version called the Sample File Server.
This enables Spectrasonics' Omnisphere and Trilian to
access memory outside of the host application, so when
running in a 32-bit application, they are unrestrained by
the 32-bit memory restrictions.

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Published November 2010