M-Audio has actually gotten in touch in response to frustrations about incompatibilities with OS updates — updates which, admittedly, have recently been frequent and sometimes troublesome on both the Windows and Mac sides. Niels Larsen, General Manger at M-Audio, responds in comments with some specifics on where drivers are, some new drivers that were released literally today, and some comments on the OS situation in general.  (I’ve copied it here just in case you missed it in comments.)

I’ve also heard from Digidesign/M-Audio public relations; I hope to have additional updates soon.

This is well worth reading whether or not you own M-Audio hardware.

From comments:

Hi all,

I’m Niels Larsen, General Manager of M-Audio. I am posting here not to throw things at Peter:-) for writing this article but to recognize to you all that we are aware that we are disappointing many of our users. With OS updates not being entirely voluntary anymore it gets increasingly frustrating for users to suddenly find that their systems don’t work from one day to the next.

I am sorry that we are prolonging this frustration by being late in delivering compatible drivers. It affects many of our loyal users and it therefore also affects our business.

So what’s the current status? I have tried to outline for you below where we are as of today:

Leopard
Today we posted release drivers for our Firewire Solo/Audiophile/410/1814/Ozonic and NRV-10. We still have work to do on Profire Lightbridge and Projectmix but outside of these two products our Leopard development is complete. I hope users who have experienced problems with the beta drivers will find the new drivers trouble-free.

http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1267.html

XP SP3
The statement from http://www.m-audio.com that Peter referenced in his article above was correctly quoted. We actually did ourselves a disservice by not providing more information and have corrected that today in the following link:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=620a9083da49326e05cbb00e653a528d

Of course we also have to fix the installers that don’t work under SP3. It’s not only frustrating for our users, its also a burden on our tech support team. We will provide more information about that during next week as we get a better overview of the timeline.

Projectmix and Vista 32
We posted the 32 bit release driver for Projectmix about a week ago and that leaves Transit, Mobile Pre and Ozone still in beta.

Vista SP-1 & Vista 64
We have been recruiting for beta testers on our website for a little while but the truth is that we are still some way off with both of these two projects. We have to finish our other Windows projects completely before we can fully engage but I hope you are getting a sense from the above that things are looking up on that front. Before long, our development should be focused entirely on these two issues and as we are in beta already we hope that development will go relatively smooth.
We are fully aware that Vista 64 is a big deal particularly because of the RAM constraints within Vista 32, so we take this seriously. We plan to give a timeline update on our website once we have put Vista 32 and XP SP3 behind us.

Going forward, I hope you will see an improvement in our support as our driver team is growing with new hires and an increased commitment to support OS updates in a timely fashion. I appreciate that we are not perfect until the day that we are able to launch driver update within minutes of a new OS revision. Recently we have been far off that mark and need to at least get closer to perfect.

Thanks for listening.

Niels

Thanks, Niels, for being so open. It may not make people any less frustrated with various updates being out of sync, but I think we do appreciate knowing more about what’s happening behind the scenes. (And based on feedback we’ve gotten, M-Audio/Digidesign are far from alone with difficulties with some of these recent OS updates.)

We have some more stories on 64-bit Windows and other operating system changes forthcoming; if anyone has more they’d like to know, do say so. I will follow up more on M-Audio specifically next week once I’ve had a chance to talk to them.

And this also illustrates why, when you are having trouble, don’t be quiet about it. Let the folks you bought your gear from know specifically what’s happening. We’ll continue to track how responsive they are to your needs.

In celebration of my birthday, this month's Home with House show contains a special 2 hour long mix. Keeping with the theme of last episode, this mix mirrors the progression of moods throughout a period of the day. This episode follows the timeline of an early evening through to the end of an eventful night. The mix starts off with some deep and soulful jazz suitable for an evening of cocktails with friends, and progresses to some more upbeat and funky house that represents a fun night out on the town. Episode 6 is called "Moonlight Bargain". Download the mix and leave comments for this episode here: http://www.velvetycouch.com/blog/archives/000313.html Subscribe to this podcast here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HomeWithHouse Home with House ep06 - Moonlight Bargain tracklisting: 1. Loan Souls - Sun Is Shinning (Original Mix) 2. Rhythym Of Elements - Tribe #2 (North Wind) 3. Fredrik Stark - Late Night Groove feat. Tomoko Ono (Original Mix) 4. Samantha James - Breathe You In (KJ's Soulful Mix) 5. Atlantic Fusion - Jesse Rose - Re-Jigg (Original Mix) 6. Seven Hill Soul - Sonic Love (Central Avenue's Soulful Jam) 7. Fabio Bacchini, Andrea Carissimi - Love Spin feat. Brent St. Clair (Jazzy Dub Mix) 8. Justin Michael, Secret Soul - Celebration Of Music feat. Gina Rene (Original Dub Mix) 9. Johnny Fiasco - The Message (Original Mix) 10. Scott Wozniak - Breathe (Breathe Dub) 11. Joeski, DJ Chus - El Amor (Original Mix) 12. Ross Couch - The Look In Her Eyes (Original Mix) 13. Grantorino feat. Sha'ron - What You Won't Do (House Device Remix) 14. E-Tones - Ooh La La (Johnny Fiasco Remix) 15. Helena Brown - Cancao Dourada (Ralf Gum's Club Vocal Mix) 16. Ross Couch - See The Light (Original Mix) 17. Tommy Largo, Buck Naked, Busy, Phonogram - Stressed The Fuck Out (Original Mix) 18. Ross Couch - Rising Up (Christian Malloni Remix) 19. Deadmau5 - Faxing Berlin (Original Mix) 20. Solaris Heights - Vice (Sydenham Dub) 21. Freemasons feat. Bailey Tzuke - Uninvited (Club Mix) 22. Chris Botti/John Barry/Chet Baker - I Didn't Love You Less Peace! - Source Site:http://www.homewithhouse.com

16th May 2008: Denis Eismann has updated SuperDrumFX to v1.3. Improvements: The SDFX Library path is now adjustable: The position of the SuperDrumFX Drum Sample Library is not important anymore. There is no ne...

16th May 2008: XT Software has released a new energyXT2 Beta for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Changes: You can now add VSTs from right-click on track in sequencer. You can now add VSTs from right-click on FX slot...

16th May 2008: Sonalksis has announced the release of version 2.04 of the Essentials Mk2 plug-in suite (SV-315 Mk2, SV-517Mk2 and SV-719). Changes: All Essentials Mk2: Ported to Digidesign Audiosuite format. Impr...

Current TV has done a video featurette on a Handmade Music event held by CDM, Etsy.com, and Make in the fall. We’re finally getting back to these this summer, but this gives you an idea of the kinds of projects people are up to in the NYC area — hope some of you in the rest of the world can enjoy it.

Via The Storque, Etsy.com’s excellent online magazine. (See their previous coverage of these events.)
We could really use your help raising the visibility of DIY music tech — if you’re a Current member, or can register quickly, you can give the video a thumbs-up and give it a shot of being on the Current TV network. The way it works is, Current takes popular online videos and sticks them on the actual tube. And if you want your own fame and fortune and are near NYC, be sure to check out our call for projects.

If you’re on the East Coast of the USA and want to share some of your musical (and visual) projects with us, we have a number of opportunities.

Submit now! [Was briefly broken; now working!]

• Internet Week — Evening with MAKE Magazine: Thursday June 5, 6:30-9:30pm. We’ve already programmed part of this, but there should be a couple of spots left for unique DIY music/visual hardware and software projects. Part of a week-long celebration of the Internet in NYC.


• Hackers on Planet Earth Conference: Friday, July 18. This legendary assemblage of hackers at NY’s Pennsylvania Hotel is one of the world’s great geekfests. Tech author Steven Levy is keynoting. We’re throwing a big music and live visuals party, combining forces with some of the local 8-bit community.
• Handmade Music with Etsy + Make: We’re re-inaugurating our regular series with Make Magazine and Etsy.com. Dates TBD but we hope to bring this back as a regular event in Brooklyn.
• Mystery Event in Boston! If you’re in the Boston area, stay tuned. (Providence, New Haven, you’ll want to make the trip.)

Here’s what we’re looking for: DIY music software, hardware projects, 8-bit, custom gaming and gaming interfaces for music, live visuals, hacked solutions, visualizations and sonifications of Internet data (would seem especially appropriate during Internet week), interactive projects, physical computing, oddities, custom cases, weird stuff … the usual.

For HOPE, I’m particularly interested in keeping with the hacking theme, including open source projects, Linux audio, and unusual projects built with computers. With all the cool stuff happening in DIY electronics and hardware, software often falls by the wayside. And with all of these, I’d love to see more audiovisual projects.

Deadline: Right Now

Sign up here if you’re interested in doing these. I thought about setting a deadline, but honestly, with Make it’s first-come, first-serve, and with everything else, I’d rather know sooner than later, so if you’ve got something in-process, don’t be shy!

A Google Docs live form is embedded in this story below right on createdigitalmusic.com; if you’re reading via RSS, you’ll need to click through to the site to view it properly.

Alternatively, use the direct link

Feel free to forward the call!

Here’s another addition to our iPhone / iPod touch round-up: the author of the beautiful, minimal iPhoneSynth has created a drum machine inspired by Roland’s classic TR-909. Basic features, but it could be fun to hash out a drum pattern for your next tune on the subway:

IR-909 is a drum machine for the iPhone inspired by the Roland TR-909. IR-909 features a 16-step sequencer, 4 patterns, 8 different drum sounds and the ability to adjust tempo(BPM) and shuffle amount.

iPhone Applications at roventskij.net

It’s interesting: I heard some complaints in comments on our previous round-up that the applications were basically toys. To me, there’s a certain appeal to having something simple and elegant to toy around with musically, whether on an iPhone or other mobile gadget (Nintendo DS, Palm) — and that’s long been the draw. Of course, we know what you want to be able to do with your iPhone, as exemplified in this fake mock-up by our friend Tricil.

Before you get excited, it’s fake! It’s not real! He admits it’s fake! (Nice fakery, in fact, Tricil!) But it does raise an interesting question. For now, Apple’s APIs are largely incomplete on iPhone in the way that would be necessary to support something like Live. But mobile devices in general are moving fast, and I don’t think it’s that far out of the question. The question is, would you actually want something far simpler than Live in your pocket — or perhaps you’d want to do what mobile users have been doing, using sophisticated trackers for music arrangement that are better suited to mobile hardware.

And, likewise, it’s very possible that tools like the iPhone, iPod touch, or others could work as effective remote controls for full-blown music apps. See our previous story on an upcoming, commercial multi-touch controller app for iPhone/iPod touch and Pro Tools:

Control Pro Tools with an iPhone or iPod Touch

As for your mobile Linux nuts, I say bring it on. (Hey, if I saw a nice enough gadget, I might try to code that one myself…)

16th May 2008: Stillwell Audio has updated all of its plug-ins to version 1.50 which also sees the welcome release of Mac OS X Universal Binary VST and AU versions of all of them. The plug-ins: 1973 Bad Buss Mojo...

16th May 2008: Flux has announced the release of Stereo Tool - a new free plug-in for Windows and Mac OS X. Its other freebie plug-in, Bitter Sweet II, has also been updated for both Windows and Mac OS X and Flux's ...