I hope this is not a stupid question...But I really don't know the answer so I'll just fire it off:
Does a 64 bit operating system have better sound quality than a 32 bit operating system or does the bit rate just refer to how much processing power the operating system itself takes to run? (graphics etc)
I have windows xp 32 bit I find it to be surprisingly stable yet I'm wondering if I'm missing some sound quality because of not running in 64 bit......Thanks in advance:)

Hi Jeff:

It's a reasonable question, and unequivocally, there is no difference ... zilch... in 32 and 64-bit OS sound quality.

What the 64-bits refers to is the memory fetch size -- when the CPU (the computing chip) makes a call to random access memory (RAM ...these are the vertical cards on your motherboard ... see the picture of my motherboard below ... the RAM is up front and to the left... the CPU is under the fan) it brings back 64-bits (twice as much as with a 32-bit OS). Since these fetch operations are on a clock (e.g., my x*3.5 billion fetches a second for my computer where the x* is the CPU to clock multiplier) you technically could do twice as much computing with a 64-bit OS.

You have to have a 64-bit CPU chipset to use the 64-bit OS; 64-bit OS give you access to more than 4GB of RAM (your upper limit with 32-bit computing ... 4GB is what I have in the computer shown below)

But, when it comes to an application like BiaB ... 64 and 32-bit OS are processing exactly the same information ... the same stream of digital 1s and 0s for audio DAC and output on the audio board, at exactly the same time and the sound output is identical.

Also, I have found from a practical standpoint, there is very little speedup in going from 32 to 64 bit Windows. I have a dual boot on the machine below and both 32 and 64 bit Win 7 have computation performance of 7.4 and memory fetch performance of 7.3 on the Windows Performance metric (right click on 'Start/Computer' and go from there to compute your performance ... 7.9 is tops).

I think adding cores is a lot cheaper and better way to improve performance. My four core AMD Phenom II is running about 3 times the number of instructions of a single core on the AMD chip ... see my other post (click here) for how I did this on the cheap )

Chris

Thanks for the reply...Very informative. I have an older p.c. (2g processor and maxed out @ 2g ram) It seems to be doing alright though. I'm looking forward to seeing your other post ....Thanks again and have a great day.

Yo Chris. Thanks for that great explanation. I just upgraded from XP to Win 7. It took me some time to learn if I had a 32 or 64 bit processor. It's 32 and my laptop is about 4 years old. As you say, BIAB works fine. I have Sibelius 4 and it works okay, but I've heard the newer versions will not work with Windows 7. It's an expensive pgm so that provides enough motivation to learn how to do notation in BIAB and RB. FWIW.

Stan

Stan:

BiaB 2010.5 (but not earlier versions) works with Win 7 64-bit; but I've run BiaB on both the 32bit and 64bit Win 7 (on the above AMD/ASUS computer) and I can't see any performance difference. I think the chipset is much more important -- as I said, the 4 cores give you about 3 times the processing of a single core with BiaB, and because Win 7 is assigning tasks to chips, the load balancing is very good across cores on the 4-core chip.

Another thought .... Win 7 32 will support almost all applications (down to Win 95 compatibility) whereas the 64 bit supports a much smaller set of apps (importantly, a lot of the free utility apps for sound, video, compression, etc. only run on 32 bit Win). This mainly (to me) means that Win 7 64-bit is a PITA; So I've settled on Win 7 32bit as my standard (and I do think Win 7 is much better than Vista)

Chris

Chris, thanks again for a very informative and thought provoking post and your insights.

64-Bit OS MIGHT restrict the drivers / hardware you can use on your system.

It does limit a number of options including the VscDxi which I like a lot. 90 percent of my backing tracks, which just go from downstairs where my 'system' is to upstairs where there is a small desktop Bose on the acoustic piano, are just 3 RealTracks rendered to mp3's and put on my mp3 player and plugged into the Bose. That gives me 3 verses of each song I'm playing, and Bob's yer uncle.

Given the 'evidence' in this thread, my suggestion to those who want to go midi with a laptop is to stick with 32 bit systems for now. I'm sure the upgrade won't hurt you ...later..

My downstairs system is Win 7 64 bit, I do have some regrets now.....that said I have the Ketron Sd2 on that system if I want to render slowly...

Chris, FYI, I was running version 2010 for several months under Windows 7 64-bit before version 2010.5 was available.

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Chris, FYI, I was running version 2010 for several months under Windows 7 64-bit before version 2010.5 was available.

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Hi guys, Great info Chris but I'm running 2009.5 on win 7 64 bit.
Dave.