DickMacInnis.com is proud to announce the official release of Dream Studio 11.04 for 64-bit processors. This is the first official release of Dream Studio in a fully 64-bit version, and while it contains all the same programs and features of the standard release, this version does come with a few advantages, such as:
-Support for more than 64GB of RAM
-Better hardware support for some 64-bit systems, including Apple’s 2011 MacBookPro (due to there being no existing 32-bit wireless network driver for these systems)
-Support for programs which could use more than 4GB RAM, such as the included Cinelerra video editor, Blender 3D, or virtual machines which have been allocated more than 4GB of RAM
Congratulations on the 64-bit release. Your comments on which users are recommended to use 64 bit system brings up some questions (which are slightly off the thread topic,…). I have wondered if for music production if 64-bits buys you much. I know Jack uses 32 bit floating point for data, so I might think a 64 bit environment would add nothing and might even be a disadvantage because of having to drag around an extra 32 bits of empty bits. But I do not know how processors handle 32 bits in a 64 bit environment so maybe it does not make a difference. I know that for the large memory situations that you mention that 64 bits is an improvement, however, I might guess that for music production there is no advantage.
@Edward Diehl: The floating point resolution or ‘precision’ is not dependent upon whether you are using a 64Bit or 32Bit CPU. Single precision (32Bit) floating point numbers and double precision (64Bit) floating point numbers can be handled by either x86 or x86-64 CPUs, it’s more of a design decision as to which the software uses. 32Bit floating point numbers are more than adequate for most audio tasks (excepting some recursive DSP processes). The architectural differences between 64 and 32Bit CPUs and whether one is qualitatively ‘better’ than another for a particular application is potentially a very complex topic, but in very general terms, a 64Bit CPU will be able to address a much larger amount of memory, and therefore may be some advantage if you are using huge numbers of audio tracks or huge sample libraries but for most audio applications there will be other limiting factors that arise before this becomes an issue.
I’ve been using 64-bit for some years now and that is good and bad i guess; for me, it’s generally good because I made a decision to only use native Linux programs and plugins. So no VSTs under Wine for me.
The decision was made out of a few things: VSTs and other Windows stuff under Wine sucked badly when I tested it, I was thinking something like “hey, it’s 2007 (or something), lets go 64-bit” - and finally, I decided to use a native Linux only system - I have a strong believe that one of the best ways to support a program, project or a system is to actually use it - and that hearfully, so the 64-bit Linux train was an obvious step for me.
Today, more and more people and companies are making useful programs and plugins for 64-bit Linux, convincing me that I made the right decision. Of course, I miss a lot of plugins, like something like Melodyne or a real alternative to the only real deesser for Linux, on the other hand, I stay much more focused on the job because I have what I have and nothing more. And wonderful programs and projects like Ardour, Mixbus, Pianoteq, LinuxDSP, Invada, Linuxsampler, Jack, Qsynth (fluidsynth) and countless of other nice free and also an increasingly amount of commercial software would never been made if nobody was using a real Linux system.