[Mikael]

I'm running Vista Home Premium 32-bit with an Audigy 4. Sadly, MP3s sound like utter crap. 320kbps songs sound like 64kbps ones... I haven't had time to test it enough to see if the bad sound quality is limited to MP3 playback or if it affects all sound.

 

[Superpredator]

Okay, since I require some form of sound to work at home I installed Realtek AC'97 drivers for Vista for the SoundMax onboard sound on my ASUS board. Foobar seems to run fine on Vista, which was a nice surprise. However, the onboard S/PDIF out running into my D02 sounds like an elephant pooped a submarine. It sounds reminisent of running something other than 44100 into the D02 (which typically either doesn't work at all or causes distortion, pops and clicks). However, the sound is much much worse than that. There is some kind of disgusting reverb-ish distortion. Sounds like the music is being projected out of a rusty soup can while being crushed by an elephant pooping out a submarine.

I tried connecting my Beyer 250-80s directly into the onboard card's output and the sound, while still pretty awful, just sounds normal awful, not Vistafied awful. Actually I am still getting pops, they just aren't as pronounced. Maybe this is worse than normal awful.

At least I can work now, but I certainly can't listen to music this way. I believe Creative will be releasing E-MU drivers for Vista sometime between now and 2009. Sweet relief is on the way!

EDIT: Vista was also able to install the SoundMax chip automatically, but I had results similar to using the Realtek drivers.

 

[Superpredator]

UPDATE: I can get the E-MU 1212m to run fine in Vista by cleanly installing the latest XP driver/DSP from www.emu.com (not installing over top of the driver/DSP that came with the CD). This is despite the fact that E-MU states that Vista drivers are in development for all its products and makes no mention that XP drivers (can) function.

1) install driver, do NOT restart when prompted

2) install DSP, restart when prompted

3) manually run DSP after Vista loads - I have not been able to get it to begin at startup

So far I have just been using S/PDIF out, but it sounds absolutely normal so far.

 

[shlomomofo]

i'm using vista with hagusb. works well with vista standard usb-audio driver... 16/44.1 output (bit-perfect?) without asio4all. sound is just as good as xp with asio4all. now i'm just waiting for a new version of foobar that will support the vista audio "exclusive mode".

 

[Ihmemies]

I don't see what's wrong with Vista. On my computer, 32-bit VHP works at least as well as XP Pro. As a gamer I need to eventually move to Vista, so I didn't see any point delaying it. My only issues with vista are no ability to adjust UAC settings (it's either on nazi mode, or completely disabled), and lazy driver coders. I have no drivers for my Brother printer and Creative's vista drivers suck *****.

Of course Vista has built-in drivers for Brother printer, so I can print, but still

 

[Bones13]

Have vista on my machine at work - had a true hard disk physical crash and had to reload an operating system. Have Vista Business up and running - it loaded a lot faster than an XP install.

Running the newest drivers for Nvidia and XFi without any problems in terms of games, and audio (foobar and itunes)

Am having some difficulties with some of the "protection" features. EAC is running, but I am unable to save profiles, and the little bar where the profile name is displayed remains blank. Similar problems with the CD importing software from dbPowerAMP. The program runs, and will rip, but I cannot change the settings without it fritzing out, or locking the program up. iTunes runs fine. Currently ripping with MAX on my laptop instead. Sure seems a lot easier.