Tonight: Windows 7 presentation

So is Apple actually going to beta test iTunes properly for Windows 7, or are early adopters going to be public beta testers for it like current iTunes 8 users are on Vista? I relish in the day when Microsoft REQUIRES software developers and hardware manufacturers to fully WHQL-certify all products before they can be marketed as being Windows-compatible.

"9:15ish - Premium Member Raffle! Premium members have a chance to win an iPod Nano." Yikes! No Zune? :-)" Standard MS consistency problem. Give away an iPod at a MS event. What does that broad cast? I wont a Zune at a MS technet event when they first came out. A nice brown one no less. I got $127 for it on Ebay.

"just to educate you, a lot of WHQL-certified drivers (Creative cards and some usb to serial adapters, to name ones right off the bat) cause windows to go BSOD." You're mistaking WHQL-certified for Authenticode-signed drivers. Creative still doesn't WHQL-certify most of their drivers. They only recently decided to digitally sign drivers because of the restrictions of Windows Vista 64-bit. Only the brand new PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi series cards are Certified for Windows Vista (meaning they have WHQL-certified drivers). None of the original PCI Sound Blaster X-Fi's have WHQL-certified drivers, and they probably won't. Very few Creative cards ever do get certified. ....and I have yet to see a USB-to-serial adapter that is actually WHQL-certified. Most are made with unsigned drivers as it is, and very few even have digital signatures. WHQL-certified devices (and their drivers) must have an Authenticode signature, but the reverse isn't true. The digital signature is only to prove that the code (the driver) isn't modified by a third party outside of the original developer. WHQL certification is the process of testing those drivers for compatibility, performance, and stability, and submitting them to WinQual for evaluation. WHQL drivers are FAR more stable than drivers that are only just signed (or not) because the testing is key. Creative's stance before has always been to release unsigned drivers that "they themselves test for compatibility". That's just ignorance on their part, but I'm glad to see they've changed their ways with the new cards. I don't even remember any cards that carried a WHQL certification label (Designed/Certified for Windows XYZ).

Maybe Paul's server has stability issues caused by using drivers that didn't pass WHQL certification. ;)

"Standard MS consistency problem. Give away an iPod at a MS event. What does that broad cast?" Except it's not MS sponsoring the event, even though it is about MS products and is being held in a MS office. That would be premium members of the Boston server user group that are eligible.

IMO grab a camera and mic and have Leo live steam this as a special windows weekly edition!

App£€ user = FUD Boy AKA M.U.F. http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u65/dovellas/muf.jpg

Waethorn, you cannot take a 16-bit based mp3, and magically create an extra 24 bits of definition, you can simply pad it out to use 24 bits. Also, you cannot create audio in the frequencies that are lost when converting to a compressed format like mp3, all you can do is create harmonic distortion, that gives the illusion that there's high-frequencies there, when in fact it's just noise. This principle has been used in several audio devices over the years, such as the Aphex aural expander. Aural expanders are used sparingly, and very rarely, in specific circumstances where the trade off is deemed worthy of the positive effect. It's easy to demonstrate the ill-effects of the X-fi crystaliser. Try listening to a compressed mp3 where cymbals sound "glitchy" due to the compression, now turn on X-fi. on any decent playback system, and by that I even include £150quid "hi-fi" systems, you will hear the distortion, and it is a nasty effect to my ears. If you listen over something like a set of Genelec reference monitors (renowned for their bright top-end), or speakers such as B&Ws with a nautilus based tweeter, or, god forbid, yamaha NS10s (the marmite of speakers!) the effect is even more horrendous. Even on headphones, I find the effect disturbing, to say the least. Any vocal with an "s", or cymbals, or bright strings, or distorted guitar, or mandolin, or flute etc etc gets munched up and destroyed by the X-fi crystaliser. As for the download drivers, I was not aware of that, and humbly take back my comment.

huh? the M audio blog appears to have nothing to do with M-audio. I'm confused, what's the relevance.