[Take Vos]

Hello Richard,

I'm in the market for a new computer with Vista. I can't for the life
of me figure out if the Intel Core 2 Duo is a true 64 bit processor, a
fake one, or nothing at all to do with 32 bit.
The Intel Core 2 Duo, is a true 64 bit processor. It can run both 64
bit and 32 bit application next to each other.

Any thoughts on audio software evolving into 64 bit architectures?
I myself see two significant changes that 64 bit architecture will
offer:
- Use of more memory for internal buffers, keeping buffers for a high
number of channels and high sample rates add up very fast.
- Able to do memory mapped I/O, this allows a programmer to use an
audio file as if it was normal memory (64 bit address space allows us
to do this).

That would probably kill the argument that you need to go analog to
mix due to summing issues.
64 bit does not fix or cause summing issues. The floating point
processing of all Intel processors since the original IBM PC handles
32 and 64 bit floating point natively.

Right now most audio application do their internal processing in 32
bit floating point, but could just as easily be done with 64 bit
floating point. 64 bit floating point does cause twice as much memory
usage for buffers, and also twice the amount of memory bandwidth;
needing more and faster memory and processing power.

As most audio devices do not have AD/DA converters more accurate than
24 bit integer there have not been much use for 64 bit floating point.

Cheers,
Take