http://blog.cakewalk.com/how-windows-7-will-effect-your-music-production/

How Windows 7 Will Effect Your Music Production?

Posted on | October 22, 2009 | No Comments

Cakewalk Chief Technical Officer Noel Borthwick, a noted expert on Windows platforms, covers crucial topics around the introduction of Windows 7, such as compatibility with Cakewalk products, issues in upgrading from Windows XP and related points of interest for PC users.

For an in-depth look at Windows 7 and how it might affect your use of Cakewalk products, check out Noel’s Q & A below. Also, see Peter Kirn’s article at Create Digital Music for more insightful tips on Windows 7.

Q: In what ways has Windows 7 been optimized, in terms of performance, for audio production?

A: Windows 7 on the surface is very similar to Windows Vista. It has the same audio driver support and same audio system infrastructure as Vista. However it’s some of the under hood improvements that are more significant for audio production. There are some interesting innovations and optimizations in the Windows kernel, making the OS more scalable for concurrent processing. This makes it attractive for highly multithreaded applications like SONAR. Additionally there are various new API’s/SDK’s that may be of significance to developers. Some highlights are below:

Scalability and Distribution of Workloads

In Vista and earlier, on a highly multi threaded system (e.g. SONAR running on an 8 core hyper-threaded Intel Core I7 PC), you have many threads all processing tiny audio buffers at low latency. All these threads are ultimately waiting on the dispatcher lock when it comes time for them to be managed by the Windows scheduler. This global lock becomes a bottleneck in the system and prevents efficient multi-core workload distribution and scalability. This problem gets magnified as you increase the number of cores since they are all gated by a common lock. In Win 7 the kernel team changed the logic in the Windows scheduler to abolish this global dispatcher lock and use per object locks. This effectively removes this age old bottleneck and allows Win 7 to scale better even under workloads of 256 processors.

This change means a lot to applications like SONAR that rely on multithreaded processing of very small workloads. Initial benchmark results have been promising in this regard. SONAR performs more efficiently at low latency on multi core machines.

Memory Management

The PFN (page frame number) database lock was used by the memory manager to lock pages of memory in the working set. Like the dispatcher lock above, this would gate memory access from different threads causing resource contention. Work in this was first done in Windows server 2003 SP1 and Windows 7 has now has this optimization as well, improving asynchronous access to memory.

Power-Saving Processing

Windows 7 has a new feature called Core Parking. Core Parking is a power saving optimization that shifts processing load to one or more cores and puts other less busy cores to “sleep”. The objective is to let other cores idle if workload levels allow for it. This optimization had us scratching our heads when we ran a benchmark test on a Quad Core I7 machine. At any point in time we would notice that some cores were idle in task manager. The reason for this turned out to be Core Parking. Core parking can be useful to save battery life while running projects on laptops.

Q: Relative to Vista, are there any changes that are likely to introduce new compatibility issues with Cakewalk hardware or software?

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A: With any new OS there is always the potential for compatibility issues. Win7 is built on the Vista foundation and one of its goals was better compatibility. As such most applications that are Vista compliant should work as well or better in Windows 7. UAC in Windows 7 has been improved so this might also help with general compatibility problems with some applications.

We have run into only a couple of compatibility issues in Win7 during the course of our development/testing of SONAR 8.5.

- The MMIO API in Win7 (typically used for writing RIFF wave files) has a compatibility issue with the mmioDescend API with LIST ‘WAVE’ chunks. This caused our code that reads audio bundle files to fail and read scrambled audio data. We worked around this problem in 8.5

- In WASAPI exclusive mode under Win7, the minimum latency you can achieve is now unfortunately 3ms and the code reports an error if lower. The fact that Vista has no such limitation has been reported to Microsoft. Hopefully its a mistaken fence in their code and this issue is fixed via an update, since it’s a step backwards for low latency in WASAPI mode.

Q: What hardware and software compatibility issues should users be aware of if they’re thinking of migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7?

A: The compatibility issues that typically affect users migrating from XP to Vista/Win7 are:

- UAC problems: Many applications and plug-ins are not built to handle the newer security settings in these OS’s. For example if an application relies on something that requires administrative access it will fail when running as a limited user in Win7. This is a serious issue since in Vista/Win7 even if you are running from an administrator account; programs are launched by default with limited user privileges. Unlike XP you have to explicitly run as an administrator to use such programs. To be Win7 logo compatible all applications need to should support running as a limited user.

- Drivers: Although for most practical purposes audio drivers in XP and Windows 7/Vista are similar (you still need to write WDM drivers) there are sometimes quirks in specific drivers may cause problems. Most typical driver issues here are caused by installers that make assumptions about the OS version. In many cases this issue can be solved by the end user by setting the “compatibility mode” to Vista in the file properties for the appropriate driver installer file. (Right click the setup exe file to set its properties)

Q: User Account Control (UAC) has also been streamlined in Windows 7. Do changes to the UAS impact audio apps at all? Are there corresponding under-the-hood changes that users should be aware of?

A: The UAC changes in Win7 are primarily to allow more customization over the UAC elevation prompting process. There are no changes to the fundamentals of how UAC itself works that I am aware of. The classic problem with audio applications with UAC is when programs or plug-ins write to areas of the registry or file system prohibited from standard user access. Even when you are running as an administrator, by default when you launch a program (or the program itself launches a secondary process) Windows 7 will run that process with standard user privileges. If a program or plug-in attempts to write to an area which it doesn’t have write privileges for, virtualization will kick in. While this may allow the program to work, in general it is bad practice to rely on virtualization, since it can cause many unwanted side effects and behaviors in applications.

There are now four customization settings for UAC:

1. Never notify (least secure). The user is not notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is not notified when they make changes to Windows settings or when programs try to do so.

2. Only notify me when programs try to make changes to my computer. The user is not notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is not notified when they make

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changes to Windows settings. However, the user is notified when programs try to make changes to the computer, including Windows settings.

3. Always notify me. The user is notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is also notified when they make changes to Windows settings or when programs try to do so.

4. Always notify me and wait for my response (most secure). The user is notified when a program tries to install software or make changes to the computer. The user is also notified when they make changes to Windows settings or when programs try to do so.

Q: The big question on everyone’s mind: almost no one recommended Vista over XP in the audio world. Generally, I think on any platform, if your OS is running well you’ll probably leave it that way for audio work, and switch operating systems when you set up a new machine. But that said, would you now feel comfortable endorsing Windows 7 over XP? Would you now make the switch yourself.

A: Yes, absolutely. Windows 7 finally delivers on the stability and performance that users hoped for from Vista. The kernel changes and optimizations for large scale multi-core processors make it very attractive to DAW users who are interested in better low latency performance. I will be building a new DAW soon and Windows 7 X64 will be my OS of choice.

Q: How much customization would you advise people do to their OS? That is, you’ve just installed a build of Windows 7 for working with SONAR on a test machine. Do you run the stock configuration, or start turning off services, disabling disk indexing, etc.?

A: Optimization and customization is a topic that can’t be fully discussed in the scope of a brief article. In general you need to optimize a system when you have known bottlenecks. Otherwise you can spend a lot of time tweaking things that have little effect on the end goal. In fact you may even end up destabilizing a perfectly working system. A stock Win7 machine is not optimized for audio necessarily but it appears MS put some thought into trimming out unwanted startup tasks to cut down on startup time. For example there are now “Triggered start services” in Windows 7, so out of the box you can have fewer services running after a fresh boot. There are probably many background services in a modern DAW that could be suspended if you don’t need them but they should be evaluated on a case by case basis depending on what you use the machine for.

Q: A lot of users were advising running Vista with Aero off, certainly in the early days. Do you think it’s now advisable to leave Desktop Window Compositing switched on for audio work? (Note: I am aware that there’s actually no way to *completely* disable the Aero windowing environment in a way that it reverts to XP, as even in Class mode with no compositing settings the engine has been altered.)

A: Generally speaking turning off Aero will free up some resources on your system since it uses more costly 3D graphics rendering and transparency a lot. However on any modern graphics card, Aero offloads a lot to the GPU so unless your DAW is also competing for the same GPU resources, turning it off may or may not make an appreciable difference to performance. Most applications that are not graphics intensive use GDI for rendering to the screen and since GDI doesn’t take advantage of DirectX hardware acceleration it’s normally not contesting with the GPU. If you are using plug-ins that use Direct 2D or Direct3D you are probably better off disabling Aero.

Other areas of interest:

77 Additional Tips

Microsoft lists an extensive list of tips for getting the most out of Windows 7, found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.10.77windows.aspx

Additional File Format support

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Windows 7 adds native playback support for media in MP4, MOV, 3GP, AVCHD, ADTS, M4A, and WTV multimedia containers. It has native codec’s for H.264, MPEG4-SP, ASP/DivX/Xvid, MJPEG, DV, AAC-LC, LPCM and AAC-HE. Yes, you read that right – QuickTime MOV file support is now natively available in Windows 7 so you don’t need to install QuickTime. Another big plus is that this is supported under the X64 version of Windows 7 as well, something you cannot do with Apple’s native QuickTime itself!

All media files using these codec’s should play in Media Player. It appears that these new codec’s are exclusively available to Media Foundation applications and not via other legacy API’s such as DirectShow etc.

File format transcoding

File format transcoding of many popular formats is now built into the Windows 7 shell. I.e. dragging and dropping files onto a device automatically performs the necessary format transcoding if the format is supported. This was primarily done to copy formats to portable devices like cameras but should be useful in other scenarios as well.

Multi-function devices and Device Containers:

Prior to Windows 7, every device attached to the system was treated as a single functional “end-point”. While appropriate for single-function devices (such as an audio interface), this does elegantly represent multi-function devices such as a combination audio/MIDI interface. In Windows 7, the drivers and status information for multi-function device can be grouped together as a single “Device Container”, which is then presented to the user in the new “Devices and Printers” Control Panel as a single unit.

Here’s a link for customers who want more information: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/Device/DeviceExperience/ContainerIDs.mspx

FireWire/USB

Windows 7 contains a new FireWire (IEEE 1394) stack that fully supports IEEE 1394b with S800, S1600 and S3200 data rates. According to reports, USB 3.0 may be supported in a future Windows Update. It was initially planned for Win7 but is not supported in the shipping version of Win7 due to delays in the USB 3 specification.

Multi-touch

Windows 7 includes integrated support for multi-touch displays.

Libraries

Libraries are user-defined collections of content including folders. It’s a handy way to categorize and create shortcuts to samples, music, etc. Special shell folders (Documents, Pictures, Music, and so on) are now Libraries.

Accelerators for Windows

Windows 7 Accelerators provide a way for learning more about selected text, optionally using voice control.

Virtual hard disks

The Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 incorporate support for the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format. VHD files can be mounted as drives, created, and booted from.

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An installation of Windows 7 can be booted and run from a VHD drive, even on non-virtual hardware, thereby providing a new way to multi boot Windows.

Leaner Footprint

Win7 has a leaner footprint and has been tweaked to work well on less powerful PC’s, laptops and Netbooks. I have heard reports of Win7 working more smoothly on machines that would be slow under Vista.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/08/04/the-most-out-of-windows-7-choosing-and-optimizing-windows-for-music/

he Most Out of Windows 7: Choosing and Optimizing Windows for Music By Peter Kirn Related: 64-bit, Cakewalk, computers, operating-systems, optimization, PCs, performance, rain-computers, rain-recording, reliability, SONAR, the-most, tips, troubleshooting, tutorials, Windows, windows-7 & more

From our call for CDM reader studios, Eric Beam’s studio. In his setup: Windows 7 64-bit, Cakewalk’s SONAR 8.5 DAW (with native 64-bit support), and the excellent modular patching environment Plogue Bidule. Click through to Flickr for a closer look. Photo (CC-BY) Eric Beam.

This week, while we poll readers to find out what platforms they really use and care about for music, we’re launching a new series to help you get the most out of whichever OS you choose.

We’ve been covering the complexities of Windows for a while, from the bumpy Vista transition to the smoother advent of Windows 7. I also wrote up a feature in Keyboard Magazine covering Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Here, I’ve worked with Noel Borthwick, Chief Technical Officer of Cakewalk, and Kevin Jacoby of custom computer house Rain Computers, in order to get both the software and hardware developer perspective and the OEM side. They’ve offered some frank opinions in the past; Noel had some criticisms for Vista, and Jacoby and Rain kept XP the default for a while. But that means when they say Windows 7 can work for musicians, they mean it.

If you’re still on XP or Vista, or if you’re pondering going to a 64-bit version, we have some advice there. If you’re already on Windows 7, we’ve some tips on how to make the most of optimizing the OS.When is the OS to blame? (aka, “Glitch” music when you don’t want it)

Before we get into talking about Windows itself, I think there’s a bigger issue to address.

Now that I’ve been testing Windows alongside a variety of operating systems, I can say this. I think the press and user base have sometimes blamed the Windows operating system itself when it isn’t directly at fault. A lot of the most annoying obstacles to music making on computers – glitches, audio stability issues, and an inability to run at lower latencies – depend on a complex chain of interoperating hardware. (That’s true even on the Mac platform; in fact, even given Apple’s relatively focused computer offerings, I think Apple deserves the same credit a PC vendor does when they have all their components working in concert. When we have seen issues on the Mac, drivers and chipsets are often to blame.) Chipsets and components, particularly on laptops, can cause problems. It’s simply easy to blame (or credit) the OS because it’s so fond of flashing its logo at you, and it’s the part of the computer with which you interact.

This also means the choice of Windows itself may not be as important as the choice of computer hardware. Custom shops like Rain Computers are unique in that they test their components for audio applications – that’s not an advertisement for them; it really does make a difference. Because part of what attracts readers to the PC is vendor choice, I’m working on ways of evaluating mainstream machines, too.

The bottom line is, because musical and visual applications are more demanding, there’s a greater need to remain educated and share information. Too much of that information in the larger tech press devolves into

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petty platform advocacy and bickering. We really need the information just to keep our machines running smoothly.

Photo (CC-BY-SA) 1 2 3 Chroma Pixels.Windows 7, After Some Time in the Hands of Musicians

We’ve now been living with Windows 7 for some time, which means when you do choose to upgrade, you’ve got plenty of information behind you. When I first looked at Windows 7, it was clear the OS was better than Vista, but it wasn’t yet entirely clear how it compared to XP. And while Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux comparisons tend to be apples to oranges, you ought to at least be able to be pretty objective about comparing Windows releases to other Windows releases. Now, we do have a lot of empirical evidence, and both Rain and Cakewalk – the folks on the other end of the phone when people call to complain about problems – have pretty strong endorsements.

Kevin at Rain goes as far to say that Windows 7 exceeds XP:

Windows 7 is by far the best operating system we’ve seen for pro audio and video production. It’s got all the modern bells and whistles that were missing in XP, none of the craziness from Vista, and has managed to retain the benefit of an open architecture that lends itself to great application design. It’s given us the opportunity to squeeze every ounce of power from the apps and hardware we see most often like Pro Tools, Cubase, Adobe CS5, etc.

In terms of support, our tech support staff is over here celebrating. Windows 7 has remarkable improvements that help with stability. Pro audio/video isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It starts to get a bit touchy when there are too many features, apps, drivers, etc. But W7 seems to be more forgiving; it heals better than Vista or XP – doesn’t crash like them either. And when there is an issue, its got some tools, like Complete PC Backup, that help us get the user quickly back to a point where they’re making music and video again.

Noel Borthwick, on his off hours, is actually a musician. I’ve been following his experience with his own home computer setup, and he’s a happy camper.

I recently built a new DAW for my studio which runs SONAR 8.5 on an Intel Core I7 950 with Windows 7 Professional X64. (See http://www.noelborthwick.com/minidump/2009/12/new-daw/ for specs) I can categorically say that the SONAR/Core I7/Windows 7 combination is a match made in heaven for DAW users! I easily have way more bandwidth than I would ever need for the next several years on this rig. On my largest projects which would previously max out the CPU or drop out (an older dual CPU Windows 2003 based machine), I am now able to run at 128 sample buffers with a MOTU 828 MK2, at 24bit/96KHz with under 20% CPU utilization in SONAR!

Noel has also been listening to users, he says:

The response to Windows 7 and SONAR has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are a few threads talking about the great results that our users are having with SONAR and Windows 7.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1769661&mpage=1&key=?

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?&m=1774267&high=windows+7&mpage=1

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1734916&high=windows+7

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?&m=1713663&high=windows+7&mpage=1

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?&m=1601783&high=windows+7&mpage=1

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Rain also confirms that, as always with PCs in general, it’s the combination of hardware that can be an issue and is the focus of their optimizations. “Part of the challenge is getting around the consumer-centric features,” says Kevin. “For instance, HDMI and other high def audio features often interfere with pro audio drivers and interfaces. It’s a bit of a challenge at times but Microsoft and our other tech partners have been helpful.”

64-bit CPUs were once a rarity, but almost any machine you buy today supports 64-bit. Photo (CC-BY) Nao Iizuka.Should You Run 64-bit for Music Apps?

Not to be confused with 64-bit audio – a representation of the length of digital samples and their corresponding dynamic range – 64-bit computing is what enables access to greater amounts of memory, and provides a corresponding computational boost in performance on the same hardware. On Windows, unlike the Mac, you must choose when you install the OS whether you opt for the 32-bit or 64-bit version. (You can configure a multiple-boot operation, but each boot entry must be one or the other.)

If you’re configuring a new machine, or upgrading from XP and Vista, it may be an optimal time to try 64-bit, since you’ll be evaluating compatibility and updating drivers anyway. So, which should you choose?

Kevin offers a whole-hearted endorsement of 64-bit, but with some ideas on why 32-bit still has some place.

My biggest disappointment when W7 was released is that we couldn’t put the 64-bit version on every Rain computer that left the factory. With due respect to the pro audio industry, some software engineers are chronically behind the curve when it comes to releasing new versions and drivers. However, all that is changing now. These days, I’m in a much better mood since Pro Tools released a 64-bit compatible update and our customers can choose from a wider range of plug-ins and virtual instruments. Kudos to Cubase and SONAR for doing their homework early on that one.

On the other hand, the folks over on the video side learned a long time ago that more memory would make their lives easier. The last system we sent to the US Olympic Committee had 24GB of memory installed which made Adobe Premiere sit up and bark like a dog. We’re just now updating our Element video editing workstation to 12-core and, as with before, you can match that with 48GB of memory. It’s a beautiful thing.

That said, there are still a lot of people out there attached to their legacy gear. Maybe you’re updating your computer and your budget doesn’t allow you to replace all your software and hardware at the same time. Maybe you’re in love with a certain plug-in that just refuses to play nice with 64-bit. For those people, we do everything we can to help them protect their initial investment. But if possible we do recommend getting the most up-to-date version you can, load 64-bit and take advantage of all its benefits.

As a side note, though some Rain computers ship from our dealers (Best Buy, Amazon, B&H, etc) with 32-bit, we have a program in place to help the user update to 64-bit at no additional cost once they get their computer home.

Noel notes that 64-bit support is vastly improved over the past – and this coming from one of the first software vendors to embrace 64-bit Windows in any industry, let alone in music. (SONAR first supported 64-bit way back in the XP x64 days.)

Any new CPU you can buy these days is capable of running 64-bit Windows. As a result of this proliferation driver support for X64 is a lot better now than it was a few years ago. In this environment it makes the most sense to install the 64-bit version of Windows 7. With a 64-bit OS you get the best of both worlds. You get the advantage of expanded memory as well as the ability to run 32-bit applications. 32-bit applications on a 64-bit OS run fine and in some situations might even show better performance than when running under a 32-bit OS.

In other words, if you’re using any music hosts (or video editing software) with native 64-bit support – just one – going 64-bit is a no-brainer so long as you’ve got a 64-bit computer like those based on the Core 2 Duo

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CPU. But what if you don’t have any 64-bit software? My standing advice had been to stick with 32-bit, but Noel actually disagrees – and I have to admit, I see his point. Noel writes:

I would argue that even if you don’t have any apps that currently take advantage of X64 [Windows 7 64-bit] it still has advantages to go with [64-bit] for the upgrade options. You can always add more memory to the system or later introduce native 64-bit apps, something you cannot do if you have a 32-bit OS without reinstalling Windows and starting from scratch.

So, is there anything that should keep you on 32-bit (aside from owning an older computer with a 32-bit-only CPU?) What about ReWire?

You don’t lose ReWire by running on a 64-bit OS. You can still run a 32-bit version of the application on a 64-bit OS and have ReWire access. The only reason I can think of that might deter someone from a 64-bit OS today is if they had some legacy hardware that didn’t have 64-bit drivers. I.e., you cannot run 32-bit drivers on a 64-bit OS, since those have to be native.

Performance boosts are nice, but the big reason to run 64-bit? RAM. Photo (CC-BY-SA) William Hook.

At least you can make that decision based on your music host, not your music plug-ins. A key feature of a modern DAW like SONAR is, even though it runs natively in 64-bit, it doesn’t require that you give up your 32-bit plug-ins. That’s a very big deal, because a lot of plug-ins – even paid ones, let alone freeware oddities – aren’t yet 64-bit. For its part, Cakewalk has been updating 32-bit support.

In SONAR 8.5 we addressed many user-reported VST compatibility issues with Bitbridge. Additionally, Bitbridge XR now breaks the memory barrier for 32-bit VSTs allowing you to run as many 32-bit VSTs as you want in SONAR X64. You can use up to 2GB of memory PER 32-bit VST and run multiple BitBridge servers allowing up to 128 GB of memory for your 32-bit plug-in. With Windows 7 and SONAR 8.5, more and more users are making the leap to X64 systems running systems with 12 GB of memory or more to run multiple memory hungry plug-ins in their sessions.

That’s anecdotal evidence, however. Here are some hard numbers. Aside from the benefits of expanded memory access – useful if you use big sample libraries and the like – 64-bit can have some real-world, quantifiable, verifiable performance benefits. Noel writes:

Here are some external studies/benchmarks that compare X64 performance against X86 on the same hardware.

http://www.noelborthwick.com/minidump/2009/12/a-case-for-64-bit-windows/Disabling Power Management to Improve Multi-Core Performance

Most of the usual optimizations apply to Windows 7 that applied to previous versions. You’re best off disabling resource-consuming background applications like antivirus software, keeping drivers up-to-date, working with good quality audio interfaces, and the like. We do have a couple of specific pieces of advice for Windows 7, however.

One such detail, while it’s unlikely to impact everyone, is that disabling some power management on multi-core systems can improve performance. Noel explains, complete with instructions:

There has been some controversy about the new core parking feature in Windows 7 which was introduced for more “green” power management. On quad core and higher systems, some users have reported that core parking can cause audio glitches. It could be system specific since I haven’t personally experienced this issue on my own DAW which is pretty much running a vanilla Windows 7 install with a Core I7 (8 cores). In any case even though there is no user interface in Windows 7 to enable/disable core parking, fortunately there is an documented way to disable it in the Microsoft performance tuning guidelines. Look for “Core Parking” in

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this document http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/E/7/7E7662CF-CBEA-470B-A97E-CE7CE0D98DC2/Perf-tun-srv-R2.docx

To summarize:

To turn off core parking, set the minimum cores parked to 100 percent by using the following commands:

Powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 100 Powercfg -setactive scheme_current

Windows 7′s new Libraries feature makes it easier to keep your project files sorted.Smarter File Management

With Windows generally working better out of the box, though, here’s a quick tip that can help make it more usable when you’re actually working on projects. Noel has become a big fan of Libraries (and yes, you’ll find access to them in SONAR’s file dialog):

Win 7 has support for a very useful feature called Libraries, which can be a very handy way to keep track of data scattered around your hard drives. Unfortunately Libraries do not directly support folders on networked locations. On attempting to add such a folder to a library you get an error message telling you the location is not indexed. Apparently libraries rely on folders being indexed. This shortcoming greatly reduces the usefulness of libraries for users who store folders in networked locations.

Fortunately, I came across a workaround to the libraries problem here which uses symbolic links to get around this limitation: http://hubpages.com/hub/Adding-a-Network-Directory-to-a-Library-without-Indexing-in-Windows-7More Resources

Keyboard Magazine has my full comparison of Windows 7 and Snow Leopard online:New Decade, New OS What Matters to Musicians in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7, by Peter Kirn

I’ve been writing “geeky as we wanna be” looks at Windows for some time – and rightfully so, I think; musicians push operating systems hard. I only wish the larger tech community paid greater attention to what we do, because we’re often best able to torture test any OS, Mac, Windows, Linux, or mobile.

Here’s some of our past coverage of Windows on CDM:Obsessive Windows 7 Under-the-Hood Guide for Music; Can You Finally Dump XP?

Vista Tweak: Use the Audio Profile Cakewalk’s CTO Uses

And if you’re looking for some tips to get the most out of Windows:Tips: Fix Windows Explorer, Be Happy

12 Free and Cheap Must-Have Music Utilities for Windows

10 Free Non-Musical Windows Software Every Musician Should Use

For a look at a 64-bit-native DAW, check out my review of SONAR 8.5.2:SONAR 8.5.2 Hands On: Tradition, Meet Tempting Treats

Addendum: Finding 64-bit Crashes

This is an extremely obscure issue, so if you’re not interested in gory details, stop reading now. But because we like gory, technical details, I’ve decided to add it. It’s not a reliability problem with 64-bit Windows — far

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from it; you won’t actually see it until you encounter a crash, and even then, it’s useful only to the people troubleshooting. But it does demonstrate the power of getting to the bottom of an issue, and there is a fix. (So, Mac users, I don’t want to hear any “see, this is why I switched to a Mac.” You can get into weird, technical things if you dig deep enough in any OS, period. Shield any innocent eyes.)

Noel adds a description of troubleshooting 64-bit Windows crashes as follows:

How to make your apps crash gracefully on 64-bit WindowsOK this is admittedly a weird topic :-) Why would anyone actually want their app to crash you may ask? To answer that question we need to have some background about why applications crash.An application crashes when it performs an unexpected operation or encounters what is called an “exception condition”. Exceptions include unwanted operations like writing to invalid memory locations, divide by zero errors, page faults, etc. Programs can end up with exceptions like this for a variety of reasons – bugs in the host code itself or even due to bugs in loaded plugin DLL’s which share the same memory and address space as the host application. Normally when an error like this occurs, Windows will display the familiar error message “This Program Has Performed an Illegal Operation and Will Be Shut Down” and the program will close. Some applications like SONAR handle such errors more gracefully and will even try and intercept these exception and attempt to allow the user to save their work before exiting the program. Additionally on Windows you can choose to save what is called a Minidump containing “post mortem” debugging info that is very useful to developers to find out why the program crashed.

Recently we began noticing a pattern where we were receiving Minidump’s from crashes on from 64 bit Windows systems X64 where the dumps contained useless or apparently invalid information about the crash. This made it very hard for us to diagnose such issues. I was even able to reproduce this by writing a simple test application that forced a crash. In one case I found that the crash was reported in a completely different location and in another the application behaved as if the exception didn’t occur! This is actually very bad since when damage is done to the app the best scenario is to actually shut down the application or you risk data corruption or worse. So you really WANT your app to crash when something like this happens. I logged a bug with Microsoft about this with a test application. I recently heard back from their developer support about this issue. It’s an interesting problem that Microsoft is aware of and have issued a hotfix for.Here is a link to a Microsoft blog post describing this problem in gory detail if you want to read more about it.http://blog.paulbetts.org/index.php/2010/07/20/the-case-of-the-disappearing-onload-exception-user-mode-callback-exceptions-in-x64/And here is the link to the hotfix if you want it now. This hotfix will also be rolled into Windows 7 SP1. I hope that this is not required in the final version but currently the fix requires you to set a value in the registry to enable it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976038

http://forums.presonus.com/posts/list/2851.page

Optimizing Your Computer for Audio - Windows Vista/Windows 7 Brandon Hays Feb 25 Why would I need to optimize Windows Vista/Windows 7?

If your computer's audio has:

Pops Clicks Audio Dropouts Distorted Audio Noise

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PC Optimization Guide for Windows Vista/Windows 7

Welcome to the Windows PC Optimization Guide. Here you will find a comprehensive guide to optimization of any computer for use as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

It is important that you read through this documentation, as it covers several crucial optimization steps recommended when setting up your DAW. Because Windows is meant for an entire spectrum of users, by default, the user interface is designed to have a very nice GUI (Graphical User Interface), plenty of security, a pleasing set of sounds, and several other features. Some of these are not the ideal settings for dedicated DAW users, though. This guide is intended to step you through optimizing your machine in preparation for your new hardware and software to gain the most out of your system without experiencing the unnecessary heavy processor loads of poorly optimized machines.

A few conventions are used in the following sections: 1. This guide assumes that you are working off a fresh install of Windows . Therefore, if you have modified the way your windows are displayed, or otherwise customized the OS, some of the instructions may be slightly different. 2. Classic View is used in the Control Panel. There is a link on the left-hand pane in the Control Panel window to engage Classic View. 3. When navigating Windows, the ">" symbol is used to show the next step. For example, instead of seeing "double-click on Computer, then double-click on C:, then double-click on Program Files," you will see this: "Go to Computer > C: > Program Files." 4. It is assumed you can access the Device Manager. Here are a number of ways: - Right-click on Computer > Manage > Device Manager. - Start > type in "Device Manager" and press "Enter." - Start . Control Panel > Device Manager.

Performance

These adjustments are some of the more sweeping optimizations in this guide. They address the visual aspects, processor handling, and DEP for the Windows OS. One of the most highly touted aspects of Windows has been the new visual effects, or "eye candy." As impressive as they are, Aero effects do take a significant amount of system resources. These are valuable resources that can instead be devoted to your audio software. If you do have a powerful enough video card, then it will assume all video processing; in that case, it is more than okay to leave Aero enabled.

Processor scheduling determines which types of processing are given a higher priority by Windows. The default setting is to devote more to your programs. This seems good on the surface; however, audio drivers run in the background, and NOT as separate programs. In order to get the most performance from audio gear, it is best to set your processor to handle background services first.

Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help prevent malicious code from running on a system. This is a technology originally developed in Windows XP that is now a part of Windows. While great in theory, DEP can sometimes see audio applications as "malicious code." Leaving it on to prevent attacks on essential Windows files is preferable.

To make these adjustments, right-click on Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Performance > Settings, and select: * Visual Effects > Adjust for best Performance (this disables all Aero effects). * Advanced > Processor Scheduling > Background Services. * Advanced > Data Execution Prevention > Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only.

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Press OK when done. This will disable the Windows Aero™ theme. If you would like to enable it again, right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize > Theme > Windows Vista/Windows 7. Resource usage from the Windows theme is negligible. See the section on Personalization for more details.

Power Options

Windows allows for custom configuration of its power settings. This is useful for conserving energy when the computer is not in use. It works by automatically powering down or “hibernating” one or more components of the computer system when the computer has been idle for a predetermined amount of time. This can pose a major problem for users who record long sessions, as the computer may power itself down in the middle of recording!

To optimize your power settings for audio performance, go to Start > Control Panel > Power Options > choose "High Performance." Click the "Change plan settings" button, and make sure both options are set to "Never."

Also, many systems come preset to conserve USB power by temporarily cutting or disabling power to USB ports that are not actively in use. This can often be problematic for USB drivers that run in the background, since background tasks are not given power priority by the OS. If you use USB interfaces or controllers, than you should disable this power-management scheme. Go to the Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus Controllers > right-click on a "USB Root Hub" > Properties > Power Management > deselect "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" > press "OK." Repeat this process for all USB Root Hubs in the Device Manager.

User Account Control

The new User Account Control in Windows is among the more controversial features. It is beneficial for preventing unwanted changes to the system, and especially for protecting against unauthorized installations and file executions. However, the constant prompts asking to allow or deny access can interfere with overall workflow; all activity is suspended while the prompt waits for a reply. Furthermore, the user account monitoring uses extra CPU cycles (in fact, almost a negligible amount), so disabling the feature improves performance ever so slightly. All in all, the impediments in a DAW seem to outweigh the added security, especially if the system is kept off the Internet. To disable UAC, go to Start > Control Panel > User Accounts (your account) > "Turn User Control on or off" > Uncheck "Use UAC" > OK > Restart.

* Keep in mind that some programs may require UAC to be enabled to complete the installation. If this is the case, then follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

Windows Security Center

Another enhancement in Windows Vista/Windows 7 is the increased efficiency and centralized configuration of the Security Center. It is great for keeping out intruders, spyware, viruses, etc., but does so at the cost of CPU cycles. If you are online, it is best to leave the Security Center alone and active. Otherwise, you risk losing data, the integrity of your system drive, and even your identity. If you are not online with your DAW, then disabling the Security Center features will free up some extra resources for you. The following instructions are for the offline user.

To access the Security Center, go to Start > Control Panel > Security Center. There are several adjustments to be made from the Security Center window: * Click on Windows Update on the left-hand pane > Change Settings > Never Check for Updates... > OK > close the update window. * Click on Windows Firewall > Change settings > Off > OK > close the Firewall window. * Click on Windows Defender > Tools > Options > uncheck "Automatically scan my computer" > Save> close the Defender window. You can manually scan at any time by pressing the "Scan" button from the main Defender window. Again, this is not an issue if you're offline.

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* Note that if you make these adjustments, Windows will continually remind you that your computer is at risk. To stop these reminders, go to "Change the way Security Center alerts me" > "Don't notify me and don't display the icon."

Bear in mind that in this state, you are at risk if you should choose to go online. Before doing so, it is highly recommended that you reenable everything in the Security center, and also connect immediately to Windows Update for the latest security updates from Microsoft.

Antivirus software is another subcategory of Windows security. While not included as part of the Security Center, antivirus software is another near-necessity for everyday computing. For the online DAW user, it is best to disable antivirus software before using any audio applications. Since you will not be actively online, Windows Firewall and Defender (provided they are up to date) will be enough to monitor the background. For the offline DAW user, it's best to not install it in the first place.

In Vista Ultimate and Enterprise editions, another relevant security feature is BitLocker drive encryption. While it is a fantastic tool to prevent theft and piracy, the added encryption is not suitable for a high-performance DAW. It is best to leave BitLocker off on any drive that will actively be running DAW applications or streaming audio. However, for backup and non-DAW-related drives, it is fine to leave it enabled. To adjust BitLocker on your drives, go to Start > Control Panel > Control Panel Home > Security > BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Virtual Memory and ReadyBoost

Virtual memory (or paging files) is a technique that involves using a dedicated section of the hard drive as though it were additional RAM. The downside is that hard drives invariably process data slower than RAM does, so using paging files does decrease performance. This can be beneficial for low-performance, high-data applications where lots of material is loaded into RAM but does not process extremely quickly. With audio applications, this is not a good idea. As they are very demanding on system resources, using a lower-speed hard drive is not a viable solution. However, some applications may require the use of a paging file, for one reason or another. If this is the case, then make sure to set all of your buffer sizes in your audio application as high as possible to compensate for the hard drive's latency.

Right-click on "Computer" (either from desktop or Start button) > Properties > Advanced System Settings. This will bring you to the Advanced tab in the System Properties window. Under the Performance section, go to Settings tab and select Advanced, the press the "Change" button under Virtual memory. Uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives." For each drive listed, click on "No paging file" and "Set." You will be warned that a crash file may not be recorded if you have no paging file. Choose "Yes" to this message. Once all drives have been modified, choose "OK." Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

If you do need to enable a paging file, for whatever reason, it is usually best to use a multiple of 2 for the size. Examples would be 256 MB, 512 MB, 1024 MB, etc. There is no need to exceed the amount of physical RAM installed for a paging file. If you find yourself continually needing to increase the paging file size, it is probably time to upgrade your system RAM.

One alternative to paging files is a new Vista technology called ReadyBoost. It essentially uses a USB flash drive as a high-speed paging file. Not all flash drives will work, though. A device must have the following minimum specifications: * The device must be at least 64 MB * The device must be USB 2.0 * It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s * It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

To activate ReadyBoost on a USB flash drive, go to Computer > right-click on the drive > Properties > ReadyBoost > select "Use this Device" and choose the amount of space you wish to dedicate to ReadyBoost > "OK" when finished. As with paging files, it is best to stay with multiples of 2.

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Hard-Drive Performance

Vista has an option to boost the normal performance of ATA and SATA drives by enhancing write caching. One problem with this is that if power is interrupted to the hard drive, then the risk of data loss or corruption is greatly increased. However, if you use a battery backup or some other type of uninterruptible power supply, then you should not have anything to worry about. To speed up your drives, navigate to the Device Manager. Click on the "+" next to Disk Drives, then right-click on the drive you wish to change and choose Properties > Policies > check the box next to "Enable advanced performance."

There are several different ways in which data on a hard disk can be accessed. DMA is one of them. This format is the best and fastest method available, so it is recommended for audio. To make sure DMA is enabled on your hard drives, go to the Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. You will see one or more ATA Channels. On each channel, right-click and choose Properties > Advanced Settings > make sure "Enable DMA" is checked > press "OK." There is another type of device beyond the ATA Controllers. In some cases, changing this listing (which varies according to the motherboard) to "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" has been known to increase performance. Note, however, that this is not a required step to optimize your system. It is an optional step that MAY increase performance. If you choose to do this, then right-click on it and choose "Update Driver Software..." > "Browse my Computer..." > "Let me pick..." > "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" > Next > Close. You do have to restart your computer for this change to take effect.

There are also two other drive properties to consider. These can be accessed by going to Computer and right-clicking on the drive in question, and: * Under the General tab, make sure "Compress this drive..." is unchecked. * Under the Quota tab, you have "Do not limit disk usage" selected, but nothing else.

Indexing Options

Another feature in Windows is its ability to automatically index all the files in the Start Menu, user profile folders, and files setup for offline access. Too many files in these locations, especially when the files change often, causes the indexing service to add to the overall CPU load. While this change speeds up your overall performance, it will also adversely affect your searching speed in those locations. However, with a good file-management strategy, this will be irrelevant for the DAW user. To adjust your indexing options, go to Start > type in "indexing options" > press Enter > Modify. In the "Change selected locations" window, uncheck everything except for the Start menu, located in C: > ProgramData > Microsoft > Windows.

Onboard Devices

An onboard device is any device built in to the computer. Examples include built-in wireless adapters, audio cards, and Web cams. Most of these are fairly benign but some have the potential to interfere with digital audio software and hardware. Historically speaking, the most problematic devices are wireless Internet cards and audio cards; we typically recommend disabling these, at least while using your software. Onboard wireless Internet cards periodically send and receive information when activated (even without an Internet browser open), and these bursts of data transfer take CPU cycles, to the point of causing audible pops and clicks in DAW applications. Onboard audio cards can cause driver conflict problems, and are not as high in quality as professional interfaces. Additionally, they are often selected as the default driver in most DAW applications, forcing you to manually select your primary interface instead.

In the Device Manager, you can right-click on any device and choose "Disable." This will essentially turn that device off, releasing its drivers and stopping any resources from being used to run it. Internet and other wireless cards are typically found under the "Network Adapters" category. Onboard audio cards and Web cams will be found under "Sound, video and game controllers."

Windows Sidebar

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Windows Sidebar's gadgets provide some very useful information. They also take up some very useful CPU cycles. For the serious DAW user, it's best to have Sidebar disabled, at least while working on audio. This will not only allow for extra CPU power, it will also clear the desktop to make room for applications to be seen. If Sidebar is active, double-click on the icon in the system tray and uncheck "Start Sidebar when Windows starts." Click "OK." It will be disabled the next time you reboot.

Personalization

Like all previous version of Windows, Vista/Windows7 allows for a high level of customization, allowing users to configure the OS to look and sound almost any way they want. Unfortunately, some of the popular settings can interfere with DAW workflow. Under the Personalize window (which can be accessed by right-clicking on the desktop), here are some settings to look out for: * Screen Saver. When screen savers become active, DAW users lose all sense of what is happening in their system (for example, visually monitoring recording levels). For this reason, it is better to set your screen saver to "none." * Sounds. As certain events happen, Windows notifies you by playing a sound. This can be problematic while recording, since the sound may cause a driver problem by trying to access the driver currently in use. For this reason, it is usually best to set your sound scheme to "No sounds." * Using the Aero theme usually does not cause any problems. Since Windows outsources visual processing to your video card, it will not take up any additional resources. If your video card is robust enough for Aero's effects, then leaving the theme enabled will not cause any problems. If you do not have a dedicated video card, or have one that is underpowered, then it may be better to use the Windows Classic theme instead, but switching to the Windows theme should not use any more resources.

Startup Service and Applications

By default, Windows preloads applications and services from installed programs and deposits icons in the system tray. The goal is to both decrease load times and provide easy access to a variety of programs. While very helpful in theory, these partially launched applications are a CPU drain. Disabling them helps Windows allocate more resources to running applications. Windows will also load faster, since it is not preloading every application during startup. To disable these applications from loading on startup, do the following.

CAUTION: Make absolutely sure you follow the directions EXACTLY as printed below. Startup configuration is powerful stuff, and if used carelessly, can cause problems. Follow the directions, DO NOT treat this section lightly, and you will be fine:

Go to Start > Run, type in "msconfig" (without the " " marks) and press OK. When the System Configuration Utility comes up, click on the Startup tab. Press the button to "Disable All." Click on the Services tab. Check the box at the bottom of the window to "Hide All Microsoft Services." Press the "Disable All" button, but only AFTER hiding the microsoft services. Press "OK," then "Restart." When Windows boots back up, check the box next to "Don't show this message..." and then press "OK."

NOTE: After pressing "Disable All," Pro Tools users must recheck "MMERefresh" in the Startup tab and "Digidesign MME Refresh Service" in the Services tab. GigaStudio users must check "msg32" in the Startup tab, even if GigaStudio was installed and then uninstalled later. All users will notice that the system tray is now empty (or very close to being empty). If there are certain applications that you would like preloaded on startup (and thus back in your system tray), simply go back to the utility and recheck them. Be advised, though, that each application that is checked (and loaded) will draw CPU resources away from your audio applications.

Also, please remember that this process will cause all non-system programs from booting along with Windows, including antivirus software and, occasionally, utilities used for your computer's hardware to function properly. General-use computers may need other services and applications in order to function, such as proprietary drivers for mouse touchpads, wireless Internet cards, etc. If a particular program that you need stops working after running the msconfig utility, then DO NOT go back and attempt to reinstall the program. Simply choose "Enable All" instead of Disable All" to restore full functionality. Then, you can go through

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your processes, one by one, to see what needs to remain enabled. You may need to contact your PC manufacturer to be double-check whether or not an application need to be enabled or not.

Make absolutely sure you hide the Microsoft services in the Services tab. This is very critical, and not doing so will cause various Windows features to (temporarily) stop working. Also, be aware that antivirus utilities will also be turned off by using msconfig in this way.

Keep in mind that the msconfig utility is always reversible, but uninstalling and reinstalling software may not be. If your PC malfunctions immediately after using msconfig, then before doing anything else, enable everything to reverse the effects.

Audio Streamlining and File Management: Things to Do to Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly

Now your computer is ready for the intense demands of audio processing. There are still a few things to remember so your system stays in optimal condition. These steps will allow you to work efficiently without having to reconfigure your computer.

Defrag Often

Defragmenting your hard drives is recommended in all Windows OS’s, and particularly in systems running and editing large audio and multimedia files. As data begins to be physically written to the disk, it is placed by the drive on the first available empty location. Eventually, the file will run out of space by approaching the next file on the disk. At this point, the file is split, and the remainder of it is written elsewhere on the disk. Large files on often-used drives can end up with hundreds of these fragments. Defragmenting your disks places the data for files next to each other (rather than fragmented throughout the disk), which speeds up reading from and writing to the disk, and increases system stability. In Windows, you can defragment a disk by going to Start > Computer > right-click on the drive to defragment > Properties > Tools > Defragment now. Windows offers the option to automatically schedule a defrag. Think of this as a regularly scheduled oil change. It is preferable to schedule these automatic defrags for times when you know the PC will not be in use. Early in the morning or very late at night are preferable times. Defragmenting should be done about every 80 to 100 hours of studio use (or more, if you constantly record and delete new files).

Check Your RAM

Windows has a built-in utility that can check your RAM for you. It will let you know if there are any errors in your RAM that need to be addressed. RAM errors can lead to such things as lockups, freezes, restarts with no warning, blue screens, and failures to boot the PC. To access Window's RAM diagnostic tool, go to Start > Control Panel (make sure you are in Classic View) > Administrative Tools > Memory Diagnostics Tool. Alternatively, you can type in "memory Diagnostic" in the Start search box. You will have the option to restart immediately and check, or check the next time you restart. Once you do restart, the memory diagnostic tool will begin.

The memory test is subdivided into Basic, Standard, and Extended tests. The tests are progressively longer and more thorough. When the test finishes, Windows will boot automatically and display a notification balloon with the results of the test.

Driver Modes

Windows essentially utilizes three driver modes: WDM, ASIO, and WaveRT. WDM is the oldest of the three, provides the widest range of compatibility (especially with consumer-level, built-in audio cards), and operates with the slowest response. ASIO is a third-party standard developed by Steinberg and is more than adequate for a DAW user. WaveRT is a new driver mode developed specifically for Windows that provides a kernel-level data transfer, allowing for the most stability and least latency (delay) of the three. Some interfaces may not have WaveRT support, so in this case, ASIO is a necessity. This is fine, as ASIO has been the preferred standard for years for DAW use and is still very widely used. However, if WaveRT is available, it is the preferred driver mode due to its speed and OS integration.

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Plug-in Resources

Plug-ins can take the form of inserts (reverb, compression, etc.) and virtual instruments (synths, rewire applications, etc.). Both types can consume large amounts of CPU resources when instantiated. It is a good idea to use as few instances of each plug-in as possible. Reverbs and hardware emulators—typically the most hungry plug-ins—can be inserted to auxiliary tracks, and audio can be bused to these tracks from multiple sources. Similarly, multiple MIDI tracks can send to a single virtual instrument. Both methods conserve resources by loading the plug-in, and thus the CPU load, only once. Additionally, analog emulation plug-ins can take up a large amount of CPU resources. Rather then inserting a modeled compressor on, say, seven drum tracks, create a group channel for your drums and only insert it once. With this method, you still get the sound you want on the drums, but you save your CPU six instantiations of a plug-in. Limiting the amount of active plug-ins has the added benefit of keeping your session smaller and more streamlined.

To monitor how your computer is utilizing its resources, right-click in an empty space on the task bar (somewhere between the Start button and the clock). Select Task Manager. The Performance tab will give you a fairly accurate idea of the average load put on your CPU. This meter takes into account everything that is running. Keep in mind that it can be a little jerky; what you are looking for is an average measurement over several seconds. Try to keep the processor (there will be more than one processor window on an Intel or AMD multicore CPU) at an upper limit of 70-75%. Higher loads than this are known to cause stuttering, dropouts, freezes, and crashes. If the load is too high, you can remove plug-ins or applications. If this still doesn't help, then the solution very well could be to increase the amount of RAM installed in your computer.

Saving and File Management

The preferred setup for all audio computers makes use of at least two hard drives. One drive, the system or C: drive, will only have the OS and all applications installed on it. All data will be saved to other drives. This prevents the C: drive from becoming too full and/or fragmented, and allows for faster transfer rates for your audio files, thus increasing track counts. Full system drives run much slower than their clean counterparts because there is more data to search through when trying to find system or application files, and there are fewer open spaces to write files. It is strongly advised to save everything (sessions, downloads, documents, EVERYTHING) to a second (or third, fourth, etc.) hard drive. The general principle is that things you INSTALL go to the C: drive, while things you SAVE go to a different drive. External hard drives are becoming very popular because the data can be easily transported to a different computer. Whichever type of hard drive you opt for, make sure that it has a minimum speed of 7,200 RPM (revolutions per minute). Drives running at 10,000 RPM are ideal, especially when running large sessions (over 24 tracks). Slower drives may not be able to keep up with the demands of recording and streaming audio.

A word on saving: Often, when creating a new session, it is easy to choose the default name and location provided. Be careful NOT to do this! The default settings are usually to name the session "Untitled" and save it somewhere in the C: drive. You will soon get a full C: drive and too many "Untitled" sessions to tell which is which! Use the same amount of care with file management that you do when recording.

Archiving

Even when taking care to save to multiple hard drives, you can still run short on space. This is especially true if there are many sessions (complete with audio files) and sample libraries on the same drive. A good idea is to archive these sessions. Archiving in this sense means either burning to a removable disk (CD or DVD), or transferring to a backup drive. DVD's are the preferred method of removable storage because they can hold over 5 times more data: 4.7 gigabytes on a DVD versus 800 megabytes on a CD. If you archive to a backup hard drive, make sure to access the drive frequently (every six months to ensure smooth operation).

Another reason to archive is to prevent data loss. An entire drive full of sessions can be lost at any time due to a hard drive crash. Having all of your sessions backed up on removable media will allow you to maintain a copy that can then be copied back onto a new drive, if necessary. Removable media has the added bonus of

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being relatively impervious to data loss; unless you physically lose or damage the disk, your data will not be lost (translated: CD's and DVD's don't crash).

The Manual is Your Friend

AAll audio applications are complicated; it's the nature of the beast. However, they all include extensive help files, and in many cases, thorough tutorials. The vast majority of operational questions can be answered from the manual. We strongly advise that you read at least the introductory sections, if not the entire manual, before you attempt to use your software. This will allow you to understand where key tools and menus are, give you insights into what you can and can't do, walk you through how to do various tasks, and increase efficiency and reduce stress when making music. If there's a section you don't understand, read it several times. Walk through the procedure step by step as you read it. Repeat this as many times as you need. Use the index and table of contents to find areas in which you need to brush. Never assume that will know every feature in any piece of hardware/software. Always read your manual.

PC Optimization Guide for Windows Vista

Welcome to the Windows Vista PC Optimization Guide. Here you will find a comprehensive guide to optimization of any Vista computer for use as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

It is important that you read through this documentation, as it covers several crucial optimization steps recommended when setting up your DAW. Because Vista is meant for an entire spectrum of users, by default, the user interface is designed to have a very nice GUI (Graphical User Interface), plenty of security, a pleasing set of sounds, and several other features. Some of these are not the ideal settings for dedicated DAW users, though. This guide is intended to step you through optimizing your machine in preparation for your new hardware and software to gain the most out of your system without experiencing the unnecessary heavy processor loads of poorly optimized machines.

A few conventions are used in the following sections: 1. This guide assumes that you are working off a fresh install of Vista. Therefore, if you have modified the way your windows are displayed, or otherwise customized the OS, some of the instructions may be slightly different. 2. Classic View is used in the Control Panel. There is a link on the left-hand pane in the Control Panel window to engage Classic View. 3. When navigating Vista, the ">" symbol is used to show the next step. For example, instead of seeing "double-click on Computer, then double-click on C:, then double-click on Program Files," you will see this: "Go to Computer > C: > Program Files." 4. It is assumed you can access the Device Manager. Here are a number of ways: - Right-click on Computer > Manage > Device Manager. - Start > type in "Device Manager" and press "Enter." - Start . Control Panel > Device Manager.

Performance

These adjustments are some of the more sweeping optimizations in this guide. They address the visual aspects, processor handling, and DEP for the Vista OS. One of the most highly touted aspects of Vista has been the new visual effects, or "eye candy." As impressive as they are, Aero effects do take a significant amount of system resources. These are valuable resources that can instead be devoted to your audio software. If you do have a powerful enough video card, then it will assume all video processing; in that case, it is more than okay to leave Aero enabled.

Processor scheduling determines which types of processing are given a higher priority by Vista. The default setting is to devote more to your programs. This seems good on the surface; however, audio drivers run in the background, and NOT as separate programs. In order to get the most performance from audio gear, it is best to set your processor to handle background services first.

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Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help prevent malicious code from running on a system. This is a technology originally developed in Windows XP that is now a part of Vista. While great in theory, DEP can sometimes see audio applications as "malicious code." Leaving it on to prevent attacks on essential Windows files is preferable.

To make these adjustments, right-click on Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Performance > Settings, and select: * Visual Effects > Adjust for best Performance (this disables all Aero effects). * Advanced > Processor Scheduling > Background Services. * Advanced > Data Execution Prevention > Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only.

Press OK when done. This will disable the Windows Aero™ theme. If you would like to enable it again, right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize > Theme > Windows Vista. Resource usage from the Vista theme is negligible. See the section on Personalization for more details.

Power Options

Windows allows for custom configuration of its power settings. This is useful for conserving energy when the computer is not in use. It works by automatically powering down or “hibernating” one or more components of the computer system when the computer has been idle for a predetermined amount of time. This can pose a major problem for users who record long sessions, as the computer may power itself down in the middle of recording!

To optimize your power settings for audio performance, go to Start > Control Panel > Power Options > choose "High Performance." Click the "Change plan settings" button, and make sure both options are set to "Never."

Also, many systems come preset to conserve USB power by temporarily cutting or disabling power to USB ports that are not actively in use. This can often be problematic for USB drivers that run in the background, since background tasks are not given power priority by the OS. If you use USB interfaces or controllers, than you should disable this power-management scheme. Go to the Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus Controllers > right-click on a "USB Root Hub" > Properties > Power Management > deselect "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" > press "OK." Repeat this process for all USB Root Hubs in the Device Manager.

User Account Control

The new User Account Control in Vista is among the more controversial features. It is beneficial for preventing unwanted changes to the system, and especially for protecting against unauthorized installations and file executions. However, the constant prompts asking to allow or deny access can interfere with overall workflow; all activity is suspended while the prompt waits for a reply. Furthermore, the user account monitoring uses extra CPU cycles (in fact, almost a negligible amount), so disabling the feature improves performance ever so slightly. All in all, the impediments in a DAW seem to outweigh the added security, especially if the system is kept off the Internet. To disable UAC, go to Start > Control Panel > User Accounts (your account) > "Turn User Control on or off" > Uncheck "Use UAC" > OK > Restart.

* Keep in mind that some programs may require UAC to be enabled to complete the installation. If this is the case, then follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

Windows Security Center

Another enhancement in Vista is the increased efficiency and centralized configuration of the Security Center. It is great for keeping out intruders, spyware, viruses, etc., but does so at the cost of CPU cycles. If you are online, it is best to leave the Security Center alone and active. Otherwise, you risk losing data, the integrity of your system drive, and even your identity. If you are not online with your Vista DAW, then disabling the

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Security Center features will free up some extra resources for you. The following instructions are for the offline user.

To access the Security Center, go to Start > Control Panel > Security Center. There are several adjustments to be made from the Security Center window: * Click on Windows Update on the left-hand pane > Change Settings > Never Check for Updates... > OK > close the update window. * Click on Windows Firewall > Change settings > Off > OK > close the Firewall window. * Click on Windows Defender > Tools > Options > uncheck "Automatically scan my computer" > Save> close the Defender window. You can manually scan at any time by pressing the "Scan" button from the main Defender window. Again, this is not an issue if you're offline. * Note that if you make these adjustments, Windows will continually remind you that your computer is at risk. To stop these reminders, go to "Change the way Security Center alerts me" > "Don't notify me and don't display the icon."

Bear in mind that in this state, you are at risk if you should choose to go online. Before doing so, it is highly recommended that you reenable everything in the Security center, and also connect immediately to Windows Update for the latest security updates from Microsoft.

Antivirus software is another subcategory of Windows security. While not included as part of the Security Center, antivirus software is another near-necessity for everyday computing. For the online DAW user, it is best to disable antivirus software before using any audio applications. Since you will not be actively online, Windows Firewall and Defender (provided they are up to date) will be enough to monitor the background. For the offline DAW user, it's best to not install it in the first place.

In Vista Ultimate and Enterprise editions, another relevant security feature is BitLocker drive encryption. While it is a fantastic tool to prevent theft and piracy, the added encryption is not suitable for a high-performance DAW. It is best to leave BitLocker off on any drive that will actively be running DAW applications or streaming audio. However, for backup and non-DAW-related drives, it is fine to leave it enabled. To adjust BitLocker on your drives, go to Start > Control Panel > Control Panel Home > Security > BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Virtual Memory and ReadyBoost

Virtual memory (or paging files) is a technique that involves using a dedicated section of the hard drive as though it were additional RAM. The downside is that hard drives invariably process data slower than RAM does, so using paging files does decrease performance. This can be beneficial for low-performance, high-data applications where lots of material is loaded into RAM but does not process extremely quickly. With audio applications, this is not a good idea. As they are very demanding on system resources, using a lower-speed hard drive is not a viable solution. However, some applications may require the use of a paging file, for one reason or another. If this is the case, then make sure to set all of your buffer sizes in your audio application as high as possible to compensate for the hard drive's latency.

Right-click on "Computer" (either from desktop or Start button) > Properties > Advanced System Settings. This will bring you to the Advanced tab in the System Properties window. Under the Performance section, go to Settings tab and select Advanced, the press the "Change" button under Virtual memory. Uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives." For each drive listed, click on "No paging file" and "Set." You will be warned that a crash file may not be recorded if you have no paging file. Choose "Yes" to this message. Once all drives have been modified, choose "OK." Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

If you do need to enable a paging file, for whatever reason, it is usually best to use a multiple of 2 for the size. Examples would be 256 MB, 512 MB, 1024 MB, etc. There is no need to exceed the amount of physical RAM installed for a paging file. If you find yourself continually needing to increase the paging file size, it is probably time to upgrade your system RAM.

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One alternative to paging files is a new Vista technology called ReadyBoost. It essentially uses a USB flash drive as a high-speed paging file. Not all flash drives will work, though. A device must have the following minimum specifications: * The device must be at least 64 MB * The device must be USB 2.0 * It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s * It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

To activate ReadyBoost on a USB flash drive, go to Computer > right-click on the drive > Properties > ReadyBoost > select "Use this Device" and choose the amount of space you wish to dedicate to ReadyBoost > "OK" when finished. As with paging files, it is best to stay with multiples of 2.

Hard-Drive Performance

Vista has an option to boost the normal performance of ATA and SATA drives by enhancing write caching. One problem with this is that if power is interrupted to the hard drive, then the risk of data loss or corruption is greatly increased. However, if you use a battery backup or some other type of uninterruptible power supply, then you should not have anything to worry about. To speed up your drives, navigate to the Device Manager. Click on the "+" next to Disk Drives, then right-click on the drive you wish to change and choose Properties > Policies > check the box next to "Enable advanced performance."

There are several different ways in which data on a hard disk can be accessed. DMA is one of them. This format is the best and fastest method available, so it is recommended for audio. To make sure DMA is enabled on your hard drives, go to the Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. You will see one or more ATA Channels. On each channel, right-click and choose Properties > Advanced Settings > make sure "Enable DMA" is checked > press "OK." There is another type of device beyond the ATA Controllers. In some cases, changing this listing (which varies according to the motherboard) to "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" has been known to increase performance. Note, however, that this is not a required step to optimize your system. It is an optional step that MAY increase performance. If you choose to do this, then right-click on it and choose "Update Driver Software..." > "Browse my Computer..." > "Let me pick..." > "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" > Next > Close. You do have to restart your computer for this change to take effect.

There are also two other drive properties to consider. These can be accessed by going to Computer and right-clicking on the drive in question, and: * Under the General tab, make sure "Compress this drive..." is unchecked. * Under the Quota tab, you have "Do not limit disk usage" selected, but nothing else.

Indexing Options

Another feature in Vista is its ability to automatically index all the files in the Start Menu, user profile folders, and files setup for offline access. Too many files in these locations, especially when the files change often, causes the indexing service to add to the overall CPU load. While this change speeds up your overall performance, it will also adversely affect your searching speed in those locations. However, with a good file-management strategy, this will be irrelevant for the DAW user. To adjust your indexing options, go to Start > type in "indexing options" > press Enter > Modify. In the "Change selected locations" window, uncheck everything except for the Start menu, located in C: > ProgramData > Microsoft > Windows.

Onboard Devices

An onboard device is any device built in to the computer. Examples include built-in wireless adapters, audio cards, and Web cams. Most of these are fairly benign but some have the potential to interfere with digital audio software and hardware. Historically speaking, the most problematic devices are wireless Internet cards and audio cards; we typically recommend disabling these, at least while using your software. Onboard wireless Internet cards periodically send and receive information when activated (even without an Internet browser open), and these bursts of data transfer take CPU cycles, to the point of causing audible pops and

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clicks in DAW applications. Onboard audio cards can cause driver conflict problems, and are not as high in quality as professional interfaces. Additionally, they are often selected as the default driver in most DAW applications, forcing you to manually select your primary interface instead.

In the Device Manager, you can right-click on any device and choose "Disable." This will essentially turn that device off, releasing its drivers and stopping any resources from being used to run it. Internet and other wireless cards are typically found under the "Network Adapters" category. Onboard audio cards and Web cams will be found under "Sound, video and game controllers."

Windows Sidebar

Windows Sidebar's gadgets provide some very useful information. They also take up some very useful CPU cycles. For the serious DAW user, it's best to have Sidebar disabled, at least while working on audio. This will not only allow for extra CPU power, it will also clear the desktop to make room for applications to be seen. If Sidebar is active, double-click on the icon in the system tray and uncheck "Start Sidebar when Windows starts." Click "OK." It will be disabled the next time you reboot.

Personalization

Like all previous version of Windows, Vista allows for a high level of customization, allowing users to configure the OS to look and sound almost any way they want. Unfortunately, some of the popular settings can interfere with DAW workflow. Under the Personalize window (which can be accessed by right-clicking on the desktop), here are some settings to look out for: * Screen Saver. When screen savers become active, DAW users lose all sense of what is happening in their system (for example, visually monitoring recording levels). For this reason, it is better to set your screen saver to "none." * Sounds. As certain events happen, Vista notifies you by playing a sound. This can be problematic while recording, since the sound may cause a driver problem by trying to access the driver currently in use. For this reason, it is usually best to set your sound scheme to "No sounds." * Using the Aero theme usually does not cause any problems. Since Vista outsources visual processing to your video card, it will not take up any additional resources. If your video card is robust enough for Aero's effects, then leaving the theme enabled will not cause any problems. If you do not have a dedicated video card, or have one that is underpowered, then it may be better to use the Windows Classic theme instead, but switching to the Vista theme should not use any more resources.

Startup Service and Applications

By default, Windows preloads applications and services from installed programs and deposits icons in the system tray. The goal is to both decrease load times and provide easy access to a variety of programs. While very helpful in theory, these partially launched applications are a CPU drain. Disabling them helps Windows allocate more resources to running applications. Windows will also load faster, since it is not preloading every application during startup. To disable these applications from loading on startup, do the following.

CAUTION: Make absolutely sure you follow the directions EXACTLY as printed below. Startup configuration is powerful stuff, and if used carelessly, can cause problems. Follow the directions, DO NOT treat this section lightly, and you will be fine:

Go to Start > Run, type in "msconfig" (without the " " marks) and press OK. When the System Configuration Utility comes up, click on the Startup tab. Press the button to "Disable All." Click on the Services tab. Check the box at the bottom of the window to "Hide All Microsoft Services." Press the "Disable All" button, but only AFTER hiding the microsoft services. Press "OK," then "Restart." When Windows boots back up, check the box next to "Don't show this message..." and then press "OK."

NOTE: After pressing "Disable All," Pro Tools users must recheck "MMERefresh" in the Startup tab and "Digidesign MME Refresh Service" in the Services tab. GigaStudio users must check "msg32" in the Startup tab, even if GigaStudio was installed and then uninstalled later. All users will notice that the system tray is

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now empty (or very close to being empty). If there are certain applications that you would like preloaded on startup (and thus back in your system tray), simply go back to the utility and recheck them. Be advised, though, that each application that is checked (and loaded) will draw CPU resources away from your audio applications.

Also, please remember that this process will cause all non-system programs from booting along with Windows, including antivirus software and, occasionally, utilities used for your computer's hardware to function properly. General-use computers may need other services and applications in order to function, such as proprietary drivers for mouse touchpads, wireless Internet cards, etc. If a particular program that you need stops working after running the msconfig utility, then DO NOT go back and attempt to reinstall the program. Simply choose "Enable All" instead of Disable All" to restore full functionality. Then, you can go through your processes, one by one, to see what needs to remain enabled. You may need to contact your PC manufacturer to be double-check whether or not an application need to be enabled or not.

Make absolutely sure you hide the Microsoft services in the Services tab. This is very critical, and not doing so will cause various Windows features to (temporarily) stop working. Also, be aware that antivirus utilities will also be turned off by using msconfig in this way.

Keep in mind that the msconfig utility is always reversible, but uninstalling and reinstalling software may not be. If your PC malfunctions immediately after using msconfig, then before doing anything else, enable everything to reverse the effects.

Audio Streamlining and File Management: Things to Do to Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly

Now your computer is ready for the intense demands of audio processing. There are still a few things to remember so your system stays in optimal condition. These steps will allow you to work efficiently without having to reconfigure your computer.

Defrag Often

Defragmenting your hard drives is recommended in all Windows OS’s, and particularly in systems running and editing large audio and multimedia files. As data begins to be physically written to the disk, it is placed by the drive on the first available empty location. Eventually, the file will run out of space by approaching the next file on the disk. At this point, the file is split, and the remainder of it is written elsewhere on the disk. Large files on often-used drives can end up with hundreds of these fragments. Defragmenting your disks places the data for files next to each other (rather than fragmented throughout the disk), which speeds up reading from and writing to the disk, and increases system stability. In Vista, you can defragment a disk by going to Start > Computer > right-click on the drive to defragment > Properties > Tools > Defragment now. Vista offers the option to automatically schedule a defrag. Think of this as a regularly scheduled oil change. It is preferable to schedule these automatic defrags for times when you know the PC will not be in use. Early in the morning or very late at night are preferable times. Defragmenting should be done about every 80 to 100 hours of studio use (or more, if you constantly record and delete new files).

Check Your RAM

Vista has a built-in utility that can check your RAM for you. It will let you know if there are any errors in your RAM that need to be addressed. RAM errors can lead to such things as lockups, freezes, restarts with no warning, blue screens, and failures to boot the PC. To access Vista's RAM diagnostic tool, go to Start > Control Panel (make sure you are in Classic View) > Administrative Tools > Memory Diagnostics Tool. Alternatively, you can type in "memory Diagnostic" in the Start search box. You will have the option to restart immediately and check, or check the next time you restart. Once you do restart, the memory diagnostic tool will begin.

The memory test is subdivided into Basic, Standard, and Extended tests. The tests are progressively longer and more thorough. When the test finishes, Vista will boot automatically and display a notification balloon with the results of the test.

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Driver Modes

Windows essentially utilizes three driver modes: WDM, ASIO, and WaveRT. WDM is the oldest of the three, provides the widest range of compatibility (especially with consumer-level, built-in audio cards), and operates with the slowest response. ASIO is a third-party standard developed by Steinberg and is more than adequate for a DAW user. WaveRT is a new driver mode developed specifically for Vista that provides a kernel-level data transfer, allowing for the most stability and least latency (delay) of the three. Some interfaces may not have WaveRT support, so in this case, ASIO is a necessity. This is fine, as ASIO has been the preferred standard for years for DAW use and is still very widely used. However, if WaveRT is available, it is the preferred driver mode due to its speed and OS integration.

Plug-in Resources

Plug-ins can take the form of inserts (reverb, compression, etc.) and virtual instruments (synths, rewire applications, etc.). Both types can consume large amounts of CPU resources when instantiated. It is a good idea to use as few instances of each plug-in as possible. Reverbs and hardware emulators—typically the most hungry plug-ins—can be inserted to auxiliary tracks, and audio can be bused to these tracks from multiple sources. Similarly, multiple MIDI tracks can send to a single virtual instrument. Both methods conserve resources by loading the plug-in, and thus the CPU load, only once. Additionally, analog emulation plug-ins can take up a large amount of CPU resources. Rather then inserting a modeled compressor on, say, seven drum tracks, create a group channel for your drums and only insert it once. With this method, you still get the sound you want on the drums, but you save your CPU six instantiations of a plug-in. Limiting the amount of active plug-ins has the added benefit of keeping your session smaller and more streamlined.

To monitor how your computer is utilizing its resources, right-click in an empty space on the task bar (somewhere between the Start button and the clock). Select Task Manager. The Performance tab will give you a fairly accurate idea of the average load put on your CPU. This meter takes into account everything that is running. Keep in mind that it can be a little jerky; what you are looking for is an average measurement over several seconds. Try to keep the processor (there will be more than one processor window on an Intel or AMD multicore CPU) at an upper limit of 70-75%. Higher loads than this are known to cause stuttering, dropouts, freezes, and crashes. If the load is too high, you can remove plug-ins or applications. If this still doesn't help, then the solution very well could be to increase the amount of RAM installed in your computer.

Saving and File Management

The preferred setup for all audio computers makes use of at least two hard drives. One drive, the system or C: drive, will only have the OS and all applications installed on it. All data will be saved to other drives. This prevents the C: drive from becoming too full and/or fragmented, and allows for faster transfer rates for your audio files, thus increasing track counts. Full system drives run much slower than their clean counterparts because there is more data to search through when trying to find system or application files, and there are fewer open spaces to write files. It is strongly advised to save everything (sessions, downloads, documents, EVERYTHING) to a second (or third, fourth, etc.) hard drive. The general principle is that things you INSTALL go to the C: drive, while things you SAVE go to a different drive. External hard drives are becoming very popular because the data can be easily transported to a different computer. Whichever type of hard drive you opt for, make sure that it has a minimum speed of 7,200 RPM (revolutions per minute). Drives running at 10,000 RPM are ideal, especially when running large sessions (over 24 tracks). Slower drives may not be able to keep up with the demands of recording and streaming audio.

A word on saving: Often, when creating a new session, it is easy to choose the default name and location provided. Be careful NOT to do this! The default settings are usually to name the session "Untitled" and save it somewhere in the C: drive. You will soon get a full C: drive and too many "Untitled" sessions to tell which is which! Use the same amount of care with file management that you do when recording.

Archiving

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Even when taking care to save to multiple hard drives, you can still run short on space. This is especially true if there are many sessions (complete with audio files) and sample libraries on the same drive. A good idea is to archive these sessions. Archiving in this sense means either burning to a removable disk (CD or DVD), or transferring to a backup drive. DVD's are the preferred method of removable storage because they can hold over 5 times more data: 4.7 gigabytes on a DVD versus 800 megabytes on a CD. If you archive to a backup hard drive, make sure to access the drive frequently (every six months to ensure smooth operation).

Another reason to archive is to prevent data loss. An entire drive full of sessions can be lost at any time due to a hard drive crash. Having all of your sessions backed up on removable media will allow you to maintain a copy that can then be copied back onto a new drive, if necessary. Removable media has the added bonus of being relatively impervious to data loss; unless you physically lose or damage the disk, your data will not be lost (translated: CD's and DVD's don't crash).

The Manual is Your Friend

AAll audio applications are complicated; it's the nature of the beast. However, they all include extensive help files, and in many cases, thorough tutorials. The vast majority of operational questions can be answered from the manual. We strongly advise that you read at least the introductory sections, if not the entire manual, before you attempt to use your software. This will allow you to understand where key tools and menus are, give you insights into what you can and can't do, walk you through how to do various tasks, and increase efficiency and reduce stress when making music. If there's a section you don't understand, read it several times. Walk through the procedure step by step as you read it. Repeat this as many times as you need. Use the index and table of contents to find areas in which you need to brush. Never assume that will know every feature in any piece of hardware/software. Always read your manual.

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/article.php?id=1071

Optimising your PC for audio on Windows 7All of the tuning tips below should be implemented if you want to achieve high speed, low latency audio recording and playback without glitches with your FireWire audio interface.Please note: If you are using a Saffire (white), Saffire LE (black), Saffire Pro 26, Saffire Pro 10 or Liquid Mix you must downgrade your FireWire driver to the legacy driver. For more information on how to do this, see the article here.

The video here guides you through the following steps.

General optimisation:

1. Set your computer's power for high performanceIf your computer is set to conserve energy, the CPU may not be running at full speed all of the time. This can have a detrimental effect on your computer's audio performance. To set your computer's power for high performance:- Go to: Start>Control Panel>Power Options- Choose "High Performance"- Click the "Change plan settings" button.- Make sure both power options are set to "Never"

2. Disable system soundsSystem sounds can interrupt audio. Ensure that they are disabled by doing the following:- Go to control panel and select "Sound"- Go to the sounds tab- Under sounds scheme, select "No sounds"- Click "Apply" then, "OK"

3. Enable DMA (Direct memory access) on each IDE channel

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This allows data to be transferred directly into the memory and can improve audio performance. To ensure that DMA is enabled:- Open device manager - Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers category then double click on each one of the IDE channels- Under the 'Advanced settings' tab, make sure the 'Enable DMA' box is ticked in device propertiesPlease note: this only applies to some hardware and if this option is not available, you should not worry about completing this step.

4. Set processor scheduling to "Background services"This will improve the performance of your audio drivers on your computer. To do this:- In control panel select "system"- Go to "Advanced system settings" and then the "Performance" tab- Set processor scheduling as "Background Services"- Click "Apply" then "OK"

5. Disable Windows Firewall, anti-virus and spyware softwareThese should all be disabled to ensure that no interferences occur during audio recording or playback and to ensure that maximum resources are available. To remain secure while your firewall and antivirus disabled, it is advisable to temporarily disconnect from any internet connections when working with audio.

Advanced optimisation:

If you wish to optimise your system further, or you are using a system that is particularly lacking in resources you can follow the tips below for advanced optimisation.

Disable Visual effectsThe visual features in Windows 7 can use resources that could otherwise help to improve audio performance. As a start, it is good idea to disable some of the visual features by doing the following:- Press start and in the search box type: "SystemPropertiesPerformance" and press enter- On the visual effects tab select "custom"- Untick: "Animate windows when minimising and maximising" to help prevent glitches when minimising and maximising. You can also experiment with disabling other visual effects in the custom list to see how they improve audio performance.- Once finished, press "OK"

If you wish to optimise your Windows 7 graphics for the best performance use the "Adjust for best performance". Although improving computer performance, this will make your Windows 7 appear a lot less aesthetically pleasing.

Disable Windows servicesOne way in which you can make more resources available to improve audio performance, is to disable unnecessary Windows 7 services as these use valuable resources. The following site has a comprehensive guide to the services running on Windows 7 and helps locate the services that are safe to disable:Windows 7 Service Configurations by Black Viper

If you are still experiencing audio performance problems after optimising your computer for audio, please contact the support team by using the "contact us" link at the top right-hand corner of this page.

VIDEO: Optimising your Windows 7 PC for audio http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/article.php?id=1088The following video guides you through how to perform the tuning tips for Windows 7 as explained in the 'Optimising your PC for audio on Widows 7' answerbase article.

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=148337

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optimizing windows 7 for audio production

-hellohow to optimize windows 7 for audio production and ableton?is win 7 ok for working with audio? or better to try to setup XP on a new laptop?

-Get DPC latency checker as a reference to make sure your drivers are good ,turning off hi precision event timer HPET in my bios gave me 10 to 1 improvement result in DPCLC.

-Turn off Aero and all visual effects.Turn off file indexing for all hard drives.

-I'm running Win7 64-bit Ultimate and Home Premium on my laptop and desktop respectively, with indexing and Aero on, and I have had zero problems with it.I get great performance, can run 192 sample latency with no hiccups or dropouts until I get up to 70%+CPUJust an FYI. Let the indexing run through for a few days, and you shouldn't have any problems with it

-thanksand where to stop that file indexing?where s menu?

-Answer here: http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-speed-up-your-computers-performance-by-turning-off-indexing-of-your-local-drive-in-windows-xp-and-vista/You'll have to do this for each drive or partition, if you happen to have several.

-Check out this post on my forum: http://nebulae.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=495Also, here's a post on services you can set to manual: http://www.askvg.com/windows-7-services ... to-manual/

http://www.audiogeekzine.com/2010/08/pro-tools-windows-7-optimization/

Pro Tools & Windows 7 optimization

I recently switched from Windows XP to Windows 7 64 bit. The install went surprisingly well considering my usual bad luck with this sort of thing. While there was a lot of reinstalling of software the experience overall was very positive and far less stressful than I feared. Win7 looks and feels and works a lot nicer than XP did with the same hardware so I’m really satisfied. Windows 7 64 bit is strongly recommended. Whether you need more RAM now or not, this is the way forward and will be the standard.

Note – I also updated my MacBook Pro to Snow Leopard, which was even easier but leaves very little to talk about as everything works perfectly as is. If you have questions feel free to ask.I know some people are hesitant to upgrade, so here are my tips for making the transition.Pro ToolsPro Tools 8.0.4 is the first version to be officially compatible with a 64 bit Windows system. When this was announced I knew it was my cue to finally ditch ancient XP for good. At this time there is no full installer for 8.0.4 so unfortunately the installation takes quite a while. Pro Tools 8.0.0 (the retail dvd version) will not work correctly with Windows 7.

The Process is recommended in this order:Completely uninstall any previous versions if applicableDownload and install Pro Tools 8.0.3 Full installer from your AVID account. Do not run Pro Tools yet.Download and install Pro Tools 8.0.4 UpdateOptional – Install additional Toolkits (Music Production/DV/Complete Production)Make sure ALL your plugins are up to datePro Tools should work well at this point. If it does not or you desire improved performance continue to the optimization steps below.

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Note – Pro Tools 8.0.4 is 64 bit Windows compatible but is NOT a 64 bit application. For this reason Pro Tools will install to the Program Files (x86) folder.Optimizing Windows 7 for Pro Tools

Note- These tips are with Pro Tools in mind but will improve the performance of ANY DAW you use.

1 – Windows 7 Optimizations and Troubleshooting – Here is AVID’s guide for setting up Windows 7: http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=349411&NewLang=en

I personally don’t find it all necessary and didn’t follow all of it on my system like disabling graphics effects, disabling other devices. I actually need internet and the internal sound card often while using Pro Tools for realtime collaboration, lessons or tech support. I did do the USB Power thing. Power settings are set to always on exept monitors which turn off after 10 minutes. This is the official guide, if you need tech support this is what they assume you have already tried..2 – Microsoft Hotfix Fix311388 – This hotfix has been recommended by a few PT 8/win7 users. I’ve installed on my system with no issues before or after. For some this made a world of difference. Recommended if you use either a firewire audio interface or firewire hard drive (or plan to).http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B981613&x=10&y=14.

3 – W7 x64 optimzations for 8.0.4 – I went through and applied the tweaks in here, but found my internet stopped working and had to revert it all. You can read through the thread but I would skip the the tips in the original post. The best bits of the thread are the next 3 below http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=277438.

4 – Ultimate Windows Tweaker – Later in the thread user Shan recommended Ultimate Windows Tweaker. It adjusts windows options easily http://www.windowsvalley.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-1-released-download-now/.

5 – SMART – Shan also shared another great tool for registry tweaks, I use the “tweaked settings” option. One click to apply general system optimizations. http://www.thewindowsclub.com/smart-a-utility-for-tweaking-windows-7-vista-xp-services.

6 - Menu delay utility – Absolutely install this, removes the delay between clicking a button and the menu appearing in all of Windows. This tiny thing allows you to work faster. http://duc.digidesign.com/showpost.php?p=1635574&postcount=33Extras

You can set up a key command to launch any program. This is something I started to do to make my life easier.Here is how I did it for the M-Audio Profire control panel.- Start>Control Panel find M-Audio ProFire. Right-click and choose ‘create shortcut’ Close the control panel explorer window.- Go to your desktop and find the new shortcut to the profire control panel. Right click and choose properties- In the ‘shortcut key’ entry box enter the key command you want to launch the control panel. I use ctrl+Alt + Num 0- Apply and close the properties window.

I’ve also set this up for my media player and the Sounds control panel to quickly switch the default device.I also find it handy to have a link to the DAE folder on the desktop to check the plugins and unused plugins folder from time to time.“C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Digidesign\DAE”That’s about it at this point, I’ll update the post if I come across any more tips. Everything is working great (other than the slow scrolling bug) on my end, I dare say the best any version ran on the same hardware. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

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