What is the most optimal and up-to-date audio configuration for personal computers available in today's rapidly evolving tech landscape, and how can one achieve the best audio quality and performance on their PC?

 

Complicated answer, but here are a few tips.

For performance :

- Good CPU and RAM sticks. According to DAWbench results, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the best CPU for low-latency real-time audio processing, so that's what I picked for my new workstation as I have some heavy projects, but it could be overkilled for your needs. The better your CPU and the lower your RAM latencies are, the more stable your computer will be at lower buffer sizes.

- A computer to audio interface path that is optimized. Check with LatencyMon to optimize the OS processing latency, and get an audio interface with well optimized drivers. RME and Motu are widely regarded as having the best drivers out there, but it's hard to pick a single best interface for every computer as its stability depends on sample rate and buffer sizes. From my experience, just avoid Antelope. It's laughable how bad their drivers are. Also, make sure that the USB cable you use is of high-quality and not too long. I had some interfaces that required shorter USB cables for the most stability.

- Check if your MIDI controllers are faster with MIDI cables plugged into your audio interface instead of directly to your computer.

For audio quality :

- DSP correction. There is no speaker setup, headphones or IEMs that don't benefit from DSP correction. For speakers, Sonarworks/ARC/Dirac are alright, Trinnov is better, but manual correction is best (when done properly). I obtained the best results by combining multiple techniques, such as vector averaged curves to treat the low-end, measuring the speakers very closely (2-10cm) to treat the midrange and high-end, and mid-side EQ to compensate the magnitude distortion from the phantom image of stereo speakers. It's quite complicated to do, and there's no comprehensive tutorial to do it online sadly, but the end result is 100% worth it, much better than the automatic process from Sonarworks.

- For headphones/IEMs, individual DSP calibration, and a good headphone amp with low output impedance. If you can't get individual measurements, refer to Oratory's database and squig.link

Hope it helps

 

For beginners:
1. Use a dedicated sound card or DAC.
2. Use high-quality amplifier, speakers or headphones. The quality of your amplifier, speakers or headphones is one of the most important factors in determining the sound quality of your PC audio.
3. Keep your audio drivers up to date. Outdated audio drivers can lead to poor sound quality and performance.
4. Optimize your audio settings. (As a starting point use Fidelizer and Process Lasso - see

and apply other tips from the video).

• Set the sample rate and bit depth to adequate values (to the audio files you actually use and avoid resampling, dithering, EQ-ing, etc.).
• Disable all audio enhancements.
• Disable all devices you don't use.
• Use a PS2 mouse on desktop PC.
• Decrease mouse and keyboard speed.
• Unplug all unnecessary USB devices.
• Enable exclusive mode for audio.
• Disable all unnecessary audio devices.
• Use WASAPI exclusive output (select pull option if available/possible) of your player.
• 
  
• 5. Reduce CPU usage. There are a number of things you can do to reduce CPU usage, such as closing any unnecessary applications, background apps and disabling startup programs.
• 6. Use a high-performance power plan (I recommend using Quick CPU).
• 7. Use BugHead Emperor player, Minority Clean and Rewrite Data software by Hiroyuki Yokota.
• --------------------------------------
• 8. If you have enough expertise:
• - Use Service Commander to kill all unnecessary services.
• - Start your audio player as service.
• 9. Use FULL Windows 10 Latency Reduction Pack
• See also other tips on https://audiosex.pro/threads/do-you-need-to-tweak-win-10-11-for-music-production.64322/

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 30, 2023

. Keep your audio drivers up to date. Outdated audio drivers can lead to poor sound quality and performance.
This may be a fallacy. if you're audio drivers are working well, time cannot degrade the performance, so the drivers release date would actually have little to do with performance abilities.

be not in haste to "upgrade" that which works fine. Once I have a well functioning system I don't upgrade anything unless I can prove it will be an actual upgrade and not just marketing flim flam for yet another useless feature.

 

It's the same as a firmware update. The updated software can make improvements if programming/changes were done to increase performance. By not updating, you do not gain anything. But not doing it does not mean it's going to get worse.

That one is funny,

 

yup, I just learned my lesson yesterday when Audient emailed me for a new driver release. Download it and give it a go just to get my whole audio setting messed up, Audient crashed so badly, that Studio One can't even initialize my AI. Had to go back and download the legacy driver and it worked like a charm again.

It is my mistake to ignore the golden advice, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

 

Since starting in 2004, I have never encountered an audio driver update that resulted in deterioration or malfunctions. While the benefits are often marginal, there have been pleasant surprises, particularly in terms of bug reduction.

 

in the states we refer to such activity as "running in place" a pleasant way to burn calories while getting nowhere. I myself don't trust software companies, lets be frank, I don't trust companies. Nothing they do is for the customers benefit. Its all about the bottom line. Caveat Emptor....