Hi guys,

I know, there is a guide to boost the performance on a windows system for audio, but I can't find it.
Someone have it? Or can we collect all known performance boosters?

Here are some I found:

• Set your computer's power for high performance

If 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:

1. Go to: Start>Control Panel>Power Options
2. Choose "High Performance"
3. Click the "Change plan settings" button.
4. Make sure both power options are set to "Never"2.

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• Disable system sound

System sounds can interrupt audio.Ensure that they are disabled by doing the following:

1. Go to control panel and select "Sound"
2. Go to the sounds tab
3. Under sounds scheme, select "No sounds"
4. Click "Apply" then, "OK"

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• Enable DMA (Direct memory access) on each IDE channel

This allows data to be transferred directly into the memory and can improve audio performance. Please note: This only applies to some hardware and if this option is not available, you should not worry about completing this step. To ensure that DMA is enabled:

1. Open device manager
2. Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers category then double click on each one of the IDE channels
3. Under the 'Advanced settings' tab, make sure the 'Enable DMA' box is ticked in device properties

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• Set processor scheduling to "Background services"

This will improve the performance of your audio drivers on your computer. To do this:

1. In control panel select "system"
2. Go to "Advanced system settings" and then the "Performance" tab
3. Set processor scheduling as "Background Services"
4. Click "Apply" then "OK"

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• Disable Windows Firewall, anti-virus, spyware software and disconnect from any internet connections

These should all be disabled to ensure that no interference's 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.

• Disable Visual effects

The 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:

1. Press start and in the search box type: "SystemPropertiesPerformance" and press enter
2. On the visual effects tab select "custom"
3. Untick: "Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing to help prevent glitches when minimizing and maximizing You can also experiment with disabling other visual effects in the custom list to see how they improve audio performance.
4. Once finished, press "OK"

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• Disable Windows services

One 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

 

Great guide. This will help augment it:

http://us.focusrite.com/answerbase/optimising-your-pc-for-audio-on-windows-7

http://us.focusrite.com/answerbase/optimising-your-pc-for-audio-on-windows-10

I think they might be the same. But hey. here they are.

 

I usually manually set up Services, i also suggest to go thru task manager and turn down unnecessary process then with ccleaner turn down non essential stuff wich start when windows start.

 

Got some of them bookmarked. Here you go:

https://www.native-instruments.com/.../windows-78-tuning-tips-for-audio-processing/

http://www.presonus.com/community/Learn/Optimizing-Windows-Vista-and-Windows-7-for-Music-Production

http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/pc-optimization-guide-for-windows-7/

http://us.focusrite.com/answerbase/optimising-your-pc-for-audio-on-windows-7

Hope that helped!

 

great little video for windows 8.1 but applies to 10 aswell

 

Also you can unpark cores of your multicore processor, to work with distributed load all the time!

I even "made" some reg keys to quickly merge them on and off (after merging, restart required)


P.S.
I'm running without any problems, so yeah, it's tested!
...also you can check your cores with keys "WIN+R", then type "resmon.exe" and when you open res. monitor in tab "CPU".

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2015

If you'd like to download this video from youtube and keep the sound (i found that if you try direct download the sound is not on the video) then this site seems pretty handy
http://www.clipconverter.cc

 

Tanks a lot for this, after appling all of these, my comptuer had a big performance boost. Ableton is now running as iff i installed another stick of ram! Any more settings i can mess with ? keepem comin. I only use this pc for production so, i really just want to run the bare essentials to run audio software.

cheers,
cleff

 

In reality with all of that optimization you'll get 2% performance boost.

The only real boost is not installing antivirus nor any realtime scanning antibullshit software.

 

Can anyone confirm this? With all these tweaking, how much could this improve performace percentage wise?

 

I've spend years with WinXP tweaking (my passion). Slipstreaming, registry tweaks and anything you can find on web. And yes, you could tweak to make significant changes in OS RAM consumption (couple of hundreds MB), not CPU. But the same tweaks were useless on Win7 because new OS Is optimized and background processes are active only if they have to (otherwise paused).
I guarantee, there is nothing you can do to make Windows more suitable to DAW performance.
But everything you install on top can make difference. So, if I was looking for benefits my focus would be on installed software.

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2015

Actually, the only important trick about Windows optimizing for DAWs is to give priority to background processes since ASIO drivers are background processes.

 

Yep, the biggest stuff is power settings, no non-essental software, and prioritizing background services. On an audio-only pc this is much easier.

 

+1, Disabling services will give you more free RAM, especially if you don't need Internet access on your DAW machine.
Antivirus software is indeed the biggest resource eater, especially with background scanning/monitoring enabled.
I would highly recommend to keep your DAW host offline, disable independent network-related services and do virus scanning on your internet box instead.
Confirming what VroundS said, slow systems are usually full of unnecessary software like registry cleaners, ram maximizers and other bs, not the least some bad drivers that make things worse.
BTW, RME labs are not only known for good audio hardware, but also for great drivers with low audio latency and low CPU load at the same time.
You can test it yourself by doing a fresh Win install and run your DAW for comparison, the problems are usually *not* caused by Windows itself.

 

You can also simply write a non_essencial_for_audio.cmd file which disables all the stuff (services and programs) you use but not when you want maximum audio performance. Like others users have said well, it's more about avoiding slower than making faster. And in most of the cases you can gain more RAM than speed.

Services often are added by programs when installed. For example, if you use Chrome, magically a service that updates it launches at startup. Disable them merciless.

I have one that disables windows search (resource eater but useful), windows update, the acronis system backup one, most network ones, and so on. The AV I disable it manually.

You can permanently disable what you don't need (that's why blackviper site author compiles such great lists).

 

Last edited: Dec 18, 2015

in win 10 you can park / unpark in advanced power settings, Cubase is nice enough to do this for you if you check mark the "" Activate Sternberg audio scheme" box in device setting within Cubase.

 

Who wants to fly with a home office computer to the moon, should learn what it takes to start.
What I like is that you only learn from mistakes;)
@ 2015 -, 64 GB of memory. SSD, & multi-core processor.
You can learn more from a woman get out when you turn on the nipples, but not with a complex system ala WIN / OSX .... not for VST.
A good firewall will not scan each bit, when you're playing (games or DAWs).
trash you your BS with superfluous tools to, you have to switch it off again, this makes no sense.
Router + a software firewall to the go out to control data.

The cores must be set to 100% stone age and only brings high power consumption. ETC ...

 

in XP it made a big difference if you tweaked it, on Win7, not so much.

 

I've never noticed any difference with that setting. Actually in some occasions daw was a little snappier on foreground processes setting.
Noel from Cakewalk explains it here http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=1239881

 

Last edited: Dec 26, 2015

Yeah but how much? Currently all services on my pc (16GB Win7) use 6.2MB of RAM (Working Set Private). The only services I've disabled are Disk defragmenter, Superfetch, NetBIOS Helper and Windows Defender.