A lot of things can influence the performance of your computer for audio recording. This tutorial is applicable to those home recording setups that are using Windows XP operating system with either a Firewire or USB audio interface. The objective of this tutorial is to make your computer run as efficient and fast as possible during recording/mixing and mastering. This list is complete and includes the software and hardware aspect of optimization. Some of these tips are applicable to Windows 7. Let’s get started:
Windows XP Important Adjustments
1.) Use Windows XP SP3 – SP3 (Service Pack 3) includes the latest speed patches as well as important security patches for your Windows XP. For example for Firewire and USB drivers, things are optimal when run at Windows SP3. In addition, most Firewire and USB audio interface drivers are optimized and designed to run at Windows XP SP3. You can confirm that in the manual or in the manufacturer website.
This implies that if you are still using either SP1 or SP2 (older service packs), then do not expect everything to run at their optimal condition particularly the drivers for your Firewire and USB audio interface.
2.) Reinstall your OS and upgrade to SP3 – this may sound time consuming but I noticed a BIG increase in my OS performance after reinstalling everything and upgrading to SP3. It won’t take very long; at most it will take a day of upgrade.
The primary reason is that if your OS has been running in your computer for a very long time (example more than 3 years); there are big chances that the registry as well as the affected legacy drivers are corrupted or altered. This can slow down your computer when you are recording or mixing.
If you reinstall it again, all those corrupt registry entries and drivers will be erased and things will go back to normal again. Of course, you need to back up your computer files before doing this.
2.) Change “Processor Scheduling” to “Background Services” – when you are recording, the digital streams of data coming in and out of your Firewire/USB audio interface comprises the background services of Windows XP. Specifically these modern audio interfaces depend on ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) drivers and they are assigned to operate in the background.
If you change processor scheduling to background services – the CPU will optimize and put importance on the background tasks. This will reduce latency and delay of your recording since the CPU will put more priorities to it.
You can change processor scheduling to background services by going to: Control panel – System – Advanced – Performance – Advanced – then under “Processor Scheduling” select “Adjust for Best performance of” – “Background services”. It looks like this:
Processor scheduling to background
3.) Use Panda Cloud Anti-virus – some Windows XP optimization guides for audio are advising not to use antivirus. I am not in favor of it. Why? It is because Windows XP can easily be infected with viruses, spyware and malware and a lot of computers used for home studio are also used in surfing online and plugging/unplugging USB drives which can be easily infected with a virus.
The best solution is to use the lightest antivirus possible and I recommend Panda Cloud Antivirus because it is very light on system resources and it’s free. However when recording to get the best performance, I recommend turning off your Antivirus updates and real time scanning.
4.) Turn off power-schemes – Go to Control Panel – Open Power Schemes – make sure it is always ON and all settings are switched to Never. See screenshot below:
Power schemes turning off
Sometimes when your computer are doing playback, long audio streaming, etc; it will turn off automatically or go to standby. This is not optimal. For best operation, you should turn off all power schemes so that it won’t accidentally affect your session or recording.
5.) Turn off system sounds – Go to Control Panel – Sounds and Audio devices – Go to “Sounds” tab – make sure the “Sound Scheme” is set to “No Sound”.
6.) Optimize your Device Manager– Go to Run – type “devmgmt.msc” then press enter. You will go to Device Manager. Then make sure the following is set:
a.) Go to IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers – you will see a list of your Primary IDE and Secondary IDE channels. Right click on any of them and click Properties. Go to “Advanced Settings”. Set the transfer mode to “DMA if available” and make sure the current transfer mode is set to “UltraDMA Mode 5”. DMA stands for direct memory access which means that RAM data can be accessed directly without passing through the CPU for faster access. See screenshot below:
Direct memory access optimization
b.) Make sure any Firewire (1394) adapter are disabled under “Network Adapters”. When disabled, a red X is shown over the device:
red x on the firewire network adapters
7.) Do not connect your USB audio interface to a USB hub that is also used by other USB devices. For Firewire, make sure the audio interface has a dedicated Firewire slot. For example in my computer, I have two Firewire slots, one from the motherboard and one from the PCI Firewire. Although there are several Firewire slots on the PCI Firewire, I only used the motherboard Firewire port to have a dedicated Firewire bus connection. For other Firewire devices, I connect them to the PCI Firewire slots.
8.) Do not install gaming and non-recording software if possible. Since you are using a PC dedicated for recording, there is no need to install heavy software like games, office applications, drawing applications, etc. This software can be resource intensive and can slow down your system.
Get a Powerful PC Hardware as Possible
Your PC hardware is the dark horse of Firewire/USB audio interface optimizations in Windows XP. No matter what software/OS tweaks you do, you are only limited by the power of your hardware. For example, before I only have a P4 2.4GHz in ASUS P4P800X which is still a 2004 technology (Socket 478). Even though the RAM is 2GB, the conditions are not optimal for recording and I experienced a lot of pops and clicks in the audio. This is after all software and OS tweaks.
I then decided to upgrade my entire hardware with Windows XP installed with the following specifications:
a.) P8P67LE Asus motherboard with built in Firewire and USB 3.0
b.) Intel Core i3-2100 CPU @3.1GHz.
c.) 4GB of RAM (Windows XP recognize it as 3GB).
d.) A total of 1.5TB hard drive.
After installation, it now runs very smoothly (no pops and clicks, no hangs) because the hardware is powerful for a less processor/memory intensive OS like Windows XP.
Content last updated on August 6, 2012