Optimising XP for Audio – Part 1

Compared to previous versions, particularly Windows 98, XP doesn’t require as much tweaking underneath the hood for it to function as a stable platform for home audio recording.

However, as always, there are ways to improve the performance and reliability of your Windows XP computer for audio recording, and this article will examine some of the tweaks that can improve your DAW recording environment.

Ok, let’s start off by stripping the unwanted graphical frills out of XP;

Problems such as clicks and pops can be caused by Windows performing unwanted tasks in the background

While we’re in this menu, let’s check out the Appearance tab. If you’re a sucker for nostalgia you can recreate your Windows 98 appearance here under the Colour Scheme drop-down menu!

It’s also worth clicking on the Effects button to remove some more unwanted clutter, and deselecting all the boxes.

We can continue our optimisation of the visual aspects of Windows by accessing the Control Panel from the Start Menu and choosing the system icon. Within this choose the Advanced tab and then you can select the Settings button underneath the Performance heading.

We now have a plethora of options to choose from, but just select the Adjust for best performance option and you should find all the boxes deselected. This will remove all of the fancy fade effects and visual tricks from XP, and will provide a few more CPU cycles for your audio work. Also, I find that with all the visual effects disabled, general Windows use is more efficient with less time waiting for screen re-draws and the like.

You should also see an Advanced tab, so lets have a look in there; First up is the Processor Schedulingoption. By default this will be set for Programs, but lets change this to Background Services. What this means, in simple terms, is that your audio software will be ‘interrupted’ less due to a change in how the CPU divides its power.

At the bottom of this page should be the Virtual Memory information, another hiding place for a tweak!

Virtual Memory stems back from the days when RAM was expensive and users often had insufficient RAM to run software straight from memory. Consequently Virtual Memory was used to overcome these problems. Virtual Memory, as the name suggests, is not physical RAM at all, but rather a section of your audio hard drive that is treated as memory by the computer. However, hard disks, quick as they are, are nowhere near as fast as RAM in transferring data, so when possible we want to use our physical RAM. The problem that is presented to PC musicians by Virtual Memory is that if Windows is left to manage the Virtual Memory itself, it will often change the size of the Physical Memory and this can cause problems when trying to record onto the hard drive. What we want to do is constrain the size of the Virtual Memory, or better still, disable it completely.

Managing your own Physical memory requirements can be beneficial to the home recordist

Click on the Change button and you should be presented with a Virtual Memory menu. In most systems this will be set to the System Managed Size. What we want to do is select Custom Size and enter and equal amount in both the Initial Size and Maximum Size boxes. How much this value should be is open to much debate. I would recommend that if you have a lot of RAM (for instance 768MB or above) then you could select No Paging File and just use your physical memory. For systems with around 512MB, then try starting with a size of about 300MB and work your way down to see how little you can get away with. If you have less than 512MB, I’d seriously recommend purchasing more memory! One word of warning however, some non-audio applications such as Photoshop will not function correctly/at all without some amount of virtual memory. If you find yourself faced with an application like this then consider setting up a small fixed value of around 150MB.

Ok, we can forget about Virtual Memory now and get back to our System Properties box. Select the Settings button under the Startup and Recovery section, and have a look in there. Untick the Automatically Restart box to prevent your PC restarting itself every time there is an error.

Finally in this section chose the Error Reporting button and Disable Error Reporting.

Back in the System Properties box, choose the Remote tab and deselect all boxes in here if you don’t use remote assistance (if you don’t know what it is you probably don’t use it). Moving swiftly on, select the Automatic Updates tab and deselect the checkbox. This prevents Windows from automatically connecting to servers and trying to download new patches etc whilst you are recording. You can still update Windows via the Windows Update icon in the Start Menu.

Next, onto the System Restore tab. Now this is something that I usually disable straight away but if you use this feature of Windows often then you may want to think about changing the frequency of it’s updates and the drives it runs on. If you choose to keep System Restore turned on, then consider turning it off on your audio drive (if you have 2 or more drives) and changing the restore point to every 12, 24 or 48 hours.

If we come back to Control Panel, we can select the Power Options icon and look in there. Under Power Schemes select Always On to, and in the three drop down menus below select Never. Select the Hibernate tab at the top and deselect the Enable Hibernation tick box. This can free up hundreds or even thousands of MBs of space on your hard drive!

Disabling XPs Hibernation feature can save over 1GB of disk space

Another feature of Windows XP audio that can be troublesome to the PC musician are the default Windows sounds. As nice as it is receiving a fanfare every time you turn on your computer, it can be annoying if these sounds start cropping up, especially if a perfect take is ruined by an orchestral flourish letting you know that you’ve received an email!

So, to remedy this lets visit the Control Panel again, and choose the Sounds and Audio Devices icon. Under the Sounds tab select No Sounds.

I hope this article has given you an introduction to the art of Windows XP audio tweaking. At a later date we will examine some more in-depth audio tweaks, looking at Services and Registry Tweaks which can help increase the performance of your Windows XP computer for audio purposes.

Author: Ben Morgan.

XP AUDIO FORUM

Disclaimer: Using this information you accept full responsibility for the health of your PC. Audiocourses accepts no responsibility whatsoever for loss of data or computer issues as a result of using this information. Also the tips included are for audio optimisation only and NOT for family PCs etc.