Tweak Your Own

July 28, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio computer, audio pc, build your own windows pc, music computer, nquit, optimize windows for audio, recording magazine, sound computer

Studio computer, that is…

Optimizing your Windows computer for audio

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

If you read my “Roll Your Own (studio computer, that is)” article, you’ll remember I promised to talk later about setting up that computer for optimal audio performance. Even if you haven’t built your own machine, you’ll still want to optimize audio performance, so this is for you too.

Before we dive in, make a note of a few things:

We’re talking about Windows. Macs and Linux boxes are different beasts.
Screenshots here are from Windows 8. Instructions apply to both Windows 10 and Windows 7/8 machines, but your screens may look a little different.
We’re assuming you’ve got your hardware set. If not, you can refer to “Roll Your Own” for some guidelines about specs (even if you’re not building it yourself). Most modern, good machines will work. 4GB RAM with a 2.5Ghz multi core processor would do.
We’re just covering the system here, not setting up audio software.
Finally, not everything is necessary, especially if your hardware is great, so you can use your judgement and adjust your settings to taste. Think of this as a list of things you CAN do, some of which you probably should.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Basic Optimization

We’ll start with the easiest stuff. First of all, make sure all your drivers are up to date, as well as your plugins and software (both audio and other). Outdated drivers especially can cause performance problems.

Next, uninstall unnecessary software. If your computer is ONLY for audio work, this can include Office products, accounting software, extra browsers – anything you don’t need. You can uninstall Windows components that aren’t necessary like games, or apps like extra music players, painting programs, etc. This really just saves space and distraction, but it’s a good start.

Next disable programs running in the system tray. These are the pesky items here:

Right click on those items and you should be able to find a settings section (you may have to actually open the program) where you can tell it not to run on start up. You don’t want to disable your virus protection or system critical applications, but you can trim the fat.

Next, defragment your hard drives, if they need it. The easiest way to get to this is open the control panel and put “defrag” in the search box. You should do this whenever that utility says the drives need it.

Next up, tweak your screen saver. Fancy screen savers take up resources. Disable it or set it to just turn off the screen. Increase the time so it doesn’t kick in while you’re recording. This can happen because Windows doesn’t consider audio activity “activity”, so you could be singing your heart out on that 10 minute rock opera, but if you’re not touching the mouse or keyboard, the screen saver could come on, cause a glitch, and ruin your life.

Next, disable system sounds. You don’t need extra dinging and binging, but more importantly these sounds can grab control of the sound device. Search for “sounds” in the control panel and click “change system sounds”. Pick “no sounds” from the system scheme dropdown.

Next tackle visual effects. Windows has some cool animations and transparencies which you don’t really need. They’re actually not that bad, but it could make some difference. Search for “visual effects” in control panel, and choose “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows”. It’s easiest just to pick “adjust for best performance”, but you can pick and choose which effects to keep.

Next, you could disable automatic Windows updates, or tell Windows to “check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them”, so that Windows updates aren’t running when audio should be prioritized. If you fully disable automated updates, be sure you remember to periodically check for updates manually. To do any of this, search for “Windows update” in the control panel. You can pick “turn automatic updating on or off” to change automation or “check for updates” to manually update.

Now look into your virus software. Disabling virus software is definitely not recommended, but you might be able to tell it when to do scans and otherwise tweak its behavior so as not to interrupt audio processing.

Next, if you’re not using it, consider disabling the onboard sound card. The onboard sound drivers don’t always play nice with other audio drivers, and to boot, they sometimes introduce noise into the system. Search for “device manager” in control panel, click “device manager”, find the sound device in the list, right click and pick “disable”. Note: I didn’t do this on my laptop, because I want that device working if I’m not in the studio with my interface. I did do it on my desktop.

Next up, if your system is a 64 bit system and your Windows is 64 bit (find out at control panel->system), AND your DAW has a 64 bit version AND your plugins are all 64 bit, run at 64 bit! This allows the software to access a lot more memory. Beware though, because 32 bit plugins generally don’t work in 64 bit DAWs, and vice versa. If you’re starting from scratch though, you might as well stay in 64 bit mode. You do this by simply installing and using the 64 bit version of your software.

Finally, consider using hardwired keyboard and mouse devices instead of Bluetooth (wireless) devices. Bluetooth communication can affect audio performance.

Advanced Optimization

Power Options

Here’s where the fun begins. By default, Windows is set up to balance between power saving and performance by doing things like putting the computer to sleep, throttling down the processor and other tricks. This is a great place to get a significant boost.

Go to control panel and search for “power options”. Click on “power options”. Start by picking “high performance” under “choose or customize a power plan”. Now click “change plan settings” to further tweak this plan. You’ll see two settings: “turn off the display” and “put the computer to sleep”. If you’re using a laptop, there will be an “on battery” option and a “plugged in” option. You can leave the “on battery” option alone to conserve power, but for “plugged in”, pick “never”. Next click “change advanced power settings”. Here you have a whole bunch of options.

For the plugged in options, use these settings:

Hard disk: turn off hard disk after “never”.
Internet explorer: JavaScript timer frequency, “maximum performance”.
Desktop background settings: slide show, “paused”.
Wireless adapter settings: power saving mode, “maximum performance”.
Sleep: sleep after “never”. Hibernate after “never”.
Intel CPCC energy efficiency settings: enable energy efficient operation, “disabled”. Energy efficiency aggressiveness 0%.
USB settings: USB selective suspend setting, “disabled”.
Graphics settings: graphics power plan, “maximum performance”.
Processor power management: minimum processor state, “100%”. Maximum processor state, “100%”. If you do nothing else, do this. It prevents the processor from throttling down when it’s not active. It can take a long time to throttle back up when an audio process needs the processor.
Display: turn display off after “never”.
Multimedia: when sharing media, “prevent idling to sleep”. When playing video, “optimize video quality”.

Here’s a very advanced extra. Under “processor power management”, you probably DON’T see an option called “processor performance core parking min cores”. This is a feature which allows Windows to turn off (aka “park”) cores in a multi core processor to save power. This can affect performance because it takes time for the core to un-park. It’s turned on by default, and the option to change it is usually hidden, but you can just turn it off, which I’ll tell you how to do.

Warning, this is advanced stuff. Do not attempt if you’re not comfortable with advanced configuration and paying attention to detail. Even then, attempt at your own risk!

Make sure the “high performance” scheme is selected in power options (you probably just did this).
Click the Windows start button, and in the search window, type “cmd”, which should pull up “Command Prompt”.
Right click on this and pick “run as administrator”.
A command line window will appear. Type the following on one line:

powercfg –setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 100

Hit enter and then type:

powercfg –setactive scheme_current

This will turn off core parking, but it won’t give you the new option in your power options window.

Other Options

Besides power options, there are quite a few more things you can do boost audio performance. Try these on for size:

Processor scheduling: Search for “performance” in the control panel. Click on “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows” and go to the “advanced” tab. Under “choose how to allocate processor resources” select “background services”. Note: this is usually the better setting because most audio processing is done in the background, but there are times when it actually harms performance, so if you change this and notice a dip, change it back.

USB hub power: Search for “device manager” in control panel, go to device manager, scroll down and click on “Universal Serial Bus controllers”. There should be one or more items called “USB root hub” or similar (look for the words “root hub”). On those, right click and pick “properties”. Click on the “power management” tab and UNCHECK “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.

While you’re in device manager, you can disable devices you don’t need, but be careful! Don’t disable a device if you don’t know what it is. In general, don’t disable devices in the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, processors, system devices, universal serial bus controllers or computer groups. Some devices that are usually safe to disable are batteries, Bluetooth, imaging, network adapters (wireless especially), sensors and sound, video and game controllers. Obviously you don’t want to disable devices you’re using (the network adapter, for example).

Don’t actually uninstall device drivers unless they’re for hardware that no longer exists in your system. Instead just right click and pick “disable”.

Drive properties: In windows explorer, right click on your hard drive, pick “properties” and uncheck “compress this drive to save space” and “allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties”. If you have an extra drive that’s JUST for storage and isn’t getting accessed by audio software, you can go ahead and use “compress this drive” to save some space.

Graphics card: Some graphics cards have a throttle setting much like the processor setting, which allows the card to throttle down when not in demand. This can cause the same problem of lag when it throttles back up. If you can, turn this setting off in your graphics card settings.

Page file settings: The page file is also known as the swap file. Basically it’s how Windows uses the hard drive as additional random access memory when it needs to. Windows dynamically chooses the size of this swap file unless you tell it not to. That dynamic sizing takes time, so while you’re still in the performance options window, tell it not to by going to the “advanced” tab. Under virtual memory, click “change”. Uncheck “automatically manage paging files size for all drives”. Next, for each of your drives, select “custom size” and enter in your desired initial and maximum size values. If your RAM is small, use about one and a half times the size of your RAM memory. Eg, if you have 4GB of RAM, use 6GB (6000MB). If you have more than 8GB of RAM, you probably don’t need a paging file that big. On my desktop, which has 16GB, I use a 6000MB paging file.

Finally, pay attention to things like backup software or other tasks that run regularly. Make sure they run when you’re not working on audio. You can use the task scheduler to dig into that further, but be careful. The task scheduler does a lot of necessary work and it’s a bit out of this article’s scope to dig into it.

Testing

If you have problems, or if you’d just like to get a bench mark before and after you do all this optimization, there are a couple of highly recommended (and free!) programs that can help you get a gauge on how your system is performing, what applications are hogging memory, and even which drivers might be causing issues.

LatencyMon is a free and thorough program that monitors latency issues and CPU load and reports on problematic drivers and software. You can find it here: www.resplendence.com/latencymon.

DPC Latency Checker is another similar tool. It’s a simpler tool which doesn’t point out problematic drivers and the like, but it’s great for checking whether your audio stream is getting interrupted. You can find it at www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml.

Ok Go For It!

We’ve covered a lot here, but it shouldn’t take you long to make these adjustments. They’re foundational adjustments, and you’ll find yourself tweaking settings in your DAW and other software to taste, but you should be in a really solid place at this point. There are some other more advanced things I haven’t discussed, like spread spectrum, Nagle’s algorhythm and digging into Windows services and startup apps.

If you’d like to dig deeper, I highly recommend a free PDF download called “Glitch Free”, by Brad Robinson of Cantabile. Brad goes into great detail and gives wonderful background information on this topic. His book is one of the best resources on this topic I’ve come across. You can get the book for free (you don’t even have to sign up for anything) at www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree.

Even if you don’t want to dive deep, you’ve got plenty here you can do to get your machine rock’n’roll ready. Have fun with your new computer!

I’m a singer, producer and recovering developer. I’ve built a lot of computers, but I love people more. Contact me on social media at @AaronJTrumm

Roll Your Own

July 16, 2020 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio computer, build your own computer, nquit music, recording magazine, studio computer

Studio computer, that is…

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

I went to a tiny elementary school in Taos, NM called Vista Grande, which we affectionately referred to as “roll your own academy”. The meaning should be apparent, but I took something else away: a DIY ethic that stays with me to this day.

You may have that ethic, or you may just find yourself in need of more power for less money, but in either case, if you’re mindful, your studio computer is a great place to apply the roll your own philosophy and save some serious scratch. I thought I’d lay out the process, based on my latest build.

Basic Pre-Requisites

Let’s talk basics first. First of all, we’re talking about PCs here. Building a Mac is another story, pretty much untold. Second, you’ll need a basic understanding of computer hardware, some tools, a clean work surface and time. Keep your current machine in operation, and plan on transitioning slowly, over weeks. Keep an attitude of learning and problem solving and you’ll have more fun and do a better job. If things don’t work at first, don’t be discouraged, they almost never do. Just like you almost never nail the mix on the first draft. Right??

You will also need SOME money, but less than you would to buy a machine with the same specs. Do remember, though, that a build may NOT be the right path for you. Consider the opportunity cost of spending your time versus your cash flow and when you need the machine. If you do decide to build, think of it as educational and fun (appeal to your inner geek) as WELL as potentially useful and frugal.

Tools

Your main tool is a Phillips head screwdriver. You may need a couple sizes, and depending on the case, a right angle screwdriver may be useful. An anti-static grounding device that you wear on your wrist is a good idea, or at least something grounded and metal nearby (like a rack). You’ll want to touch that to release your static build up before touching computer components. Some compressed air might also come in handy to blow away dust, but be careful about too much force on small internal parts.

Finally, make sure you have your reading glasses. You’ll want to be methodical about reading manuals and instruction sheets. Trust me on this one – don’t be flip. You know who you are!

Cost

You probably want to know what this’ll cost. As mentioned, it’ll cost some time, and I recommend a slow process, even if you can spare some focused time for the bulk of the work. Financially, your mileage will vary, as there’s no limit to how much you can spend on doo-dads. As a very rough guide, though, I built my current machine for just under $1000, matching the specs and power of machines that generally cost $2000-$2500 when bought outright. So I cut my cost in half.

Parts

Some of this may be obvious, but let’s go through all the parts you’ll need:

Essential (can’t run without):

Monitor (if you don’t already have one)
Keyboard (obviously)
Mouse
Computer case (the basic housing – you may want a case built to be quiet – Figure 1)
Mother board
Processor
Internal hard drive(s)
RAM (memory) (Figure 2)
Power supply (Figure 3)
Operating system

Optional (but probably a good idea):

DVD or CD-ROM
Extra cooling (Figure 4)

Optional:

More hard drives
External hard drive(s)
KVM Switch
Graphics card (probably essential if video editing is a goal) (Figure 5)
Extra monitor(s)
Fancy cooling or neon things

Specs

So what specs are we looking for? Well this machine isn’t just for email and Farmville. You need some power, and you need decent storage. How much you go for is mostly a matter of budget, because if money were no object, well…you see my point. There are some minimums to think about though. First, decide what your goal is for the machine. How many tracks you intend to be able to record or mix at once, how many soft synths and plugins you have, and whether you intend to do video as well. The more you intend to push it, the more power you need.

If you’re just doing audio, what you need is actually pretty minimal by today’s standards. Common DAW minimum requirements hover around here:

Windows 7 or later
2.5GHZ processor multi core
4GB RAM
5-20GB space for the DAW software itself

It’s never a bad idea to beat the minimum specs, so I might opt for an i5 quad core chip, 8GB of RAM and maybe 120GB hard drive, with some kind of extra hard drive storage. As a matter of fact, I do a lot of my audio work on my Sony tablet, which is a 1.5GHZ i5 chip with 4GB RAM and 120GB drive. With the right system tuning, I’m able to record 32 tracks and more simultaneously at 96k 24 bit and mix with plenty of plugins without a glitch. Video editing – not so much – and some DAWs are more processor intensive than others. Mixbus, for example, does a lot of work, and therefore needs a lot more power to work well at 96k than Sonar.

As far as storage is concerned, bear in mind the size of audio files. 44.1k 16 bit audio takes up 5.292 megabytes per track minute. So a typical 3 minute song, 24 tracks, recorded at CD quality takes up 381 megabytes. 10 of those is 3.81 gigabytes. At 96k 24 bit, those numbers jump to 17.280 MB per track minute, or 1.22 GB per 24 track pop song – 12.44 GB for a 10 song collection (not including mixdowns, mp3 versions, etc).

Sample libraries of course take up space, as does software, presets, notes, Word documents and so on. So depending on how much you do, you might want anywhere from 250GB to 2 terabytes and up worth of space. My advice is to get as much storage as you can afford. You may also consider an SSD (solid state drive – Figure 6), at least for your main drive if not storage drives, as SSDs can be quite a bit quicker. They are more expensive though, so bear that in mind.

If you’re doing video work, your specs need to be quite a bit higher, and you probably need a video card. That video card should have at least 1GB of its own memory, 2GB would be a better minimum, and 4 or 8GB would be even more awesome. Your CPU needs to be faster and you probably need 8GB of RAM at minimum. Here are the basic specs of my aforementioned build, which I use for video and audio:

Intel i5 3.0 GHz quad core processor
16 GB DDR4 3000 RAM
GeForce GT 730 video card with 4GB RAM
250 GB SSD Hard Drive (for OS and software)
2 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (for project and sample storage)

Were money no object, I would have gone a lot farther, but that machine serves beautifully for anything I can dream up to do with audio, and has been doing great with video footage for music videos and such, with the proper workflow. I would probably need a few upgrades to make a feature film for Warner Brothers, but for me, it’s a great machine.

As far as which parts to buy, specs are your main concern, but read carefully about compatibility. Not all motherboards work with all chips, for example. Another common problem is skimping on the power supply and not having enough juice for all your components. Read carefully before you order, and here’s a little trick: Use a custom build site to “fantasy build” your machine virtually, then note the power supply and other components. This is also a good way to track how much money you’re really saving.

The Build Itself

The build itself is pretty straight forward, but you want to be accurate, respect the delicacy of components, and there are a couple of areas you want to be especially careful. Here are your basic steps:

Open the case
Install the power supply
Install the motherboard
Install the CPU and cooling
Install the RAM
Install the video card
Install the hard drives
Install extra components (DVD, etc)
Connect data connections from drives to the motherboard
Connect the power supply to the motherboard and drives
Connect LED and front panel connections
Close the case
Connect power, monitor, keyboard, mouse and audio interfaces
Power up for first test
Scream in frustration
Open case
Use manuals, wit and Google to figure out why it won’t power up
Kill yourself over your stupidity
Fix problems
Close case (repeat steps 14-19 ad nauseum)
Power up for umpteenth test and achieve victory
Install operating system and drivers
Configure and tweak OS
Install software and configure
Pay credit card bill
Rejoice

The order you do steps 3 through 8 doesn’t matter much, but be aware of your layout. In many cases, it’s necessary to install the CPU and cooler before the RAM, simply because of the proximity of parts. If you find a component is in the way of another, you can always take it out and put it back, but in the case of the CPU, that can be a can of worms. Better to get the CPU installed first, and then everything else.

While we’re at it, be extra careful with the CPU. Make SURE you have it oriented right (refer to installation instructions, which should show you an arrow), because you can bend pins and ruin the part pretty easily. Also pay close attention to instructions on mounting the extra fan, or the extra awesome cooling tower you’re replacing that stock fan with. You’ll be applying a cooling gel onto the chip itself, so do that carefully, as you don’t want that stuff all over the motherboard. Remember to connect the CPU fan to its power source (a 2 pin plug on the motherboard). CPU cooling is quite important, and I highly recommend springing for a super awesome better cooling tower. If your CPU heats up too much, your computer will intermittently power down, or worse yet, you could damage or destroy the CPU itself.

In addition to that, here are some other common mistakes you can avoid, most of which will cause the computer to not boot up:

Forgetting the 4 (or 8) pin CPU power connector (Figure 7).
Forgetting power on the graphics card
Seating components incompletely or incorrectly (especially RAM)
Not plugging in CPU fan (Figure 7)
Loose screws or incorrectly screwing down the mother board
Forgetting to turn on the power switch on the power supply

If your computer doesn’t boot, start by checking those.

Don’t fail to discharge your static energy, work in a clean space, or be careful with the parts. Apply gentle pressure rather than force, and pay attention to notches in your plugs and components. Don’t force something that doesn’t seem to want to plug in.

Configuration

Once you’ve got your computer built and booting up, you can start having fun with your software. Install your operating system first (probably some flavor of Windows, or Linux if you dare), then tweak your system for audio performance, then install your hardware drivers (such as audio interfaces), DAW, plugins and other software. Prioritize audio performance over fancy look and feel stuff, and make sure your DAW is humming alone before you start with stuff like word processors and games. Be especially careful about high end games – they can do a number on your system, from an audio/video point of view. I advise leaving games to another computer entirely.

We’ll get into more depth about configuring a machine to really kick tail for audio and video in another article, but until then you’ve got plenty to do!

Resources

There really is a wealth of information out there on this subject, so I’d like to refer you to some online reading that you can keep pulled up on another computer while you build – these resources will give you another perspective, which will be really valuable.

Tom’s Hardware – a great resource for building and troubleshooting, especially this page: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems
PC World – has another handy “common mistakes” page: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2049100/how-to-avoid-common-pc-building-mistakes.html
CNET – also has a “rookie mistakes” page that’s quite a handy reference: https://www.cnet.com/news/how-to-fix-diy-pc-common-issues/

There you go. Hopefully you’ll have a blast building your own custom studio machine, and while you’re at it, save some money and put together a box that suits you perfectly. Have fun!

I’m a singer, producer and recovering developer. I’ve built a lot of computers, but loves people more. Contact me on social media at @AaronJTrumm

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