Can you experts help create a "Top 10" list here?
What are the big do's and don'ts??
Thanks all - Mike from The Coffeehouse
Top 10 ways to good performance of Tracktion in a PC-?
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Mr Coffeehouse Mr Coffeehouse https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=40087
- KVRist
- 277 posts since 9 Sep, 2004 from Middletown, CT USA
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Mr Coffeehouse Mr Coffeehouse https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=40087
- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 277 posts since 9 Sep, 2004 from Middletown, CT USA
Hi there C00kie - Both, of courseC00kie wrote:First please explain your main concern:
sound quality, or CPU efficiency?
Looking for general tips & tricks to make tracktion work better in a PC. Maybe things to do with settings in tracktion, settings in a PC, hardware considerations, ram, number of vsts and sample folders and how to manage and store them, best ways to get stable and accurate final renders and minimal cpu overloads. That sort of thing.
I imagine this is a nube line of questioning but maybe helpful to many - thanks all
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- KVRAF
- 7489 posts since 6 Jul, 2004
FWIW, I've not really had to do anything much to get Tracktion working very smoothly on my P4 2.8 Ghz laptop. I did a few Windows tweaks (e.g. changed the power-saving options) but nothing drastic.
Tracktion seems to me to be very stable, and the Freeze function allows you to get far more out of the CPU than you could in programs that don't have it - one of Tracktion's BIG draws to me
Tracktion seems to me to be very stable, and the Freeze function allows you to get far more out of the CPU than you could in programs that don't have it - one of Tracktion's BIG draws to me
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- KVRian
- 1321 posts since 26 Mar, 2004 from UK
There's loads of articles on the web for this, like this one:
http://streamworksaudio.com/contents.php?id=38
But I think most people would say DeFrag, set pagefile, optimise services, disable unnecessary startup items etc.
http://streamworksaudio.com/contents.php?id=38
But I think most people would say DeFrag, set pagefile, optimise services, disable unnecessary startup items etc.
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- KVRian
- 954 posts since 14 Apr, 2004 from Maryland, USA
I don't know about a top 10 list, but there's certainly plenty of info on the web. I've not used it yet, but this guide from TASCAM has had positive reviews in some forums I read:Mr Coffeehouse wrote:Can you experts help create a "Top 10" list here?
What are the big do's and don'ts??
http://www.tascam.com/Products/US-428/W ... timize.pdf
I've not used it because my current studio machine is older and still running Win98 (but I'll be using it soon -- just spent some $s!
). The TASCAM guide for that OS is good.DaveL
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- KVRAF
- 12977 posts since 29 Sep, 2003 from Ottawa, Canada
Besides general tune-up knowledge, here are some specific Tracktion things to do:
1. Turn off ASIO direct mode
2. Turn off realtime priority mode
3. If you have a P4, enable low-level noise to avoid denormalization
4. Don't always fight for the lowest latency possible, give yourself a bit of comfort room and you'll be less likely to run into pops and crackles.
They won't give your system a boost, but they'll save you some potential headaches.
Greg
1. Turn off ASIO direct mode
2. Turn off realtime priority mode
3. If you have a P4, enable low-level noise to avoid denormalization
4. Don't always fight for the lowest latency possible, give yourself a bit of comfort room and you'll be less likely to run into pops and crackles.
They won't give your system a boost, but they'll save you some potential headaches.
Greg
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- KVRAF
- 4644 posts since 28 Nov, 2002 from Chicago
I prefer:Lunch Money wrote:1. Turn off ASIO direct mode
1. Experiment with ASIO direct mode
I find this setting to be mostly benign. It is more likely to help than hinder, and greatly more likely to do neither, IME.
Someone shot the food. Remember: don't shoot food!
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- KVRAF
- 12977 posts since 29 Sep, 2003 from Ottawa, Canada
Agreed. I haven't actually ever noticed a difference either way.
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- KVRAF
- 4644 posts since 28 Nov, 2002 from Chicago
I did with one version of M-Audio's drivers, but then they finally got them stable, and since then I've noticed no difference on my PC.Lunch Money wrote:Agreed. I haven't actually ever noticed a difference either way.
Someone shot the food. Remember: don't shoot food!
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- KVRist
- 415 posts since 18 Dec, 2003
here is a basic starter list:
1. Keep taskbar startup icons to a minimum(lower right corner). Close out the printer, chat , virus stuff unless you are using it. Keep the firewall up of course - but that should be all you need when working on audio. If you have quick time, etc or any other non-essential music making app, adjust the setting so it never loads in the task bar unless you tell it to.
2. turn off the shitty windows automatic updates. This chews up cpu cycles searching around for stuff. Go into control panel, click on automatic updates, and uncheck "keep my computer up to date". That should do it, right? Wrong. It's still working, lol. So now go to administrative tools(same folder) and click on "services". Then click on automatic updates and set it to manual. Right below it or near it should be "Background Intelligent Transfer Service". Click on it and set it to manual as well. Now finally the automatic update beast has been killed. This will save you a bit of hassle and some cpu cycles.
3. Keep as much shit off your desktop as possible. Dontbe one of these guys with 300 AOL shortcuts all over your desktop. Dont keep large files on your desktop. Keep mp3's and bigger files in folders off the desktop. Only put essential items there. Put secondary items in your start menu.
4. Turn off all of the auto virus shit. But DO NOT turn off the firewall. Turn of ALL the anti virus shit. The startup, everything. You can update the system yourself and scan yourself every week or so. Dont even let the virus program load up in the taskbar. There is no need. You can just turn it on yourself for scans.
5. Download Ad-aware and run it every couple of weeks. It's a great spyware destroyer. It, along with your firewall and weekly virus scans should keep your PC clean without all the automated bullshit that slows it to a crawl. Of course, still scan files you dont know manually.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
6. Download sisandra soft pc checker/benchmarker. I cant say enough about this application. It will be very helpful to all of you in keeping your PC fit for audio.
http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/
This will tell you everything you need to know about your system. It will give you reccomendations etc all in a great GUI.
You can run multimedia and cpu benchmarks, and then compare your results right there with similar specced machines. If your numbers are low in comparison, you will know something is wrong. It will do hard drive speed tests, cpu tests, you name it. Very helpful for a free app. IT will igve you a performance test and reccomend tweaks for you. Highly reccomended.
7. Make sure you are not running your O.S. drive with under 25% free space left. Some say it doesnt matter, I say bullshit. Of course defrag and run scan disk every couple of weeks.
8. If you can afford it, get two hard drives. One drive for nothing but O.S. and apps, and a secondary drive strictly for audio and al lyour important files (my documents, business stuff, etc). Why? Well for numerous reasons. First of all, the drive most likley to mess up is the O.S. drive. It's that simple. In case your O.S. drive does get wacked by a virus or windows goes berzerk , all you need to do is reformatt and reinstall your apps. There would be little need for any kind of data recovery. That's a little reassuring, don't you think? So when this happens, all you have to do is set it up again and then just plug your data drive back in. Of course back up your data drive with a dvd burner or another hard drive. The frequencey should be based on frequency of importanrt items added. Reformatting can be good anyway because it increase performance after a bloaty O.S. and swamped registry.
The other reason is speed. When using tracktion , cubase or audobe Audition, you wont have to read and write to the same disk if you have an audio drive andd an O.S./app drive. You will notice an increase in performance.
Be sure to back up all your patches ensembles, everything on your data/audio drive. Be sure to keep the audio drives on their own seperate IDE's and ribbons. No sharing. If yo uhave two hard drives and one dvd burner, keep them all to their own ide lost and cbale. Dont have 3 ide slots? Than get a cheap ata 133 pci controller card for like 25$. Well worth it. Some newer motherboards have IDE slots for raid setups as well as two IDE slots. You can use the raid slots as Raid 0 and have it act as another IDE basically or use the built in ATA 133 ide slot commonly next to the raid slot - but I have found this can chew up CPU cycles. Of course, run sisandra BEFORE and after tweaking this setup so you know your not losing performance.
9. Do you really need all that shit?
How many apps and crap do you really need? Be selective about what you install on your computer.
Do you really need that Internet shopper assistant or 4 different instant messaging programs? How about that interactive cookbook? Do you realy need all that warez? Think about it. Delete the shit warez. That is a gauranteed way to mess with your computer. Im not trying to be preachy, but talking about this from an effeciency point of view.
Simplifiy. Go into all your folders and organize everything. dont leave files laying all over. Run scandisk and defrag often. Delete multiple mp3's. Create more space for your system to operate in.
10. USB - do you use it? If not disable it. Go into your motherboard bioas (ins keyon startup) and disable it. Even if you use a digital camera once a month, disable it.
firewire - use it? If not disable it.
onboardsound - use it? If not , disable it.
You get the picture. The point is to make an effecient PC.
1. Keep taskbar startup icons to a minimum(lower right corner). Close out the printer, chat , virus stuff unless you are using it. Keep the firewall up of course - but that should be all you need when working on audio. If you have quick time, etc or any other non-essential music making app, adjust the setting so it never loads in the task bar unless you tell it to.
2. turn off the shitty windows automatic updates. This chews up cpu cycles searching around for stuff. Go into control panel, click on automatic updates, and uncheck "keep my computer up to date". That should do it, right? Wrong. It's still working, lol. So now go to administrative tools(same folder) and click on "services". Then click on automatic updates and set it to manual. Right below it or near it should be "Background Intelligent Transfer Service". Click on it and set it to manual as well. Now finally the automatic update beast has been killed. This will save you a bit of hassle and some cpu cycles.
3. Keep as much shit off your desktop as possible. Dontbe one of these guys with 300 AOL shortcuts all over your desktop. Dont keep large files on your desktop. Keep mp3's and bigger files in folders off the desktop. Only put essential items there. Put secondary items in your start menu.
4. Turn off all of the auto virus shit. But DO NOT turn off the firewall. Turn of ALL the anti virus shit. The startup, everything. You can update the system yourself and scan yourself every week or so. Dont even let the virus program load up in the taskbar. There is no need. You can just turn it on yourself for scans.
5. Download Ad-aware and run it every couple of weeks. It's a great spyware destroyer. It, along with your firewall and weekly virus scans should keep your PC clean without all the automated bullshit that slows it to a crawl. Of course, still scan files you dont know manually.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
6. Download sisandra soft pc checker/benchmarker. I cant say enough about this application. It will be very helpful to all of you in keeping your PC fit for audio.
http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/
This will tell you everything you need to know about your system. It will give you reccomendations etc all in a great GUI.
You can run multimedia and cpu benchmarks, and then compare your results right there with similar specced machines. If your numbers are low in comparison, you will know something is wrong. It will do hard drive speed tests, cpu tests, you name it. Very helpful for a free app. IT will igve you a performance test and reccomend tweaks for you. Highly reccomended.
7. Make sure you are not running your O.S. drive with under 25% free space left. Some say it doesnt matter, I say bullshit. Of course defrag and run scan disk every couple of weeks.
8. If you can afford it, get two hard drives. One drive for nothing but O.S. and apps, and a secondary drive strictly for audio and al lyour important files (my documents, business stuff, etc). Why? Well for numerous reasons. First of all, the drive most likley to mess up is the O.S. drive. It's that simple. In case your O.S. drive does get wacked by a virus or windows goes berzerk , all you need to do is reformatt and reinstall your apps. There would be little need for any kind of data recovery. That's a little reassuring, don't you think? So when this happens, all you have to do is set it up again and then just plug your data drive back in. Of course back up your data drive with a dvd burner or another hard drive. The frequencey should be based on frequency of importanrt items added. Reformatting can be good anyway because it increase performance after a bloaty O.S. and swamped registry.
The other reason is speed. When using tracktion , cubase or audobe Audition, you wont have to read and write to the same disk if you have an audio drive andd an O.S./app drive. You will notice an increase in performance.
Be sure to back up all your patches ensembles, everything on your data/audio drive. Be sure to keep the audio drives on their own seperate IDE's and ribbons. No sharing. If yo uhave two hard drives and one dvd burner, keep them all to their own ide lost and cbale. Dont have 3 ide slots? Than get a cheap ata 133 pci controller card for like 25$. Well worth it. Some newer motherboards have IDE slots for raid setups as well as two IDE slots. You can use the raid slots as Raid 0 and have it act as another IDE basically or use the built in ATA 133 ide slot commonly next to the raid slot - but I have found this can chew up CPU cycles. Of course, run sisandra BEFORE and after tweaking this setup so you know your not losing performance.
9. Do you really need all that shit?
How many apps and crap do you really need? Be selective about what you install on your computer.
Do you really need that Internet shopper assistant or 4 different instant messaging programs? How about that interactive cookbook? Do you realy need all that warez? Think about it. Delete the shit warez. That is a gauranteed way to mess with your computer. Im not trying to be preachy, but talking about this from an effeciency point of view.
Simplifiy. Go into all your folders and organize everything. dont leave files laying all over. Run scandisk and defrag often. Delete multiple mp3's. Create more space for your system to operate in.
10. USB - do you use it? If not disable it. Go into your motherboard bioas (ins keyon startup) and disable it. Even if you use a digital camera once a month, disable it.
firewire - use it? If not disable it.
onboardsound - use it? If not , disable it.
You get the picture. The point is to make an effecient PC.