Optimize your PC for Mixcraft!

[Ian Craig]

No I just managed to make nearly all window's resources only begin when I loaded a program that called for them by setting them to Manual instead of Automatic by typing 'services.msc' in the Run box (Windows Key + R). I just read carefully the description of every running process and decided that 85% of them were totally unnecessary unless I called for them (printers, Adobe Updater and other background programs loading things I didn't even use).
I'd advise anyone to try the same thing of loading 'services.msc' in the Run box and reading the descriptions on the left hand side of each process. If there is no warning about it listed, but there is a description for the process it may be unnecessary for it to load automatically so you can set it to manual loading. It's worth doing.

[SirLanceALot]

Whats the latest on optimizing our Win10 PC's for running Mixcraft?
I'm using Mixcraft's sound libraries a LOT live. Every now and then I get a delay,
cutout, or missing notes when Windows decides to interrupt and go off and do something.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Check out this article that Acoustica Eric recently wrote: Windows Power Plans and CPU Throttling.

Greg

[SirLanceALot]

Thanks Greg!
Tell Eric that article had some great advice!
I downloaded LatencyMon and WhySoSlow and found out one of my older laptops wasn't throttling down, but suffered greatly from a zillon hard pagefaults. See screen capture below. And I had reinstalled windows just a few months ago.
My newest i7 laptop that I keep off the internet was fine.

[Ian Craig]

I downloaded LatencyMon and WhySoSlow and found out one of my older laptops wasn't throttling down, but suffered greatly from a zillon hard pagefaults. And I had reinstalled windows just a few months ago.

Lance, That pagefault thing does not look unlike my own on this 2 quad processor machine. I think it is something you either put up with or disable Virtual Memory (which I tried a couple of months ago and it didn't help anything much). It doesn't represent much else.

[SirLanceALot]

Thanks for that info Ian.

I've reinstalled Windows about 3 times on my 1st laptop, which originally ran Win7, and Windows always runs lighting fast at first. But it doesn't take long for it's performance to start degrading, usually after the windows updates.

I've kept my newest laptop offline for a year. I'm not getting the advantage of the frequent Windows updates, but who cares, unless one of my applications requires one of those updates.

I'm copying my Mixcraft new updates/new builds to a USB stick on my 1st laptop, and installing them from there to my offline laptop. So far so good.

[rrichard63]

I just came across this e-book, which is excellent background reading on PC performance, especially for Windows users:

https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree/

Applicable to all music software, not just Mixcraft.

[dpaterson]

Hi.

Just to add my "two cents' worth here based on something that I've found with an HP notebook (and not sure if this has been covered somewhere in this thread and, if so, apologies for addressing it again).

The HP notebook in question has a 2.5GHz processor but the speed can be increased up to 3GHz if and when called for by software (this when CPU throttling is ENABLED). However: it is not enough to simply DISABLE CPU throttling because then the CPU is locked / limited to 2.5Ghz. There is yet another BIOS option that must be disabled which is related to CPU power. If BOTH are disabled then the processor gets locked / limited to 3Ghz only. Just an anomaly that I noticed with this particular HP range of notebooks is all.

Regards,

Dale.

[Thomas]

I have done a forum search for "defrag" with no results, so I'll ask here. Years ago, I remember more "talk" about defragging our hard drives and I did practice this semi-regularly. However, I haven't heard about it(or done it) for some time and wonder if the practice has lost popularity(or necessity) for one reason or another.

I don't think I'm the only MC user running an older machine, so this should benefit others as well. Is defragging still a benefit and is it best to use Windows onboard utility or are there better 3rd party utilities out there? I have an older 1.5 TB drive and I imagine it's got to be plenty fragmented by now being 7 years old. One day I'll have my own SSD, but for now, I'm still in the year 2011.

[Thomas]

So I did a quick check, and it seems Win 10 is set up by default to defrag on a regular schedule. Mine is set to run weekly and I had no idea it was doing this. It looks like approx. 2:30 pm is the appointed time for my system. I say this, because it makes sense not to use the system while it is performing this important task. Easy to check by going to the system drive properties and selecting the tools tab.

[Zaffi]

Hello,

these settings did it for me, I'm on windows 10 and have tested on multiple pc's(intel-7500T and amd-1500X).
Pop's and crackles are in the past for me UMC-HD404@6ms(asio) / Motu microbook@8ms(asio)

Maybe not for the beginner so be carefull and on your own risk.


for realtime performance:

run high performance schedule
uncheck indexing on drives and disable scheduled optimization
set usb devices in hardwaremanager to not to go sleep
bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock(disable hpet)
bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes(uses more battery when disabled)
cpu performance on background services
disable windows search service
disable prefetch and superfetch
check for unwanted services(black viper site)
check for startup services like adobe nvidia etc crap
disable netwerk adapter(for live performance)
disable antivirus en firewall
change ide ata/atapi to standard sata ahci controller(on high storport.sys)
run timerResolution in background(optional)
run latencymon and check what driver is bad
run taskmanager to check memory and cpu usage
if cpu usage is low, its not your processor holding things back
add memory if usage is high
on laptop disable batteryacpi in devicemanager(not recommended)
set MC8 priority from high to realtime(on your own risk if nececcary)

google these for how to do it.

Good luck.

[dpaterson]

Hey Zaffi.

Got some really interesting tweaks there. Thanks.

Thanks to your post (and some pare time on my hands) I figured let me check on some few things. Found the following and just had to share:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... s/autoruns

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... s-explorer

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... ds/procmon

Check them out particularly "AutoRuns"!!!

Ever since I've had my Focusrite: whenever I booted my notebook I'd have to ensure that it's outputs were turned down both on the unit as well as on my mixer because at bootup time the power to the Focusrite was being cycled (at least three times) and this caused huge output spikes. Well!!! Turns out it was an old M-Audio 2x2M driver that was still being loaded and trying to initialize the M-Audio audio interface (that I no longer use for a variety of reasons). What kills me: this in spite of ensuring that the M-Audio driver was uninstalled correctly AND being anal about running cleaners like CCleaner and Raxco's Perfect Registry Pro (neither of which were able to figure that this device no longer exists)!!! Anyways. Disables the flipping M-Audio driver and now: problem solved i.e. Focusrite doesn't even generate a peep upon bootup!!! Sweet. And oddly enough: this didn't show up in ANY of the other utilities that I've used over time (that inspect drivers etc. etc. etc.).

What's more: I was absolutely amazed at the amount of stuff that gets loaded at boot time (in particular drivers because I've already tweaked my services to be so minimal that even I'm surprised that the notebook even runs!!! LOL!!!). Also found a whole bunch of drivers that were being loaded for a mobile 4G data dongle that I have not used for months and months (don't even know where the darn thing is anymore). Alright: there's a few drivers that are being loaded that I'm not SURE whether or not they should be disabled to I've left well alone (and oh yeh: use with caution of course).

Have fun.

Regards,

Dale.

[shayneoneill]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... s/autoruns

Check them out particularly "AutoRuns"!!!

Ever since I've had my Focusrite: whenever I booted my notebook I'd have to ensure that it's outputs were turned down both on the unit as well as on my mixer because at bootup time the power to the Focusrite was being cycled (at least three times) and this caused huge output spikes.

Just a heads up. I had a run through on this and managed to make my PC unbootable. So , make sure you got your licenses backed up/in the cloud before trying this.

I think my mistake was disabling a SSD cache driver thing I was using in the past that might have left the boot sequence mangled. Whoops. Unfortunately had to do a full nuke/reinstall to get back up. Thankfully the f**king waves DRM still recognized the machine afterwards. But it could have gotten ugly.

Now to re-download 600+ gig worth of EastWest libraries

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Focusrite has a page on optimizing your PC for audio performance in Windows 10 here:

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/ ... Windows-10

Greg

[Acoustica Greg]

Detailed treatise on eliminating audio glitches:

https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree/