PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production PETE BROWN OF MSOFT UNOFFICIAL AUDIO TWEAK GUIDE FEB 2021

I came across this. fascinating. Feb 2021.
UNOFFICIAL WIN 10 AUDIO WORKSTATION BUILD AND TWEAK GUIDE.
Pete Brown of microsoft has a 3 part article regarding the above subject.
(he has his own recording daw set up).
i find this to be a very interesting article.
i am now posting the link as it could be of lots of interest to pg users.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/unofficial-windows-10-audio-workstation-build-and-tweak-guide-part-1/
WOW DOES THIS GUY HAVE A STUDIO !
hope pg users find this usefull, and note particularly what he says about so many aspects of setting up a daw includeing desktop use versus laptop use.
best.
oldmuso

Thanks!

Nice article. Thanks for the share!



A man after my own interests. If you get a beefy enough machine, you can do it all....

Read part 2 as well.

I enjoyed seeing this little notice, in which the author acknowledges that tweaks are not as necessary for digital audio in Windows 10 as they used to be:

I want to point out one thing many folks don’t realize, and the proliferation of tweak guides (including this one) doesn’t help: you can get perfectly fine audio performance from most quality PCs without doing any of this. You don’t have to tweak the PC in most cases.

Of course, the PC ecosystem is huge with many different PCs, DAWs, and devices out there, so your mileage may vary. But don’t go into a PC purchase assuming that, to be usable for any audio, you’ll have to do a ton of customizations.

Agreed Matt!

Thanks Muso, this is an excellent article!

Jeff

I agree with Matt also. Plus if you make those tweaks will the next Win 10 update change them back?

all.(HAPPY SPRING !)
heres the letter/comments i nearly sent to pete out of respect.

Dear Pete.
nice article. thanks. nice studio gear/rig.

for many years i worked in IT. both for vendors and end users.
(i decided to exit IT, to rescue my sanity, and to spend much more time with my family; plus all my life ive always had some sort of recording rig. earlier with tape/analogue, and now all digital.)

for the longest time ive wanted for daw work a slimmed down efficient OS. (programmed in assembler perhaps.)
perhaps microsoft (if market studies prove me correct) might bring out a vastly slimmed down win for us project studios that only runs our recording software. (and maybe a notes app for makeing session notes.)
frankly my recording win pc computer never sees the net. as such i never have any issues whatsover. but i still yearn for a small efficient os.
(i use a seperate pc for net surfing as well as a cheap amazon fire tablet i really like. it boots fast and i can surf fast on the tablet.)

so how bout a daw only slimmed win os ??
i suspect millions of daw project studios worldwide would really like such an os.
regards.
oldmuso.

ps mario. i would be surprised if an update changed ones tweaks. but one never knows. all i can say is since i took my recording rig off the net years back ive had no problems. as i said above i use a seperate pc for surfing. (one can buy perfectly good pc's for net surfing
that are refurbs for 200 bucks or less. )

About Mario’s comment, yes, I’ve had Microsoft Windows updates change my settings.

I always revisit two areas after each update: power settings, and Device Manager. The latter is to deactivate the HD audio for my screen that Windows continues to want to activate.

I have had updates change some of my settings, thus the warning.

The only time my music computer is on line is to update Win 10 and installation of software/patches. In the good old days my Internet computer was completely off-line but because of changes in updates and installations it now must be on-line occasionally.

I did have my Win 10 music computer off-line for a couple of years but when I had to start getting on-line for the above I had a real mess. Win 10 was so far behind that it caused many problems updating so I had to format my drive and do a complete install. YMMV

Ditto,
I lost a couple of recording machines through malware/viruses/etc - wiping a drive is a very annoying thing to have to do. I've kept my DAW and recording gear away from the internet for a decade now and use AVG to ensure any USB/Drive transfers are clean.
My current W10 is stripped of everything I can strip - including Office - so that it does what I want/need and as little else as manageable.

Guess I’m the odd man out ... ample precedent.

My Mac is always on line and all of BiaB / Logic Pro files are saved locally and to iCloud. The Mac Time Machine backs up changes from any source multiple times a day to an external HD. Also a full bootable backup is made via Carbon Copy to another external HD at least weekly. I swap the backup HD’s monthly with copies kept in my safety deposit box.

OS updates are done seamlessly overnight. Major updates, e.g., Big Sur are done when I choose after all relevant programs have been certified compliant.
I don’t recall any relevant settings being changed by an update.

That’s been my scenario for the last eight years. FWIW. Pardon the somewhat off topic post

Rayc.
exactly the same methodology here.
actually following on from what pete brown of ms says in his write up,
bout desktops over laptops.
i normally recommend a person setting up a daw from scratch , if they want to save big bucks, to look at this type of refurb and stuff it with cheap ssd's. you can even now stuff m.2 ssd's into external enclosures , and hook them up too i believe.

https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/hp-z440-workstation-xeon-e5-1620v3-3-5ghz-4-cores-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd-quadro-k2200-4gb-win10-pro-refurbished/14348023


note the loads of usb 3 ports.
its a "beast" of a pc for low bucks imho.
cant be beat imho. loads of flexibility per petes comments
in his guide.

as to APPLE.
heres my viewpoint , haveing worked in tech in the past.
1. they might have now done a "strategic move" to their own processors
so they can possibly have more control over future processor technology, plus, possibly be able to thus offer lower computer prices to get more users into the apple fold.
yes the M1 is a nice processor,but, i personally am leery knowing there probably is a M2 in the offing. my concern always is how long a piece of gear is gonna last till its obsolete, and is replaced by something better.
for example i find the iphone marketing strategy interesting in that a new model comes out every year. which is ok if ones family has a high income. but i worry bout the poor. who cant afford high prices.
2. i personally would be a big fan of apple if they adopted the following strategy.
a. allow some hardware updateing of previously sold devices.
eg if i bought an earlier m1 based mac mini, allow updateing to the new m whatever faster better processor. and please dont solder in memory. i think apple would get a lot of new friends with a "upgradeability strategy". i dont mind inexpensive upgrades, i just dont want to have to buy a new computer often.
(one reason i like that hp z workstation at the link i posted above.
the thing will last for many years, and is flexible.)
b. big sur does look nice, but i would like to see a very stripped
down ultra lean mac os that just ran daw software.

what is interesting to note , is that "yes" a lot of project and mid tier studios DO run mac based rigs, "but" if one looks around at gearslutz.com from what ive seen, often in some of the really really high end studio threads, you will often find for really huge trak and plug in counts/orchestral sessions etc etc, custom pc's running windows are often employed that have been specifically built by companies that specialise in building high end custom computers.
but of course such win pc's are out of my (or most peoples) budgets.
thus i wait for such pc's to trickle down to the refurb market
after a few years. haveing said that. yes i can see there is lots to like bout apple, but there is lots to like about pc's too.
there are pros and cons of each.

HAPPY SPRING TO EVERYONE.
there-is-no-perfect-computer-old-muso

No worries on this being off topic..... I'm with you on connecting to the internet. I'm a completely registered computer nerd and have no issues at all. My studio computer is used for recording/mixing music, flight simulation, gaming, video editing/producing/rendering all done on the interwebs. I don't tend to have issues with viruses and the few times I've encountered suspicious entities, I've been able to wipe them out pretty fast. I also keep my files on different drives than the OS drive and do frequent backups of my data. No need to be afraid of what the internet can do if you know how to keep it in check. I also have a script turn off my connection to the internet at night (9 PM to 6 AM local time).

That is a great idea. Never thought about it.
Bud

Steve, how do you do that, please?

Yes, how do you do that? Very interesting approach!

Jeff

I posted about this a couple of years ago: FYI-hopefully this may help some

Here's the text repeated:

Here's the commands I put in a .BAT file to turn it off and on:

netsh interface set interface "Ethernet 2" ENABLED
netsh interface set interface "Ethernet 2" DISABLED

Your network card may be another name than Ethernet 2.....

Then just create a Scheduled Task to run it every day. For the disable one, I use a sleep command of 5 minutes or so before the DISABLED in case I'm working on the PC and don't want to get knocked off the internet.

EDIT: Alternatively, you could just put the ENABLE and DISABLE .BATs on the desktop and just turn the internet off and on on demand and just leave it off when you're not at your PC. It would be the same as unplugging the network cable.

Cool, thanks Steve!

Jeff

Thank you, Steve!

I like the edit approach. Just make two batch files, or one if you want to dress it up with some conditional logic.