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I'm still working on optimizing my 2003-vintage homebrew DAW. I'm not up to the full 133 Mbps capability of the ATA bus, but the drives have been benchmarked at six times the data rate they were achieving before. The system is ready to use in a minute from a cold start (45 seconds faster than it was before) and the CPU isn't getting hammered like it used to. I've got a utility (Advanced System Care 4) with a "Game Booster" button that strips the OS down to basics when I'm ready to work. I'm starting to think I can make some serious music on this thing again.
Okay, the questions. First, where is the best place to put temp files on a system with two fast hard drives? On the same drive as the programs or on the second drive? I guess this applies to Windows files, too. A cursory web search says that the temp and swap files should be on the second drive.
Next question: I've got a 128 Mb graphics card, but I'm not certain I've got it configured correctly. The CPU bogs down pretty well and the audio stutters when I run certain visualizations in Winamp or WMP while streaming music. Screen resolution is set to 1024 x 768. Hardware accel is set to full. I just switched write combining off.
Any other tweaks you can think of are welcome. I just received a 'new' used mobo from another forum member but haven't installed it yet. I'd like to see how far I can go with the existing system before I make that change.
System specs: Win XP Pro SP3, PC Chips M863-G mobo, AMD Athlon XP 2200+ CPU, 2 Gb PC2700 DDR RAM, WD Caviar Blue 7,200-RPM HDs (160/500 Gb), Dell P991 17" CRT monitor, Invidia GeForce FX 5200 display adapter.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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In RB I always set the temp audio files to 2nd drive. This is where the audio input gets streamed during recording.
Video card; is it sharing an interrupt with something else running at same time?
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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**Sometimes certain machines stream audio better when the Hardware Acceleration slider is backed down or even pulled all the way to the left. Especially true when using certain softsynths, VSTs and DXis that can get interrupts at the worst time from the Accelerator. Experiment with different settings of that slider to see if it helps, and of course how far down to turn it. Sometimes necessary to remember that setting if you are a gamer and turn it down to record music and back up for gaming, sometimes seems to make no difference when turned all the way off all the time, go figure.**
Pay attention to what rharv has said as well, IRQ share with video card and sound device is a no-no audio interruption waiting to happen.
How much RAM ya got? Disk swap instead of physical RAM isn't a pretty thing when multitracked streaming of audio in and out while running softsynths and effects is the goal. It is also important to understand how Double Density RAM works and the proper configuration of sticks on your motherboard in order for its Bios to be able to switch and stay in Double Density mode. Odd amounts of RAM, not matched in the proper slots for DDR, may seem like more ramcount but actually can be much less because they force the BIOS to boot up in Single Density mode. Increasing the RAMcount to somewhere around the 2gig mark for the older XP machines is a very good thing when doing DAW work. And the RAM for them is rather cheap now.
But even if you don't have quite enough physical RAM in there, for DAW work under XP it pays to manually set the Disk Swap cache to twice your physical ramsize rather than accepting the default, "Let Windows handle...".
Speakin of XP, if you aren't using SP3, you should. The upgrade is available from microsoft site. No worries here, it is not only well proven and stable mature stuff now, there is also the Restore Point in XP which allows you to revert if need be. If you have it turned on, and everybody should.
Normally I recommend using the second hard drive for the streaming storage of audio Temp files ONLY. This is typically set in the Prefs of the host recording program, the place to select for Temp file storage. And I also recommend using that second drive's first partition only for the purpose, okay to put one folder there, but leave it empty and let it be only for the program's Temp audio streaming files. If you are low on physical RAMcount, I recommend leaving the disk swap selection on the same hard drive where the System lives. That way it cannot interrupt your streaming audio if it needs to access for ram use.
Finally, it often pays to visit the website of the mfr of your mobo (and the mafr's website ONLY - avoid mirror sites and other places that have merely used bots to download who-knows-what) and see if there is a newer BIOS released for it. If so, read up on their method for downloading and installing the newer BIOS to the old girl, and be sure to follow their instructions -- to. the. letter. *Many* problems get corrected after the fact with mobo BIOS and upgrading to the latest patch is often a path to a machine that works as advertised. Be careful on this one, those who don't follow exact instructions, or allow power to be interrupted during the install (or actually turn it off because they got antsy and couldn't wait until the task finished itself...) -- have BRICKED their computers. That's not pretty. Don't be afraid, but do be careful when doing a BIOS flash. If you have a UPS, by all means use it.
--Mac
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rharv,
I have the temp files for all audio apps set to the second drive. If that's the consensus, then
I guess I have that right.
Now, when I said "streaming" I strictly meant listening to music from the internet, usually on
Winamp. Apparently there is a larger meaning of which I am not aware. Please say more.
Is there somewhere that I can see a table of the interrupts, or do I have to look at each device
individually in Device Manager? I know that my graphics adapter and soundcard are on different
interrupts.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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***
Mac,
Lotta meat there, as usual.
I backed the accel slider off a notch and cut screen resolution to 800 x 600, which I hate. This
allows Visualizations to run smoothly unless I start doing other things. Note that graphics are
not important to me except as far as allowing me to see what I'm doing. I thought, however, that
the glitching was a symptom of a system being sort of "brittle" or on the edge performance-wise.
Note that I would NEVER run a browser when performing serious audio work. In fact, when I hit
"Game" button I'm not even on the network. I don't have antivirus, screen savers, power utilities,
or, AFAIK, any other potential 'gotchas' running in the background.
I have two matched sticks of 1 Gb PC2700 DDR RAM for a total of 2 Gb, the system max. I got
another mobo from rharv with a faster CPU and possibly twice the RAM capacity, but I want to
tweak the existing system first. I did increase the swapfile to a system-recommended default
3070 Mb with a max of 4092, although it's not clear when it would switch. Should I just go ahead
and bump it all the way to 4092?
I am using a fully updated SP3 (the system specs were listed above).
The main drive is 160 Gb; the secondary is 500 Gb. The secondary's intended use is for audio
temp files and storage. Half a terabyte seems like a lot to dedicate to audio, and I need a fair
amount of storage. However, I have a partitioning utility (Partition Magic 8.0) which allows me
to manipulate pretty much everything under Windows. What are your recommendations for allotting
space on the second drive?
When running only one or two apps I typically have 75% RAM available. How does this affect the
location of the swapfile? It doesn't sound critical, but I'm greedy for performance, within the
confines of the existing system.
Updating the BIOS has been suggested many times. That one makes me a bit nervous, in part because
I've never properly backed my system up. I do have a UPS which I have had in reserve, so I guess
this would be the time to use it, although I think I only get about 15 to 20 minutes of runtime
with my system. Would that be enough in the worst case?
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Your UPS should give you plenty of time, even worst case, to update the BIOS.
Some of my audio software will analyze my system and make a recommendation, which I can approve or not, about where to place temporary files. They seem to prefer, first, the larger drive and second, the faster drive. Given the sizes of your drives, though, I think there is no question you want to direct temp and audio files to the second.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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So manually set your swap file size to twice the 2G ram, or somewhere around the 4g mark.
For DAW work (and that's the streaming I'm talking about, Audio Streaming in and out of the hard disk at the same time, as we do when multitracking, monitoring a few tracks playing back while at the same time recording more tracks) it is not cool to let Windows decide when to go into swap. That alone can generate unnecessary interruptions in those audio streams.
To get to your IRQs table, go to "Start", "Run", and type in "msinfo32"(no quote marks, of course). Click "OK". In the resultant left-hand window pane, click on the "Hardware Resources" plus sign (+), click on "IRQs" and, after "polling" the computer, the right-hand pane will display what IRQ each peripheral is assigned to in the right window. Examine the report and hopefully the all-important video will not be sharing the same IRQ as your sound device. If such is the case, report back for more.
BTW your screen resolution should not be hurting the audio. When troubleshooting things on the puter, it is always essential to only change one setting at a time and then retest for operation. If your audio streaming improved, it would most likely be due to turning down the vid acceleration, although if your video is shared with the soundcard on the same IRQ, then that would be the real bottleneck at the moment.
--Mac
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OK, retrieved this old thread, and maybe computer are not the same as they were those times... Well, I have a "new" notebook, i5 processor, 2 GB RAM, 500Gb HD, 5400 rpm or so HD. That is my intended DAW. Well, is it possible to run good audio jobs using that notebook? I found an article at the Presonus site, sugesting many "optimizations" in the Windows settings, but maybe they are outdated too. http://support.presonus.com/entries/119099-Optimizing-Your-Computer-for-Audio-Windows-Vista-Windows-7Now I have a Presonus AudioBox 1818VSL interface.
Last edited by Luiz Dias; 09/23/15 08:09 AM.
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Yeah. I ran one on a Dell Duo processor with 1G memory. If you use a decent external interface, you can do a lot with it. The interface you have should do fine.
I really wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to "optimize" the computer for audio. I found out that the laptop I was using ran just fine off the shelf. I did a few so called optimizing things and never saw any difference.
Run ASIO drivers and see how she runs.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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