Hunh, I think that little tweak may have done me some good. I was running at 128 buffers (6ms round trip time) on a moderately sized project...70-ish tracks, softsynths, amp sims, 18 different hardware outputs in use. Did the tweak, dropped my buffers to 64 (3.13ms round trip time) and the project plays without a hitch. Nice!
 
Now if I could just get down to 32 buffers for a 1.79ms round trip time. I tried it and it plays but gets pops and crackles.
 
Also probably helpful would be to get quixotic quests for ever-lower but in my case ultimately meaningless (and probably imperceptible) latency times out of my head 
 
Dean

I must be one of the lucky ones then. I disabled the nvidea drivers in Device Manager and they've stayed disabled.
 
This is after reboots, power downs etc.
 
Haven't noticed much of a difference though.

'The last few years we have constantly been told that it is not necessary to tweak as we were inclined to do with XP, and before.'

I'd like to know who says that....
Plenty of good tweaks you can do, and plenty or bad ones as well.

YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson
You have helped put to rest the notion that W8 does not need optimizing for audio. The last few years we have constantly been told that it is not necessary to tweak as we were inclined to do with XP, and before.

Well actually, this isn't really so much an OS tweak as a "things that a manufacturer adds to the OS" tweak. I do leave Windows itself pretty much alone. Based on Noel's feedback and subsequent testing, apparently the only reason I had to go into System Devices was to deal with a problem with the AMD driver, not something inherent in Windows. 
 
If I think about this any more, my head may explode 

Anderton

YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson
You have helped put to rest the notion that W8 does not need optimizing for audio. The last few years we have constantly been told that it is not necessary to tweak as we were inclined to do with XP, and before.

Well actually, this isn't really so much an OS tweak as a "things that a manufacturer adds to the OS" tweak. I do leave Windows itself pretty much alone. Based on Noel's feedback and subsequent testing, apparently the only reason I had to go into System Devices was to deal with a problem with the AMD driver, not something inherent in Windows. 
 
If I think about this any more, my head may explode 

Sorry for your frustrations!
 
 
Are we learning the truth yet People?...We have to tweak the PC and MS OS...(dependant on user/build/and function)...it is The best way to improve Performance, and the age old issue...."conflicting ""SHARED IRQs"" , and interruption of the single multi core cpu"....
 
My Jibber Jab jibberish rants, should resolve your head exploding syndrome, by Not thinking any further into code!...because it is not truthfully the code, or coders...it is the motherboard's, and lack of what I said before!....IRQs of a physical nature implemented properly for all exclusivity of supplied slots, ports,and devices onboard!!..., and a second or third or even fourth cpu to help resolve over 200? virtual IRQs MS recent OSes use, and calls on one signal cpu to perform!
 
Tweaking with a setup as such, with those limitations still in use today, as was yesterday, and seems to be ongoing!... has to be tweaked....Period!...until the motherboard makers make the change to light speed!.....Wink.
 
Have a
Nothing more to think about, great day!
Cheers!
 
Sir Les

As mentioned in post #80, "I gleaned additional insights from Noel and Keith at Cakewalk (thanks guys!!) to write up an 'official' version of this tip that actually answers the question in the thread title. They have graciously offered to look it over and make sure everything is correct. I'll close off my contribution to the thread by including the tweaked version."
 
However, I decided to include the final version in the "Friday's Tip of the Week" thread because this tip has been shown to make a quantifiable difference in many systems, so I didn't want the info to go away when this thread slipped off the front page. You'll find it listed as the tip for Week 35.

I need to run YouTube (for instructional videos) and Sonar X3 or another DAW at the same time with audio functioning.
 
I was able to disable the Sound Video and Game controllers all 4 HD Audio. after reboot they are no longer visible on the list. Is this odd?
 
Also disabled the System Devices  both HD audio Controllers. But had to enable one to get YouTube to work again. For YouTube to work I also need to keep the Realtek HD Audio enabled.
 
Does this seem releasable?  I am not good at audio techy stuff.
 
 
 

Vas
I need to run YouTube (for instructional videos) and Sonar X3 or another DAW at the same time with audio functioning.
 
I was able to disable the Sound Video and Game controllers all 4 HD Audio. after reboot they are no longer visible on the list. Is this odd?
 
Also disabled the System Devices  both HD audio Controllers. But had to enable one to get YouTube to work again. For YouTube to work I also need to keep the Realtek HD Audio enabled.
 
Does this seem releasable?  I am not good at audio techy stuff.

As mentioned in the post previous to yours (#96), there is an official, vetted version of this tip in my Tip of the Week thread. This is the one whose instructions you should follow.
 
If you disabled the HD audio under Sound, Video, and Game controllers per the instructions, they should be visible with a downward pointing arrow. If you uninstalled them, they will no longer be visible and will need to be reinstalled.
 
However, as mentioned I had to temporarily disable the HD Audio under system devices to be able to disable (not uninstall) the HD device under Sound, Video, and Game controllers.
 
Please review the tip by clicking here.

Its been years since i every time i get a new DAW i will spend months trying to run perfect on low buffers, always aiming for that almost real-time dream.
My experience tells me it all comes down to one thing, DPC latency, the lower it gets the smaller buffers i can use and the less chance i have of pops and clicks.
 
Its not a matter of disabling HD Audio, its a matter of DISABLE EVERYTHING not related to your Audio work.
-ACPI Battery
-LAN
-Car Readers
-WIFI
-On board audio
-Printers
... EVERYTHING!
 
Lock everything that uses energy management, stuff that makes clocks go up and down to save energy (speedstep, turboboost, nvidia powermizer, etc etc).
Test the hardware, for instance, new laptops with NVIDIA will make 600ms DPC- REALLY BAD, same laptop with a AMD M290X you get perfect DPC, my top DPC is the actual audio card, nothing goes above it! Bad Firewire cards (not TI) will make you life really hard. I have the chance to test every piece before assemble, unfortunately not everyone has the same chance so the solution is replace if it causes high DPC.
 
As for those who need their PC/laptop for more than audio you can have both, you can make Two batch files like "AUDIO MODE" and "REGULAR MODE" and with one click it will disable everything you dont need for audio and with other click re-enable it.
Same with clocks, for CPU you can use ThrotleStop to set profiles for the CPU and have a "AUDIO MODE" with fixed multiplier and no C1/Turboboost/etc a "POWERSAVE MODE" (name says it all) and so on...
 
Should i start making guides in this forum? 

Since I have kept a separate computer for music exclusively, I have always disabled all audio drivers except my sound interface (Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 for the last nearly five years). Even with Sonar 8 I was tracking 4-6 channels simultaneously in a rich mix at 64 samples, but with Sonar Xn and a solid machine, I routinely use 16 channels for tracking and 512 for mixing. Never have a wrinkle (knock on would (sp))