• SONAR
  • How do I Optimise Windos 7 for for audio use
2012/07/12 13:18:20
Scoot
  Hello, not been on forum for ages, past laptop has died, got a new one (not the best, but it will have to do, also got the quad capture. Past laptop had Vista on it and there was a site that was recommended back then that advised how to tweak the background services how to change there priorities, and how to reduce the loading on the programme for optimising the compurter for Audio. I assume there's an equivilent for Windows 7, anyone know? Thanks
2012/07/12 13:21:01
Scoot
Blimey my signature is well out of date
2012/07/12 16:28:03
Bristol_Jonesey
Nothing much.

I'm running X1d Expanded on my general internet/email/gaming machine without any tweaks whatsoever, and it's bomb proof.


2012/07/12 16:39:24
Scoot
I'm going to return to Sonar 8.5 Producer, try and get back on my feet with that. Then look at the Soner XI LE and decide if my usage warrants upgrading my 8.5 to XI Producer. I'm struggling to see what extras I get after being away from thing for a few years. Is it a case that Windows 7 is much better than Vista, so I shouldn't need to tweak. As before I used to disable a whole load of services. Found the guide on the site I used in the past. Seems my record keeping was better than I thought. Just as well as this new forum seems to have got rid of all my old threads, whihc had loads of notes and links in them http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/
2012/08/03 13:30:43
sharke
I've always shied away from disabling services, even the ones that Black Viper says you can disable. You just never know if some software or other that you install somewhere down the line is going to require them. I read an article by some tech guy who said that you wouldn't believe the amount of problems that are eventually traced back to someone disabling a service and forgetting about it. I think maybe it made sense 10 years ago when people had a small fraction of the memory/CPU power we have today, but these days you're not going to make that much of a difference by disabling a few services. 

One "tweak" I would definitely make would be to create a new user account and use that for audio production. There are some Windows tweaks that are worth doing, such as disabling Aero and all the other bells and whistles, and with a separate user account you can do that without worrying about it messing up your everyday Windows experience.  You can also disable all of the startup and background programs you don't need. For example, in my main user account I have LiveMesh running, which backs up certain folders online as and when they're changed. I don't want that running while I'm using audio software. I also have Outlook sync and Quickbooks services running in the background too....don't want those clogging up resources. 

It may be worth researching system tweaks from a Pro Tools perspective, since they are a lot more documented. Also, Pro Tools is so picky and temperamental that tweaking and optimizing has been delved into a lot more. One thing I always do, from having used Pro Tools in the past, is to turn off my real-time virus protection and my network connection (so basically your audio user account will not be connected to the internet). That seemed to improve things for me Pro Tools wise, not sure what benefits it would have in the context of Sonar. 
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