Setting up vista for DAW's

[conor_j]

In the past I have seen plenty of guides for streamlining XP and its services to free up resources for audio applications, but as a Vista user (didnt really have a choice) I havnt come across much info relating to this

Any pro tip's out there for better performance?

[waxxy]

i had loads of problems with vista and i fired it off and installed xp again..if you can try get a copy of xp if you visit your local computer fair youll get a copy mega cheap

[RedDavid]

Four quick tips:

1) Disable superfetch, a process that sits in the background pre-loading data, which is what causes so much disk thrashing and so many dropouts

2) Disable the indexing service, which'll lose you the ability to do super-fast searches, but will also stop the service running continuously in the background, thrashing your disk all the while, and causing more dropouts and extra latency

3) Disable system restore, and all the other things the WinXP performance guides tell you to disable. 90% of it still applies to Vista.

4) If you've got onboard video (ie. any Intel video card, some AMD ones), disable Aero Glass. If you don't, try enabling it. In my experience, AG can lower system latencies slightly, and that's a good thing.


The essence of it all is, minimise what's running so that your DAW can have more of the system's focus. There's a load of other tweaks you can also run, but it'd take ages to get into here. Although, I've written a pretty nifty bit of Vista optimisation software geared entirely towards us muso types, so might post that when I get some spare time.

[conor_j]

Originally Posted by waxxy

i had loads of problems with vista and i fired it off and installed xp again..if you can try get a copy of xp if you visit your local computer fair youll get a copy mega cheap

I had originally planned to downgrade to xp, but was warned off doing so due to supposed problems getting xp drivers for newer devices. I would also hate to have any major downtime.....because im just fussy lol. Im not totally dismissing the option tho
Vista has actually been quite good to me however, runs pretty smoothly but just seems to eat an obscene amount of resources.

Originally Posted by RedDavid

Four quick tips:

1) Disable superfetch, a process that sits in the background pre-loading data, which is what causes so much disk thrashing and so many dropouts

2) Disable the indexing service, which'll lose you the ability to do super-fast searches, but will also stop the service running continuously in the background, thrashing your disk all the while, and causing more dropouts and extra latency

3) Disable system restore, and all the other things the WinXP performance guides tell you to disable. 90% of it still applies to Vista.

4) If you've got onboard video (ie. any Intel video card, some AMD ones), disable Aero Glass. If you don't, try enabling it. In my experience, AG can lower system latencies slightly, and that's a good thing.


The essence of it all is, minimise what's running so that your DAW can have more of the system's focus. There's a load of other tweaks you can also run, but it'd take ages to get into here. Although, I've written a pretty nifty bit of Vista optimisation software geared entirely towards us muso types, so might post that when I get some spare time.

Thanks for the info Red, apart from butchering any processes running in the background I hadnt tried anything there

[JAYDMF]

Be warey of SP1 for vista too, ive seen a few machines that just really dont like it and slow up majorly, these arent specific music machines by any means but in some cases SP1 doesnt really help

[Jamyama]

Hiya all.

I recently bought a laptop with Vista pre-installed. I must be honest, within 2 days of using it, I gave up and went back to XP. I bought it with the intention crossing my DAW software over but quickly found that most of the software wouldn't install or run properly. The compatability wizard was no good either. I knew that I may hit some problems with older software but wasn't perpared to be let down as much as this.

I appologise if this isn't exactly advice but Vista has been a fruitless experience for me!

I gave the laptop to my wife. She's thrilled to bits with it!!!

[sphelan]

My recently bought pc came with vista. I was told in the shop that I would invalidate the guarantee on the machine if I downgraded to xp!

So reluctantly I have began using vista.

I have installed sonar 7, reason 4, fl studio 8, komplete 5 and others. On my previous system running xp on a laptop I could run several of these programs at the same time. If I do this in vista it tells me that the audio drivers and midi are not available - only available on the first program opened.

Sonar goes wierd when I add akoustik piano as a vst. Some days I can run the stand alone version of akoustik piano at the same time as B4II or Kore 2 or any other komplete product. But on other days it refuses. On other days I have to re-start the pc as there is no sound at all coming out. Things were a bit better before installing sp1 but now I never know how the system is going to behave when I switch on!

Needless to say I am less than happy with the way it works!!

[JAYDMF]

Originally Posted by sphelan

My recently bought pc came with vista. I was told in the shop that I would invalidate the guarantee on the machine if I downgraded to xp!

So reluctantly I have began using vista.

I have installed sonar 7, reason 4, fl studio 8, komplete 5 and others. On my previous system running xp on a laptop I could run several of these programs at the same time. If I do this in vista it tells me that the audio drivers and midi are not available - only available on the first program opened.

Sonar goes wierd when I add akoustik piano as a vst. Some days I can run the stand alone version of akoustik piano at the same time as B4II or Kore 2 or any other komplete product. But on other days it refuses. On other days I have to re-start the pc as there is no sound at all coming out. Things were a bit better before installing sp1 but now I never know how the system is going to behave when I switch on!

Needless to say I am less than happy with the way it works!!

Yeah the problems with running several programs at once is due to the new Audio set up microsoft added ( i forget the name now) but basically it doesnt allow things to release audio drivers like XP did, someone told me there is a fix for this but im not 100% certain on that. if you want to be able to do this tho it maybe worth having a look around on the net for the fix.

This is one of the reasons that im sticking to XP for now as i like to be able to switch between Cubase and Reaktor so i can tweak synths and then reload in Cubase if theres some parameter i feel would help towards a certain sound, also helps with beats as i can go into Recycle and reslice a beat without having to close stuff.

[conor_j]

''Disable superfetch, a process that sits in the background pre-loading data, which is what causes so much disk thrashing and so many dropouts''

Can anyone elaborate a bit more on that one for me please, I cant seem to find any options in vista relating to this?

[conor_j]

actually no need, a quick visit to the googler sorted me out