The System Tray
Rain recommends a dedicated machine for recording digital audio if possible - and here's some insight as to why.
The Right Stuff
While computers are by nature capable of accomplishing any task that can be programmed in ones and zeros, when it comes to audio production, performance and stability may be seriously compromised by the addition of non-music software and applications. Rain recommends a dedicated machine for recording digital audio if possible -and here's some insight as to why.
Take a glance at your clock in the bottom right corner of the screen, in what is called the "System Tray". Do you see all those icons? These are alternately referred to as "System Tray Notification Icons" or "Notification Area Icons". If there's a "Hide inactive icons" arrow then click it to see just how many you have. Each of these icons represents a program or service that is running on your computer and each one requires a bite of your CPU's processing pie. Your CPU can only really think about one thing at a time. The fact that it does this phenomenally fast gives the illusion of everything happening at once, but it's still a linear, serial system.
Maximize The Track Count
In order to get maximum audio track and plug-in count while avoiding audio dropouts, glitches, freezes, and crashes, we want the computer to concentrate all its thinking power on the audio project at hand. While we're making music we normally wouldn't dream of running another program alongside - but these little icons are doing exactly that. While you're mixing a 48-track song, your CPU wanders off to make sure you're still connected to a network, checks your email, updates your virus logs, and recalibrates your mouse.
Where do they come from? Some are regular Windows components like network connections or volume controls, but most get implemented when you install other software. Virus checkers, firewalls, keyboard layouts, mouse pointers, graphics panel, notifications of updates, easy access to some application or other, power schemes, profiles, and an alarm to tell you when your tea's ready ñ the list can be extensive. Run your mouse along them and ask yourself how many of these you actually need.
Now there is a more aggressive way of dealing with unwanted code, and it can also unearth a bunch of other services that are running hidden away, without the politeness of a little icon to announce its presence. We're going to look at the System Configuration Utility.
Hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and press "R" and the "Run" window appears (keyboard shortcuts are very handy and always impress). Now type "msconfig" (without the quotes obviously) and the System Configuration Utility will appear. All we're interested in is the "Startup" tab, so click it and have a look at the list shown there.
In order to get maximum audio track and plug-in count while avoiding audio dropouts, glitches, freezes, and crashes, we want the computer to concentrate all its thinking power on the audio project at hand.
All of the items listed run when your system starts up. Some of them will have a corresponding icon in the System Tray but many will not. Now they are not all bad, one may refer to your soundcards volume or control panel, another to your graphics card drivers, but the vast majority can be deselected. Classic annoying services are things like Apple's "iTunes Helper" (who needs help with that?), Quicktime, Realsched, Adobe acrobat updater and the Nero update utility, none of which needs to be running in the background of Windows. In fact you may even wish to "disable all" of them and see what happens. Click "OK" and restart your system when prompted.
If there was a lot to disable then the first thing you should notice is how blisteringly fast Windows booted up - from the "Welcome" to the desktop in no time at all. Then you'll see a warning telling you what you've done. Check the "Don't show me again" box and close the window. Now look at your clock, hopefully much less crowded down there. Start your usual programs and make sure it all works. If you get any errors on startup then you may have something connected that requires a driver or service that you've now disabled. Go back into the System Configuration Utility and enable it. If you look at the "Command" line next to each item you can usually see where they come from and what they refer to.
Good To Go
You should find your system is much less clunky, smoother running, and less likely to give you glitches in your audio work. Magic! If you install any new software or hardware check to see if any new icons appear in the System Tray and routinely check the System Configuration Utility to keep only the active utilities you actually need. While these performance tips are useful for any general-use computer, having a computer that is just dedicated to audio production is the best way to avoid problems and maintain peak performance.
Author
Robin Vincent runs Rain Recording (UK) out of London and is the CTO of Rain world-wide. In his tenure in the business of PC based audio production he as authored numerous articles, reviews and books on the subject.