Definitive Windows 7 Tweaks for Cubase and Wavelab?

timmyboylad · January 28, 2011, 6:17pm

My boot drive is dying and though I’ve had no trouble at all with Vista 32bit (since SP2), it’s time to move up to Win 7 64 bit.

I remember the site Music XP that had the best ways to optimize XP for pro audio use.

Is there a definitive page out there of the like for Win 7?

Thanks!

Patanjali · January 31, 2011, 2:06pm

Win 7 is a lot more stable for use as a DAW without turning off services.

The main one is stiil setting the performance to favour background services and perhaps turn off Aero.

Even sidebar is nowhere near the resource hog it was on Vista.

While Win 7 may not disable services that are not required, they use very little CPU, if any.

Also, Win 7 optimises for SSDs, so nothing to do there either, though I disabled Defragementation and Prefetch as I don’t have any HDDs.

alexis · August 5, 2013, 9:22pm

Is it pretty much safe to buy any commercial off the shelf Windows 7 desktop and use Cubase 6.5 or greater on it? In the old days people were talking about interrupts, and processes that automatically kicked in and messed up audio recordings, latencies, etc.

Thanks -

PS Some references:

http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/847/Windows+7+Tuning+Tips+for+Audio+Processing

http://www.xpfree.org/

G-string · August 5, 2013, 10:18pm

the main thing is to stop everything from sleeping and un-park your cores then you should have a monster

Strophoid · August 6, 2013, 1:13pm

Check the firewire chipset if you’ve got a FW audio interface. Other than that, I would suggest you start by formatting the harddrive when you get your PC to get rid of all the bloatware.
It should run fine then.

alexis · August 6, 2013, 7:02pm

Thanks, Stroph!

Sounds scary, never having done that! I guess I would re-install the OS and other programs I have disks for/want afterwards?

Finally - in the XP days, there were definitely certain motherboards to avoid. Was that because of the chipsets they came with? Have things changes so much that I shouldn’t even think about what kind of motherboard is in there, or is there still some way that can mess it up?

Thanks -

Strophoid · August 7, 2013, 4:19pm

Yes, if you have a disc with your OS on it, it’s actually very easy. Just pop that in the disc tray, boot your PC and it will start the installer for the OS which has a built in formatting tool.
I find that’s the quickest way to get a clean and fast system. You could of course also go through all the preinstalled stuff and get rid of it the normal way, but I personally prefer to start from a ‘vanilla’ system.

As for Firewire chipsets, TI (Texas Instruments) is always safe, I believe VIA is fine as well these days. That’s just hearsay though, I have no experience with anything other than TI.

G-string · August 7, 2013, 4:30pm

No it’s not , no manufactures that I know of endorse VIA as a viable firewire chipset so until then VIA is just the same as it’s always been , click and pop fest chipset

Scab_Pickens · August 7, 2013, 5:25pm

Focusrite reccommends either Texas Instruments or VIA.

http://d3se566zfvnmhf.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/answerbase/Focusrite_IEEE_1394_Compatibility_article_0.pdf

I wouldn’t know how the VIA chipsets compare to TI with my Pro 40. I’ve been using the onboard TI firewire on my Gigabyte motherboard with absolutely no problems.

G-string · August 7, 2013, 5:34pm

well all I can say on that is if anyone installs a VIA chipset …don’t come crying to the forums that my bla bla bla blaaaaaaa is bleeping popping and cracking . Audio interface company can’t take such a cheap chipset seriously so why forcusrite would want to claim such a thing is beyond me , mind you if you look at the latency comparison charts ,forusrite are near the bottom for performance … I wonder why

Thalys · August 7, 2013, 7:13pm

seems to be the opposite recommandation since W7 and W8

Freddie H:

Hi all!

AERO on Windows 7 Windows 8 - OS-X Cocoa Frameworks
As someone already point out, AERO need to be ON to direct all graphic processing to use GPU instead on CPU.
You want the plugins and the Software instruments use all the CPU recourses not the graphic.

There are non benefits to disable AERO only the opposite.
All you see with AERO turn on is handle 100% by the GPU on the graphic card. So it can be good idea to invest in a better graphic card. DSP coding just increase every day so we will see more GPU based coding and add of more functions like plugins use the GPU processing in example Cubase in the near future.

In fact already today many 3 part manufactories base their GUI code and API calls around AERO - directed to the GPU on both Windows 7 / 8 and OS-X . Disable it you will get crashes and conflicts in Windows 7 and 8. On OS-X you can’t disable their coca framework and that is a good thing. I hope Microsoft will take that option away so can’t disable AERO in the near future.

On Windows 95, 98 and XP all Graphic behavior was to directed all to the CPU only. On XP; direct-Windows and Programs graphic processing to the GPU on the graphic card was not possible as it is today in Windows 7 and 8. There for it was recommend to use so low graphic in use as possible because it took away CPU resources for the plugins and software’s in XP. Today that is history.

About MIDI, no its not a background task either. Its a real time operation. MIDI messages are made up of 8-bit words, and are transmitted serially at a rate of 31.25 kbaud.

About Process scheduler on XP to “background task”.

That tweak has been used and abused since Matthias Carsten at RME come up with this great tweak on XP. It was meant to be used with specific RME hardware on XP platform only to provide better low latency from 23ms to 3ms.
Even Mattias Carsten that is the original founder of this tweak say as I do and Microsoft and all the tech Gurus in the world would say; that on VISTA, WINDOWS 7 and Windows 8 it should be set to PROGRAM.

POWER Schema shall be on FULL too. Check all USB port too so isn’t set to sleep.

BIOS setting- disable all C-wait and Sleep!

UAC-User Account Control
You can go ahead and disable that in Windows 7 and 8. There were talk to take away that feature completely in Windows 8.1 update “Windows Blue”. Its no needed as in Windows 8 has another kernel core protection further down inside the core base that has stronger protections against bad code then UAC.

Windows hibernation
Windows hibernation can be a good idea to take away to free up space especially if you use SSD on /C: Windows.
Check the Internet how to do that.

Core parkingIt can be a good idea on some system to disable “core-parking” in Windows 7 and 8. This is advance operation thru reg-edit so if you have no experience you can mess up your system pretty bad and completely.
Windows 7 & Core Parking .... a *better* way to Turn It OFF .... | Cakewalk Forums

Best Regards
Freddie

source:

Jarno · August 7, 2013, 7:53pm

And there are hardware which works fine with VIA, but not with TI:

No matter how much TI is praised as The Holy Grail of FW chipsets in every audio forum, The Whole Truth is not that simple.

knuckle47 · August 9, 2013, 4:22am

Since it only 2 cents…here’s mine. In the 8 years of running the MOTU 896hd, MOTU has always suggested I use the TI FW interface. When I did not have one immediately available , i tried using the included VIA from my Asus motherboard. The MOTU reacted badly and cost me a few months of confusion looking for other problems before asking about the FW connection. Once I was told to switch, I did…it worked and has performed flawlessly for the last 7 years…never had an issue since and there are a few tracks that really drive this 896 hard as an input and output device