Using non-dedicated Windows 10 PC as DAW?

Just a thought? SO many downloadable things these days only work with an "installer". That is you cannot download the whole program and save it then transfer it to a unconnected PC. It HAS to run the installer then interrogate the server from whence the prog' comes.

Of course I am the archetypical PC Numpty so I may have this wrong and there MIGHT a way around it?

Dave.
 
rob aylestone said:
Has anyone ever had a computer 100% reliable?
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I have. Two flawless machines across 6 or 7 years now. Any computer can get struck down by something, hardware or software, but *touch wood* mine hasn't yet.
I use the same machine for audio, video, gaming, streaming, day to day use.
I have a laptop too for the mobility and convenience, but my main machine does everything.
 
Steenamaroo said:
I have. Two flawless machines across 6 or 7 years now. Any computer can get struck down by something, hardware or software, but *touch wood* mine hasn't yet.
I use the same machine for audio, video, gaming, streaming, day to day use.
I have a laptop too for the mobility and convenience, but my main machine does everything.
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(working again!) Yeah but you are a PC 'SPERT!

Dave.
 
I do EVERYTHING on one computer. I upgraded to Win10 and stuck with it for quite a while. I didn't like it so much. When I bought a new computer, I loaded it with Win7 and am solidly happy. Never have a problem from multi-purpose usage.

I have a laptop for when I want to record elsewhere, but it sits idle most of the time.
 
Chili said:
I do EVERYTHING on one computer. I upgraded to Win10 and stuck with it for quite a while. I didn't like it so much. When I bought a new computer, I loaded it with Win7 and am solidly happy. Never have a problem from multi

Another 'spert!

Dave.
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Bobbsy said:
Gone are the days when I could afford a dedicated DAW. I now do all my work on a "shared" PC running Windows 10.

Some caveats:

I'm VERY careful about what extras I load onto the machine and try to keep the internal disk drive down around 50% capacity.

When used as a DAW, the Wifi and Anti virus software are turned off and nothing else is allowed to run in the background. I've also followed one of those "optimise your Windows 10 for sound recording" lists of suggestions.

Most important, neither my wife nor my 12 year old son who thinks he's a computer whiz are allowed near my laptop.

Working that way (and at the risk of jinxing myself) I've not had any problems.

...(At this point, I just did a check and realise that the only non-audio/video programmes I have running on my computer are Chrome, Thunderbird and Open Office. Maybe my system isn't as "shared" as I thought....
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Thanks Bobbsy. Are you just running everything from one account/login, then manually disabling WIFI/AV when you want to work with audio? Given that you have stripped down the OS with all the recommended tweaks for audio, and don't run many other programs anyway, that sounds like it would work in that situation. I've got a lot of other programs I need to use at various times, though (MS Office, Dragon voice recognition software, Quicken,occasionally Visio and Project, etc.). That's why I'm thinking I need the equivalent of the old "dual boot" idea, and was seeing if Windows could now boot basically to either the bloated version for everything, or the stripped down version for audio, just by my login account setup. If you (or anyone else) are doing it that way, I'd love to hear the details.

Ecc83 and Rob, yes I definitely plan to keep some PC available as a backup in case of equipment meltdown.

I may end up continuing with 2 main PCs - 1 recording, 1 everything else. But both my existing workhorses are old and starting to show signs that the end may be coming. Recording PC is a 2003 Carillon running XP, and "everything" laptop is a 2008 Dell running Vista. :)) Since both really need to be replaced/upgraded by something new and more powerful, it would be cheaper and would simplify my life if it is possible to buy the right hardware for audio but configure it to do everything I need!

Sam
 
The only program I use that definitely interfered with my DAW is MS Outlook. For whatever reason if I freeze tracks and Outlook is open in the background Sonar will crash most of the time. Never crashes when freezing with Outlook closed.

I don't do much to prevent issues with my setup, but I also don't use the computer for anything other than light email, Facebook, photo editing, and mostly music related activities. My tech advice would be to turn off update checking for programs like Quicken, Dragon, etc. I can see having these programs suddenly decide they need to perform an update when you're in the middle of tracking could be an issue. Otherwise I've never fully bought into the reduction lists I've seen, where you 'strip' windows of things that aren't deemed mission critical for music production. having tried a lot of software over the years and never having it be the cause of any lag/latency issues, I think those lists are placebo/click-bait.
 
Pinky said:
I think those lists are placebo/click-bait.
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I've often though that. A lot of the optimisation advice, I think, might be hangover stuff from when system resources really were limited. Maybe as far back as pentium.
There's some good stuff that's worth doing, some of which you mentioned, but I've always really disliked the idea of stripping a system just because it is, or was, the thing to do.

I don't even really agree with it in terms of troubleshooting an issue. I'd rather be systematic and logical about it instead of following some arbitrary list of disable this and remove that.
 
I don't do music, I do pre-recorded one hour talk radio each week which pays well. After the latest mess-up with some attempt to clean out files, I bought a decent compact-sized W10 PC with 8 GB of RAM and a terrabyte HD with HDMI out and a ton of USB ports, including USB 3.0. A refurb from a reputable brand, it was $228. As much as I like newish gear, I'm using it exclusively for audio editing, web page creation and billing. My flat panel monitor, another refurb, cost $89 and has two HDMI ports an one RGB. So I can use my "older" computer for movies, my mp3s, net stuff and writing.

I'm tempted not to even hook up the new unit to the net, avoiding viruses, etc. There's just too much at risk with my audio files to use the PC for general purpose computing.
 
Steenamaroo said:
I've often though that. A lot of the optimisation advice, I think, might be hangover stuff from when system resources really were limited. Maybe as far back as pentium.
There's some good stuff that's worth doing, some of which you mentioned, but I've always really disliked the idea of stripping a system just because it is, or was, the thing to do.

I don't even really agree with it in terms of troubleshooting an issue. I'd rather be systematic and logical about it instead of following some arbitrary list of disable this and remove that.
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99.99% of issues I address professionally at the workstation level have nothing to do with needing to turn off services. IMO if a piece of third party software crashed or malfunctioned because of one of these services, I'd consider the third party app to be the problem, not the Windows service. [in other words - software developers like to blame issues with their shitty software on Windows a lot]
 
radi0j0hn said:
I'm tempted not to even hook up the new unit to the net, avoiding viruses, etc. There's just too much at risk with my audio files to use the PC for general purpose computing.
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if this is a viable thing to do, then i would encourage you and anyone else to do that. I tell clients all the time that the internet starts attacking you the moment you open your browser. Been saying this for a decade, and it's more true today than ever. It can be done safely, but it really depends on the end user's ability to not do something or get tricked into doing something stupid. And having a good, bare metal/full backup just in case. In most cases people can't or won't fulfill one or both of those qualifications, so avoidance is really the only sure thing.
 
Pinky said:
99.99% of issues I address professionally at the workstation level have nothing to do with needing to turn off services. IMO if a piece of third party software crashed or malfunctioned because of one of these services, I'd consider the third party app to be the problem, not the Windows service. [in other words - software developers like to blame issues with their shitty software on Windows a lot]
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Absolutely.
 
I use to do a lot of stripping-out of unwanted apps and turning services off..etc...back in my W2K and also in my XP DAW systems. There were extensive optimization procedures that people were doing.

With my Win7 DAW...I just run it lean by NOT adding more apps that I don't need...it's a DAW-only box, so besides the OS, the only other stuff on there are the audio apps, and maybe a PDF reader for the manuals, and that's about it.
I think I did some basic power setting adjustments in the bios, and just minor tweaks to suite my preferences, like I turn off the networking all-together, since it's an off-line DAW. I didn't much more than that...the rest is default.

That said...not adding lots of non-audio stuff makes a difference. My Win7 DAW computer boots 5 times faster than my Win7 work laptop, which has tons of shit on it, including all the anti-virus/anti-spyware stuff.
Many of those additional apps will load pieces into the background so that they appear to load faster when you want them...so they can suck up some of your resources, even if you have a robust system.
I just don't see a reason to have some non-DAW apps installed and their background services always running...if I'm never going to use them.

(Knock on wood)...my current Win7 DAW has never crashed/frozen...there's just not much there to get in the way. :)
 
Chili said:
Never have a problem from multi-purpose usage.
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Well.... not but a few hours after saying this, I go to work on a tune and there is all kinds of glitching and stutters. The Cubase performance meter was near max all the time, even when sitting idle. That had me scratching my head and eating crow for a couple of days. lol

:wtf:

Turns out, after updating my UAD plugs, it reset the buffer to something like 32 samples; 1ms latency. :eek: Yeah, I don't need it that low. Set it back to 256 samples to get 5ms and everything is back to normal.

Secure from drill, restow all damage control equipment. :D
 
miroslav said:
You need to knock on your wood next time before saying all is well.
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I said 'that' wood as an example of my knocking on any wood in agreement with you. Sorry if you found that to mean 'your' wood. That wasn't my intention. I'll try to keep off your lawn MR. Grouchy... lol

What happened to adding some smileys today?

:)
 
My touring rack for the current job has plenty of space, so I put the recently demoted audio recording computer in it - but as these things are now GB laden with samplers and stuff, to be able to work when away, I put my new machine in the rack too. Deciding to run from the demoted one, it's had to process video and audio and has done a decent enough job - apart from a major user gaffe - when I quick formatted the D drive - a 3Gb internal drive that stupidly had a very similar name to the USB stick - both called toshiba drive. Only noticing when the sampler didn't work, I was dismayed to see disc recovery time quoted as 6 hours for a full scan. Good job the other machine was in the rack. This is the risk with computers. As it happens I'd not written to the drive - but it would have been simple to copy a wadge of video files to it. Maybe one machine is ok with a really on the ball person working it? I'm not that person.
 
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