If PC laptop===> what is the methods for dealing w/ latency???

[rimisrandma]

There is a lot of talk about turning things off when recording audio on a PC to reduce latency and errors etc. What exactly are people/pc users turning off and on exactly....to make it more concrete???

A pc user also has to get ASIO4all drivers. What else do they have to get?? Anything else have to be configured....I guess drivers, but is there something that gets overlooked that you can think back to the first days and sticks out???

A pc user also HAS to use spyware, what spyware seems to work for an audio guy?? Does it matter??? Better/Worse spyware in general???

 

[Nathan1984]

I have been there and done that my friend. I will tell you what I do to try to optimize my laptop. First thing, turn off the wifi. Turn off your antivirus program, I use avast and just put it in gamer mode. Set your pc for performance in the control panel. Remove backgrounds, screen savers, and such. Open up your task manager, and get rid of all those hidden goodies that don't really make a difference on your pc, got to love those companies that wanna lodge all kinds of bs into your hard drive. Another good thing to really look into is upgrading your pc, such as your ram, hard drive, video cards, cpu. Hope this helps you out alittle, trial and error. Just be patient and you will figure it out.

 

[rimisrandma]

I have been there and done that my friend. I will tell you what I do to try to optimize my laptop. First thing, turn off the wifi. Turn off your antivirus program, I use avast and just put it in gamer mode. Set your pc for performance in the control panel. Remove backgrounds, screen savers, and such. Open up your task manager, and get rid of all those hidden goodies that don't really make a difference on your pc, got to love those companies that wanna lodge all kinds of bs into your hard drive. Another good thing to really look into is upgrading your pc, such as your ram, hard drive, video cards, cpu. Hope this helps you out alittle, trial and error. Just be patient and you will figure it out.

Holy crap. That is a little more intensive than I expected and did not know that there was that many hoops to jump through before you even start recording. Imagine if you had to set up a bunch of mics, amps, drum sets etc....I would just shut the computer off and end up going to bed.

Also, Ardecko, could you add to this and put it in the beginner stickied thread?

 

[TeyshaBlue]

Nathan gave you some good advice...heed it. Use your task manager to see what's running and identify programs you don't need and uninstall them.
It's not all that difficult. After uninstalling the bloatware found on most comps, optimize your startup and services. Here's the quick process for that with some screen caps.

1. In the search bar, type MSCONFIG
2. Open MSCONFIG and select the STARTUP tab.
3. Deselect anything you don't want running in the startup menu.
4. Select the SERVICES tab. Disable anything you don't need. If you are not sure, then leave it running but if you disable something accidentally, it will start when a task requires it.


Also, ASIO4ALL is basically an ASIO driver hack. It is something you can use if your computer is not playing nice with the stock drivers for your interface. I had to use it for my ZOOM R16 until Zoom released some updated drivers.

With some really flaky drivers, a USB mouse can cause dropouts! Weird....but I've only had that happen once and it turned out that somehow my laptop had reverted to low power mode.

Also, disable any automatic updates. Nothing worse than a prompt popping up while running 16 tracks of audio with a zillion plugs.

 

[arcadeko]

Rimi are you having latency problems now? Or are you just trying to avoid them before you get them? Depending on your interface ASIO4ALL may not even be needed! The thing I have found with latency issues is that there can be several reasons for them, it's not always a standard answer.

But all the things described above by Teysha and Nathan are absolutely the right thing to do. Virus software and Automatic updates will inevitably start running some BS in the middle of recording or mixing and drive you insane. And all those extra processes in the background, while they may not have a huge running load will almost ALWAYS spike the CPU when they kick on which will screw up your DAW activities.

Can you give some more info about what your set up is and any problems you are having?