14 Tips to Make Windows Break the Sound Barrier

Digital recording places a huge demand on your computer in terms of processing power, memory usage and storage space. Is your computer up to the task? If you want to be making good quality music, it had better be!

Arguments abound about which operating system is best for recording music. Many swear that Macs are best for anything multimedia, while others vow they will never move away from Microsoft Windows. Some suggest that Linux is worth a look, and that’s a story of its own. Arguably, Windows may not be the best choice, but the truth is, the computer you’re running now is probably running Windows. And you might as well start there.

What can we do to make Windows record music more effectively? I spend a lot of time supporting and maintaining Windows computers, and here are my 14 tips to make Windows break the sound barrier.

1. Don’t Use Your Windows Computer For Anything Else

Windows seems to bog down over time. We fill our computers up with software, temporary files breed like rabbits, programs conflict with one another, and our favorite settings are tampered with by others.

If you don’t want that to happen with the computer you use for digital recording, don’t use it for anything else! Set it up with the software you need for recording, and use a different computer for the rest. And keep others off your production machine as well. Especially kids and teenagers!

2. Don’t Keep Installing and Uninstalling Software on Your Production Machine

I love exploring new software. I see something interesting on the Net, and download a trial to see what it’s like. I see a new free program that promises the world, and I install it to find out it’s a useless mess. And over the months, the computer I experiment on feels about as fast as watching grass grow in a drought. Most of the programs I uninstalled left orphaned registry entries, configuration files, and maybe more, all over my hard drive.

Registry cleaners and and computer cleanup software abounds, and might help. But here is a better idea: Install just the software you need for recording, and nothing else. Do your experimenting on someone else’s computer. You’ll notice the difference!

3. Keep Your Production Machine off the Internet

I once read someone say on a forum, “My DAW is an XP internet virgin.” The average time between connecting a Windows computer to the Internet and it catching a virus is eight minutes. Of course, the time will vary widely depending on the firewall, security sofware, updates and common sense you are using. The best way to avoid viruses is to stay off the Internet altogether. If you want to surf or download new software, do it on another computer!

And many Windows programs (and Windows itself) “call home” regularly, either to report who knows what back to its owner, or to check for updates, or to download updates, or to see if you won the lottery. Murphy’s Law says that this will always happen in the middle of an important recording session, putting a big stutter on your best lick. If you’re not on the Internet, your software can’t phone home.

4. Don’t Run Antivirus or Antispyware Software

My brother-in-law had constant problems with viruses and spyware a few years ago. That may have something to do with having four teenagers. The computer tech guy got sick of it, and installed every virus and spyware program in the book. The computer ran slower with all that security software than it ever did with viruses!

The point is, anti-malware software will slow your computer down. It’s better not to install it on your production machine. Keep your computer off the Internet, and you should be safe.

5. Scan Any Media for Viruses on Another Computer Before Use

Always be suspicious of CDs, USB sticks and external hard drives from others. You don’t know what’s on them, or where they’ve been. They may have picked up hitchhikers along the way! If possible, avoid them altogether.

But if you have to plug someone else’s storage device into your production machine, thoroughly scan it for viruses on another computer first. Your production machine doesn’t have virus software on it, remember!

6. While You Can, Use Windows XP and Avoid Vista

Windows Vista requires more memory, more disk space, and more system resources than XP. So by using XP, your recording software will have more of your computer to work with.

I haven’t tried Windows 7 yet (the next version of Windows which is coming out later this year, maybe). Microsoft is aiming to make this version lighter and more responsive. Some of you may be using the private beta of Windows 7. I’d be interested in hearing about your recording experiences. Did you find it better than Vista? Better than XP?

7. Install Lots of RAM

Memory is fast. Hard drives are slow. Install lots of RAM in your computer – at least 2 GB for XP, and even more if you are using Vista. Be aware that your computer won’t be able to use more than 4 GB of RAM unless you are using a 64-bit version of Windows.

8. Defragment Regularly

A fragmented file is stored partly on one part of your hard drive, and partly on another. This happens because Windows starts saving a file on the first available chunk of the hard drive, and if that chunk isn’t big enough, it stores the rest in another chunk. Audio files are big files, and the bigger the file, the more likely it is to be fragmented.

Badly fragmented files may be split into many sections around your hard drive, and opening or saving those files takes a split second longer. You don’t want to lose that split second in the middle of recording. To defragment your drive, follow the bouncing ball to Start Menu, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools then Defragment.

9. Save Your Audio Files on a Second Hard Drive

Drive C: on your computer is very busy. It’s kept busy by your music software and Windows itself. Files and programs are being read, memory is being swapped onto the hard drive (especially if you don’t have enough memory), and the C: drive becomes fragmented very quickly.

If you install a second drive on your computer for nothing but recording, you may almost totally eliminate fragmentation, and because that second drive isn’t sharing the job of reading software and saving audio files, your recording experience will be much smoother.

10. Reinstall Everything When You’re Getting Slow

If you notice your computer starting to slow down, consider wiping your computer and reinstalling everything – Windows and recording software. Your computer will suddenly be as fast as it was on the day you bought it. It will take a few hours, but is ultimately better than fiddling around hoping for things to improve.

Many Windows users schedule reinstalls once or twice a year just to be sure. But don’t forget to backup everything important first!

11. Consider a Hard Drive Caddy

If you can’t afford two computers (one for music and one for everything else), buy an inexpensive hard drive caddy that will allow you to insert and remove different hard drives. It’s honestly almost the same as having two computers (except you can’t use them both at once).

A few years ago when I was doing computer tech support over the phone, I spoke to a wise mother. She was sick of her computer always being slow. Her teenage son always blamed her teenage daughter, and vice-versa. She decided to find out, and bought a hard disk caddy and three hard drives. She installed Windows on all three, kept one for herself and gave the others to her son and daughter.

Any time one of them used the computer, they would shut it down, insert their own hard drive, and boot up. Any nasties they downloaded, or settings they changed, would only effect them. The other hard drives were not even in the computer.

You could do the same to keep your recording system totally separate to your usual system. Again, I recommend unplugging your ethernet or USB lead from the Internet before booting into your recording system.

12. Buy a Good Graphics Card

A cheap graphics card gets your normal computer processor to do all the work of updating what is on your screen, taking resources away from your recording software. A good 3D accelerated graphics card will take that headache away from your computer and do all of the graphics work itself. The more computer resources your recording software gets, the better.

13. Buy the Fastest Hard Drives You Can Afford

Hard drives may be slow, but less slow is better! Talk to your local computer store about buying a hard drive that balances speed with your budget.

Solid-state drives (using Flash RAM) are becoming bigger and more affordable, and are much faster than hard drives. Unfortunately, they can also be written to a limited number of times (typically 10,000 to 100,000 writes), so may not be ideal for recording. Does anyone have any reasonably long-term experience with them?

14. Tweak Your System to Improve Latency

Latency is the length of time you have to wait between your software playing a sound and you hearing it, or the time between you playing a sound and your software recording it. Latency is usually measured in milliseconds, and for audio, we are aiming for a latency of less than 10 ms.

Latency is a complex subject, and is affected by many issues. One technician says that on Windows XP machines he has measured latency between 8 ms and 400 ms. It may be that your computer has a latency too high for digital recording. Here are a few things that affect latency, and what you can do about it.

• It takes time to convert your signal from analogue to digital (and vice-versa). This job is handled by your sound card. Many consumer soundcards have a latency of over 40 ms, so your choice of soundcard is very important. Choosing a soundcard is too big a topic to cover now, but be aware that you definitely don’t want to skimp when buying a soundcard.
• It takes time for your system software (drivers and operating system) to handle sound, so you want your operating system to be clean as mentioned above, and keep your drivers up to date.
• It is usually possible to tweak your recording software for better latency, so I recommend visiting your recording software’s forums to find out how to best set up your software.
• It takes time to read or write to your hard drive, so use a fast one, as mentioned above. Consider 3.3 or 4.2 ms drives, rather than 8.9 ms drives.

I’d be very interested to read your responses to this issue. Have you found any of the hints above helpful? Do you have more to add? Do you love using Windows for recording? Have you given up on Windows and gone elsewhere? Please let us know in the comments.