Optimising your PC for Audio

I’ve been reading this months batch of music mags (Sound on Sound, Future Music and Computer Music) in anticipation of setting up my new studio computer tomorrow – Scanning the mags for info on optimising the setting on XP.

The reason being that since I upgraded my current work computer to XP, the performance has been very sluggish indeed, so I’ve been wondering whether I should just install Windows 98 on it, like I did when I set up Morph’s machine for him.

Anyway, just spent the last hour serching the internet, using the tips that I picked up in the mags as a springboard, and I’ve found an excellent resource called www.sonicmagician.com, which has a no-bullshit page which lists all the things you need to do to get your XP machine running as fast as possible for audio.

I’ve done the all the tips, and my work machine is workng much, much, faster indeed!

The only tip I picked up that the article didn’t mention was this one on disabling an option for optimum CD Burning.

Let me know what you think, or if you know of any more – I’ll let you know how I get on, but initial results certainly seem impressive.

Update: The sonicmagician site is no more – but the tweaks were so useful that I dig them out of the Internet Archive and posted them on a page on this site, just in case it’s of use to anyone - I updated the page in the link above, or you can  click here for the new page

First steps back

Well, it’s all go here. I’ve not made a track for months (well, 2 and a half), and since then I’ve set up my new music room, kitted it out with the necessary furniture, and all that’s left to add is the computer.

Ordered the parts from Insight, and I just need to buy the case. This weekend I’ll be up and running again. Should be a nice little system – Athlon 2400 XP processor, and 512MB RAM – I hope to upgrade that soon too, but I want to see how it runs without it first.

So, in the birst of enthusiam for all things music, I thought this would be a good place to start the blog, which I’d frankly forgotten about since I set it up one evening in April.

So I venture my first steps into Blogland; You with me?