Optimising Windows 95 or 98 for audio production.

Windows out of the box is not very audio friendly! The following suggestions are meant as a guide toward optimising Windows for audio in the endeavour to achieve the maximum amount of multitracks without pops and crackles. They are not intended as the be all of Windows audio and we suggest you experiment with various settings and compare the difference in performance for yourself.

Use two hard drives (or more) if possible. Choose a large UDMA33 or UDMA66 IDE drive for your audio files. FAT32 is prefered over FAT16 To format an empty drive use the following command from a DOS prompt:  format e:/z:64 (where e is the drive you will save your audio files too.) Warning: this will wipe all data on this drive. This will format the drive with 32k clusters instead of the 4k clusters Windows 98 defaults to.

Start optimising the system by specifying your own virtual memory settings.

Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Virtual Memory
First disable virtual memory and any startup programs, shutdown and restart the system.
Now defrag the drive you wish to put your new swapfile on. This should be a drive other than the one you will store your audio files on. Then set virtual memory min and max both to 64 on this non-audio drive. (Usually the same drive you have Windows installed on) On some slower machines you might find an increase in performance if you increase this number to 128. One rule of thumb for machines with low ram is a setting of between 2 and 2 1/2 times the amount of RAM in the machine to a max of about 150.  (The number can be increased if you need more swapfile space for other programs.)
For the greatest performance gain you really should place the Windows swapfile on a fast drive other than the one you record your audio files on.

The creation of a fixed swapfile will prevent Windows from resizing the swap file at the wrong time, like when you are recording or playing back audio!

We often read suggestions that you should set your machine's typical role to "network server"
but we have found the "Desktop" setting just as adequate. Try comparing performance both ways. For some machines the "network server" can be a considerable performance enhancer but your data is less safe if your computer crashes. Use only if your machine is stable.
Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - File System

You can try minimising Read Ahead Optimization, but this may compromise the performance of the machine with other software. We have found with the more current machines that this setting is best left as is.  Again; compare performance for yourself.

Place a check  beside "Disable write behind caching" and compare the difference.
Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - File System - Troubleshooting

Add a buffer to the DMA channels for DMA IDE hard drives.  Experiment with settings between 32K and 64K
Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Device Manager - System devices - Direct Memory access controller - Properties - Settings - reserve DMA buffer
 

Ensure you are using Busmastering drivers to get the most performance from your hard drives.
If you are using Windows98 you don't need to worry about this.

Ensure that you have a tick next to the DMA option for each IDE hard drive.
Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Device Manager - Disk Drives - Properties - Settings

Disable low power mode to hard drives or any other power conservation that your hardware supports. This applies more specifically to laptops. MIDI interfaces will not work etc with power saving to a parallel port etc.
Start - Settings - Control Panel - Power

Make sure that Auto Insert Notification for your CD-ROM drives are disabled. (Uncheck the "Auto Insert Notification" box.) This means that CD-Roms and Audio CDs will not start automatically when you insert them. It also means Windows won't check for a CD while you are recording audio and add a pop or click!
Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Device Manager - CD ROM  +

A PCI video card may also cause glitches. See Greg Hanson's post on this. If you experience interruption in audio playback while the screen redraws, when you move the mouse, drag program windows around, or even while VU meters are moving, turn "Hardware acceleration" down a couple of notches.
Control Panel - System - Performance - Graphics

You might want to run all audio sessions at 256 colours. If pops and clicks persist or audio channels are flipped over we suggest you update your video cards driver or replace the card. AGP video cards recommended.
Decent no frills PCI Video card is the Cirrus Logic 5446 64bit card.
More current cards with good reports: Diamond Stealth 3D 200
Matrox AGP cards now available to run multiple monitor setups.

If you have Office 97 turn off the automatic indexing Find Fast utility (and anything else from office in your autostart folder) To disable Find Fast run Find Fast from the Control Panel.  Select each of the
indexes and delete them.  Then remove Find Fast from the Startup folder. While you are there also remove the Microsoft Office Fast Start. Remove all programs from the Windows StartUp folder.
Start - Settings - Taskbar - Start Menu Programs - Remove - Startup +

Open WIN.INI with Notepad and if there is anything after the run= or load= lines, use a
semi-colon to rem the line out. The file is usually here: C:\Windows\win.ini

Open the system.ini file. The file is usually at C:\Windows\system.ini
Find or create a [vcache] area. Enter in after it: maxfilecache=8192 and minfilecache=8192 with 64Meg (Set it to about 10-25% of your available RAM ) A system with 32 MEG go with 4096 (Don't set it too low else Windows will ignore it) A system with 128 meg RAM try a maximum of 16384

The entry should look like this:
[vcache]
maxfilecache=8192
minfilecache=8192
 

If you have Version 4 of Internet Explorer or later ensure that Active Desktop is disabled.
Even better, uninstall Internet Explorer and then re-install it without the Active Desktop component.
Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display - Web

Turn off any screen savers check for any programs, virus programs etc that might be running in the background.
Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display - Screensaver

Windows 95 version: WIN95 24/7 is preferable to earlier versions. Otherwise a fresh install on a clean system of Windows 98 with the latest service kit is recommended. NT will enhance performance by about  5 - 20% but is not really practical if you plan to run MIDI programs. There are a couple of NT capable MIDI interfaces (Winman 4X4 internal) and some software that works but, generally speaking, MIDI timing and compatibly is lacking. Windows 2000 may be a better option when it is a mature product but is still notnrecommended for MIDI setups.

Don't use any kind of disk compression.

Installing games on your computer can give your system incompatible versions of DirectX files.
If things go haywire overnight this might be the reason.

Don't run any applications that you don't need to. It might also be an idea to restart windows before doing any serious work, especially if you have been running any other non-related applications. You can do a quick restart of Windows by holding down the Shift key while pressing OK to restart Windows.
Hold down the Shift key until the computer prompts: restarting Windows. You might also want to run all audio sessions at 256 colors.

Run Scandisk and defrag once a week or so if you use your PC heavily (Do a Defrag even if Windows tells you that you don't need to. It is also a good idea to run scan disk before doing a defrag.)
Start - Programs - Accessories - System tools

Windows 98: Disable Task Manager.

Widows 98 Disable:
"Show Icons using all possible colors.
"Show window contents while dragging"
"Smooth Edges of screen fonts"
Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display - Effects

Good luck; enjoy.

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