Windows XP is just like, soooo 2001, but regardless of Microsoft's efforts to move us to Vista, Windows XP remains the most popular choice for musicians. Probably not for too much longer as XP keeps getting discontinued (we really mean it this time) and Windows 7 is just around the corner meaning that you could soon upgrade without ever getting your hands dirty in Vista. So while Windows XP continues to exist it's fitting to pull together the best tips on getting it optimised for running audio.

Why does XP need to be optimised for audio?

Music making on a computer only came into its own when things were able to happen in “real-time”. You plug your microphone in and you want to be able to monitor the signal as you sing – obvious – but computers like to work with things called “buffers” which hold a bunch of data before processing it and sending it back out. The reality of this buffering is that it might take half a second for your voice to come back out of the computer – we call this “latency”. Fortunately music software and hardware manufacturers were able to get around this by creating much faster driver protocols and have got the buffer size down to next to nothing. The problem is that the computer needs to pay these drivers its full attention or it won't be able to keep up with the speed of what's going on. The result is that you get audio glitching or drop-outs – not good! So, to get realtime audio in and out of the computer, without glitching you need to strip out all the fluff that's unnecessarily taking up the computers resources. It's really easy and your system will run a whole lot better for it.

The first three tweaks are probably the most effective on general performance and are to do with stuff running in the background.

Tweak 1 – Clear the notification area

You'd be amazed at what people have running on their systems and they often have no idea what they are or what they do. Have a look down at the clock in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Any icons there? Each of those is taking up resources (processing power, “headspace”). Some are vital and useful like your soundcards control panel but most are not needed and I suspect some are a mystery to you. This is called the “Notification Area” and each icon tells you that something is running. The majority of cases there's no need for these things to run constantly – why do you need to be updated on your printers ink levels, or whether bluetooth is on or off when making music? These things can be found out manually when you need to know.

So, go through each icon and find out what it is. Right-clicking usually brings up some options and you can often find a way of preventing it loading when Windows starts, or simply exiting them.

Tweak 2 – Clear the Startup Folder

Under “Start – All Programs” you'll find a folder called “Startup”. This can contain shortcuts to programs that want to run when Windows starts up. There's never any reason for any program to do this. Office is a common culprit and all it does is allow you to load up a document a split second faster because it's already running. But while it's running it's taking up a load of the CPU's thinking time. Delete any shortcuts you find there (right-click, delete).

Tweak 3 – Clear the System Configuration Startup

This is a more hidden place for annoying startup hogs and are often behind the entries in the Startup folder and Notification Area. Click on “Start – Run” (or hold the windows key and press “R”) and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) to bring up the System Configuration Utility. Click on the Startup tab and you'll be able to see what naughty things are starting up. Be a bit careful as there maybe things here that you need to be running, such as the soundcards control panel, maybe your anti-virus, ADSL modem, but most things can be unticked – and they can always be re-enabled. Click OK and restart the computer. On boot up you'll get a message saying that you have messed with the settings – tick the box that says “don't tell me again” and click OK. Hopefully you'll notice how much cleaner and quicker your computer appears to be.

Some people will tell you to disable various services but I feel that's very dependant on individual systems and how you use your computer and to be honest they don't make a load of difference.

The next bunch of tweaks are to do with system settings from the Windows Control Panel, so click on Start - Control Panel and set it to Classic View.

Tweak 4 – Date and Time

Go to Internet Time and un-tick “Automatically Synchronise”

Tweak 5 – Display

The bubble gum XP interface is mostly fine but you will get a bit more performance if you reduce it down to the classic Windows look. First click on “Screen Saver” select “None” and click “Apply” - screen savers can take up an enormous amount of computer time. Next click on “Appearance” and  under “Windows and Buttons” choose “Windows Classic Style” and click “Apply”. Then click on “Effects” and deselect the top box for transition effects (no fading thanks) – click “OK”. Click “OK” on the display properties window to close.

Tweak 6 – Power Options

This has become increasingly important because of the clever speed stepping that both AMD and Intel CPU's do these days. CPU's are designed to slow themselves down to save power – particularly with laptops. However, this can cause erratic behaviour in audio software where the demands on the CPU are high and instant. The CPU should always be running at its highest speed. Sometimes this must be set in the BIOS which we'll look into at the end, but it's vital to set the power options to “Always On”. Then set the other options to “Never”. This will be harsh on a laptop battery but when making music you are likely to be plugged in anyway and you can always change it back for general use.

Tweak 7 – Security Center

Click on “Change the way security center informs me” and choose “Don't tell me”.

Tweak 8 – Sounds and Audio Devices

Under “Sounds” select “No Sounds” and then click “No” when it asks you to save your current setup (unless you really want to). This is to prevent system sounds getting in the way of recordings or distracting the soundcard from what it's supposed to be doing.

Tweak 9 – System

There's a couple of important tweaks here:
Hardware – Driver signed and windows update can both be turned off. This helps with the installation of audio hardware rather than will performance.
Advanced – Performance – Visual Effects select “Adjust for better performance”. I like to tick the “Use common tasks in folders” box and it shows useful stuff on the left of any folder you have open.
Advanced – Performance – Advanced – Processor Scheduling adjust for “Background Services”. This is supposed to give priority to the ASIO drivers of audio interfaces and soundcards but no one really knows if it does any more. It used to be an issue many years ago and made a difference.
Advanced – Performance – Advanced – Virtual Memory, much has been said about this and in the bad old days where you had bugger all memory it was a vital tweak – these days I would let the system manage it's own page file. There are complicated things you can do with placing the page file in its own partition on the fastest edge of a hard drive but i'm unconvinced it's worth the effort.
Advanced – Startup & Recovery – click on the edit button and replace the text “optin” with “alwaysoff” and save. This is to do with the Data Execution Prevention which is a badly written anti-virus thing that often sees plug-ins as virus'. Your regular anti-virus software will do a much better job.

Make sure you click “OK” to close these windows.

Tweak 10 – Registry

Finally let's sneak into the registry for two tweaks that may or may not help.
Start – Run and type “regedit”. The registry is a dangerous place to mess around in so the first thing to do is click on the “Computer” and click “File – Export” to create a backup.
Press F3 (Find) and type “menushowdelay” without the quotes and no spaces. Windows will find the entry and it will normally have a value of 400. Double click to edit and change it to 50, click “OK”. People often say set it to zero but this tweak simply dictates how long it takes for a menu to appear once you've put your mouse on it. If you put it at zero then you can't move your mouse over anything briefly without it popping up all the time. 50 is just enough to let you glide over something but feels really quick when you rest your mouse on it.

Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SYSTEM – CurrentControlSet – Control – PriorityControl and you are now down a long tree. With PriorityControl selected on the left right-click in the space on the right and select “New – DWORD Value”. Call it “IRQ8Priority” (no quotes or spaces) and give it a value of 1. This is supposed to prioritise a certain key part of the system that helps with audio performance – no one can remember what or if it works but it's become a standard tweak.

Those are your top ten standard XP tweaks for optimising audio performance and they'll do the job nicely.

DPC Latency

There's one other cause of audio glitching and other drop-out problems and that's to do with badly written drivers and DPC latency. A DPC or Deferred Procedure Call  is when something interrupts the processor to demand an important task is done and everything else is knocked to a lower priority. All sorts of system devices need to do this but badly written ones hang on to that interruption far longer than they should. The result could be that it breaks the realtime streaming of your audio and so you get glitches. There's a wonderful tool that can analyse your system and see if this is happening. It's one of the most useful troubleshooting tools ever and you can get it from here along with a bigger explanation:
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Download it and run it and it will tell you exactly how well your system is behaving. If you get any spikes then open up the Device Manager and disable devices until the spikes go away. Be careful not to disable something that your system needs to function, like the hard drives, but other devices are fair game.
I would disable things in this order:

1. Wireless network
2. Regular network
3. Modem
4. Bluetooth or IR
5. Optical Drive
6. Microsoft battery management (if a laptop)
7. Onboard audio drivers
   

If it has no effect then you can re-enable. Also disconnect any external devices such as drives, printers, cameras etc.

What you're aiming for is a lovely flat readout on the latency checker for at least a few minutes. It can be a bit bumpy and still work well, it's only when it hits the red that there's a real problem.

BIOS

Some things can only be disabled in the systems BIOS. This is the “Basic In/Out System” of the motherboard that is the heart of your computer. You can usually access it on boot up by pressing the “Del” or “F2” key but have a look at your screen to if there's a mention of BIOS or “Setup”. It usually has a basic old fashioned blue interface where you use the arrow keys to move around. If you're not familiar with what you see then try not to change anything. If you are looking to disable an on-board device such as a modem, network socket or audio then you'll usually find it under “Integrated Peripherals”.

You may also find an entry for Intel “Speed-stepping” or AMD “Cool & Quiet” which you should disable.
Don't forget to save before you exit.

Summary

Tweaking XP was vitally important in the early days but as time's moved on the speed and power of the computer has got around many of the problems, and drivers are generally much better than they once were. However, with the Internet we are prone to filling up our machines with all sorts of nonsense that sits around in the background getting in the way – if you can deal with that then you shouldn't have too many problems.

If you need further advice then please drop is a line.