Definitive Windows 7 Tweaks for Cubase and Wavelab?

WaveLab
#1

My boot drive is dying and though I’ve had no trouble at all with Vista 32bit (since SP2), it’s time to move up to Win 7 64 bit.

I remember the site Music XP that had the best ways to optimize XP for pro audio use.

Is there a definitive page out there of the like for Win 7?

Thanks!

#2

Win 7 is a lot more stable for use as a DAW without turning off services.

The main one is stiil setting the performance to favour background services and perhaps turn off Aero.

Even sidebar is nowhere near the resource hog it was on Vista.

While Win 7 may not disable services that are not required, they use very little CPU, if any.

Also, Win 7 optimises for SSDs, so nothing to do there either, though I disabled Defragementation and Prefetch as I don’t have any HDDs.

#3

Is it pretty much safe to buy any commercial off the shelf Windows 7 desktop and use Cubase 6.5 or greater on it? In the old days people were talking about interrupts, and processes that automatically kicked in and messed up audio recordings, latencies, etc.

Thanks -

PS Some references:

http://www.steinberg.net/en/support/steinberg_support_daw.html

http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/847/Windows+7+Tuning+Tips+for+Audio+Processing

http://www.xpfree.org/

#4

the main thing is to stop everything from sleeping and un-park your cores then you should have a monster :wink:

#5

Check the firewire chipset if you’ve got a FW audio interface. Other than that, I would suggest you start by formatting the harddrive when you get your PC to get rid of all the bloatware.
It should run fine then.

#6

Thanks, Stroph!

Sounds scary, never having done that! I guess I would re-install the OS and other programs I have disks for/want afterwards?

Finally - in the XP days, there were definitely certain motherboards to avoid. Was that because of the chipsets they came with? Have things changes so much that I shouldn’t even think about what kind of motherboard is in there, or is there still some way that can mess it up?

Thanks -

#7

Yes, if you have a disc with your OS on it, it’s actually very easy. Just pop that in the disc tray, boot your PC and it will start the installer for the OS which has a built in formatting tool.
I find that’s the quickest way to get a clean and fast system. You could of course also go through all the preinstalled stuff and get rid of it the normal way, but I personally prefer to start from a ‘vanilla’ system.

As for Firewire chipsets, TI (Texas Instruments) is always safe, I believe VIA is fine as well these days. That’s just hearsay though, I have no experience with anything other than TI.

#8

No it’s not , no manufactures that I know of endorse VIA as a viable firewire chipset so until then VIA is just the same as it’s always been , click and pop fest chipset

#9

Focusrite reccommends either Texas Instruments or VIA.

http://d3se566zfvnmhf.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/answerbase/Focusrite_IEEE_1394_Compatibility_article_0.pdf

I wouldn’t know how the VIA chipsets compare to TI with my Pro 40. I’ve been using the onboard TI firewire on my Gigabyte motherboard with absolutely no problems.

#10

well all I can say on that is if anyone installs a VIA chipset …don’t come crying to the forums that my bla bla bla blaaaaaaa is bleeping popping and cracking . Audio interface company can’t take such a cheap chipset seriously so why forcusrite would want to claim such a thing is beyond me , mind you if you look at the latency comparison charts ,forusrite are near the bottom for performance … I wonder why :question:
chart.jpg

#11

seems to be the opposite recommandation since W7 and W8

source:
https://www.steinberg.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=44881

#12

And there are hardware which works fine with VIA, but not with TI:

No matter how much TI is praised as The Holy Grail of FW chipsets in every audio forum, The Whole Truth is not that simple.

#13

Since it only 2 cents…here’s mine. In the 8 years of running the MOTU 896hd, MOTU has always suggested I use the TI FW interface. When I did not have one immediately available , i tried using the included VIA from my Asus motherboard. The MOTU reacted badly and cost me a few months of confusion looking for other problems before asking about the FW connection. Once I was told to switch, I did…it worked and has performed flawlessly for the last 7 years…never had an issue since and there are a few tracks that really drive this 896 hard as an input and output device