Retail purchase Vs. custom made
Version of OS you’re using (Ie… Home Premium, Business, Pro, etc…)
Other apps and services on that computer.
Retail computers for DAW’s I have always regarded as one step above unusable. Some serious tweaking needs to be done to get these ready.
OS versions are more subtle with the changes that may need to be done.
Other apps fall into two categories.
Does the app just reside on your computer until you need it?
Is it running any active services and/or processes continuously?
With those things in mind, in regards to your original question. I would say either no or not to a point where we would be able to tell (in comparison to other OS’s). It is the features that come along with the Windows OS that start to degrade performance.
I was in support for a number of years, and put together a computer tweak / troubleshooting document as well for Tom (Woodcrest Studios), but can’t find it at the moment.
When I find it I’ll attach that as well. That one was mainly for getting a full 64 bit OS/DAW up to speed, but there was still a lot of optimizing that applied to XP systems as well. TweakHound_XP_Services_SP3.doc (148 KB)
It is a lot Steve, my old XP setup had 14 services running at start up, including Task Manager, also was only using just over 80MB RAM, very snappy.
If you decide to use those tweaks maybe don’t apply all at once;)!
Unfortunately, to run things like Omnisphere and Trilian at the same time is tricky at best on a 32bit system, I’m making moves to a 64bit setup and so have abandoned XP for W7.
Hey Steve,
Do you have Microsoft Office (or at least Word?). A Word doc turns to gibberish when opened in Notepad. I just tried it in Wordpad (which is a version of Notepad with more features. Your OS would have that as well.) It opens fine in Wordpad.
The path to it is:
Start → All Programs → Accessories → Wordpad.
I believe there are two kinds of people, those that are comfortable building their own (hats off and bow/down worship pose to you guys!), and those that aren’t. My fear of permanently BSOD’ng my machine is so high (“Hmm, this tweak says just change the BIOS a little bit here, shouldn’t cause any probl …” )that for my 2nd music computer I “gladly” paid extra for a Carillon pre-built: all tweaks done, comes pre-loaded with software, UAD-1, etc. This was after learning hard lessons on my first music computer where I did all the tweaks (remember IRQ conflicts?), and sometimes would get so deep I couldn’t go backwards to the last tweak where things worked properly. I think I lost years off my life doing that stuff …
I know it’s not for everyone, and that self-built music computers by competent people are the best, but for those with sub-par computer skills who just want to get to making music (and learning DAW software, that’s not a piece of cake either), a vendor-built computer is not a bad option.
Is it just me or does this stuff about Windows hampering Cubase just not ring true any more??
I Use windows 7. yeah granted i havent installed or used any of the Windows live stuff etc. But other than that i actually welcome each update as a step toward a more stable system. Im aware that home additions (Which i use) run less processes than professional and therefore dedicate more to the likes of software such as Cubase, but i have never, on Windows 7, heard of this actually being a significant problem.
I have no problems whatever with Cubase or windows. I wonder if its purely an issue of older platforms such as XP. Even Vista in the end was stable and problem free.
Im no complete expert and may be wrong, but Windows 7 for me is ideal, problem free and very stable.
Nothing wrong with Windows except for the expectations of people who think hosted software should perform as well as dedicated hardware. It never will. See PTHD’s permanently low latency no matter what the load.
It’s all kinda nuts to me. Modern PC’s & Macs can do amazing things with music software, even edit major motion pictures, but some people are still never satisfied and always want more.
I just got a new machine (stock HP) with W7 64-bit about a month ago, and I conclude you really don’t need to do much if any tweaking with W7. I did all the tweaks in XP, but W7 has moved a long way from there. You just have to set the power management to use the high performance profile. I see lots of people looking for tweaks for W7, but I think a lot of them are dubious, and even if you don’t notice a problem right away, you can cause yourself a problem. You can turn off programs that start up that you don’t need (which I did), but for the most part I think they usually just take a little memory and don’t really use any CPU when you’re not using them directly. I even used the stock firewire that HP provided (Via), and it’s working great. I run an antivirus, I stay connected to the internet, all that stuff, without experiencing problems. Not to say that I never will have problems, but I really do get the impression that in the 10 years or so since XP came out, they did a lot to prevent issues.
I think it’s down to sheer computing power of today’s machines.
10 years ago it was sensible to tweak your machine/OS to squeeze the best out of Cubase, but these days there’s really no need apart from a few basics as mentioned.
First thing I did when I received my HP laptop was to format the harddrive and reinstall W7, just to get rid of the huge pile of HP junk they put on it. It booted at least twice as fast after that, all I needed to do was find a few hardware drivers from the supplied discs. I don’t understand why manufacturers cripple the computers they sell
My projects are modest - not many tracks. From the moment I got on to dual core 2GHz with Win XP, OS ceased to be a hamperer. About the only tweak I have been doing since then is to use Windows Classic theme with all bling apart from ‘show contents while dragging’ turned off, and even then, these days, I think it is just an aethetic choice which does not affect functionality.
I agree with Paul: nowadays it’s not as much of a requirement to do so given the sheer processing power of CPUs and the associated goodies like the FSB speed (+ memory speed); RPMs for the hard drive; etc.
The last time I ever experienced issues with Cubase of this sort was when running VST on an underpowered computer running Windows 2000. This was nearly 10 years ago.
Now I’m running on a home-built PC running Windows 7 x64 with 8G of RAM. It is not dedicated to Cubase nor is it cut off from the Internet. It works like a charm.
@Steve, were you ever able to get that file open (and readable)?
I run a Win 7 64 Bit computer, home built as well. The DAW is also 64 Bit. I couldn’t tell you for sure whether enabling Steinberg Audio Power stabilized my system, but I did have problems at first. It took a lot of tweaking to get it stable. I ended up creating a custom power setting, and after finding Steinbergs audio power, I compared them and found them similar. But I have turned off a lot of other services as well, especially stuff that has to do with networking and virtual machines, etc…
I still hook up to the internet for occasional updates, and I have a antivirus on there (Avast doesn’t allow you to disable it, but I do turn off the service when I’m not online.) I’m happy with the setup, and can load it up significantly without having to increase the buffer. (I usually move to 1024 samples in the mixing process when I have over 100 plugins running). I just feel more comfortable doing that, even though the system could still take it without increasing the buffer.
Re: How Much Does Windows OS REALLY hamper Cubase?
I saw Sparky down at the pub last night, so I asked him to answer that question. He gives me that you’ve come to the right place rodent grin of his and replies:
.
)that for my 2nd music computer I “gladly” paid extra for a Carillon pre-built: all tweaks done, comes pre-loaded with software, UAD-1, etc. This was after learning hard lessons on my first music computer where I did all the tweaks (remember IRQ conflicts?), and sometimes would get so deep I couldn’t go backwards to the last tweak where things worked properly. I think I lost years off my life doing that stuff …
