Optimizing Your DAW
From Sonar
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Many people have had serious problems when they have Sonar's ''audio data'' stored on a SATA drive. Use IDE or external drives for this purpose. Note that having Windows or Sonar itself on a SATA drive does ''not'' seem to affect performance. | Many people have had serious problems when they have Sonar's ''audio data'' stored on a SATA drive. Use IDE or external drives for this purpose. Note that having Windows or Sonar itself on a SATA drive does ''not'' seem to affect performance. | ||
| - | ===Set up a recording-only hardware profile== | + | ===Set up a recording-only hardware profile=== |
Set up a recording-only hardware profile and disable absolutely every device and service you can. And I mean everything -- network interfaces, modems, Firewire ports, DVD drives, USB ports, parallel and serial ports, floppy drives, game ports, PS/2 ports, and various virtual devices added by programs for DVD burning, drive emulation, etc. In short, disable everything you can without disabling your system or Sonar's functioning. | Set up a recording-only hardware profile and disable absolutely every device and service you can. And I mean everything -- network interfaces, modems, Firewire ports, DVD drives, USB ports, parallel and serial ports, floppy drives, game ports, PS/2 ports, and various virtual devices added by programs for DVD burning, drive emulation, etc. In short, disable everything you can without disabling your system or Sonar's functioning. | ||
Revision as of 07:28, 14 September 2006
Information about optimizing Sonar, your OS and your computer.
You can't expect optimal performance from Sonar (or any other DAW software) with your computer and OS configured as they were right out of the box. Digital audio has its own special needs. Here are a series of things you can do to optimize
Contents |
Optimizing Sonar
Optimizing Windows
Optimizing Your Computer
Fix your PCI latencies
Your PCI latencies are almost guaranteed to be configured in the worst possible way out of the box. Typically, video card makers assign the maximum value (meaning the most access) to their devices, leaving other equipment --like your sound card-- precious little PCI bandwidth to use.
A good freeware tool for this purpose is PCI Latency Tool. You can also use Entech's Power Strip, which is a US$29.95 shareware app that only incidentally allows you to adjust PCI latencies -- its main uses are video-card related.
There are no ideal PCI latency values for each device in your system -- this is something you will have to experiment with.
Put your audio on a non-SATA drive
Many people have had serious problems when they have Sonar's audio data stored on a SATA drive. Use IDE or external drives for this purpose. Note that having Windows or Sonar itself on a SATA drive does not seem to affect performance.
Set up a recording-only hardware profile
Set up a recording-only hardware profile and disable absolutely every device and service you can. And I mean everything -- network interfaces, modems, Firewire ports, DVD drives, USB ports, parallel and serial ports, floppy drives, game ports, PS/2 ports, and various virtual devices added by programs for DVD burning, drive emulation, etc. In short, disable everything you can without disabling your system or Sonar's functioning.
To do this in Windows XP hit WIN+PAUSE to bring up the System Properties control panel, select the Hardware tab, and click on the Hardware Profiles button at the bottom. Then select your current hardware profile, hit Copy, and rename the copy to something like "Sonar" or "DAW".
Then reboot, select this profile at boot time when given the choice, go into Device Manager and start eliminating devices one by one from your new hardware profile. Do this by right clicking on the device, choosing Properties, and selecting "Do not use this device in the current hardware profile (disable)" under Device Usage at the bottom of the General tab.
