Made some timestamps so people can go to a given section and check things along w/the PDF- A off Start menu on L side of taskbar B off search box on taskbar All A 1:05 Power options 3:28 System sounds 4:12 Privacy settings 9:09 System settings 11:30 offline maps B 12:06 Services 14:30 Animations (download) 15:36 CCleaner A 19:15 Hard Disk Optimization
Mike-Didn't realize you were over here man!!Actually made a mistake and had to repost this,then saw you'd pinned the first one w/the mistake-could you change this to the corrected one? BTW just posted over on the Creative Sauce FB group the other day asking about using GM files in Native Instruments..wonder if you saw this?
This is the most comprehensive tutorial on the subject I have ever seen. Most of the others on this topic only hit a fraction of the tweaks you mention. I thought I had done all the tweaks to maximize my PC for music production. I'm glad I watched your video and found that there was much more I could do. As you mention in your video, many of the more minor tweaks by themselves don't amount to much, but collectively can make a big difference. Thanks, and keep those videos coming!
From my 25yr. of Windows OS and around 15yr. DAWs experience I can say there are only very few real OS "tweaks" worth it since Windows 7. The more important part is good practices non specifically related to OS itself. Windows tweaks 1. High performance power profile. 2. Disable everything about windows defender. 3. Disabling visual FX in advanced settings can help with "responsiveness" of graphical elements but it's mainly a matter of perception, not performance efficiency. 4. You may want to install Malwarebytes Windows Firewall. It's a frontend for Windows Firewall. It gives you much better control over app's and processes connection to internet. Optional - turn off the cpu power saving options in bios. It might squeeze a little more responsiveness from your stone age cpu, - using core parking disabling apps. Good practices 1. Do NOT install any realtime antivirus/antimalware. Just disabling it while making music won't cut it. 2. Keep the number of background running apps at minimum. You don't need 15 apps checking e-mails, chats, weather, forums, the world's chinchilla reproduction rate, whatever,...while making music. Performance wise, it is best to shut down their processes in the task manager. While shutting down the Windows "diagnostics" is good because of privacy issues, it is nowhere near harmful to OS performance as shitload of apps you installed which runs in the background. 3. Keep it simple as possible. I've spent countless hours on "optimizing" Windows since WinXP. Just for fun. The most important thing I've learned is to keep it simple and effective. The thing is, the more complicated your tweaking procedure, the less you're willing to do it again when the best choice is to reinstall Windows and start from scratch. You WILL come to that point sooner or later and no system partition backup strategy will save you from that occasion. After 5, 10 or 20 reinstalls (15 years span) from scratch, your focus is shifted to efficiency. You don't want to practice the same "tweaks" allover again when you haven't seen any tangible improvement. This is the best guideline you can get on Windows optimization topic. Learn it from my experience or take the long road.
Optimizing WinXP for audio back in the day was fun. You could actually see a real improvement. If you coupled both a user profile with a hardware profile you could log in using your Audio account and have a tweaked Audio pc then when you need to do non-audio computing like programming or business tasks, reboot into your standard hardware profile and second user profile and have all those extra services and non-audio hardware working.
@@mjsthx1138 It depends on the context. WinXP was good for tweaking because there was a lot of space for improvement. Win10 is the most optimized Windows version to date, giving very few tweaking options. In fact, the only "tweak" that could make a tangible difference in some scenarios is changing balanced power plan to performance.
@@eviloutionise The best performing system is no-AV system. If you really need AV then the Win Defender is the least damaging. The "antivirus" software is actually worse than the virus. You may get a virus, but you can easily restore everything from the backup. Or you can install AV and suffer inevitable performance problems because of their realtime scanning and monitoring and false positives. Antivirus is good for your grandma but useless to anyone with internet experience. I gave up on AV 5yr ago, torrenting as usual and never got virus or anyting like that. My PC rig is most responsive you can get.
This video is fantastic. I had audio latency issues while using Ableton and thought I would need to update my bios. I've been running Latencymon for 2mins and getting in the red every time. Updated some drivers and it made next to no difference. However, after following along with this video Latencymon has everything in the green. My PC is having no latency issues whatsoever now. Super in depth and helpful. I rarely comment on vids but this helped me so much I felt I had to. Cheers mate!
Wow thanks dude! I watched your video and did quite a few of the steps you recommended and it resulted in much better performance for my CPU. Thanks for posting, peace
Great advice Mike. My Windows 10 Pro PC machine,is a reconditoned unit,so not overly powerful,but good enough for my needs. so I will go over these settings see if I can make my DAW run smoother,too
Thanks Mike, the first tip alone helped resolve an annoying crackling sound I had while using Kontakt and other VSTi's on my high end machine. From another Mike.
Great Post. This is something I needed. I just bought a new power pc due to limitations with Mac M1 and Big Sur with my Daw and Plugins. Now I expect that my W10 work like a charm. By the way, I have switch off completelly Windows Update Service. I do not consider this important.
Thanks Mike. I have two pcs. One of them I mainly use for Music. I have just finished tweaking windows 10 as per your amazing instructions. It was easy for me as I kept listening/posing the video on one pc to update the music pc. I am not using the CCleaner. I have recently bought SonarX3 Producer and found all your Cakewalk videos useful. Thanks a lot for such amazing guidance for people like me.
Great technical information - explained clearly and finally after many years of using computers, you've taken the time to demonstrate important information that otherwise would cost a lot of money to have a technician do. Nothing against technicians, however, they can better serve with more complicated aspects of CPU ocupation
I had a pop and crackling sound coming from my uphoria 404HD. I thought it was the interface or USB cable but it was just the configuration of the usb and power that was mentioned in the video. Also my laptop runs a lot better. Thanks a lot!!!
Thank you for making these videos. I swear everyone has a mac. It's nice to see windows tutorials especially for music productions. years of headaches gone now. ✌
Mike thanks for excellent tips. Having switch the Studio from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Turning off the Apps running in the background was very helpful.
Thanks, Mike. I'm gonna try these things tonight and through out the next couple days. I've got windows 10. The tech at the computer shop talked me into this jallopy!!! Live and learn, I guess. Ha ha ha 🤔🤪☹️! Have a great week.
That usb power step is very useful. I had to switch from my Roland audio interface to a Focusrite one, and then I was getting BSOD driver errors but didn't realise it was due to the Focusrite ... Formatted my PC, and it eventually started happening again! Luckily it is a know problem and I found this fix but I nearly threw the Focusrite out the window
Do you know if this process still applies for Windows 11? I think we only have until October to get the free upgrade from 10 to 11 and I'm not sure if the set up would be the same or not. If you've already upgraded to 11 it would be great to have a video like this one for setting it up. Thanks for all the great content and love the channel 🙂
Tip: In CCleaner > Registry > run the scan for issues a few times. It often finds some more (new) issues after fixing the first batch, I always repeat it until it finds no more.
Don't do registry cleaning. It has nothing to do with performance. All what CCleaner does is removing the registry leftovers from uninstalled programs and some references to deleted files locations on the disk drive. They are dead anyways. Just sitting there doing nothing.but using very tiny portion of drive space. While a registry cleaner may be benign, there is always a chance of a mistake. You don't want mistakes unpredictably altering any registry settings. Just forget about the registry cleaners. Not worth it.
Excellent Windows 10 optimization tutorial Mike. Some other optimizations that have helped me include: Cakewalk's Plug-in Load Balancing, disabling ACPI devices, using Latency Monitor, learning about task/processor affinity to keep Cakewalk out of "the slow lane" and yes, I'm a long time CCleaner user and it has never fowled up my computer. QUESTION: Does Windows 10 have a way to save system settings so that all those nice DAW optimizations can be set back again when I want to use my computer in non-DAW mode?
Big thanks for all your post, really informative and always right to the point . But why am I expecting to see Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich to show up by your side? ;) Great Job! Thanks!
Another thing I remembered just now. It's not about tweaking the system per se, but about turning the PC off. There's this thing in most modern operating systems (including Windows 10), when if you want to turn off your computer, and you hit the "shut down" option, it doesn't actually make the PC stop working, rather it puts in sort of "deep sleep/hibernation mode", and this is supposed to make the PC turn on faster, but it does it by never really shutting down the computer properly, and in the long term, it might make your machine slower, so what you can do to avoid this (at least on Windows systems) is using the "restart" option instead of "shut down", and after the computer restarts and the window where you enter your password shows up, then you actually use "shut down" option, and you should even see the warning about how the system won't save your work, etc, nothing to worry about. Only then your PC actually shuts down completely. Having IT friends is useful.
whether your pc "shuts down" or goes into "sleep" or "hibernation" are actually 3 different options and 3 different states based on your power settings, if we are talking a laptop which most people have, then there can be different things that happen when the lid is closed, or when the power button is pressed, or when the "sleep" button is pressed (if it has one), however what you are saying isnt' actually true....the misunderstanding probably came from someone who just closes the lid on their laptop thinking that will shut it down when it doesn't actually do that normally. The way to properly shut the comptuer down completely is to go to the windows logo and choose "shutdown", you dont' have to restart and then shutdown.
@@tamellbailey4857 Hold down the Windows button and hit the 'R' key (for "Run"), then enter "shutdown /s /t 002" without the quotes (and note the spaces). That will produce a guaranteed complete shutdown. Change "/s" to "/r" to reboot instead.
I've found that Piano learning apps like Piano Marvel can interfere with the USB MIDI on Cakewalk in a Win 10 PC. And vice versa, said a support person at Piano Marvel. I love that app by the way; I'm 72 now, and surely by the time I'm 90 I'll be playing piano as good as you! 😂😂😂
I really appreciate this video. I heard a bunch of cracks and pops before I tried this. After this step by step process, I noticed a huge change. I don’t hear any more pops or cracks. I also downloaded the most recent driver for my audio interface. I believe the combination really made a difference. Thanks again
I REALLY wish some of these were app-dependant. In a home studio, most folks will be using their only PC for everything - not just music. The wall socket power draw when setting things on 'maximum' can be quite significant. I don't know if this can be done, but is is possible to have these power settings changed up or down automatically when Windows detected specific user-assigned programs running? i.e... - If Cakewalk/audio software is running, set power options to maximum - If not, set to balanced/lower, as determined by user?
Thanks for this, I already did many of them - to keep Microsoft 'hands' off at the same time - some other I did not know. 😎... in cloudy UK, there is some Sun coming out of the darkness!! 😂😂
The CCleaner, uninstall page. Maybe it is better to uninstall programs from "programs and features" in the "control panel". Because the ccleaner shows dubbel of som programs, who the control panel program uninstall page, dos not.
(a) First: One the problem was the bad-Performance and Settings of Windows 10 for Audio-Production. Let's be honest, everybody wants to Record, Mixing & Master music using a DAW and at the same time enjoy Social Networks & Mutimedia (Facebook, TH-cam, Instagram, Web Cam.. etc...) You can choose both, but you have to turn off some of caracteristics of Windows to be able performance much better the DAW's integration.. and that's what I did... I want to thank to this video for the help: (b) Second: I was having a lot of problems with Audio & Pugins through Cakewalk by BandLab (Pops, Noise, and Crackling during Recording, Playback & Mixing) despite of have a powerful PC.. and the solution was too: I had to delete these two files (AUD & AUD.INI) C:\Users\"pc-name"\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core) and That's it... cakewalk regenerate automatically these files once reopen the Program. Thanks! now I'M HAPPY.. no NOISE, no Pops, no Cracking.. all Good... (y) I also got back 7GB of RAM memory...
Hallo Mike , as i said in previous mails I´m just beginning with my first recording after setting everything up following your superb invaluable tutorial´s , my first song ``yoodoo that voodoo ´´ isnt completey written so playing guitare and using my toontrack drums in conjuction with BL and adding drum fill-ins as I write makes the whole process so much easyer saving me loads of time ,once again thanks for the super tutorials ....analogue Paul B
not sure if this thread is still active but i'm at the crystal disk part of this demonstration and one thing this video seems to lack is how to use crystal disk as far as gaging the effectiveness of having both those boxes clicked. trial and error i try to avoid if possible . but if thats the only way... i still might skip it thanks
I have a question... When I uncheck compress this drive to save disc space, it's asking me to do it for C drive only or with C drive with subfolders and files! Which one should I choose??? I'm using Windows 11 by the way...
The first step to this process is running LatencyMon. If LatencyMon Determines your system is capable of handling real-time audio without dropouts proceed to recording music. If you are running into issues while recording, then look at tweaks to your system. If you are only mixing and not recording the tweaks are going to be less beneficial to you. The Audio settings in the daw and/or your interface software will probably provide the biggest performance boost if you are actually experiencing issues during mixing.
Hi Mike. I just got an HP Envy brand new. In my old tower (windows 10), I was able to record what I was hearing in my headphones with audacity, or any of the daw I use. With this new computer it won't do that. I'm sure there is a setting I'm missing but before with Cakewalk and Bandlab now I could record my sequences and save them to MP3 or Wave. What do I need to do to get my new computer to hear what I'm playing? It's the same type of Sound as the other one Realtek sound. Thanks!!!
@@sebastianszyperski1886 Hi Sebastian, I tried it with ASIO4ALL and it didn't work neither. I'm contacting the "Finale" software people and see if they can figure it out. The funny thing is that I run other programs I have (DAW's), and there's no problems. I can show the DAW to my students and they can hear what I play and hear me speaking without any problem.
@@mannycepeda1 Well I'm not sure about the specifics of your situation, I couldn't get a midi controller or the realtek stuff working at all. Also what do you mean by hearing what you are playing? Midi, a microphone into an audio interface?
@@sebastianszyperski1886 Hopefully "Finale" the software that is causing the problem will give me some solutions. I use Mixcraft 9 (DAW), and I can record (in a different track), what I'm playing. That's what I mean I can record myself. Makes sense? Anyway, thank you for your comments and help, I appreciate it!!
Is it true that a DAW uses a series core and not a parallel core processing? That means you are limited to the speed of the processor core and not the number of cores.
Hi Nathan, good question. It depends on the DAW. The 2 main DAWs I use for example, Cakewalk and Studio make use of multiple cores by spreading the load of plugins across DAWs. This can (apparently) give up to 70% better performance. However, it's ultimately better to focus on higher speed than cores for audio production.
Is there any way to automate the process of disabling, and later re-enabling all the settings you recommend turning off? I'm in the unfortunate (and likely common) situation of needing my PC for music recording, graphic/photo editing, playing guitar instruction courses, video editing, general web surfing, my music library, games, finances, etc. So while I can turn things off when recording, it would take a good 15 minutes once I knew exactly what to do, and another 15 minutes of mouse-clicking on the other end, when I'm done recording. And very likely 5 minutes to reboot each time I make changes. All in all it would keep me from recording when the opportunity or mood strikes. You DO recommend dropping many things I will likely leave off forever, so kudos for that, might be enough to make a difference! As for registry cleaning, I've read for many years that it simply doesn't help outside of removing links to non-existent programs so the system doesn't waste time trying to run them, and even removing those links can be dangerous if you're not careful.
Ran thru everything here and it did have a minor effect on the LatencyMon highest reported DPC and ISR - so may help to eliminate some of those rare clicks and pops. However it didn’t allow me to drop down to a lower buffer size for reduced lower latency. Also - I hear that background virus checking is a major processor hog so should probably include that in any optimisation process.
You very much sound like Mick Jagger in places but I'm wondering if you're from Essex ? !! LOL I'm TRYING to get used to Win 10 but I find Win 8.1 Pro runs much faster after just killing Defender. Win 10 feels like Bill Gates has laid an array of Security Minefields everywhere that I get so frustrated with. I've downloaded your PDF just in case I stay with 10 but I've just bought PreSonus Studio One 4 Professional to learn the arts of music production. Fabulous video. Happy New Year back to the Homelands from Xena Land in Middle Earth✌️ps subbed !!
Lol. I'll take the Mick Jagger reference. I was born in Australia, but moved to England when I was a kid, and grew up on the Isle of Wight! But my mum is Londoner, so I think I got a bit of accent from her. Thanks for watching!
@creative sauce awesome - thanks for your video. Could you also tell us that u activated hyperthread and or High precision timer in bios ? Thanks and take care
Hey Mike. Just went through the list and made the changes. Running cakewalk on new Omen laptop and W10 with Mk Mini controller. All worked well before. Now when I insert a new instrument track CW recognizes the keyboard. I select it as input but getting no signal to the track. On the track I selected Mini Omni and Master as output. Now completely stalled. Help!
Hi Peter, would you kind sending me a screen shot of how you have it setup, and send to creative.sauce.tube@gmail.com . I dont think any of the windows tweaks would affect this, so maybe some other error.
In my experience yes, some anti-virus software are worse than others, but they will bog the computer down. If you make music on your pc, consider not being connected to the internet on that machine. I have a dual boot system, with Linux on one drive and Win10 on another, where I simply deactivated the network adaptor.
I”m a musician. Ikve recently found out that I need to be able to switch off “Turbo Mode” and “Connected Standby” in reg edit within Windows.Without the ability to do this, any Windows laptop will be of no use to me, due to the constant power grabs that these codes are used for. If I cannot turn off Turbo mode then I will get clicks/pops in my audio/and constant “throttling” . I need maximum (or near) power resources going to my Cubase/Logic/Ableton software. According to info received, Microsoft have completely removed the ability to do this in it’s latest 2014 software update. Do you know a way around this prob? I believe the new software just gives you a “slider” labelled something like More-Less! This is a big problem for audio professionals using DAWs. Any help would be v much appreciated! Do you know if this latest update has put this application back? Desperate find out!
Often, when I'm in Cakewalk, I may need the sound for a different application, such as TH-cam to watch Creative Sauce, or an MP3 player to listen to an exported mix. However, Cakewalk does not release the sound card. I have to into system settings, sound, device properties, additional device options, advanced tab, click restore defaults. Do you have any suggestions to prevent this, or is this a Cakewalk bug?
Nigel Barnes I am a bit late but, try in preferences to suspend audio engine when cakewalk not in focus. It is found under audio playback and recording. I’m not sure if this will fix it but it might do something :)
Are you using AISO4ALL? If so, there's no simple way that I have found to do it. It can only be controlled by one program at a time, that sound driver, which sucks for me as I need to use the low latency to play my e drums with nice VSTs on my PC
I always turn off my network card running services when recording Guitars or mics as of the slight hiss pops swoosh interference caused by the signal anything wireless should go :-)
There’s no hi performance mode how old is this? Is there anything out there on getting the best performance from Windows 10 from like 12/2019 or newer I mean you might as well tell us how to get the best from xp bro live in the now there’s only balanced now mmmk?
Buy one? If you've never installed one look for a video on here to walk you through the process. If you want the easy way out just get an external USB hard drive.
Hi Mike, I’ve followed these tips which are mainly very helpful thanks, but when I go to update icons in Cakewalk they no longer display and I just have the generic logo. Do you know what I need to do to get these displayed again? Thanks.
Dear Mike, am new to your channel and enjoy videos very much and well put over thank you.need your help with a problem I am having on start-up with cakewalk, after opening new project the cursor take up to 10 seconds to move and will not run at all when loading a sample.it seems as though the processor cant cope. the system I am running is alien aurora R7 intel (cr) core CTM) i7-8700 k cpu @ 3.70 ghz 3.70 ghz installed ram 16.0 gb (15.8gb usable) should cakewalk have any problems with this system. PS. have followed your video on weakling but know joy.glad of any help you can give.Paul Henderson
Hi Paul, thanks for watching. There should be no problem at all running Cakewalk on that system - its more than capable. I dont think I know the answer to your issue, but a good place to ask is here: discuss.cakewalk.com/
Help!!! After I followed your guidelines here, Cakewalk no longer offers my Focusrite USB interface as an input option on the tracks. Something that we switched off must have disabled it.
@@CreativeSauce I love all your videos on Cakewalk! I have been using Cakewalk since Windows 3.1, and you came to save my life after a long time :) Thank you so much !
I did this last night And now today when my computer is in resting mode sometimes the bar that I punch in the password wont come up ! I know it has something to do with one of the things you said to shut off I bought this computer new a couple of months ago and I've had no issues up until now Do you know what is causing this ?
Made some timestamps so people can go to a given section and check things along w/the PDF-
A off Start menu on L side of taskbar B off search box on taskbar
All A
1:05 Power options
3:28 System sounds
4:12 Privacy settings
9:09 System settings
11:30 offline maps
B
12:06 Services
14:30 Animations
(download)
15:36 CCleaner
A
19:15 Hard Disk Optimization
Mike-Didn't realize you were over here man!!Actually made a mistake and had to repost this,then saw you'd pinned the first one w/the mistake-could you change this to the corrected one?
BTW just posted over on the Creative Sauce FB group the other day asking about using GM files in Native Instruments..wonder if you saw this?
This is the most comprehensive tutorial on the subject I have ever seen. Most of the others on this topic only hit a fraction of the tweaks you mention. I thought I had done all the tweaks to maximize my PC for music production. I'm glad I watched your video and found that there was much more I could do. As you mention in your video, many of the more minor tweaks by themselves don't amount to much, but collectively can make a big difference. Thanks, and keep those videos coming!
From my 25yr. of Windows OS and around 15yr. DAWs experience I can say there are only very few real OS "tweaks" worth it since Windows 7. The more important part is good practices non specifically related to OS itself.
Windows tweaks
1. High performance power profile.
2. Disable everything about windows defender.
3. Disabling visual FX in advanced settings can help with "responsiveness" of graphical elements but it's mainly a matter of perception, not performance efficiency.
4. You may want to install Malwarebytes Windows Firewall. It's a frontend for Windows Firewall. It gives you much better control over app's and processes connection to internet.
Optional
- turn off the cpu power saving options in bios. It might squeeze a little more responsiveness from your stone age cpu,
- using core parking disabling apps.
Good practices
1. Do NOT install any realtime antivirus/antimalware. Just disabling it while making music won't cut it.
2. Keep the number of background running apps at minimum. You don't need 15 apps checking e-mails, chats, weather, forums, the world's chinchilla reproduction rate, whatever,...while making music. Performance wise, it is best to shut down their processes in the task manager.
While shutting down the Windows "diagnostics" is good because of privacy issues, it is nowhere near harmful to OS performance as shitload of apps you installed which runs in the background.
3. Keep it simple as possible.
I've spent countless hours on "optimizing" Windows since WinXP. Just for fun. The most important thing I've learned is to keep it simple and effective.
The thing is, the more complicated your tweaking procedure, the less you're willing to do it again when the best choice is to reinstall Windows and start from scratch. You WILL come to that point sooner or later and no system partition backup strategy will save you from that occasion.
After 5, 10 or 20 reinstalls (15 years span) from scratch, your focus is shifted to efficiency. You don't want to practice the same "tweaks" allover again when you haven't seen any tangible improvement.
This is the best guideline you can get on Windows optimization topic. Learn it from my experience or take the long road.
hey....you are good!...thanks for the advice!
Optimizing WinXP for audio back in the day was fun. You could actually see a real improvement. If you coupled both a user profile with a hardware profile you could log in using your Audio account and have a tweaked Audio pc then when you need to do non-audio computing like programming or business tasks, reboot into your standard hardware profile and second user profile and have all those extra services and non-audio hardware working.
@@mjsthx1138
It depends on the context.
WinXP was good for tweaking because there was a lot of space for improvement.
Win10 is the most optimized Windows version to date, giving very few tweaking options. In fact, the only "tweak" that could make a tangible difference in some scenarios is changing balanced power plan to performance.
What do you suggest for antivirus?
@@eviloutionise
The best performing system is no-AV system.
If you really need AV then the Win Defender is the least damaging.
The "antivirus" software is actually worse than the virus. You may get a virus, but you can easily restore everything from the backup. Or you can install AV and suffer inevitable performance problems because of their realtime scanning and monitoring and false positives.
Antivirus is good for your grandma but useless to anyone with internet experience. I gave up on AV 5yr ago, torrenting as usual and never got virus or anyting like that. My PC rig is most responsive you can get.
This video is fantastic. I had audio latency issues while using Ableton and thought I would need to update my bios. I've been running Latencymon for 2mins and getting in the red every time. Updated some drivers and it made next to no difference. However, after following along with this video Latencymon has everything in the green. My PC is having no latency issues whatsoever now. Super in depth and helpful. I rarely comment on vids but this helped me so much I felt I had to. Cheers mate!
Your videos are really on the money, dude. Amazing job. Every video I've from Creative Sauce has been helpful!
What a bunch of junk running in the background. This did make a difference, at least on my laptop it did. Thanks so much for reposting this Mike.
Glad it helped!
God Bless You Mike! You just gave my PC a shot of B12! This thing is flying now bro. Thanks Man!
Wow thanks dude! I watched your video and did quite a few of the steps you recommended and it resulted in much better performance for my CPU. Thanks for posting, peace
Hi, I went through the pdf, tweaked, now running faster...thank you!
Great advice Mike.
My Windows 10 Pro PC machine,is a reconditoned unit,so not overly powerful,but good enough for my needs.
so I will go over these settings see if I can make my DAW run smoother,too
Thanks Mike, the first tip alone helped resolve an annoying crackling sound I had while using Kontakt and other VSTi's on my high end machine. From another Mike.
Wow thank you again, you have been on the move lately!
Great Post. This is something I needed. I just bought a new power pc due to limitations with Mac M1 and Big Sur with my Daw and Plugins. Now I expect that my W10 work like a charm. By the way, I have switch off completelly Windows Update Service. I do not consider this important.
Thank you so much! Especially the pdf helped me a lot to stabilise my workflow
Thanks Mike. I have two pcs. One of them I mainly use for Music. I have just finished tweaking windows 10 as per your amazing instructions. It was easy for me as I kept listening/posing the video on one pc to update the music pc. I am not using the CCleaner. I have recently bought SonarX3 Producer and found all your Cakewalk videos useful. Thanks a lot for such amazing guidance for people like me.
Great technical information - explained clearly and finally after many years of using computers, you've taken the time to demonstrate important information that otherwise would cost a lot of money to have a technician do. Nothing against technicians, however, they can better serve with more complicated aspects of CPU ocupation
Thanks mate. Coming back to Windows after moving to Apple 10 years ago, so this is helpful ;-)
Haha - welcome back!
I had a pop and crackling sound coming from my uphoria 404HD. I thought it was the interface or USB cable but it was just the configuration of the usb and power that was mentioned in the video. Also my laptop runs a lot better. Thanks a lot!!!
Thank you for making these videos. I swear everyone has a mac. It's nice to see windows tutorials especially for music productions. years of headaches gone now. ✌
Cakewalk had been just turning off with no warning so I hope this helps that issue. Thanks
Bro, you look like a Bond 007 baddie who's a very good musician too! Kiddin apart, Thanks for all the guidance, mate!
great video! very helpful
I got so used to your intro that I just do the drums in my midi keyboard lol
Mike thanks for excellent tips. Having switch the Studio from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Turning off the Apps running in the background was very helpful.
Thanks, Mike. I'm gonna try these things tonight and through out the next couple days. I've got windows 10. The tech at the computer shop talked me into this jallopy!!! Live and learn, I guess. Ha ha ha 🤔🤪☹️!
Have a great week.
Thanks, already looking better usually my laptop would be running around 25% cpu and now it’s running around 3%
That usb power step is very useful. I had to switch from my Roland audio interface to a Focusrite one, and then I was getting BSOD driver errors but didn't realise it was due to the Focusrite ... Formatted my PC, and it eventually started happening again! Luckily it is a know problem and I found this fix but I nearly threw the Focusrite out the window
Just caught up with this one. Some great tips here. Thanks again Mike
Do you know if this process still applies for Windows 11? I think we only have until October to get the free upgrade from 10 to 11 and I'm not sure if the set up would be the same or not. If you've already upgraded to 11 it would be great to have a video like this one for setting it up. Thanks for all the great content and love the channel 🙂
Nice one Gordon!
Great video thanks. I hadn't built a PC music computer since XP so this was invaluable for optimizing my setup. Thanks.
Tip: In CCleaner > Registry > run the scan for issues a few times. It often finds some more (new) issues after fixing the first batch, I always repeat it until it finds no more.
Don't do registry cleaning. It has nothing to do with performance. All what CCleaner does is removing the registry leftovers from uninstalled programs and some references to deleted files locations on the disk drive. They are dead anyways. Just sitting there doing nothing.but using very tiny portion of drive space. While a registry cleaner may be benign, there is always a chance of a mistake. You don't want mistakes unpredictably altering any registry settings. Just forget about the registry cleaners. Not worth it.
Excellent Windows 10 optimization tutorial Mike. Some other optimizations that have helped me include: Cakewalk's Plug-in Load Balancing, disabling ACPI devices, using Latency Monitor, learning about task/processor affinity to keep Cakewalk out of "the slow lane" and yes, I'm a long time CCleaner user and it has never fowled up my computer. QUESTION: Does Windows 10 have a way to save system settings so that all those nice DAW optimizations can be set back again when I want to use my computer in non-DAW mode?
Thanks for the tips Rob, excellent. On your last point - I wish! Although I find these to be generally good for other use.
Big thanks for all your post, really informative and always right to the point . But why am I expecting to see Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich to show up by your side? ;) Great Job! Thanks!
LOL - its the deep wrinkles!
Another thing I remembered just now. It's not about tweaking the system per se, but about turning the PC off.
There's this thing in most modern operating systems (including Windows 10), when if you want to turn off your computer, and you hit the "shut down" option, it doesn't actually make the PC stop working, rather it puts in sort of "deep sleep/hibernation mode", and this is supposed to make the PC turn on faster, but it does it by never really shutting down the computer properly, and in the long term, it might make your machine slower, so what you can do to avoid this (at least on Windows systems) is using the "restart" option instead of "shut down", and after the computer restarts and the window where you enter your password shows up, then you actually use "shut down" option, and you should even see the warning about how the system won't save your work, etc, nothing to worry about. Only then your PC actually shuts down completely.
Having IT friends is useful.
whether your pc "shuts down" or goes into "sleep" or "hibernation" are actually 3 different options and 3 different states based on your power settings, if we are talking a laptop which most people have, then there can be different things that happen when the lid is closed, or when the power button is pressed, or when the "sleep" button is pressed (if it has one), however what you are saying isnt' actually true....the misunderstanding probably came from someone who just closes the lid on their laptop thinking that will shut it down when it doesn't actually do that normally. The way to properly shut the comptuer down completely is to go to the windows logo and choose "shutdown", you dont' have to restart and then shutdown.
Or just turn off Fast Boot in the power options... Does the same thing by turning off hibernated shut down.
@@uniqhnd23 That's good to know, thanks.
@@tamellbailey4857 Hold down the Windows button and hit the 'R' key (for "Run"), then enter "shutdown /s /t 002" without the quotes (and note the spaces). That will produce a guaranteed complete shutdown. Change "/s" to "/r" to reboot instead.
Hi Mike. Are you planing to do simmilar guide for windows 11?
Thanks so much for your very helpful video and .pdf!
My pleasure David - thanks for watching!
Hi Mike. Will you make an updated video for Windows 11😊
I've found that Piano learning apps like Piano Marvel can interfere with the USB MIDI on Cakewalk in a Win 10 PC. And vice versa, said a support person at Piano Marvel. I love that app by the way; I'm 72 now, and surely by the time I'm 90 I'll be playing piano as good as you! 😂😂😂
Thank u so much for this. I finally recorded a song without clicking and popping 😂
I really appreciate this video. I heard a bunch of cracks and pops before I tried this. After this step by step process, I noticed a huge change. I don’t hear any more pops or cracks. I also downloaded the most recent driver for my audio interface. I believe the combination really made a difference. Thanks again
I REALLY wish some of these were app-dependant. In a home studio, most folks will be using their only PC for everything - not just music. The wall socket power draw when setting things on 'maximum' can be quite significant. I don't know if this can be done, but is is possible to have these power settings changed up or down automatically when Windows detected specific user-assigned programs running? i.e...
- If Cakewalk/audio software is running, set power options to maximum
- If not, set to balanced/lower, as determined by user?
What do you think about Ashampoo WinOptimizer for optimizing windows for music production?
Thanks for this, I already did many of them - to keep Microsoft 'hands' off at the same time - some other I did not know.
😎... in cloudy UK, there is some Sun coming out of the darkness!! 😂😂
Thank god.
Just got my PC back after the blue screen.
It's new SSD drives a beast.
It's going but I wanna make it as stable and fast as possible.
The CCleaner, uninstall page. Maybe it is better to uninstall programs from "programs and features" in the "control panel".
Because the ccleaner shows dubbel of som programs, who the control panel program uninstall page, dos not.
Hi there I’m considering a switch from Windows to Mac, from Logic to Cubase. Should I be expecting latency.
(a) First:
One the problem was the bad-Performance and Settings of Windows 10 for Audio-Production. Let's be honest, everybody wants to Record, Mixing & Master music using a DAW and at the same time enjoy Social Networks & Mutimedia (Facebook, TH-cam, Instagram, Web Cam.. etc...) You can choose both, but you have to turn off some of caracteristics of Windows to be able performance much better the DAW's integration.. and that's what I did...
I want to thank to this video for the help:
(b) Second:
I was having a lot of problems with Audio & Pugins through Cakewalk by BandLab (Pops, Noise, and Crackling during Recording, Playback & Mixing) despite of have a powerful PC.. and the solution was too: I had to delete these two files (AUD & AUD.INI) C:\Users\"pc-name"\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core) and That's it... cakewalk regenerate automatically these files once reopen the Program.
Thanks! now I'M HAPPY.. no NOISE, no Pops, no Cracking.. all Good... (y) I also got back 7GB of RAM memory...
Hallo Mike , as i said in previous mails I´m just beginning with my first recording after setting everything up following your superb invaluable tutorial´s , my first song ``yoodoo that voodoo ´´ isnt completey written so playing guitare and using my toontrack drums in conjuction with BL and adding drum fill-ins as I write makes the whole process so much easyer saving me loads of time ,once again thanks for the super tutorials ....analogue Paul B
The best ever Windows OS for music production was XP. Things were proper an smooth all day every day!!!
not sure if this thread is still active but i'm at the crystal disk part of this demonstration and one thing this video seems to lack is how to use crystal disk as far as gaging the effectiveness of having both those boxes clicked. trial and error i try to avoid if possible . but if thats the only way... i still might skip it thanks
PDF link “page not found” 😢
I have a question...
When I uncheck compress this drive to save disc space, it's asking me to do it for C drive only or with C drive with subfolders and files!
Which one should I choose???
I'm using Windows 11 by the way...
The first step to this process is running LatencyMon. If LatencyMon Determines your system is capable of handling real-time audio without dropouts proceed to recording music. If you are running into issues while recording, then look at tweaks to your system. If you are only mixing and not recording the tweaks are going to be less beneficial to you. The Audio settings in the daw and/or your interface software will probably provide the biggest performance boost if you are actually experiencing issues during mixing.
There are no OS tweaks except for the power plan that could make a difference.
Agree with the audio settings.
Thanks for that Mike
My pleasure David.
Hi Mike. I just got an HP Envy brand new. In my old tower (windows 10), I was able to record what I was hearing in my headphones with audacity, or any of the daw I use. With this new computer it won't do that. I'm sure there is a setting I'm missing but before with Cakewalk and Bandlab now I could record my sequences and save them to MP3 or Wave. What do I need to do to get my new computer to hear what I'm playing? It's the same type of Sound as the other one Realtek sound. Thanks!!!
Manny Cepeda
Try ASIO4ALL
I had some problems with the Realtek ones too before I got my audio interference which includes its own drivers.
@@sebastianszyperski1886 Hi Sebastian, I tried it with ASIO4ALL and it didn't work neither. I'm contacting the "Finale" software people and see if they can figure it out. The funny thing is that I run other programs I have (DAW's), and there's no problems. I can show the DAW to my students and they can hear what I play and hear me speaking without any problem.
@@mannycepeda1
Well I'm not sure about the specifics of your situation, I couldn't get a midi controller or the realtek stuff working at all.
Also what do you mean by hearing what you are playing? Midi, a microphone into an audio interface?
@@sebastianszyperski1886 Hopefully "Finale" the software that is causing the problem will give me some solutions. I use Mixcraft 9 (DAW), and I can record (in a different track), what I'm playing. That's what I mean I can record myself. Makes sense? Anyway, thank you for your comments and help, I appreciate it!!
@@mannycepeda1
I'm sorry but I still dont understand 'recording yourself'.
However please let me know if you manage to get it working :)
You are a beast thank you for your help
My pleasure!
Is it true that a DAW uses a series core and not a parallel core processing? That means you are limited to the speed of the processor core and not the number of cores.
Hi Nathan, good question. It depends on the DAW. The 2 main DAWs I use for example, Cakewalk and Studio make use of multiple cores by spreading the load of plugins across DAWs.
This can (apparently) give up to 70% better performance. However, it's ultimately better to focus on higher speed than cores for audio production.
You said to turn off notifications in privacy so why did you keep it on?
do you have one of these videos for windows 11
Love your channel, bought your spiral bound book.
not seeing any of these links you speak of in the description
Great informations here !
Is there any way to automate the process of disabling, and later re-enabling all the settings you recommend turning off? I'm in the unfortunate (and likely common) situation of needing my PC for music recording, graphic/photo editing, playing guitar instruction courses, video editing, general web surfing, my music library, games, finances, etc. So while I can turn things off when recording, it would take a good 15 minutes once I knew exactly what to do, and another 15 minutes of mouse-clicking on the other end, when I'm done recording. And very likely 5 minutes to reboot each time I make changes. All in all it would keep me from recording when the opportunity or mood strikes. You DO recommend dropping many things I will likely leave off forever, so kudos for that, might be enough to make a difference! As for registry cleaning, I've read for many years that it simply doesn't help outside of removing links to non-existent programs so the system doesn't waste time trying to run them, and even removing those links can be dangerous if you're not careful.
What version of Win 10 would you recommend?
- Win 10 Pro
- Win 10 Enterprise
- Win 10 Pro lite
- Win 11
What is your answer? What did u go with
@@333_Tarot Win Pro 10
Great video, thanks!
the page isn't found
Ran thru everything here and it did have a minor effect on the LatencyMon highest reported DPC and ISR - so may help to eliminate some of those rare clicks and pops. However it didn’t allow me to drop down to a lower buffer size for reduced lower latency. Also - I hear that background virus checking is a major processor hog so should probably include that in any optimisation process.
Thanks for all the info....
You very much sound like Mick Jagger in places but I'm wondering if you're from Essex ? !! LOL I'm TRYING to get used to Win 10 but I find Win 8.1 Pro runs much faster after just killing Defender. Win 10 feels like Bill Gates has laid an array of Security Minefields everywhere that I get so frustrated with. I've downloaded your PDF just in case I stay with 10 but I've just bought PreSonus Studio One 4 Professional to learn the arts of music production. Fabulous video. Happy New Year back to the Homelands from Xena Land in Middle Earth✌️ps subbed !!
Lol. I'll take the Mick Jagger reference. I was born in Australia, but moved to England when I was a kid, and grew up on the Isle of Wight! But my mum is Londoner, so I think I got a bit of accent from her.
Thanks for watching!
HI thanks but i couldn't see a link to the Crystal Disk Mark you recommended to test speed re: write cache buffer flushing?
@creative sauce awesome - thanks for your video. Could you also tell us that u activated hyperthread and or High precision timer in bios ? Thanks and take care
Are this tips work for DJing to???
Can you release for win 11 please?
Hey Mike. Just went through the list and made the changes. Running cakewalk on new Omen laptop and W10 with Mk Mini controller. All worked well before. Now when I insert a new instrument track CW recognizes the keyboard. I select it as input but getting no signal to the track. On the track I selected Mini Omni and Master as output. Now completely stalled. Help!
Hi Peter, would you kind sending me a screen shot of how you have it setup, and send to creative.sauce.tube@gmail.com . I dont think any of the windows tweaks would affect this, so maybe some other error.
Did you get the new Omen 15 2020? I did and I love it!!!
Thanks for the PDF and for not making us create an account, give personal info and sign in just to receive the PDF.
Great information. Thank you!!
Very interesting thanks Mike
does antivirus software ever get in the way of plugins and smoothly running software?
In my experience yes, some anti-virus software are worse than others, but they will bog the computer down. If you make music on your pc, consider not being connected to the internet on that machine. I have a dual boot system, with Linux on one drive and Win10 on another, where I simply deactivated the network adaptor.
Good tips mike
Are these tweaks still good for windows 11?
I”m a musician. Ikve recently found out that I need to be able to switch off “Turbo Mode” and “Connected Standby” in reg edit within Windows.Without the ability to do this, any Windows laptop will be of no use to me, due to the constant power grabs that these codes are used for. If I cannot turn off Turbo mode then I will get clicks/pops in my audio/and constant “throttling” . I need maximum (or near) power resources going to my Cubase/Logic/Ableton software. According to info received, Microsoft have completely removed the ability to do this in it’s latest 2014 software update.
Do you know a way around this prob? I believe the new software just gives you a “slider” labelled something like More-Less! This is a big problem for audio professionals using DAWs. Any help would be v much appreciated!
Do you know if this latest update has put this application back?
Desperate find out!
Often, when I'm in Cakewalk, I may need the sound for a different application, such as TH-cam to watch Creative Sauce, or an MP3 player to listen to an exported mix. However, Cakewalk does not release the sound card. I have to into system settings, sound, device properties, additional device options, advanced tab, click restore defaults. Do you have any suggestions to prevent this, or is this a Cakewalk bug?
Nigel Barnes
I am a bit late but, try in preferences to suspend audio engine when cakewalk not in focus. It is found under audio playback and recording. I’m not sure if this will fix it but it might do something :)
Are you using AISO4ALL? If so, there's no simple way that I have found to do it. It can only be controlled by one program at a time, that sound driver, which sucks for me as I need to use the low latency to play my e drums with nice VSTs on my PC
@@DevinJuularValentine
Google FL Studio Asio driver.
I always turn off my network card running services when recording Guitars or mics as of the slight hiss pops swoosh interference caused by the signal anything wireless should go :-)
There’s no hi performance mode how old is this? Is there anything out there on getting the best performance from Windows 10 from like 12/2019 or newer I mean you might as well tell us how to get the best from xp bro live in the now there’s only balanced now mmmk?
i thought that too but there should be a little triangle you can click to unhide the option
Samuel Lofthus nope, last couple updates eliminated any possibility of awesomeness looks like they’ve gone into apples land of brand propriety
@@ajmagana4385 not sure what you mean. I literally just did this last night.
It can be revealed if not shown.
Cmd box:
percfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61ow
Thank you did it all except last tip. Only have one hard drive. How do I obtain another for music?
Buy one? If you've never installed one look for a video on here to walk you through the process. If you want the easy way out just get an external USB hard drive.
Excellent! Thank you!
Hi Mike, I’ve followed these tips which are mainly very helpful thanks, but when I go to update icons in Cakewalk they no longer display and I just have the generic logo. Do you know what I need to do to get these displayed again? Thanks.
Dear Mike, am new to your channel and enjoy videos very much and well put over thank you.need your help with a problem I am having on start-up with cakewalk, after opening new project the cursor take up to 10 seconds to move and will not run at all when loading a sample.it seems as though the processor cant cope. the system I am running is alien aurora R7 intel (cr) core CTM) i7-8700 k cpu @ 3.70 ghz 3.70 ghz installed ram 16.0 gb (15.8gb usable) should cakewalk have any problems with this system. PS. have followed your video on weakling but know joy.glad of any help you can give.Paul Henderson
Hi Paul, thanks for watching. There should be no problem at all running Cakewalk on that system - its more than capable. I dont think I know the answer to your issue, but a good place to ask is here: discuss.cakewalk.com/
Help!!! After I followed your guidelines here, Cakewalk no longer offers my Focusrite USB interface as an input option on the tracks. Something that we switched off must have disabled it.
Have you gone through this tut in reverse?
I would try that 1st
Hey Rick, did you get this fixed, since doing the tutorial this morning my USB synth is no longer working and I suspect its related to your problem.
Thumbs up for "sneaky Microsoft" on 9:03 ! Changing user defined settings without notice seems a normal thing for that company ...
And they really ARE!
@@CreativeSauce I love all your videos on Cakewalk! I have been using Cakewalk since Windows 3.1, and you came to save my life after a long time :) Thank you so much !
Awesome!!! Thank You!!!
thanks for this info, I'm about to upgrade from win 7 to win 10
Did all this and still have ranom glitchy, stuttering audio
The only one of these "performance tweaks" that could have an effect on audio stuttering is the power plan.
I did this last night And now today when my computer is in resting mode sometimes the bar that I punch in the password wont come up ! I know it has something to do with one of the things you said to shut off I bought this computer new a couple of months ago and I've had no issues up until now Do you know what is causing this ?
Congrats, you've just learned that useless Win10 "performance tweaks" are nothing but trouble.
Excellent!
Very cool!
Thanks for watching!
Is anyone else trying to record guitar on a 2017 hp laptop like me? 😃 Lol.. I think this video helps, thanks!
What processor is better for music production? Intel or AMD???
@@EstoEsLaNASA Why is that?
Why what?
thank you really noice