I became interested in actually reading the book. I am thankful that I did. I have been running Omnisphere 2 with crackles and dropouts, spiking at like 170% when using bell and granular patches. Turned down the grains, and it was manageable but sounded thin. Waves Element, did something similar (CPU overload on “note on”). VB3, NI Classic Keys, Lounge Lizard, Sylenth etc all fine. However, I needed O2 to function as the other plugins. I have an I7 Laptop Computer with an SSD (30% free space left) and 16GB of ram. For this gig I was using the Peavey USB-P. A fine device, by the way. It is USB 1.1. So, I plugged in an Audiobox 22VSL with usb 2.0. No improvement. USB 1.1 or 2.0 - no difference. Same overload and drop outs. I decided to take each and every step listed in chapter 4 and 5 (leaving out a couple things that I felt I could live with). Restarted my computer, ran my song with the same O2 patch config, and pressed multiple keys simultaneously on the lower register over and over with the identical patches and C3 configuration as before. CPU load had ZERO glitches or dropouts and did not go over 40%! I was careful to create the exact same scenario as the 170%. Insane difference! I was so frustrated with what I thought was an under powered Laptop with an I7 Hyperthreaded CPU SSD and 16gb ram. Now I see why all of the settings in windows have a massive effect on functionality. My computer has become extremely powerful and able to run some of the most taxing programs. The only reason I didn’t get Serum was because I didn’t need another CPU hog. I bet my system will handle that VST much better now. I couldn’t contain the excitement, had to share. Pay attention to the book. Thanks Brad.
Yeah, I read it and found several tweaks I had not implemented before. You have inspired me to read it again and make sure I’ve really done every tweak I can…
A precaution is that some things that you use your laptop for may not work as well because it may hinge heavily on things like flashplayer, java etc. I noticed my Quicken had some things that didn’t work right. Also, if you have bluetooth (I’d leave wifi and bluetooth enabled) after making all of the tweaks let your system boot and take a few minutes to associate bluetooth mouse and keyboard.
Yeah, it depends on what you use your computer for- my music machines are fully dedicated and optimized for DAW/Cantabile only. I don’t even allow wifi to be on so they won’t try and auto-update. All my playing and web-surfing happens on a really cheap little laptop that I can blast and reload Windows whenever the need arises and any other serious applications happen on a dedicated desktop.