![]() From this perspective, upgrading the OS of an old machine might hurt you more than help you.īut there’s another aspect here. Remember that the OS itself will take up CPU and RAM resources, leaving you with less to run your DAW and plugins. Choosing your OS and DAWĪs computers became more powerful, operating systems rose to make use of those increases. Switch off built-in effects if you can use effects on a bus elsewhere. Using synths? Try to run as few voices as possible (switch off the Unison function) in order to free up processing power. Even better, export audio files into a new version of your project, and retain the original project in case you need to go back and make changes. If your DAW doesn’t have a dedicated freeze or bounce feature, you can simply render audio files using its normal audio export function and then re-import the files into your project. Often, a Bounce in Place function will render an audio file with virtual instruments and effects baked in, and deactivate the original plugins (you can turn them on again if you want to make changes later). ![]() Learn how your DAW can freeze or bounce tracks. You’ll want to return these options to high quality when you export audio, the only negative being that it’ll take longer. Here in Serum, for example, you can set the quality to 1x (Draft). Some plugins allow you to increase or decrease the internal sample rate, trading off processing quality for performance. Use your DAW’s stock plugins if you need something that’s more efficient, and check how certain third-party plugins burden your system by comparing with and without them. There’s a huge variety of third-party plugins out there, and depending on the type, the age and the programming quality behind any, these have the potential to be a huge drain on your system. Do you really need three separate reverbs for three tracks, or will one do for the moment? Run plugins as send effects rather than inserts where possible. Production habits for trimming CPU cycles Although it doesn’t matter on semi-recent machines, you may want to disable graphic properties like smoothed fonts and window opening/closing animations. On very old computers, even the OS’s minor graphical display properties can make a difference. When you’re working with limited resources, you want as many as possible to be used for audio processing tasks. Here, in Studio One 4, we can change the sample rate and bit depth in the Song Setup window, lowering it for mixing tasks, then raising it back up again when exporting.Ĭlose as many other programs and processes as you can in order to reduce the burden on your machine as much as possible. Reduce your project’s sample rate and bit depth if possible, giving your computer fewer samples per second to perform calculations on. To monitor your entire machine’s usage as a whole, Mac users can use Activity Monitor, and Windows users will find tabs for this in Task Manager. On an older machine, CPU will likely be your tightest resource, so you’ll need to keep an eye on how it works. Understand how to find your DAW’s CPU meter. The exception is for those who want to record audio while monitoring it - for this, you’ll want to reduce the buffer size. ![]() This means that, although the same amount of CPU power will be required, the CPU gets more ‘breathing space’ to cope with processing audio alongside everything else it has to do. One of the most helpful things you can do is increase your DAW’s buffer size in its preferences. Your CPU doesn’t have to be maxed out for clicks and pops to be created (as we’ll see later), but throw too many instruments or effects at an old CPU, and it’ll hit its ceiling quite quickly. Even if you don’t think you’re doing much, if your computer is burdened by other processes and can’t focus for long enough on what your DAW wants it to do, the result will be clicks and pops in your audio playback - annoying for playback and mixing, and awful for recording. ![]() Making music requires your computer to work quickly. Computer and DAW tweaks for better performance ![]()
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