how to reduce asio usage? (pc tuning)

[xconnyx]

it seems that my pc needs more asio power since i use cubase 4.5 then it needed with cubase sx3.

i wonder how i can improve my asio power by tuning my pc.

at this moment i got an intel core2 2.1ghz, 4gb ram, some wd sata harddrive. but audio starts clipping when asio is about 40% in use, the asio meter is jumping around too.

i use a toneport ux2 as my main interface at this moment. i'm going to change that to a motu 8pre in a few weeks, but i know that i have somehow the same asio usage with the 8pre cause a friend of mine lent me his 8pres and i tested it for a day. this makes me thinking that it is not an interface problem, more the setup of my pc.

since i was not able to find a thread about pc-for-daw-use-tuning-thread i would like you to post things to make pc's run in DAW mode better.

generally speaking, devices you can disable in windows and stuff like that.

thanks

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

make sure your processor usage is optimized for background services and not for programs, that's the only really important tweak there is for windows

 

[xconnyx]

yeah i did that and some other things:

devices list settings (systemsteuerung->verwaltung->dienste)
-i disabled the "indexierungsdienst" which is indexing the harddrive all the time for a faster search function
-i disabled the windows firewall from the devices list not only from the system control it self, it also needs to be disabled through his own killswitch in systemcontrolpanel->windows firewall.
-i disabled the system recovery which is runing in the background all the time form the devices list. (sytemwiederherstellung)

systemcontrolpanel->system->"advanced?!"->"systemprocessing?!" (systemsteuerung->system->erweitert->systemleistung)
-i put the processor usage to background processes (optimiert für hintergrundprozesse)
-put the visualsettings to optimized for fastest system stuff (optimiert für schnellste leistung)

asio is running much more smooth now, no cracking anymore.

 

[TheDude]

Raise the audio buffer.