[audioengr]

I have one customer that has several expensive DAC's and the Off-Ramp Turbo 2.  He has tried a lot of things on the PC to get the optimum sound on all of them, and I believe some of these changes are good ones.  I am test-driving the changes below and they seem to be positive.  Instructions assume XP OS and using the older M-Audio driver.  If you are using the new "driverless" firmware, these are not necessary.

PC tweaks:

1)Turn-off disk caching by:
Start - Control Panel - System - Advanced - Performance "settings" - Advanced - Virtual Memory - "Change" - Paging File Size for selected drive "no paging file"

You will have to do a restart of the machine for this to take effect.  This should now play directly from memory.

2) Create a large memory cache by:
Go to Foobar Preferences - Playback - Full-file buffering - Buffer files up to => enter "700000000"

3) Change playback thread priority:
Go to Foobar Preferences - Playback - Playback Thread Priority - pull the control down one notch from "max"

Please post your results to see if they are all positive changes on all systems.

Steve N.

[gongos]

The changes work. I couldn't resample to 24/96 before I made the above changes. The sound would crackle and slow down w/ my flac files. I never had the problem w/ wav files???

With the changes no crackle, no slow down.

[woodsyi]

Seems to work a little better.  I didn't have any problem with 24/96 files before.  I will have to listen a little more later but it seems to be better in clarity.  BTW, I don't have music stored on the C drive -- just the programs. 

[DSK]

Just beware that some programs actually expect a pagefile and will crash if you have turned it off.

I've seen a number of people recommend turning off the pagefile based on the (unresearched) assumption that the PC will run faster as a result, with no detailed evidence to support the claim. Recently I came across some in depth posts (on a couple of PC overclocker forums) by people that had more thoroughly researched how, when and what is actually swapped out to the pagefile. Their results suggested that there was actually very little to no improvement in disabling the pagefile, and that some programs (eg. NERO ?) actually expect and/or gobble up a ton of memory on initial startup and will suffer problems without the pagefile. IIRC there was also mention that there was some benefit, in certain circumstances, to setting the minimum and maximum pagefile size to the same amount. They found that it was far preferable to keep the pagefile but to locate it on a separate hard disk, preferably a fast one (eg. Raptor 10k RPM).

Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark the websites but from memory one of the posters was from a PC mag. I stumbled across them while researching some overclocking information. I have 2gb Ballistix RAM (2 x 1gb PC4000 DDR in Dual Channel) on my P4 and was going to disable the pagefile, but after reading this information I have decided to leave the pagefile alone for the moment. I already have XP Pro (inc. pagefile) on a 36gb Raptor and applications on a 200gb Seagate Barracuda, but can't justify the expense of a second Raptor just for the pagefile.

FWIW, some posters had been running with pagefile disabled for some months, without problems. I guess it just depends on how much RAM you have and what apps you run. Just something to watch out for ....

[kfr01]

My old negative text deleted.  Steve was ahead of his time.

[rbrb]

People may find this article helpful also...
http://www.tascam.com/Products/US-428/W2k_XP_Optimize.pdf 

[audioengr]

Just beware that some programs actually expect a pagefile and will crash if you have turned it off.

I've seen a number of people recommend turning off the pagefile based on the (unresearched) assumption that the PC will run faster as a result, with no detailed evidence to support the claim. Recently I came across some in depth posts (on a couple of PC overclocker forums) by people that had more thoroughly researched how, when and what is actually swapped out to the pagefile. Their results suggested that there was actually very little to no improvement in disabling the pagefile, and that some programs (eg. NERO ?) actually expect and/or gobble up a ton of memory on initial startup and will suffer problems without the pagefile. IIRC there was also mention that there was some benefit, in certain circumstances, to setting the minimum and maximum pagefile size to the same amount. They found that it was far preferable to keep the pagefile but to locate it on a separate hard disk, preferably a fast one (eg. Raptor 10k RPM).

Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark the websites but from memory one of the posters was from a PC mag. I stumbled across them while researching some overclocking information. I have 2gb Ballistix RAM (2 x 1gb PC4000 DDR in Dual Channel) on my P4 and was going to disable the pagefile, but after reading this information I have decided to leave the pagefile alone for the moment. I already have XP Pro (inc. pagefile) on a 36gb Raptor and applications on a 200gb Seagate Barracuda, but can't justify the expense of a second Raptor just for the pagefile.

FWIW, some posters had been running with pagefile disabled for some months, without problems. I guess it just depends on how much RAM you have and what apps you run. Just something to watch out for ....

Excellent tips, thanks.  All of use have to run other apps, such as EAC and NERO, so this may be of concern.  I have not tried either yet, but I'll let you all know.

Steve N.

[audioengr]

People may find this article helpful also...
http://www.tascam.com/Products/US-428/W2k_XP_Optimize.pdf 

I liked page 11 (I do this manually now) and this one:

XP: Still under Control Panel/System, select the Advanced tab. Click the Performance
settings button and select the Visual Effects tab. Choose “adjust for best performance”
and then select the Advanced tab. Under Processor Settings, select “adjust for best
performance of background services” to ensure lowest latency with ASIO-based drivers
(ASIO drivers run as background services in Windows).

I didn't know this.  I'll give it a try.

Also on page 18:

To disable this feature, go to Control Panel, and under “User Accounts” click on “Change
the way users log on and off” and uncheck “fast user switching.”

And page 20:
Windows defaults to continual logging of Input and Output data to your hard drive.
Disabling this will free up some resources. To disable performance logging, go to the
Start menu and select Run. Type in “diskperf –n” (minus the quotes) and hit Okay.

Have fun and let us know if these help.

Steve N.

[woodsyi]

Yes, this is a good link.  I plan to go over it thoroughly when I get home this evening.

[FRANKe]

I have one customer that has several expensive DAC's and the Off-Ramp Turbo 2.  He has tried a lot of things on the PC to get the optimum sound on all of them, and I believe some of these changes are good ones.  I am test-driving the changes below and they seem to be positive.  Instructions assume XP OS.

PC tweaks:

1)Turn-off disk caching by:
Start - Control Panel - System - Advanced - Performance "settings" - Advanced - Virtual Memory - "Change" - Paging File Size for selected drive "no paging file"

You will have to do a restart of the machine for this to take effect.  This should now play directly from memory.

2) Create a large memory cache by:
Go to Foobar Preferences - Playback - Full-file buffering - Buffer files up to => enter "700000000"

3) Change playback thread priority:
Go to Foobar Preferences - Playback - Playback Thread Priority - pull the control down one notch from "max"

Please post your results to see if they are all positive changes on all systems.

Steve N.

First off, Steve, "disk caching" should not be confused with Virtual Memory. They are not the same thing. And I would not recommend anyone turn off virtual memory. Doing so, does not allow music to simply "play directly from memory". Music still needs to load from the hard drive and in my experience does not write to the pagefile first anyway.

In any case, recommendation #2 negates #1 anyway. This DOES play directly from memory, but I did not hear any improvement, as it still needs to read the hard drive first. Improvements come from not having your internal hard drive spin at all. (No moving parts and no power demands). I have found benefits to playing from an external NAS drive with all buffers set to 0 (in playback and asio settings in foobar). This way there is no need for my internal disk I/O and reduces power load. But the biggest benefit I've heard is playing music from a RAM Disk (again with all buffers set to 0). This is not the same thing as buffering to memory first. I know this is controversial and I don't want to start a debate on whether this is the same as buffering, but it does sound noticeably better (on my system). Please try it before voicing any opinions. If you want to give it a try, you can download a free 14 day trial:
http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php
I am not affiliated with them, so if you don't like it or buy it, you will not hurt my feelings.
And one last point I want to make about recommendation #2, if you go this route, you will not have seamless (gapless) playback from track to track. I tried playing two songs back to back (that run together) and there was a slight pause between them (when buffering).

As for recommendation #3, this had a negative effect on my system. I prefer leaving it set to Max.

And last, thanks for the tascam link. Here are a couple more links which I followed to setup my system:

http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php

http://www.absdigital.co.uk/dloads/XPdawTweaks.htm

Enjoy.

[Joules]

Steve - Did you ever do any of your own evaluation on any of this?
               How did it turn out?
     I wanted to hear back from you be for I started fooling around with virtual memory and such.

[JohninCR]

I find Gongo's post interesting, since it turns out that Flac isn't so great after all.  It doesn't save enough space, so give me plain old WAV files, and no conversion is necessary.  Doesn't an adequate supply of RAM eliminate the need for the other stuff other than maximum caching?  I'm all for better sound, but I prefer the best and most direct route.

[audioengr]

Steve - Did you ever do any of your own evaluation on any of this?
               How did it turn out?
     I wanted to hear back from you be for I started fooling around with virtual memory and such.

Still doing evaluation.  I'm not noticing any delays between tracks.  Dont have much time to do listening as I have backlog to work on.  The Benchmarks are flying in for the upgrade now....

Steve N.

[FRANKe]

...I'm not noticing any delays between tracks....

Steve N.

Steve, do you have the gap killer DSP (foo_dsp_nogaps.dll) installed? I do not, and should have mentioned that before when I said there was a pause. I'm a bit of a purist, so the only DSP I have installed is SRC.

[mizzuno]

I would recommend not sizing your pagefile to 0, however you can disable window kernel paging executive which stops windows kernel from paging via the registry, the one caveat with all pagefile tweaks is that you must have enough memory:

If you system has more than 256MB of RAM, then you should try this tweak. In theory, the kernel (and thus XP) should run faster if it kept in RAM instead of the slower page memory.

This involves editing the registry so make a registry backup before trying this.

Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive

Setting the value to 1 will prevent the kernel from using slower page memory.

Changing it back to the default value of 0 will return your system back to normal.

Remember that registry changes require reboot before you will see their effects.

[FRANKe]

And last, thanks for the tascam link. Here are a couple more links which I followed to setup my system:

http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php

http://www.absdigital.co.uk/dloads/XPdawTweaks.htm

Enjoy.

I tried the suggestions in this first link, some of which had all ready been done,  all but the registry stuff and I left that alone, and now I cant log on to the internet.
 I'm not a big XP expert but I keep trying.

If you're referring to the MusicXP 25 Tuning Tips, I see nothing that relates to Internet Access. If you just change back all the tweaks you applied does your internet access come back? BTW, if you can't access the internet, how did you write this post?

[audioengr]

...I'm not noticing any delays between tracks....

Steve N.

Steve, do you have the gap killer DSP (foo_dsp_nogaps.dll) installed? I do not, and should have mentioned that before when I said there was a pause. I'm a bit of a purist, so the only DSP I have installed is SRC.

No, I just have SRC and ASIO installed.  I meant "excessive" delays.

Steve N.

[drrd]

That RAM disk app works really well. I found that switching off VM and buffering whole files does improve sound quality but i think the RAM disk idea takes this a nice step further, noticeably more focused sound. Thanks for that tip.
The tip about setting priority 1 notch below max was to avoid the odd pop or break-up, sound quality is slightly better with it maxed.

[drrd]

just tried ram disk with VM active and it's not as good, the two things seem to make improvements independently. don't have any explanations, i do hear the difference though.

also tried out samplitude as i read someone really rated it's sound quality. actually sounds identical to wavelab ie. excellent. i think the reason seems to be that both these apps seem to 'lock' the asio device and dont allow sharing whereas foobar doesnt seem to do this. then went to m-audio device properties and highlighted option 'do not use audio features on this device' (as well as not mapping through device) then restart. you can still play through foobar with asio and sound quality then seems to be same as wavelab+samplitude. unfortunately other apps no longer seem able to see the off-ramp when you do this.

have a few other comments (i'm new here so go easy....):

having looked around the forum and read steve's advice i seem to be in a minority that i prefer the latest foobar release and foobar asio. foobar 8 and the otachan asio plugins (i've tried loads of them) all sound slightly fuzzy to me and just seem to grate in the long term.

i also dont really like the sound of the secret rabbit src that much. has anyone tried the r8brain src? unfortunately no foobar plugin but i've processed files with it and sounds superior to realtime processing via secret rabbit. it's free to download anyway so worth a mess around.
http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/

this site comparing SRCs is interesting too:
http://src.infinitewave.ca/

and this related page from the secret rabbit author:
http://www.mega-nerd.com/erikd/Blog/CodeHacking/SecretRabbitCode/src_compare.html

i'm going to try out a dCS hardware src and will see if that's any good.

[Karsten]

Actually the best PC tweak I did was buying a new Vista based notebook. I went from XP - Foobar - asio4all - Trends UD-10 USB transporter to Vista - Mediaplayer - Trends UD-10 USB transporter and found that it was a pretty big improvement, much more natural sound to my ears.

One of the most surprising aspects is that the digital volume control works really well, actually beating several high end preamps.....

The setup I'm doing these experiments with currently consists of Orpheus Zero DAC going directly to a Berning ZH270 amp and SP Technology Revelation speakers. Getting probably the best sound I have had in my room so far...

Karsten