Give your studio machine some TLC with our tips for clearing space, reducing noise and more
It’s easy to dismiss your studio computer as just another piece of faceless electronic equipment but, as computer musicians, our production machines are not only our equivalent of a musical instrument, but also our way of expressing our creativity.
Therefore, it’s vital that we look after our computer with the same care and attention that a guitarist lavishes on their priceless vintage Strat, or a drummer puts into keeping their kit tuned. As software becomes ever more complex and resource hungry, keeping your computer fighting fit and ready to roll is key to making the most of your music-making time. After all, nothing’s more of a buzzkill than audio dropouts, DAW crashes or running out of processing power!
To give you a helping hand with keeping your studio machine on the straight and narrow, we’ve put together ten essential tips for both Mac and PC users, covering topics such as latency, hard drive space, OS tweaks and being more efficient with your music-making software of choice. All of these will help you squeeze more power and performance from both your computer and DAW, without spending big bucks on upgrades. So, if you’re fed up of not getting the most out of your production rig, read on as we divulge a few computer tips and tricks.
01 (Don’t) make some noise
One way of making the sound clearer in your studio is to mitigate the noise coming from your computer as much as possible, particularly if you’re running a fan-filled Mac or beastly gaming PC as your production rig. The first port of call for making things quieter is to find a more suitable location for your computer to reside in. If you’ve got a big enough cabinet or cupboard, placing the computer in there with some soundproofing on the cabinet panels will reduce the amount of computer noise you hear, as will placing your machine in another room – though this option means you’ve got to drill through the wall to extend your cables. If these options aren’t viable, you can reduce the noise of your machine by purchasing quieter fans, a fanless graphics card, or – if you’re feeling flush – a super-quiet liquid cooling system.
02 Storage hunters
Running an SSD drive? You can install libraries for monster-sized music software packages like Omnisphere or Komplete on a separate storage drive, avoiding filling precious SSD space with files you don’t use all the time, while leaving room for your operating system to work at its fastest. If you’re running a laptop or all-in-one computer that’s difficult to upgrade with extra internal storage, we’ve found a USB 3.0 external hard disk is plenty fast enough for library storage.
03 Be more efficient in your DAW
Although computers are much faster than even a decade ago, it’s still easy to max the CPU in a complex synth- and plugin-laden project – so here are a few ways to take that processing power back using your DAW’s CPU-saving features
1 Most DAWs have a channel freeze function, which bounces the frozen channel to audio before unloading the plugins on the channel from memory. If you need to tweak the frozen channel later on, unfreezing it reloads the channel and plugins in their previous state.
2 Using effects with an automated wet/ dry mix is an easy way to add variation to a sound, but leaves the effect running in memory, eating up CPU. Using your DAW’s bounce in place function allows you to print the edits to audio, before turning off the effects to save CPU.
3 The best way of making a resourcehungry project more efficient is to stem the entire thing to audio before starting again in a ‘v2’ project. Not only will you have a big smash of CPU power available, but you’ll also have a handy archive of your track parts to boot.
04 Latency 101
Getting your latency settings right can make your DAW more usable for recording, production and mixing. But what’s latency? Well, it’s the amount of time (in milliseconds) between your DAW being asked to do a task, such as starting playback or triggering a synth, and the resulting sound emerging from the speakers. Lower latency times cause signals to pass more quickly through your audio interface and DAW, but use more processing power, which can lead to distortion and glitching as the CPU and audio system struggle to keep up the pace.
The best way to balance CPU use against low latency is to be flexible with setting your latency times. Low latencies of 64 to 128 samples are perfect for recording live instruments, vocals and MIDI input, particularly if you’re setting up a headphone mix in your DAW. Once you’ve moved on to mixing, pushing the latency time up to 512–1024ms will free up CPU power at the expense of latency. It’s also worth knowing that most audio interfaces with recording preamps offer a zero-latency internal mixer that’ll let you set up headphone mixes without signals having to pass through your DAW – ideal for recording vocalists or musicians.
05 Know when to update
OS updates are a necessary evil if you’re looking to run the latest software on your machine, but our top tip is to avoid upgrading to the latest Mac OS or Windows version until the manufacturers of your audio interface, DAW and plugins have all given it the official thumbs-up. New OS updates are notorious for causing issues with audio software, so we’ve found staying at least one version behind is best for keeping your computer working at its best.
06 Space savers
A top tip for keeping your audio computer running smoothly and reliably is to make sure you leave enough free space on all your internal hard drives. Leave around 10-15% free on each drive to clear some room for the OS to work – this helps the computer run smoothly and avoids any glitches or dropouts during recording sessions. If you’re struggling to trim down your data, a great place to start is to empty your Trash/Recycle Bin and check through your internet browser’s download folder for any unwanted downloads you can delete.
If you’re a Windows user, there’s a Disk Cleanup tool that’ll help you wipe temporary internet files and other junk from your machine. For those looking to get more organised with hard drives, freeware apps such as Grand Perspective (Mac OS) or SpaceSniffer (Windows) allow you to see a graphical representation of the contents of your hard disk. Once analysed, your files will be shown as a collection of blocks, making it easier to select any unwanted blocks for deletion.
07 Optimise your OS
Fine-tune the basics with these three tips
Onboard sound
When using your PC’s built-in audio outputs, you may suffer glitches, crackles and unacceptable latency times thanks to default drivers that aren’t made with music production in mind. Fix this issue by grabbing ASIO4ALL, a highly optimised (and free) universal ASIO driver.
Backing track
By default, Windows 10 allows a few apps to run in the background in case you need them. See what’s loaded by opening your Start Menu, hitting Settings, selecting Privacy then Background Apps. Now, you can uncheck any apps that aren’t relevant to the cause… like that annoying Adobe Acrobat updater!
Recording al fresco
If you’re using your laptop and audio interface to record somewhere without mains power, make sure you’ve disabled all of your machine’s power-saving features. When running on batteries, laptops will throttle CPU speeds and turn off hard drives after a short time, which can lead to unwanted glitches.
08 Bridge the gap
Modern 64-bit DAWs – that’s most of ’em – don’t support 32-bit plugins any more, which is a problem if you’ve used legacy 32-bit-only plugins such as Focusrite’s Liquid Mix or an old-school Powercore in any projects prior to upgrading. A solid workaround is to use a program such as jBridge (Windows) or SoundRadix 32 Lives (Mac OS) to bridge between the 64-bit DAW and 32-bit plugin in real time, letting you open those old projects without losing processing. We recommend you find 64-bit replacements longterm, however, as bridging uses a fair chunk of CPU.
09 Pull the cord
It’s well known that browsers are one of the most resource-hungry programs you can run on a computer, so it’s worth closing your browser and turning off your WiFi connection when using your machine for any audio-related tasks. Not only is having the net turned off better for productivity, it also means that your computer’s full attention is focused on that club banger you’re mixing down. This tip is even more useful for the laptop DJs amongst us, as high-quality yet low-latency audio playback requires a lot of juice. You wouldn’t want a Facebook inbox notification to mess up your live set, would you?
10 Get with the times
For many years now, PC and Mac computers have featured 64-bit processors so, if you haven’t already, make the most of this by installing 64-bit versions of your operating system, DAW and plugins. 32-bit operating systems and software can only address a maximum of 4GB RAM, leading to vibe-killing
crashes when running a complex DAW project stuffed with synths, plugins and RAM-hungry multisampled instruments such as Kontakt or Addictive Drums – a real waste of resources when most modern production rigs have at least 8GB RAM on board! In contrast, a 64-bit system can address up to a mindbending 16 exabytes, meaning that your OS and music software can use every spare bit of system resource available for your expert beatmaking endeavours.