Optimizing Your Computer for Audio Under Mac OSX and Windows XP

Both Mac OSX and Windows XP were created with multimedia in mind. The new user interfaces, though more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing than their predecessors, require a great deal of processing power that can potentially cause problems when recording audio. Here are some tips for keeping your system streamlined for audio editing and recording.

Mac OSX:

The operating system is brilliant in its simplicity. It’s easy to make a few quick changes to dedicate more power to your audio.

1. Change the display color properties to thousands from millions. This will reduce the amount of processing power needed to by video and free some power up for audio. Go into Apple Menu > System Preferences > Displays > Display tab > Colors. Change the setting to thousands.
2. Turn off items in the Login Items section. Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Login Items. Turn off the programs you don’t need to automatically start when you log in to the computer. This will free up processing power.
3. Turn off Instant Message clients (they take up bandwidth on your computer).
4. Check to see that you have more than half a gigabyte of free space on your hard drive. The system needs space to temporarily put items. If it doesn’t have ample space, the system may slow significantly.
5. If you have less then 512 MB, upgrade to at least 512MB. If the OS needs a temporary location to store information, it will first look to RAM. If there is insufficient room there, it will look to the hard drive. RAM access time is faster then hard drive access time by a factor of approximately 10. If the computer has to write temporary information to the hard drive, processes will slow down.

Windows XP:

Microsoft built Windows XP from the same OS model as Windows 2000 (the NT kernel) but added multimedia functionality. It has a customizable new look and feel, which makes it easy to optimize for recording audio.

1. Adjust for best performance by going to Start > Control Panel > System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Visual Effects tab. Choose “Adjust for best performance.”
2. Turn off programs that launch automatically. Go to Start > Run. Type “msconfig” and click OK. On the Start Up tab, you may uncheck the programs or processes you do not wish to run automatically.
3. Turn off Instant Message clients (they take up bandwidth).
4. If you are going to purchase a new copy of XP, choose the Home Edition. The professional version is intended for enterprise environments and consequently features unnecessary resource-consuming services that run in the background.
5. Check to see that you have more than half a gigabyte of free space on your hard drive. The system needs space to temporarily put items. If it doesn’t have ample space, the system may slow significantly
6. If you have less then 512 MB, upgrade to at least 512MB. If the OS needs a temporary location to store information, it will first look to RAM. If there is insufficient room there, it will look to the hard drive. RAM access time is faster then hard drive access time by a factor of approximately 10. If the computer has to write temporary information to the hard drive, processes will slow down.
7. If you are choosing a new motherboard, look for one that supports DDR RAM or Rambus RAM. They offer faster access time and will add to your computer’s ability to process data faster. DDR and Rambus may cost more, but are worth the investment.

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