Wow! Tascam had put up what was considered the definitive set of tweaks for best audio performance a couple of years ago and that was one of the first things they said, especially when using asio drivers. I did definitely notice an improvement with my laptop, which is a 202ghz dual core, when I did this recently. Now lately I've been experimenting with going back to wdm with my motu, so maybe I should try chaning this setting back. Every one of the dancing dots systems that I set up had this setting on them, as well as the paging settings and visual performance settings.
Gord----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Muir" <ddots@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Dancing Dots E-mail List" <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 2:04 PM Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Glitches and pops?
Gord wrote: Have you set priority to background services in the performance dialog under theadvanced tab of system in windows control panel?Phil replied: No, no, no! Very very bad idea. In fact, this can make your system much more unstable. I remember trying this on several occasions with various set-ups and found that system performance got significantly worse. I wondered if it was something to do with my system. Then, I came across an article written by Noel Borthwick from Cakewalk. Noel recommends not doing this at all, and having played with this setting here myself and discussed this with others in the business,I agree with Noel. you will find noel's post at the following URL: http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1238330Here's a quote from noel's post. Noel wrote: "I don't recommend this. Setting the sheduling to background for "better performance" with drivers is a myth. At best this is masking a real problem with the driver. All this does is change the quanta for the timeslice assigned by the windows scheduler. By making the time slice longer you are potentially setting up a scenario where the high priority audio threads in the host application might be denied frequent enough servicing by the scheduler! This might actually result in more dropouts or clicks. Here is a quote from an MSDN articlehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/308417. If you click Programs, the foreground program runs more smoothly and responds more quickly. If you want a background task such as a Backup utility to run faster, click Background services. . The Programs option allocates short, variable time slices (quanta) to running programs, and the Background services option assigns long, fixed quanta.Contrarary to the SOS article that says "this is the most essential tweak of all, because ASIO drivers run as background services in Windows." An ASIO driver is just another a dll running in the process memory space, its NOT a background service - at least not typically. I've never seen an ASIO driver that installs an actual Windows service (you would see that in the services view otherwise). Its just a DLL running a user mode thread to service the audio device and asio callbacks. The thread is no different from the threads that run in the host application itself. If the driver is coded to have the thread priority set to time critical and its thread is not being blocked by something else there should be no need to change this setting. i.e. for the few people this "helps" its likely that all its doing is masking another more fundamental problem. Additionally setting the sheduling to background is allowing ALL other background tasks on your computer to get a longer timeslice - i.e some other windows service or background application is now more likely might to start interfering with the host task."Regards, Phil Muir P J Muir Productions Music And Audio Production URL: http://www.philmuir.com/ Band website: http://www.demuirs.com/ PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE! To leave the list, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type unsubscribeFor other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately following link:ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or send a message, to ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type faq
PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE! To leave the list, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type unsubscribeFor other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately following link:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq orsend a message, to ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
and in the Subject line type faq
