Old 02-10-2019, 07:39 PM   #1
BanjoBob
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Houston, Tx
Posts: 9
Default Laptop

Hi All,

I'm upgrading my laptop and have the luxury (I think) of doing a fresh install of windows. I have 10 but the computer came with disks for 8 so I have to find out if I can make some install disks from 10 before I install to the new SSD.

That being said, can anyone offer any tips on things I can do at the install phase of windows to optimize the computer for audio recording. Also any tips on setup after the install, I want to dedicate this laptop to recording (with the exception of basic office functions that would be turned off when recording)

If it matters,
Lenovo E530 Think Pad, i5-3210M(2.5Ghz), 16g, 500ssd MSata for OS and 500 ssd 2.5 for recording to.
Presonus 1824
WinPro 64bit
BanjoBob is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-10-2019, 11:35 PM   #2
Cranky Emu
Human being with feelings
 
Cranky Emu's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 489
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by BanjoBob View Post
I'm upgrading my laptop and have the luxury (I think) of doing a fresh install of windows.
Hi Bob;
Can't comment on Windows 10, running 7 on my machine.
One thing I intentionally did (and still do) is only install software that is related to audio/video work on the main computer.

The only exception to this is some system maintenance software like defrag, eusing cleaner, CCleaner, Filesync, FileZilla and Notepad++.

Everything else such as office programs, messengers, radio software and so on gets relegated to the laptop.

One thing I will definitely advise you do, even if others suggest otherwise, you would be very foolish not to install a program like FileSync (it's free), and do regular backups to an external USB drive of all your important stuff. I do backups at the very least once a day to two external drives. The second USB drive is just a mirror of the first. I also have a drive duplicator and every month duplicate the primary drive to a backup drive - can save a lot of time re-installing!

Your laptop and interface are both very capable so you should not have to many problems I don't think.
__________________
♫ C. Emu ♫
Cranky Emu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-11-2019, 08:43 AM   #3
BanjoBob
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Houston, Tx
Posts: 9
Default

Thanks Cranky,

My plan is to only have Reaper, plug-ins and related software and I am very big about backing up. Since I will have a dedicated drive for recording to, backup should be real easy.

I will however need to have Office and Photoshop installed (not to be used at the same time as recording). Is there anything you know of that would cause an issue/conflict with my recording software by virtue of just having Office and PS installed on the computer?
BanjoBob is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-11-2019, 09:57 AM   #4
DVDdoug
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
Posts: 2,779
Default

This page tells you how to make installation media for a "fresh install".

Quote:
That being said, can anyone offer any tips on things I can do at the install phase of windows to optimize the computer for audio recording.
Glitch Free.

Quote:
I will however need to have Office and Photoshop installed (not to be used at the same time as recording). Is there anything you know of that would cause an issue/conflict with my recording software by virtue of just having Office and PS installed on the computer?
There should be no conflict. The main concern is if you go on the Internet and "play around" downloading stuff and end-up messing-up your computer.

...I have a dedicated audio/video computer for the "opposite reason"... I sometimes download free audio/video tools/utilities and I don't want to screw-up my office computer.
DVDdoug is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-13-2019, 03:57 AM   #5
Cranky Emu
Human being with feelings
 
Cranky Emu's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 489
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by BanjoBob View Post
I will however need to have Office and Photoshop installed (not to be used at the same time as recording)
Guessing you don't have a second machine to run office/photoshop on then.

I can't speak for Office as I do not use it, I am an OpenOffice user myself. Adobe installs a lot of stuff onto your machine, and there is a hell of a lot running in the background and at start-up, so you may want to hop into msconfig and have a beak at what is being loaded during boot and get rid of anything that does not need to be loaded then, like bridge, adobe-arm and so on. Disabling/deleting these from boot will not effect the programs in any way - but it will make your boot a lot faster and free up ram from being chewed up by all the junk being loaded.

I had Audition previously and it is the same ilk as all Adobe products now, just blatant bloated software. A myriad of stuff loading at boot that is not needed.

There should not be any problems with those programs installed on the laptop along with Reaper, just keep in mind about the above with what is being loaded at boot, as it will slow it down a lot.

As for backups, you can never have to many backup mirror images
__________________
♫ C. Emu ♫
Cranky Emu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-13-2019, 11:45 AM   #6
JeffreyET
Human being with feelings
 
JeffreyET's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
Posts: 405
Default

FWIW, I made the jump from W7 to W10 last year. I assumed it would be a good idea to apply all the same tweaks I had done before, e.g. disable throttling. It was a bad idea. W10 seemed to perform best if left alone.
__________________
Jeffrey's REAPER tracks Are on Spotify as well as most other streaming services, under the name Karmic Cage.
JeffreyET is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-13-2019, 12:03 PM   #7
BanjoBob
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Houston, Tx
Posts: 9
Default

I've seen a few other things to make me think that as well.

I've been using W10 on a Desktop that has not been optimized at all with the exception of setting power mgmnt to high performance. I have not done a lot of recording but have been working with some pretty big practice songs I've found on the net with no issues what so ever.

My plan is mostly to record acoustic/bluegrass music so I probably won't use all 8 inputs all the time, but could be. I have some friends with bands that include drums that I sit in with occasionally, so I could see myself possibly adding 8 more through adat, but that would be the max I would use this laptop for so between the SSD drive for OS and a 2nd internal SSd for recording and 16gigs ram, I probably won't have to do a lot of tweaking to windows.

Does that sound reasonable?
BanjoBob is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-13-2019, 02:04 PM   #8
toleolu
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 2,423
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffreyET View Post
FWIW, I made the jump from W7 to W10 last year. I assumed it would be a good idea to apply all the same tweaks I had done before, e.g. disable throttling. It was a bad idea. W10 seemed to perform best if left alone.
That's probably some of the best advise I've seen on this forum with respect to tweaking and performance issues. Don't get me wrong, if playing around with all the techy stuff in a computer is your thing, more power to you. But as someone who has done all of that stuff over the years, I've come to the conclusion that I'll forego the marginal performance improvements gained by tweaking things out in exchange for a stable, reliable system.

If you did a clean Windows install, and you have a separate drive for your data, then I'd say you're in pretty good shape. Make sure you regularly back things up, perform a little basic maintenance every now and then, and you'll be fine.

Oh, and one last thing. Create a restricted user account for your day to day usage. Using accounts with admin rights for day to day operations is a disaster waiting to happen.
toleolu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-13-2019, 10:56 PM   #9
Cranky Emu
Human being with feelings
 
Cranky Emu's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 489
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by toleolu View Post
That's probably some of the best advise I've seen on this forum with respect to tweaking and performance issues. Don't get me wrong, if playing around with all the techy stuff in a computer is your thing, more power to you. But as someone who has done all of that stuff over the years, I've come to the conclusion that I'll forego the marginal performance improvements gained by tweaking things out in exchange for a stable, reliable system.
This is so true, you read about these so-called "Registry hacks", terrific huh? The reality is, with most of them there is very little benefit to be gained. And unless you are confident enough to know your way around the registry (most are not) then you risk stuffing your system up, having programs not run etc.

Fresh clean install. Install only what programs you need - the bare bones.

Same for drivers - install only those required, do not use stupid software like driver detective / weupdateforyoumagically (or whatever name they give it) or that kind of bullshit. Use the drivers that came with the gear your using, or get them from the manufacturer website.
__________________
♫ C. Emu ♫
Cranky Emu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2019, 02:45 PM   #10
BanjoBob
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Houston, Tx
Posts: 9
Default

I have to say, I don't think I'll ever use a spinner again. This thing is blazing with the OS on a SSD. (just received it Friday).

Thanks everyone for the help!
BanjoBob is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 01:28 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.