Need Help Maximizing My Laptop's Performance Speed

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$uni

Guest
Hey guys, I'm pretty much as noob as it gets to ASIO4ALL, Soundcards, Drivers.. seriously it's all kind of overwhelming, so bare with me.

My laptop setup: Dell N5010.. Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 380 2.53GHz (RAM 4.0GB with 3.80GB Usable) 64-Bit Operating System

I have Asio4All installed and I have my Akai 49 Keyboard hooked up. My problem is, I will be working on a project and I will have SO many underruns. Like literally up into the 800's to 1000's range. This is partly due to the fact that I just ignore it and try to make the song still. Im tired of ignoring it though, especially since I am considering getting an audio interface soon. I went on FL studio's troubleshooting and I changed my computer settings to High Performance Mode and I have been messing around with the Asio4All Buffer Length. My underruns have definitely decreased from just changing these two, but I also definitely need some advice.

How can I fix this issue? And if you have any links that would teach me more about this I would be greatly appreciative. I might be a noob, but I'm a noob that wants to learn :)
 
you probably have looked at this already but...
-http://www.image-line.com/support/FLHelp/html/app_underrun.htm
-http://www.theflipsideforum.com/index.php?topic=19082.0


Also bouncing audio tracks might help it run smoother...
- the vst could be the problem....

Ccleaner may also help...
-http://download.cnet.com/CCleaner/
 
Ccleaner
Making sure the desktop doesnt have large files or folders on it
Also, if you're DAW allows it, you can solidify processing plug-ins into audio files. I forget what this is called, but it's an undesirable solution since you may need to change effects on the fly. It's a lot like bouncing them into audio files though, so you might as well do that
Lastly, the sampling rate, if you don't know about it, is a good thing to look at. The higher your sampling rate, the better you will run everything, but there will be a delay in regards to recording, so people like to record at a low sampling rate. This is less of a problem with midi though.
 
I've been in your situation, sadly my final decision was that I had to buy a better computer.
However, you can get pretty far by turning off the wifi, bluetooth etc, checking the energy schedule, closing unnecessary programs, ending unnecessary processes in the task manager (be careful here).

It's great to get more RAM but that's out of the question if the computer can't support more RAM than it currently has.
Also I would guess that adding more RAM won't help that much if you don't have any good processor.
 
Well yes!
Of course getting a new computer with pretty much the same standards won't do any miracle more than functioning better in the beginning since it's new, it will have to be an upgrade in the specs to work great.
Everything flows on great, except when I use very heavy resampling and heavy plugins where I get some underruns (then I just have to bounce that part), but if you want to avoid them on that level you'll probably need to spend around $2000 I would guess.
But there are projects where I on my previous computer had to maximize the buffer length and still get so many underruns it began to be difficult to actually hear the music, now I can have a short buffer length with no underruns at all on those projects.
But as I said earlier, you can do a lot of things to improve the performance on the current computer.
 
Spaceman_Ant said:
you probably have looked at this already but...
-http://www.image-line.com/support/FLHelp/html/app_underrun.htm
-http://www.theflipsideforum.com/index.php?topic=19082.0


Also bouncing audio tracks might help it run smoother...
- the vst could be the problem....

Ccleaner may also help...
-http://download.cnet.com/CCleaner/
Click to expand...

Good stuff man! I actually already had CCleaner installed, but how often do you clean your computer?

Also, how do you bounce the audio tracks?
 
I forgot if you can even bounce tracks in pro tools. You might just have to solo tracks and export them individually, but maybe someone else can help with that.

I pretty much use ccleaner whenever I think about it. I think its a must have for all computers. With heavy computer usage, I would probably do it once a week.

If you believe malware is an issue though, that's a whole different conversation
 
$uni said:
Good stuff man! I actually already had CCleaner installed, but how often do you clean your computer?
Click to expand...

CCleaner should be run once a week or more often if you are adding new programs all hte time

You might also consider something like tinywatcher as a startup and post-install checker to monitor changes that programs and updates make to your registry settings

$uni said:
Also, how do you bounce the audio tracks?
Click to expand...

pro tools bouncing tracks
 
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press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and start "Task Manager"
Under "processes" activate "show processes from all users"
Then you see what processes uses how much CPU and what user and app uses the processorforce
Then you can shut down the processes you don't need
If you don't need the process at all and it starts everytime you turn the computer on, you can change to "Services" in "task manager" and press the button "Services" at the bottom and when the "services window" pop's up you simple right click the name of the service you want to shut down and choose "properties" and change the "startup type" to what is more suitable f.eks "manual" or you can disable it totally.
But make sure you know what else the service does so you don't mess with operations needed for the OS for important tasks. But most people can remove alot of these services started with the OS without missing anything
I would rather do this first before letting any thirdpart software go through my register.
Check out "HiJackThis" if you believe there's anything bugging your system, this program doesn't change your register and use very little resources. One of the best programs for this use.
Hope you figure it out
Mvh
B
 
Im just curious....
Have you tried any of these things... if so has it made a different while running your daw...
which do you think helped out the most...
or rather after which process did you notice a change...???
 
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hijack this needs a lot of experience to understand what should and shouldn't be shutdown - you are probably better off running it and then seeking help interpreting the results fro the guys over at majorgeeks.com

ccleaner is good for a registry clean as it does not remove anything that is still valid
- you can choose to make a backup of your registry first to catch nay poor deletion choices (i.e. you can recover quickly if needed - via a safe mode start and running ccleaner to restore your last good registry settings)
- you should run it several times until it shows no further issues
 
Just so that nobody misunderstands ;)
HiJackThis is not for finding services to shut down but to find faults in register etc. and it gives you unik opertunity to make a print of everything. and it gives you the oppertunity to map unknown links to 127.0.0.1 for safety aswell
To start stop services you use "task manager" just make sure you read all about what the services do before shutdown. If you are not sure try to just stop them and see if you loose anything, It will start again when you reboot
 
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