September 2009

The tuning tips below should be implemented if you want to achieve high speed, low latency audio recording and playback without glitches with your Firewire audio interface.


• Tuning Tips for Windows Vista

(Steps 1 to 5 can all be done from the Control panel)

1/. The first thing to do is to change the Processor Scheduling to 'Background Services'. This will improve the performance of ASIO drivers on the PC.

Go to System > Advanced system settings > Performance settings > Set Processor Scheduling to Background Services


2/. Next thing is to configure is the Power Management on your PC. If the power plan is set to conserve energy, the CPU may not be running at full speed all of the time, which may be the cause of problems with audio performance.

Go to Power Options > Select the 'High Performance' power plan


3/. Then you should disable all system sounds. The windows alert sounds popping up during a recording session may interrupt the audio stream.

Go to Sounds > Click the 'Sounds' tab > Change the sound scheme to 'No Sounds'


4/. Enable DMA on each IDE channel.

Open device manager, expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers category then double click on each one of the IDE channels, under the 'Advanced settings' tab, make sure the 'Enable DMA' box is ticked in device properties.


5/. Disable Windows Firewall.

This should be set to ‘off’ and all network/internet connections, anti-virus and spyware detection software should be disabled during recording to avoid any interference.



• Windows Task List.

Once you have been through all of the above stages in the Windows control panel, you should then take a look at all the Processes running