Performance tweaking in Windows 11

Marcus_Svensor wrote on 6/20/2023, 5:22 AM

Recently we have updated to Windows 11 with a clean install.

Although it is working, during realtime playback especially with plugins open, the playback display is not as smooth as it used to be, the meters especially are very glichy.  Could you please make suggestions for Windows 11 performance tweaking to get the best performance in ACID Pro 11

The PC is a 10th Gen i9 i9-10900F CPU @ 2.80GHz, ASUS Prime B460 Plus motherboard, 32 Gb RAM (Corsair CMT16GX4M2C3200C16 4x8GB), ZOTAC GTX 1650 Super 4GB, Samsung 970 Pro NVMe PCIe 512GB Boot disc, Samsung 860 Pro 1TB and WD Green 1TB S-ATA (internal) for backups. Hammerfall 9632 PCI soundcard with expansion boards.

Comments

SP. wrote on 6/20/2023, 6:54 AM

@Marcus_Svensor Did you update the drivers of your soundcard to the newest Windows 11 drivers? Is the ASIO driver selected in the program preferences and the buffer size in the driver settings not too small?

Marcus_Svensor wrote on 6/20/2023, 7:42 AM

We have the buffer in DSP settings set to 1024 with the latest drivers from RME. Automatic detection of offset in ACID Latency and track buffering set to 0.10. The play back audio is smooth as expected but the video display, meters etc. are very glichy.

SP. wrote on 6/20/2023, 8:14 AM

@Marcus_Svensor Have you tried restarting the computer? Please select the Restart option and not the Shut down option.

If this doesn't help you could try to reset the program settings. Hold CTRL and SHIFT and double click on the program icon to start ACID. Keep holding CTRL and SHIFT until a small window appears that will ask you if you want to reset the program settings.

Marcus_Svensor wrote on 6/20/2023, 2:47 PM

Typically the machine is restarted throughout the day - a clean restart makes no difference. All the software is newly installed. Windows, ACID, SoundForge everything. We are looking for tweaks to Windows 11 to improve performance.

SP. wrote on 6/20/2023, 3:24 PM

@Marcus_Svensor Are all pending Windows 11 updates installed?

Djronrella wrote on 6/21/2023, 8:39 AM

here is some info on optimizing

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4408057193362-Optimising-your-PC-for-Audio-on-Windows-11

 

Marcus_Svensor wrote on 6/22/2023, 5:08 AM

here is some info on optimizing

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4408057193362-Optimising-your-PC-for-Audio-on-Windows-11

 

That guide was very useful. Especially disabling exclusive mode for the Soundcard. Here are some more indepth remarks to note:

TPM: Yes
SecureBoot: Yes (eufi)
CSM: Disabled
Visualisation: Yes
XMB1: Yes
CPU / GPU Overclock: No

The PC default Audio routes through the Graphics card and monitor (WDM)

The PCI Soundcard for Production / recording has 3 stereo outputs (RME 9632) routed using ASIO, do not show in the Windows control panel (Non WDM). Only in ACID / SoundForge etc. the software that supports ASIO. The Soundcard is normally set to 48KHz, 24 Bit with a 2048 buffer.

Boot drive is Samsung NVME with 340Gb free
Data drive is Samsung Pro SSD with 428Gb free

Samsung Magician is installed, drives are trimmed, 10% o/p set and performance mode enabled for the data drive.

Windows 11 is 22H2, with all the latest updates and drivers. Whether these are the best drivers I don't know. System protection is turned off on all drives and so is indexing. In advanced system settings, visual is set to best performance, foreground applications and a permanent paging file on the boot drive at 4980. DEP is on.

The screen displays in 4K SDR.

With ACID 11 (latest patch) open, a big project loaded and playing, Task Manager says 22% of (32Gb) RAM is being used. 4% of the Processor.

We use Norton 360 and Utilities. MAGIX have already suggested this to be removed, which we will try.

Suggestions please ?

shkr wrote on 6/22/2023, 5:36 AM

Thing to try: Acid starts in "normal" priority mode. Maybe try to change it via task manager to "high priority" and see what happens. It heleped on my end with big projects.
If that helps you can make a bat script to always start Acid in high priority mode.

Marcus_Svensor wrote on 6/22/2023, 6:22 AM

Thing to try: Acid starts in "normal" priority mode. Maybe try to change it via task manager to "high priority" and see what happens. It heleped on my end with big projects.
If that helps you can make a bat script to always start Acid in high priority mode.

Great suggestion,

Don't need a batch file though to load ACID Priority every time. This command will do the trick:

C:WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start "ACID Pro 11 (x64)" /high "C:\Program Files\ACID\ACID Pro 11.0\acidpro.exe"

SP. wrote on 6/22/2023, 12:54 PM

@Marcus_Svensor I found the following articles. Might be worth to check them out:

Disable All Network Connections

Disable Real Time Antivirus Protection

Make Sure The Audio Interface Is Not Used By the System

Reboot Before The Show

Disable all the drivers that are not required! Good candidates for DPC latency issues are: on-board audio (you don’t need it, remember?), graphics cards (use the built-in GPU instead if you can), network adapters, bluetooth drivers, built-in webcams etc. Disable them all!

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Blog/tip-of-the-day/how-to-optimize-a-windows-laptop-for-low-latency-real-time-audio/

The idea is to force the audio driver and the driver causing DPC latency issues to work on different CPU cores, so that the audio driver is not blocked by the faulty driver that takes time to execute.

To do that, you can edit the interrupt affinity setting for the drivers. You can either go thru the Windows registry manually (good luck!) or use the Microsoft Interrupt-Affinity tool:

In this particular case, the GeForce driver’s affinity has been set to Core #4, while the audio driver has been set to core #16.

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Blog/tip-of-the-day/solving-audio-dropouts-dpc-latency-issues-with-nvidia-drivers-on-windows/

Marcus_Svensor wrote on 6/22/2023, 1:30 PM

@Marcus_Svensor I found the following articles. Might be worth to check them out:

Disable All Network Connections

Disable Real Time Antivirus Protection

Make Sure The Audio Interface Is Not Used By the System

Reboot Before The Show

Disable all the drivers that are not required! Good candidates for DPC latency issues are: on-board audio (you don’t need it, remember?), graphics cards (use the built-in GPU instead if you can), network adapters, bluetooth drivers, built-in webcams etc. Disable them all!

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Blog/tip-of-the-day/how-to-optimize-a-windows-laptop-for-low-latency-real-time-audio/

The idea is to force the audio driver and the driver causing DPC latency issues to work on different CPU cores, so that the audio driver is not blocked by the faulty driver that takes time to execute.

To do that, you can edit the interrupt affinity setting for the drivers. You can either go thru the Windows registry manually (good luck!) or use the Microsoft Interrupt-Affinity tool:

In this particular case, the GeForce driver’s affinity has been set to Core #4, while the audio driver has been set to core #16.

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Blog/tip-of-the-day/solving-audio-dropouts-dpc-latency-issues-with-nvidia-drivers-on-windows/

1. Won't disabling the NIC stop the apps from authorising? It will will certainly give some problems with plugins
2. MAGIX have suggested disabling Norton 360, but I am reluctant to do that, trusting Defender to protect a very escential PC
3. The soundcard is a descreet professional pcix soundcard / dac, it is not visable to windows only ASIO supporting software
4. Onboard audio is disabled, so are serial ports, LPTs etc.
5. My processor does not have an onboard GPU, PEG GTX1650 is the only available
6. The audio does not drop out and I don't use the GEFORCE audio for production
7. Don't have bluetooth or webcams, only device plugged in is the iLOK

The Windows affinity tool looks interesting, but it won't run on my pc