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Have you translated this to Vista?

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In Reply to: RE: Update v0.3: The Art of building Computer Transports posted by cics on September 14, 2007 at 15:07:18

Hey cics - just wondering if you've played around with these tweaks/optimizations with Windows Vista yet? I've started to, and it looks like a lot of these improvements we noticed with XP also apply to Vista. BTW, I've been testing this with a new music player: XXHighEnd (www.phasure.com)

And also, I wanted to let you know that I discovered a glitch with the .bat files we created. I don't think it's only specific to my setup, but let me know if you experience the same thing. In the line:

start /b /wait c:\process.exe -p svchost.exe Low

This only changes the first instance of svchost.exe (of which you can see there are multiple instances). Double check your Task Manager or Process Explorer and you'll see that not all instances of svchost have their priority set to LOW (only the first one). So the way I'm doing it, is by referencing the PID #s like this:

start /b /wait c:\process.exe -p 704 Low
start /b /wait c:\process.exe -p 760 Low
start /b /wait c:\process.exe -p 800 Low

This way I change every instance. The only problem is that the PIDs for the svchost processes are different every time you boot (which you can check with Process Explorer). So you can either manually enter it in the .bat file each time you boot or I have created an automatic process that does this for me.

Follow Ups:

RE: Have you translated this to Vista? - cics 00:47:23 09/19/07 (4)
Vista:

I received an email on this subject. I haven't tried Vista and my readings on it seems to put me off (sorry). See link below. It has a lot more bloat/overheads (poorer performance benchmarks in site suggest this). I found best results when 'execution path' is minimal. Vista doesn't seem to support '/timeres=9800' switch which is an important requirement. My thinking would be in Linux direction...

Most optimizations should work for Vista with positive results.

XXHighEnd may be an alternative to foobar. I don't think it supports upsampling using SRC (which would be a big disadvantage if so). With Foobar, it must be tuned as suggested (this gets you to the purity of XXHighEnd). Looking into it... I would suggest first upgrading from Foobar 0.8 to 0.9 with latest ASIO components, etc..

It would be interesting to compare Vista with XP. For now, XP with all optimizations is very good and natural. I'm no longer trying to fix that 'something missing feeling' anymore.

Command for svchost:

Yes I'm aware of this and left it so deliberately. Ideally, you should only have one svchost process running RPC. My concern with downgrading other svchosts is that they may be related to sound or graphics software installations specific to computer and such downgrading may have negative impacts.

Your approach using PID to downgrade other svchosts is correct. Another way is using pskill utility that does all svchosts in one call (note I haven't tested this).
- XP vs Vista (Open in New Window)
- RE: Have you translated this to Vista? - edward 16:15:57 09/19/07 (3)
  Well, XXHighEnd does not use plug-in architecture so it does not support SRC, but indeed it does oversample (to 88.2) and upsample (to 96). The oversample option sounds very good on my DAC. It does not yet, however, support 24bit, but it's still in beta and hopefully that will change in the next month or two.
  
  As for Vista. I was able to disable A LOT of services, so I don't really feel it's "bloated", but maybe I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Anyway, I can appreciate your hesitation and I respect that article with the benchmarks, but when it comes to music I wouldn't discount it until you've actually listened and compared. I know when you ventured on this "tweaks" path with XP, you verified everything you changed by listening to it. I hope you can do the same with Vista. And as for XXHighEnd, I believe it is the first player to use Vista's new "exclusive mode" which I believe replaces XP's "kernel streaming". Anyway, good things can happen with exclusive mode. The programmer says its better than ASIO.
  - Have you compared optimized Foobar 0.9.4.4 with XXHighEnd? - cics 22:37:52 09/19/07 (2)
    I would be very interested in your findings.
    
    In time I hope to test both Vista and Linux.
    - RE: Have you compared optimized Foobar 0.9.4.4 with XXHighEnd? - edward 03:38:30 09/20/07 (1)
      Yes, I tried foobar 0.9.4.4 (with ASIO) on the same Vista machine that I am running XXHighEnd and I prefer XXHighEnd.
      - RE: Have you compared optimized Foobar 0.9.4.4 with XXHighEnd? - Telstar 12:59:59 11/20/07 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Have you compared optimized Foobar 0.9.4.4 with XXHighEnd? posted by edward on September 20, 2007 at 03:38:30
        
        Yes, I tried foobar 0.9.4.4 (with ASIO) on the same Vista machine that I am running XXHighEnd and I prefer XXHighEnd.
        
        I tried 0.9.5beta3 with ASIO and prefer XX too, by a slight margin. Margin that will improve when I get a DAC with a driver that allows for exclusive mode.

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