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In Reply to: Computer Audio Tweak...... posted by Todd Krieger on April 21, 2007 at 02:31:21:
...when building a HTPC or audio server PC.You're bang on here Todd.
Here's another good one:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
I've never had any problems following his "services map", and the reference you provided - I've used that one too.
The trick to minimizing services is to minimize FUNCTIONS. The closer you can come to the audio app being your only function, the fewer services you're going to need. Of course, you'll always need a certain number of essential system (OS) services. Here are some no-brainers for an audio-only PC:
1) No internet connection
2) No networking connections
3) No wireless card
4) No network card enabled
5) No Auto-Protection products
6) No software firewall products
7) No bloatware or un-needed programs that autostart.
8) No needless "system tray" appsSome argue that modern PC power does not require this level of tweakery, and that it's just a potential source of trouble. They're right. It can be trouble. But an IRQ on a super fast machine is still an IRQ!
Now, if you don't have any of THIS stuff on your PC, you can run with about 15 or so essential services - and 99% of the time these services just sit there.
Another neat concept is "mapping" processes to different processors in dual processor machines (affinity settings). This way, when an essential OS service "kicks in" in kicks in on "processor 0" while the audio app is running happily on "processor 1".
Christime Tham has some cool ideas about how to set up PC's so that they don't rely on frequenct hard-disk page-file operations. Although getting the PC out of the room is a good way to go, the technology to build machines that are not only audibly quieter, but have less "logic noise" from unnecessary processes is coming fast.
If you *are* going to mess with services, you have to know (quite intimately) about what each service does and what all the dependencies are. If you don't, you can always try one or two services at a time (based on recommendataion of Service Tweak sites of course) and see if your computer still works! ;^D.
I prefer the former as to the latter approach! ;)
I've used both your reference as well as black viper with great success. I prefer BV - because he seems to test his stuff pretty thoroughly, and provides the different "levels". The first time I used this tweak, I almost crapped my drawers when I saw how much faster my PC simply booted up, and how much smoother the entire PC ran in general.
Thanks for bringing this subject up Todd.
I think folks who "poo poo" PC audio are trying to use PC's that are simply OT optimized for A/V applications. If you didn't post this in Computer Audio Asylum, perhaps you should...
Follow Ups:
Hey P,It may be prudent to create a copy of the current hardware profile and do ones tweaking there. That way, if the changes screw things up too much, you always have the original.
FOr the duel use PC (I recommend a dedicated pc by the way) you could have a gaming profile, music profile, general use profile, etc.
"1) No internet connection"Makes it difficult to listen to YouTube videos this way.... [-;
If I ever get back home permanently, I might retire this laptop and make it a music controller.
For I think the ideal setup for PC-based music is a laptop with a slower, low-power-consumption processor (less RFI), the internal hard drive with all the applications running from it, and an external hard drive dedicated for music storage. And only for music storage. (Western Digital "My Book" is a good external drive.) Feeding a good USB DAC. (I still like the Fubar.)
The apps:
For music acquisition: Alcohol 120%. Rip the audio to the PC's local drive. Then run UltraISO to convert the Alcohol image files to .wav files and store on the external drive. (A 500 GB drive should store music from about 750 CDs in non-compressed .wav format. And if you run out of space, just swap it out for another one. The Alcohol files are initially stored to the local drive because the conversion won't "multitask" the external drive, possibly injecting jitter into the data.) The data is bit perfect (identical to file ripped directly from EAC or dBPowerAmp), and produces superior fidelity.
For playback, the latest Winamp. The best audio codec I've found, is from a company called "DScaler". (Comes with the Zoom audio player.) Very close to the best CD playback.
The PC is set up with Windows Kernel Streaming and/or ASIO, with the Windows processing bypassed (unless you need software based volume control).
For music acquisition: Alcohol 120%. Rip the audio to the PC's local drive. Then run UltraISO to convert the Alcohol image files to .wav files and store on the external drive. (A 500 GB drive should store music from about 750 CDs in non-compressed .wav format. And if you run out of space, just swap it out for another one. The Alcohol files are initially stored to the local drive because the conversion won't "multitask" the external drive, possibly injecting jitter into the data.) The data is bit perfect (identical to file ripped directly from EAC or dBPowerAmp), and produces superior fidelity.Todd, this is really confusing. Why the need for all these steps? Why not just use eac?
Also, how can bit perfect identical files produce superior fidelity?
Todd,What version of Dscaler are you running? I'm going to try some the reducing services tricks listed in this thread. I'm running an E-Mu 1616M off a Sony VGC-LS1 sourcing Hd drive WAV files and Internet radio.
"What version of Dscaler are you running?"The one that came with Zoom player, which I tried from a recommendation a couple weeks ago. When I went back to Winamp, I noticed Winamp's sound improved relative to before I installed Zoom player, and I found out the "DScaler" audio codec nudged out the FFDSHOW audio codec. Kind of "discovery by accident," if you will. (Zoom sounds very similar to Foobar, and may be preferred on PCs with a lot of horsepower. More-forgiving, but not as resolute.)
I did switch back to the FFDSHOW codec, to make sure what I was hearing was due to the unexpected changeover, and indeed it was.
Hey Todd:Is that Dscaler codec for cdda (playing right from CD drive) or for playing wav files from HD?
Thanks.
I'll tell you what I know....It's Dscaler 5. It came as part of the Zoom Player install. It consists of an MPEG video decoder and an audio decoder of unspecified type. The "Help" section is an empty shell.
The only thing I do know is the audio decoder is extremely good. I no longer use the audio decoder from FFDSHOW. (DScaler is an option with FFDSHOW on the video side.)
nt
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