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Windows 10 settings / stuff you can turn off for music?

cqd said:
Check out the windows 10 debloater..it's a script you run in powershell and it deletes all the crap..When you get rid of said crap, win 10 is very like win 7..Well, mine is anyway..filetree? comes in handy to track down anything taking up space..
I find it grand..My machine is online a bit, and clean as a whistle really..
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It would be fine when used upon fresh W10 installation, with nothing in it yet, but I have everything set up, running and don't want to mess things up.

Thanks
 
Audio Birdi said:
Make sure your sample drives are excluded from Windows Defender within settings. Your samples will load slowly otherwise. I scratched my head over this for a while and then realised later. Since Microsoft Security Essentials and Defender are both integrated into Windows 10 now.
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How do you do this Audio Bird?
 
David Enos said:
How do you do this Audio Bird?
Click to expand...
In fact, if you have any Anti-virus (which would be the wise choice), then Windows Defender does not interfere.

In that case, just go to the settings of your anti-virus, and there must be an option to "exclude folders from scanning", or equivalent.

Simply add the folders you dont want to be scanned.
This should include:
1. Your VST3 folder (usually in Program Files/Common Files/VST3)
2. Your VST2 folder (normally in Program Files/VSTPlugins)
3. Your Kontakt folder (Program Files/Common files/Native Instruments). This will make a huge difference every time that you load Kontakt!
4. And lastly, the folders where you have placed your Kontakt libraries.

Namaskar!
 
Omji said:
In fact, if you have any Anti-virus (which would be the wise choice), then Windows Defender does not interfere.

In that case, just go to the settings of your anti-virus, and there must be an option to "exclude folders from scanning", or equivalent.

Simply add the folders you dont want to be scanned.
This should include:
1. Your VST3 folder (usually in Program Files/Common Files/VST3)
2. Your VST2 folder (normally in Program Files/VSTPlugins)
3. Your Kontakt folder (Program Files/Common files/Native Instruments). This will make a huge difference every time that you load Kontakt!
4. And lastly, the folders where you have placed your Kontakt libraries.

Namaskar!
Click to expand...
This is awesome, thank you Audio Bird! :)
 
Omji said:
In fact, if you have any Anti-virus (which would be the wise choice), then Windows Defender does not interfere.

In that case, just go to the settings of your anti-virus, and there must be an option to "exclude folders from scanning", or equivalent.

Simply add the folders you dont want to be scanned.
This should include:
1. Your VST3 folder (usually in Program Files/Common Files/VST3)
2. Your VST2 folder (normally in Program Files/VSTPlugins)
3. Your Kontakt folder (Program Files/Common files/Native Instruments). This will make a huge difference every time that you load Kontakt!
4. And lastly, the folders where you have placed your Kontakt libraries.

Namaskar!
Click to expand...
Thank you Audio Bird. I have had drives 'excluded' for years but never thought to exclude the VST and VST3 plugin folders. Seem breezier on open of project(s).
 
This is when I realize I have VSTs in too many places. And I forgot Kontakt is in a separate place. But thanks for reminding me to do this.
 
When I get ready to fire Cubase up, I do the following things:
1. Turn off the internet.
2. Use Wise Memory Optimizer. It brings my CPU usage from 25% to around 18%.
 
Not sure if it's been posted, but,

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/author/petebrown/

this is the only "tweak" guide I follow, aside from adding my DAW .exe as a process exclusion within windows "Virus & Threat Protection" setting. Adding the .exe as an "Process" rather than a "File" means that any files that the .exe "touches", for lack of a better term, is also excluded from scanning. So kontakt etc sample files.
 
Lannister said:
Not sure if it's been posted, but,

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/author/petebrown/

this is the only "tweak" guide I follow, aside from adding my DAW .exe as a process exclusion within windows "Virus & Threat Protection" setting. Adding the .exe as an "Process" rather than a "File" means that any files that the .exe "touches", for lack of a better term, is also excluded from scanning. So kontakt etc sample files.
Click to expand...
Excellent post. I hadn't consider this. One novice question - when w10 asks to 'enter process name' - can you tell me what to enter there? Thanks in advance.
 
On my new PC, I had external drives (non-SSD) and after a while I heard those drives continuously spinning. And when I started the task manager, I saw there was indeed continuous access on multiple drives (including my C drive which I did not hear as it is an SSD, but also my external drives). But sadly, the task manager only pinpointed general/shared Windows DLLs as the culprit.

Ofcourse this had a negative effect on the performance of my computer (and thus music making applications).

I found out that among others:
a) my computer was scanned for (only) multi-media files (photos, audio files, video files, etc)
b) to enable fast-search, Windows has an indexing process that scans all files on all drives (this is a different process than that for a)
c) there was also a file synchronization taking place to the cloud (Microsoft OneDrive) (which I never have said that should take place)

These are three separate processes that did scan my terabyte big drives.
And this is also separate from any anti-virus program.

You can disable all three processes (among others in the Services), but I needed much time to figure things out, as the windows Task Manager was so un-helpfull by just showing general/shared Windows DLL's.
 
Rob Elliott said:
Excellent post. I hadn't consider this. One novice question - when w10 asks to 'enter process name' - can you tell me what to enter there? Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
It depends on which DAW you use, and what the .exe is called. For example, for Cubase 12 it's "Cubase12.exe.", if it's REAPER then it's "reaper.exe". The easiest way to find the executable name is to, 1). know which DAW you're using, and 2) find the executable (.exe) in the Task Manager.
 
Ok thanks - I am on Cubase 11. I'll look in the task mgr. I don't see 'file extensions' in my folders though (prolly have to turn that 'on')
 
Lannister said:
this is the only "tweak" guide I follow, aside from adding my DAW .exe as a process exclusion within windows "Virus & Threat Protection" setting.
Click to expand...
I'm stunned, did that and opened a project which loaded pretty much faster. Many thanks for the tip!
 
The only three things that do help (noticable in varying degrees)..
- excluding the sample locations within the antivirus tool (third party or windows defender)
- in case of nvidia GPU. use the Studio driver instead of the Game Ready Driver.
- Play with the audio buffers in the audio driver (set it to a reasonable amount, not too tight).


Besides above (i mention them separately because it's obvious i think):
- If having a dedicated audio card/unit, use the drivers provided by the vendor, don't use asio4all.
- Remain up to date (Drivers, Windows, tools, libraries etc), to receive improvements/fixes for both.

-bonus tip (my experience, i've read some others having the same):
The above should be fine, for most duties. However, Vienna Ensemble Pro can help with CPU utlilisation/threading with plugins/samples. Often times it can handle it far better than the daw itself can (on the same system). As a new VEP user, I noticed a lower cpu utilisation when loading the same plugin via VEP or in the DAW directly, from a few percentages, to 20-ish percent depending on the plugins.


Don't go edit registry settings and disabling services etc etc (without actually knowing what you are doing).. often it won't do much good and can even lead to system instabillities. (just don't copy an paste registry stuff from sites, be sure you know what they actually do. Same for disabling/removing services). Also turning off networking/internet won't do anything in gaining performance/stability of the music tools (unless you have auto update enabled in those tools)

Although this thread is for Windows 10, this is also my experience with Windows 11 (pro).
My DAW (Cubase pro 12) and the templates i am using (many tracks and many libraries/patches), work without issues.
(no dropouts, crackling, slowness etc)
 
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