KVR Audio

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:11 am

...not bother to remove all the excess bloat and garbage that MS makes you install and everything still runs smoothly on your system? Just curious if it's worth the effort or not?

The Noodlist · Post by **The Noodlist** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:28 pm

I remove unused apps, disable Cortana, install classic shell. All the usual tweaks, disable unnecessary background apps/services, max power settings, set options to best performance, disable startup apps. Disable Windows sounds and turn off search indexing.

Tried O&O ShutUp10, it always ended up with the dreaded "some settings are managed by your system administrator".

A few apps
Remove Bloat from Windows 10
Windows10Debloater
Disclaimer, I haven't tried any of the above.
10AppsManager

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:37 pm

Define bloat. Define garbage. Define what you are looking for exactly. Then someone might be able to reply to your question. Whatever it is exactly.

Pre-installed software won't be a issue at all, if there is no background task running when Windows is booted.

Unaspected · Post by **Unaspected** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:15 pm

I haven't updated W10 since I installed it over a year ago. I purchased W10 with the Creators Update and made sure my PC was not connected to the internet when I first set it up. A surprising number of system tasks can be turned off to improve performance and startup time. I've had no software issues.

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:20 pm

DevonB wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:11 am ...not bother to remove all the excess bloat and garbage that MS makes you install and everything still runs smoothly on your system? Just curious if it's worth the effort or not?

Yeah, I did that. By the time I was done uninstalling all that crap, I ended up with an iMac.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:52 pm

chk071 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:37 pm Define bloat. Define garbage. Define what you are looking for exactly. Then someone might be able to reply to your question. Whatever it is exactly.

Pre-installed software won't be a issue at all, if there is no background task running when Windows is booted.

Sure. All the stuff that's in/on the Windows Start menu from the time you do the first install. Basically do the install and do nothing else.

Devon

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:56 pm

If you're into pointless work. Those apps won't harm. If you are looking for the last extra tiny bit of performance, rather take a look at autostart apps, and services which are running, and try to otpimize there.

So, regarding your question "Is it worth the effort?". No, in my opinion, it isn't. Especially considering how big hard drives are these days.

bM3w · Post by **bM3w** » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:35 pm

With the exception of setting the power plan to high performance and disabling a few startup apps, there's really not much that would make a significant performance difference - if you got quality hardware. Turning off WiFi and using a wired LAN connection for internet instead can reduce audio crackling in super low latency tracking situations. But there's absolutely no need to cripple Windows 10 down to an unusable state, like many suggest. That's just silly in my opinion. I use my PC for gaming as well and have Defender, Bluetooth and all sorts of background apps running, and yet I can still work on heavy audio projects with no issues.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:37 pm

This ^^

bM3w · Post by **bM3w** » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:49 pm

In fact I recently went through "optimizing a Windows PC for audio" and changed settings in the bios, deactivated Windows services and all the BS many blogs and even trusted hardware manufacturers suggest. And what for? I gained absolutely nothing, besides leaving Windows in a state of uselessness. Some people may get excited of bringing down their latency by 0.03ms, so if you're in that camp, go for it...

bM3w · Post by **bM3w** » Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:11 pm

Now if you buy a PC/Laptop from HP, Dell, Lenovo etc. things look a little different. They usually include plenty of bloatware and "services" that can bring down your performance significantly. But then that's not the fault of Windows 10.

The Noodlist · Post by **The Noodlist** » Mon Sep 16, 2019 12:44 am

Having he ability to switch configuration profiles on the fly sounds interesting.
Deleted app links, Comodo says untrusted certificates.
Smart PC Utilities. Game Fire

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:05 am

That thing looks like bloatware/snake oil right out of the box. It's an extra application running on your system to make temporary changes to things you can easily enough change yourself. No thanks.

DevonB wrote: ↑Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:52 pmSure. All the stuff that's in/on the Windows Start menu from the time you do the first install. Basically do the install and do nothing else.

That's easy. Most of that stuff isn't installed but it will run you through an install process if you click on the tile. That means all you have to do is delete the tiles and you'll never have to worry about those things again. It takes about two minutes. The only ones that may require an actual uninstall are some of the Microsoft things, like the Solitaire collection but you can do that from Start anyway, so what I do is instead of choosing "Remove tile" (or whatever it says) from the right-click menu, I choose "Uninstall" for everything. It still only takes a couple of minutes.

I used to do all the rubbish The Noodlist mentioned when I had a single core Pentium CPU, 256MB of RAM and a 10GB HDD but these days it is all completely unnecessary. Windows 10 already uses one-third fewer system resources than Win7 (half that of XP) and with a modern CPU you really won't notice any difference. I'd make the effort on my Atom powered 8" tablet, if I ever wanted to use it for music production, but on my 17" hexa-core i7 laptop it would be a complete waste of my time. I wouldn't even bother on my Surface Pro 2, which is only running a second-gen Core i5 with 4GB RAM.

PeterP_swe · Post by **PeterP_swe** » Mon Sep 16, 2019 8:16 am

The only "optimization" that had any effect for me was setting the processor scheduling to "Background services". I could push my buffer setting lower without any crackling.

It's not a bad idea to look through what your DAW and Audio Interface provider recommends:

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/ ... Windows-10
https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/a ... Windows-10
https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articl ... l-Settings

Vladislav_Gronk · Post by **Vladislav_Gronk** » Mon Sep 16, 2019 8:19 am

Nope, I dont bother. Everything works fine here.

Has any Windows 10 DAW users....