Interest check | optimizing Win-10 for audio

[keith_correa]

Guys, for the past week or so, I've been anally tweaking my low end Windows 10 laptop to extract the maximum performance from it for audio playback. I've browsed a lot, collected tweaks from all over, read MSDN a lot [much more than I used to do when I used to code ], implemented the "tweaks" and have made rough [very!] notes on what I did. I have got VERY good results to the point that running the free version of "Fidelizer" in Extremist mode does not add anything positive to my system. In my current state of madness, I feel that if I put together a document or pdf with what I did to attain this level of performance, others could benefit and also save money in buying software that will tweak Windows to audiophile levels.

Things that I would want to make clear in advance:

1. These tweaks are collected from various sources over the internet. 99% are not my own. I will not be able to provide the source from where I got these simply because I have not kept track.
   
2. These work superbly on Win 10 Professional running on my 8 year old laptop with a 64 AMD Turion 64 processor and 1.5 GB of RAM that I recently saved from being thrown away. I'm using a USB DAC and JRiver as the media player. If they work well on this laptop, there is no reason why it will not work on your modern machines. hyeah:
   
3. I will not be able to provide screenshots for implementing most of the tweaks because that is just too much of work for me. So this means that some amount of "expertise" is expected from folks wanting to implement this.
   
4. If you junk your OS by implementing some/all of these tweaks, you are on your own. I will not be able to help you restore the OS back to it's original state thought a simple OS reset should restore things back. Having said that, I have not thrashed the OS yet when I implemented the tweaks!!!
   
5. I will not be providing any JRiver tweaks because that is too specific and folks may be using their own media players so I think it's best to keep the tweaks confined to the OS.
   
6. My laptop is being used for NOTHING else except as a music player so some tweaks disable a lot of functionality. Where ever possible, I will try to put in Notes saying what will NOT work if a tweak is implemented - but don't expect that I will put this in all the time.
   
7. I will expect you to take snapshots before you implement a tweak so you can revert back to the state it was before implementing a tweak if needed.
   
8. I will do this in my own sweet time so do not expect a quick turnaround on anything because my other life will take priority over this.
   
9. This will be a WIP as more tweaks are discovered and implemented by me and I would expect others to contribute too and I would update that central "repository" to include those tweaks.
   
10. Microsoft's updates to the OS probably will PROBABLY back out some implemented tweaks which means that the tweaks MAY have to be redone after any update to OS components etc.
    
11. I do not know if these tweaks will work for Win 7 or 8 but most should. Windows Server 12? I don't have a clue.

Now after you reading through the negatives listed above, before I start putting this together, I want to invite opinion from the community on the best way for me to do this OR whether there is interest in this at all from the community.

Please let me know what you folks think and thanks for reading through.

 

[jls001]

When are you starting?

Do hurry up, with lots of screen shots

Edit: I volunteer to try them on Win 2012 R2.

 

[AVcrazy]

Subscribed! Can't wait!

 

[ranjeetrain]

Surely interested. Much better than to pay $100-200 for proprietary software to someone else!

BTW, I have been able to customize Windows 7 (other OS I haven't tried that deeply) down to this level.

• Concurrently running "processes" 15-17
• Concurrently running "threads" 150-180
• "Handles" used by system < 3000
• "Memory" utilization ~ 220MB idle, less than 250MB while running Foobar/MediaMonkey but not playing music, ~250MB + size of the track playing (while playing music).

With the above I get better result for free than many paid software.

Some screenshots: Dev-Host - Winphile Memory Usage 01.jpg - The Ultimate Free File Hosting / File Sharing Service Dev-Host - Winphile Latency.jpg - The Ultimate Free File Hosting / File Sharing Service

 

[regeHA]

Yup, definitely interested.

 

[rbalu72]

interested and subscribed.

 

[keith_correa]

This may have to wait for a while. I have reached out to someone I know who worked in the Windows 10 dev. team @ Microsoft for suggestions/some answers. He says he will track down the person/s who are/were handling the audio stack and try to get me something in approx. 2 weeks.

 

[ranjeetrain]

^^ What are the question you have posed them? May be someone here already knows!?

 

[AVcrazy]

I found this while surfing the other day:
Archimago's Musings: MEASUREMENTS: Audiophile Sound and Operating Systems. (Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Fidelizer & JPLAY again!)

Seems interesting and the author also presents some quantitative data.

 

[keith_correa]

I found this while surfing the other day:
Archimago's Musings: MEASUREMENTS: Audiophile Sound and Operating Systems. (Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Fidelizer & JPLAY again!)

Seems interesting and the author also presents some quantitative data.

Yes, this has already been shared before by me on another thread. Hmm, data! What would the world be without data.

^^ What are the question you have posed them? May be someone here already knows!?

Even if someone here already "knows", I would place more weightage to answers to technical questions from a known source in Microsoft rather than multiple people attempting to answer questions posed here and getting this thread off course.

 

[ranjeetrain]

Okay, that's a personal decision to follow a certain approach.

The best source of authentic information about Microsoft products is MSDN/Technet. Due to the work culture in Microsoft (and most other top software companies) "Developers" know little to nothing more, about the "piece of a module of a subproduct of a product" they are working on, than what their documentation states/asks them to do. They work on a very very small fraction of a whole thing. So their knowledge about the whole product is good only in that ratio.

I know a whole bunch of people in top 10 software companies at personal level and I know how deep/shallow their understanding about the product they are associated with is is. People on technical fora answering user questions, on the other hand, come across more knowledgeable. Often more knowledgeable than the Microsoft product team members, and some times even more than their own official documentation. If I needed answers to "technical question" I would approach it differently.

Anyway, I was trying to help. Looking forward to good results. Because in the end result is what matters the most.

 

[keith_correa]

Okay, that's a personal decision to follow a certain approach.

The best source of authentic information about Microsoft products is MSDN/Technet. Due to the work culture in Microsoft (and most other top software companies) "Developers" know little to nothing more, about the "piece of a module of a subproduct of a product" they are working on, than what their documentation states/asks them to do. They work on a very very small fraction of a whole thing. So their knowledge about the whole product is good only in that ratio.

I know a whole bunch of people in top 10 software companies at personal level and I know how deep/shallow their understanding about the product they are associated with is is. People on technical fora answering user questions, on the other hand, come across more knowledgeable. Often more knowledgeable than the Microsoft product team members, and some times even more than their own official documentation. If I needed answers to "technical question" I would approach it differently.

Anyway, I was trying to help. Looking forward to good results. Because in the end result is what matters the most.

I've come across MANY instances where MSDN is wrong. The MS guys don't update them too despite many people pointing out the mistakes. And as for "TechNet" - I've had very bad experiences with them - sometimes you're lucky and get a Microsoft person who knows his stuff and gives you the right answer but most times, someone from their periphery attempts to answer and makes a right hash of the whole thing. If it were up to me, and if I could, I'd ask Mark Russinovich - he's one guy who really knows his stuff!!!

 

[afj]

this is like the friend that comes up to you and says " you know what...." and then stops talking

 

[keith_correa]

this is like the friend that comes up to you and says " you know what...." and then stops talking

I know! That occurred to me too. In hindsight, I should have got all this written up and then posted. But that's OK. My intentions were good. Still is.

OK, so I'm done with documenting some of the basic tweaks that need to be done and I want to unleash it on this unsuspecting audience. The advanced tweaks will follow later.

But before doing so, can I request someone using a machine running Windows 10 as a dedicated music player to volunteer to check if what I've put in is doable and correct on Win 10? Also if incorrect, to make corrections. The reason being that I'm documenting this on a Win 7 machine because my Win 10 machine does not have any word processing software. After this sort of "proof reading", we [the proof reader and I] will release the 1st version of this. Please PM me if volunteering.

 

[keith_correa]

Nobody volunteered to proof-read. No matter.

First version consisting of basic tweaks.

 

[keith_correa]

Nobody volunteered to proof-read. No matter.

First version consisting of basic tweaks.

Next version - see Page 2 for change log.

 

[jmascreen]

do you have an immediate solution for 100% disk usage while starting and most of the time, I had disabled all notifications but still the disk usage is 100%. Seems this is causing some issues while playing songs, initially its bit slow later picks up.

 

[keith_correa]

Ctrl+Shift+Escape - sort by CPU and see what's using it up.

 

[ranjeetrain]

do you have an immediate solution for 100% disk usage while starting and most of the time, I had disabled all notifications but still the disk usage is 100%. Seems this is causing some issues while playing songs, initially its bit slow later picks up.

Ctrl+Shift+Escape - sort by CPU and see what's using it up.

Disk usage/CPU usage? Can't follow what's going on here.

100% disk usage? Can you post a screenshot? What's the PC configuration?

 

[keith_correa]

I think it's 100% cpu usage.