Laptop tweaks

panditji

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Wanted to share how my simple, humble Dell Laptop's performance has been elevated to super machine levels in the past couple of weeks... I had shared how there was an instant improvement in the SQ by implementing the basic windows tweaks as shared on the internet and some basic setting changes in JRiver... However my laptop SQ went to another level after a member from Mumbai (who wishes to remain anonymous) advised me in tweaking my machine further by removing extra softwares/programs from the BIOS and making some changes to the Wasapi software.... There were additional tweaks which can be implemented by the tech guys but I could not since I am not a tech savvy person...

I know I am gushing but it is because the SQ has improved tremendously with respect to the clarity/details and the huge improvement in bass... I have been asking around on the forum for quite some time on how to improve the laptop's performance and was delving into power supplies for the laptop/DAC and softwares but a very kind gentleman from Mumbai called me and advised me to make some changes in the laptop and I am now over the moon......

So the power supplies and reclockers have now taken a back seat for sometime as I enjoy the new sound from my humble audio laptop....I use a simple, cheap Dell Vostro 14 laptop with only Jriver installed over Windows 7...

I cannot share much details since I was blindly following instructions by the gentleman but if there are questions, I can ask and post answers unless other knowledgeable members can help out...
 
That's great, panditji. Congratulations!
Would be very helpful to members at large if the tweaks are listed out. Also the ones which need technical knowledge.

Thanks
 
Wanted to share how my simple, humble Dell Laptop's performance has been elevated to super machine levels in the past couple of weeks...

That is great. Eagerly waiting for you to share the details, in bits and pieces too would be Okay.

MaSh
 
Please check out the thread started long ago by member keith_correa on optimising music PC. As far as I know I'm the only one who actually implemented his tweaks. He has suggested tons of useful tweaks. It took me about 5 and half hours spread across two sessions to complete all the tweaks.
 
Please check out the thread started long ago by member keith_correa on optimising music PC. As far as I know I'm the only one who actually implemented his tweaks. He has suggested tons of useful tweaks. It took me about 5 and half hours spread across two sessions to complete all the tweaks.
I suppose you refer to this thread. It is for Win 10. Will it work similarly for Win 7?
There was this thread also further back.
Just thought there might be something more to offer here.
 
Most of the stuff can be found online. But there are a few things I always do in every computer I own. Open services.msc and disable and stop all needless services. Just be careful not to stop services that Windows itself relies on - so better to be a bit safe here. Open msconfig (just type it in start->run), go to Startup tab, and remove all needless programs so they don't startup when you reboot. Caution: Do not disable services from msconfig, do it from services.msc instead.

Right click computer -> properties -> advanced -> performance settings
In Visual Effects, choose custom and uncheck everything except "smooth edges of screen fonts" and "use visual styles for windows and buttons".

In advanced tab, change virtual memory, and select "no paging file" and uncheck "automaticaly manage paging file for all drives".
By disabling the paging file, you are forcing Windows to stop using your hard drive as RAM. This means that when you are playing back audio or running a program, Windows is forced to use only the high speed and low latency RAM and not used the hard drive which is hundreds of times slower and could introduce errors during audio playback. This will require a reboot. The only downside of disabling the page file is that it will give you a blue screen error if any program you run takes more memory than you have RAM available. But nothing a reboot can't fix. And audio programs hardly run out of memory.

Then there are other audio settings tweaks like making sure you are running audio directly through Wasapi or other techniques that bypass the default Windows audio stack and directly stream audio from the player to the Windows kernel. It is worth pointing out that Windows 10 has several significant improvements in the audio stack, including drastically reducing latency from 10-15ms down to 1ms. I have also heard about, but haven't tried, memory playback. This deflates and decodes the audio beforehand and puts it in memory so that your player does not need to decode on the fly when you are listening to audio. Jriver claims this has no practical benefit but has huge popular demand. However, this should effectively remove any reason why people insist of storing music in uncompressed WAV instead of lossless FLAC. The memory playback will ensure that even a FLAC is first decoded into WAV and the WAV is stored in RAM memory and directly streamed by the player. So with memory playback enabled, both FLACs and WAVs will be played exactly the same way and with identical bits.
 
@panditji
Do you mean tweaking the bios as bios is on a rom ( read only memory) and can't be altered so easily
If yes, and if you remember can you list down the BIOS tweaks the gentleman suggested
Thanks
 
I suppose you refer to this thread. It is for Win 10. Will it work similarly for Win 7?
There was this thread also further back.
Just thought there might be something more to offer here.

Yes, that's the thread (first link in your post) I was referring to. I just read it and realised that I never updated the fact the I had done all Keith's suggested tweaks. My sincere apologies for the oversight:confused:

I did the tweaks on Windows Server 2012 R2 though he originally compiled it for Windows 10 and all of it worked for 2012/R2. See also point number 11 on his first post. My guess is most, if not all tweaks, will work on Win7/8. Worth a try because they're reversible.

I tried the free version of Fidelizer twice on my machine and each time it screwed it up. YMMV, of course.
 
@panditji
Do you mean tweaking the bios as bios is on a rom ( read only memory) and can't be altered so easily
If yes, and if you remember can you list down the BIOS tweaks the gentleman suggested
Thanks

IIRC, some of the tweaks were on BIOS behaviour.
 
That is the document from where the tweaks for Windows 7 were picked up... The ones implemented on my system were the generic ones which would work on most windows machines.... Joshua, what were your impressions after you made the changes in your machine?
 
Even with "memory playback" turned on, WAV files sound better than compressed audio files. How? Why? I do not know.

Windows 10 has a new audio stack and new API's but UNLESS your music player runs ONLY on Windows 10 and later you can be reasonably sure that the player software is not making use of those new API's and falling back on backward API's to be backward compatible.
 
Joshua, what were your impressions after you made the changes in your machine?

My main priority when optimising the music PC was to throw away all the useless processess and tweak conservative settings (especially power settings) to max/high settings as they were impeding the smooth running of Bughead. With stock configuration, it was tough to run Bughead smoothly. All the tweaks plus giving highest priorities to music player process and DAC driver process enhances the quality of sound.

Bughead is the best sounding music player I've ever tried in my system so yes, the tweaks really work to enable a very demanding player to run smoothly.
 
Even with "memory playback" turned on, WAV files sound better than compressed audio files. How? Why? I do not know.

Windows 10 has a new audio stack and new API's but UNLESS your music player runs ONLY on Windows 10 and later you can be reasonably sure that the player software is not making use of those new API's and falling back on backward API's to be backward compatible.

So what do you recommend? Groove player?

I just went through the PDF Doc you had compiled. Thank You so much for that. I have no clue how I missed it. I have only implemented the points not related to registry, bios and the downloaded softwares. Probably later in the night today. Even without these, Windows is running much faster and effortlessly. Next update with the other stuff implemented.

MaSh
 
So what do you recommend? Groove player?

I just went through the PDF Doc you had compiled. Thank You so much for that. I have no clue how I missed it. I have only implemented the points not related to registry, bios and the downloaded softwares. Probably later in the night today. Even without these, Windows is running much faster and effortlessly. Next update with the other stuff implemented.

MaSh
I have uploaded another version. Download URL is on that thread so use the latest version to tweak.
 
I have uploaded another version. Download URL is on that thread so use the latest version to tweak.

Yes, using the ver 1.1 (OptimizingWindows10ForAudioPlayback-v.1.1.pdf). Brilliant Stuff man.

Edit: Oh just saw you added a third one. Will check it.

MaSh
 
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I have uploaded another version. Download URL is on that thread so use the latest version to tweak.
Thank you for sharing the inputs on the link
Can you advise for Win 7 too? (since, you explicitly mention that those inputs are for optimizing Win 10 for audio)

I have a Dell N5110 (so, not much different from the Dell above).

Thank you,

Ace.
 
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