Computer repair course

Byline: Dave Hill Jr.

Face it: Making music was the last thing on Bill Gates' mind when he developed Windows 3.1, and though the software has gotten a smidge better in recent versions 98 SE, ME and Windows XP, it is plain to me that Gates doesn't pass his time making loop-based electronica. I know I should have bought a Mac, but I didn't. If you're like me and you cut your teeth on a Windows PC, you also remain committed to pain. That is not to say we PC users are doomed; rather, we have to work a little harder for our suffering. Although the default Windows installation is best-suited for home and business users, there are a few possible tweaks to better prepare your Windows environment to withstand processor-pummeling programs such as Propellerhead Reason and Emagic Logic Audio. But first, check out what hardware is in the beloved beige box.

As you read my suggestions for both software and hardware, please keep in mind that what works for me may not be the best for you and your particular workstation. Because Windows is highly customizable, I encourage all PC users to take the time to explore their own PCs, read the necessary help files and kill time at work searching the thousands of computer-geek Websites available to find new ways to improve Windows' performance.

HARDWARE CHECK

If your computer is less than three years old, it should be capable of making and recording music. Pentium II is really the minimum speed required to take advantage of the cool new software flooding the market. Generally, I prefer Pentium III processors running either Windows 98 SE or ME, though I'm aware that Pentium IV and Windows XP have been on the scene for some time now. It's just one way of keeping a little buffer between you and the frenzied, upgrade-loco computer industry as many audio-application manufacturers continue to figure out how to take advantage of Pentium IV's speed (and you pay a lot for it) and XP's new features. If you're wondering about those screaming little Athlon processors rumored to outperform Pentium chips, in my experience, they are as great as they sound, with one drawback: They run a little hot and therefore need at least one more fan inside your computer. Extra white noise, anyone? No thank you.

DRIVING AND CRYING

In the past couple of years, hard drives have become a cost-effective and fairly stable medium for audio-file storage. If you are using only one hard drive, you will be happy to know that you can really have as many as three in most PCs (that is, two on one controller and a third with a CD-ROM or -RW drive on the other). For best results, two drives are usually optimal, and if you decide to go with a third, your best bet would be to dedicate the third for backing up all audio files. Regarding what kind of drives you should buy, each brand has its shortcomings, but for audio purposes, you need at least a 7,200 rpm IDE drive with a seek time of approximately 7 to 9 ms that is capable of DMA or UDMA, which I will cover in more detail. Of course, if mom or dad is paying the way, go for a SCSI card or a RAID array of five or more SCSI hard drives. FireWire is also now a viable and audio-friendly route that is coming down in price, though most PC users will need to buy a FireWire card. If you're footing the bill and you typically classify your workspace as a project studio, IDE drives will work just fine. For about $100, you should be able to find a Seagate or Western Digital 40GB UDMA hard drive. You can buy bigger drives, but I've found that Windows actually manages, accesses and seems to prefer 20 to 40GB drives. And given that 10 MB is about one minute of 16-bit, 44.1kHz mono audio, 40 GB should be more than enough.

SPLIT PERSONALITY

Are you living a dual existence? Rather, are you using your PC for other things besides an audio workstation? If so, you might find that partitioning your hard drive, or creating separate and autonomous drives within a drive, can enhance overall system performance, as well as keep your data separate and thus more secure. In fact, some audiophiles actually prefer dual-bootable hard drives in which two operating systems live on the same drive, with one optimized to run music applications and a second (and separate OS) geared for the strains of business, Internet and test software. For instance, you might create one Windows 98 SE partition without extraneous software installed and one Windows 2000 partition running a suite of office programs, games and Internet-related applications. During system startup, you are given the option to choose which operating system to run.

Should you decide to partition your hard drive, it is important to realize that there are several ways to do so and that you will lose some available space (usually a couple of gigabytes or so, which function as overhead). On my partitioned 60GB hard drive, I have about 28 GB of available space on each drive. Also, I recommend starting with a new hard drive even though you can partition your drive on the fly.

There really isn't a limit to how many partitions you can create, and once you are using Windows 98 and higher, you can easily manage drives larger than 32 GB. Most hard-drive manufacturers (Maxtor, Western Digital, IBM and the like) make disk-formatting and partitioning software available for free download at their Websites. If you plan to partition and repartition your hard drives regularly, PowerQuest's (www.powerquest.com) Partition Magic 7.0 sells for $69.99 from its Website and makes this chore much more user-friendly.

RAM TOUGH

These days, for most applications, 128 MB of RAM is the least you want to live with. You may be able to get by with less, but you will undoubtedly hear plenty of wheezing and choking from your hard drive as Windows is forced to create a sizable - and sluggish - swap file, which will further drain your drives' capacity to play back even modestly sized audio files. At 256 MB, or even 512 MB, you will notice a huge speed and handling improvement - like upgrading a Subaru to a BMW.

ROCK-READY

So you finally bought a pro-audio sound card, or perhaps you didn't but are trying to make the one you have last another year. Do yourself a favor and download the latest drivers. This is imperative. The drivers are the software link between your PC and the device (in this case, the sound card) made by a given manufacturer. They can change as often as monthly. Manufacturers have learned a lot in the past 18 months or so about PC performance, PC sound, and MIDI and audio latency. One important trick is to try each type of driver with each of your applications. For instance, M-Audio has developed Windows drivers to support ASIO, ASIO2, GSIF, EASI, WDM (for Windows 2000) and MME for its Delta 1010 card. Often, the ASIO drivers work fine, but some applications require special communications protocol; for example, Sonar prefers WDM, Logic likes EASI and so on. When updating, save your old drivers just in case.

Here is a quick tip: Your sound card should never be in the PCI slot directly next to your video card. Video cards tend to hog system resources and can put a drain on your audio card's performance. Most tech gurus I have spoken with recommend the second or, depending on how you look at it, third physical slot. To be specific, video card goes in slot 1, leave slot 2 empty if you can, and slot 3 is for the audio card.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

Working with audio on a PC takes up a good deal of bandwidth on your system's resources. Or you could say, every PC has a limit depending on the processor speed, amount of RAM, hard-drive specs and so on. The following are a couple of tricks I have learned for optimizing your PC for audio: Right-click on the My Computer icon on your desktop and select Properties (see Fig. 1). Select the Performance tab and click on File System. In the drop-down window, choose Network Server. After you reboot your computer, it will thank you by running just a little bit quicker.

In the same Properties dialog box, choose the Device Manager tab and press the "+" sign next to Disk Drives. Right-click on each of the hard drives shown (the icons should say something like Generic IDE Disk Type 47) and select Properties. Go to the Settings tab and check the DMA box (see Fig. 2). You will get a warning; ignore it, and reboot. Your hard drive will now read about 15 percent faster unless your hard drive is incapable of DMA, in which case, when you reboot, the box will again become unchecked.