Optimizing/cleaning a laptop for live only

What have you guys done to have your laptop run the most efficiently possible in live performance conditions ?

 

My main computer is a desktop now so I don't really need anything on the laptop anymore. I've flushed all the documents, almost all the programs, etc... Unfortunately it's also running Win8 so maybe I should downgrade it to 7 since 8 is such a piece of shit.

 

I've read some "guides" before making this thread but they offered only obvious advice like "Make sure it's properly powered", duh, or pointed to some "Bullshit optimization tool v2.03" which is the opposite of what I want : not having unnecessary stuff on the computer.

 

Computers tend to act unstable when I get my hands on them and I really don't want shit to happen on d-day, if possible. How did you prepare your computer ? By formatting ? By doing nothing at all ? Anything particular I might want to do ?

Edited January 29, 2016 by Perezvon

Maybe update to Win10 - Noticed quite the performance increase since the upgrade.

But I'd just say to save effort: If it works OK at the moment and you're not getting any dropouts and stuttering and that just leave things as they are :)

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:07 PM, mcbpete said:

Maybe update to Win10 - Noticed quite the performance increase since the upgrade.

But I'd just say to save effort: If it works OK at the moment and you're not getting any dropouts and stuttering and that just leave things as they are :)

Yes I could give 10 a shot !

I do have stuttering issues sometimes but that has to come from some heavy plugins that I just shouldn't use at all when performing.

replace your spinning hard disk with an SSD

Note - If you *do* update to Win10, don't be freaked out by the somewhat sluggish booting for the first few days. It seems to want to download heaps of updates and patches and that in the background but seems to take its time to eventually download all of them !

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:20 PM, oscillik said:

replace your spinning hard disk with an SSD

 

Good idea, thanks !

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:22 PM, mcbpete said:

Note - If you *do* update to Win10, don't be freaked out by the somewhat sluggish booting for the first few days. It seems to want to download heaps of updates and patches and that in the background but seems to take its time to eventually download all of them !

Thanks for the warning, that would have bugged me for sure.

dunno Windows specific stuff, but generally you'll want to get rid of as many unnecessary background tasks as possible.

 

Basically, Windows thinks it is sitting on a desk, so it wants to look for printers, wifi, other peripherals, it does its own cleanup now and then etc... all separate processes and you need none of them for your music stuff. So open Task Manager, look at all the processes. Google each one. Research whether you can run your system without it. Find out how to prevent Windows from running launching it, etc.

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:03 PM, Perezvon said:

What have you guys done to have your laptop run the most efficiently possible in live performance conditions ?

 

 

I bought a mac

Only use native effects as these tend to run most reliable (at least in Renoise), don't use vst(i) or only use the ones you've tested extensively.

 

Pretty much stick to a working set-up, system and practice the shit out of it, know how far you can push it depending on how you play live. Don't install any last minute programs, drivers whatever that can possibly influence the stability.

 

Disabling any anti virus/firewall/malware suite's is a no brainer maybe, you don't want auto-update to kick in during a double drop . Same for any windows auto update scheduling, not sure, but isn't this impossible to configure in windows 10?

 

Live on the edge and don't care too much .

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:20 PM, oscillik said:

replace your spinning hard disk with an SSD

yeah. i did this with a handmedown laptop i was given. only installed music software on it so far. it's a 5 yr old macbook pro but it's running live 9.5 better than my desktop. i did a completely clean os install (which was a bit of a fucking headache because they're really not designed to work that way and i didn't have an itunes account but whatev).

 

ssd>clean os install>only music software>disable internet

 

should be good to go

Awesome tips guys, thank you!

 

Yes CCleaner is great, I've flushed everything with this.

  On 2/1/2016 at 8:46 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

grab it from piriforms website, they're a great software company who strike me as relatively honest and low on bullshit

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Both reasons why I ended up 'buying' their suite of tools despite the fact the free versions do everything anyway ! Plus they've saved my balls several times with the registry cleaner/fixer part of CCleaner, and have properly saved my sanity with the Recuva tool when I've accidentally shift-deleted an entire folder rather than a subfolder and Windows happily just deleted 1000s of needed files !

I'm using foobar2000 with the Discogs plugin : https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_discogs

 

It's perfect but I don't know if it changes file names as well.

  On 2/1/2016 at 3:44 PM, Perezvon said:

I'm using foobar2000 with the Discogs plugin : https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_discogs

 

It's perfect but I don't know if it changes file names as well.

looking forward to trying this out when i get home

stickers

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:20 PM, oscillik said:

replace your spinning hard disk with an SSD

 

  On 2/1/2016 at 1:28 AM, juiceciuj said:

 

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:20 PM, oscillik said:

replace your spinning hard disk with an SSD

yeah. i did this with a handmedown laptop i was given. only installed music software on it so far. it's a 5 yr old macbook pro but it's running live 9.5 better than my desktop. i did a completely clean os install (which was a bit of a fucking headache because they're really not designed to work that way and i didn't have an itunes account but whatev).

 

ssd>clean os install>only music software>disable internet

 

should be good to go

 

^^ I 3rd the SSD recommendation, save the pennies for it, worth the effort to get one! the bigger the better :)! removes a lot of old speed bottlenecks... just got an SSD for my main PC and have been in love with SSD ever since

I installed linux mint xfce and have had no audio problems or latency issues for a live setup. I have found it to be very stable so far and quite a lot of windows products have worked fine in the Wine Emulator.

Although I wouldn't hold my breath, AVLinux 8 will be released soon and is designed to run out of the box without having to update anything or even go online if you choose. It's stripped down to bare essentials to get the most out of the the CPU so will also run on shitty laptops and old computers. You can install it alongside windows with one of the install options for either. It's updated by the same people who develop Ardour so the release of one update is usually dependent on the other.

 

Also n'thing SSD. Get on that shit.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Entorwellian

  On 2/2/2016 at 8:31 AM, Entorwellian said:

I installed linux mint xfce and have had no audio problems or latency issues for a live setup. I have found it to be very stable so far and quite a lot of windows products have worked fine in the Wine Emulator.

Although I wouldn't hold my breath, AVLinux 8 will be released soon and is designed to run out of the box without having to update anything or even go online if you choose. It's stripped down to bare essentials to get the most out of the the CPU so will also run on shitty laptops and old computers. You can install it alongside windows with one of the install options for either. It's updated by the same people who develop Ardour so the release of one update is usually dependent on the other.

 

Also n'thing SSD. Get on that shit.

 

You using airwave? https://github.com/phantom-code/airwave

Once it's compiled and installed it works pretty good for bridging windows VSTs to native VST format.

  On 2/15/2016 at 4:16 PM, maitake said:

 

  On 2/2/2016 at 8:31 AM, Entorwellian said:

I installed linux mint xfce and have had no audio problems or latency issues for a live setup. I have found it to be very stable so far and quite a lot of windows products have worked fine in the Wine Emulator.

Although I wouldn't hold my breath, AVLinux 8 will be released soon and is designed to run out of the box without having to update anything or even go online if you choose. It's stripped down to bare essentials to get the most out of the the CPU so will also run on shitty laptops and old computers. You can install it alongside windows with one of the install options for either. It's updated by the same people who develop Ardour so the release of one update is usually dependent on the other.

 

Also n'thing SSD. Get on that shit.

 

You using airwave? https://github.com/phantom-code/airwave

Once it's compiled and installed it works pretty good for bridging windows VSTs to native VST format.

 

No I never knew about this! This is a great find. Thanks!

Never go on the internet with that laptop.

Also worth mentioning: defrag and clean (like, with canned air) on the reg.

I guess it depends on where you live but in the uk at least, you need the charger PAT tested if you're using it in a club. While its rare ive been asked i have seen people refused being allowed to use their laptop unless it stayed on battery. Same applies to controllers if they need power. If you have to run on battery and your controllers are bus powered, will they still function?

 

Also ground noise. This is much more common and can be partially fixed by running on battery power. I'd try and get it checked beforehand on a PA similar in power to what your gig is on. Mac's don't have this issue from my experience. I think its because of cheaper laptops tend to cut costs by putting less shielding around the power connections or something.

 

SSD's are good and will help with heat too. A laptop stand helps with heat as venues get hot and if the fan is old or blocked you may find it chokes the cpu or worse shuts down. Loud clubs easy drown out the sound of the cpu fan raring it nuts-off so you don't always notice it getting hot.

  On 1/29/2016 at 6:20 PM, oscillik said:

replace your spinning hard disk with an SSD

 

  On 2/1/2016 at 8:46 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

 

CCleaner has a tool for deleting dupe files and a decent defragger.

 

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

 

 

But dont defrag the shit out of your SSD.

Defragmentation of SSD is not recommended, as it reduces their lifespan being pretty useless: those drives don't rely on physical movements of mechanical parts anyway.

I'm pretty sure VT-d and IOMMU capable processors support VGA, PCI, and USB pass-through these days. Don't consider this the official word, but the days of bad audio latency on virtualized systems might be over. These technologies can bus the good bits rapidly and direct to bare metal hardware.

 

This is interesting because now it in theory should be possible with the right CPU to create an instance of Windows on a good performing *nix install running Xen or KVM.

Unfortunately, even though MS has came a long way I still find Windows rather clunky. That said, it isn't so bad i'd just prefer to contain that fucker so can clone it and be back online with in seconds.

 

My point in all this is that in the future processing horsepower may be abundant enough that it makes total sense to encapsulate our operating systems into environments that offer extreme redundancy. Imagine your laptop fails you during the gig, but seconds before you cloned a snapshot of your current audio environment (routing, patching, etc). In less than 5 seconds you could be back online and exactly where you were. Every 1 and 0 in the block in it's proper place.

 

I often wonder too why touring musicians spend thousands on music equipment, their career even, yet rarely spend the 1-2 grand to buy a portable UPS. You could keep not just computers live, but the entire PA itself in the event of power loss. LOL ROCK ON

Also this reminds me. I watched a guy have his Windows laptop completely fail during his set just the other week. It locked completely and spat out that ":( An error has occured" fullscreen message. He sat there frustrated as FUCK while Windows was validating some shit on the filesystem for 10 minutes. Then he gave up and left.

 

Don't be that guy I guess. It was really sad to watch.

 

 

some variation of that thing ^^ horrific

Edited February 19, 2016 by maitake