Helpfile Comment

Good day,

I have obtained a printout of the current SAWStudio manual and read something that I "must'a missed" way-back-when!

The manual states: "There are certain adjustments that should be made to your Windows environment to obtain the best performance and maximum stability required for a high performance SAWStudio system. Remember, you are asking your computer to do a specific job processing audio. Trim it down."

Now...here is the interesting part..."Do not load it with all kinds of games and other office type applications... do not use it to surf the web and process emails and other home computer type tasks."

Now, I do have two systems...my office/work system - which does have SAW and SAC loaded - along with other work-type applications...but that system is not my performance system.

Curious to know how may folks use only a single system for both "tasks"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mr_es335

Good day,

I have obtained a printout of the current SAWStudio manual and read something that I "must'a missed" way-back-when!

The manual states: "There are certain adjustments that should be made to your Windows environment to obtain the best performance and maximum stability required for a high performance SAWStudio system. Remember, you are asking your computer to do a specific job processing audio. Trim it down."

Now...here is the interesting part..."Do not load it with all kinds of games and other office type applications... do not use it to surf the web and process emails and other home computer type tasks."

Now, I do have two systems...my office/work system - which does have SAW and SAC loaded - along with other work-type applications...but that system is not my performance system.

Curious to know how may folks use only a single system for both "tasks"?

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Hi Dell,

My DAW has always been the same computer that I use for everything else. Literally going back to the 90s. I guess my track count/processing needs have never risen beyond what I've been able to pull off on a fully-populated system multipurpose system. And I have always had LOTS of programs installed. That's always been the beauty of SAW (efficiency out the ying-yang) compared to competitors. It only became more of a non-issue maybe ten years ago or so, when computer horsepower became more affordable.

In fairness, my needs have typically been lower than many other folks'. So dedicated workstations have made sense for many for a long while.

Bear in mind, though, that since Bob cracked the SAW/Windows limitation issue in recent months, it's even easier than ever (I assume) to use a multi-purpose machine for your SAW work.

I'd also add that my work has been exclusively with SAW (recording and post-production) and not SAC, so the latency need of live sound is a whole different topic (or is it?). THAT said, back around 2009 I did a series of live multi-market radio station broadcasts from my Tucson studio using SAW in live mode on, I think, a P4 system. We did have a little latency, which didn't matter in that case, but I'd found a configuration that was rock solid for our needs over a one-hour show. We probably had only two or three mics open along with occasional live playback of a stereo source or two, but it was kinda cool. :cool:

I've had separate audio and office computers for 20 years or more. When I'm out of town, though, I run SS on my office laptop for occasional VO pickups. It works well, but I wouldn't want to put up with email notifications and Windows noises in my headphones all the time. :) I'm sure those who run it all on one machine have different logins or something to tame that kind of thing.

I've been using one machine for all for many, many years. As a user, you just need to know how to keep things running well. Sometimes one can purchase incompatible hardware/software.

My wife purchased an mbox2 and Pro Tools 6.8 for me back in 2009; we were all running VAIO laptops back then. Digidesign machine specs referred to, like, 3 wintel laptops that were compatible; Sony was not supported; PT and that mbox did never work together until 3rd party drivers were released. No one revealed that to my missus when she paid for the stuff. (Nowadays, I do use the mbox2 occasionally :)

Nowadays I only use webmail on my main machine and dual boot to get better performance with SawStudio. SSL is pretty much the only thing I do on my Win7 Pro boot.

That said, try using modern rental-ware on a machine without an internet connection. Adobe Creative Cloud is one invasive, annoying animal. I have inherited an Adobe XD job I have been working on for nearly a year...and this awful CoreSync hogs the internet connection continually...XD crashes whether you are online or offline...turns into a daily shouting session and hours of lost time. The updates are all too frequent (every 48hrs!) Even Reason is rental-ware.

Thank goodness for a killer program like SawStudio which is very stable, IME...and not ranso...I mean rental-ware

Dell wrote.."Do not load it with all kinds of games and other office type applications... do not use it to surf the web and process emails and other home computer type tasks."

This part of the Helpfile was written back in the day when computers and resources(speed, hard drives memory etc.) were low, and it was a challenge to get everything to work well and reliable..computers and resources are much greater today. SawStudio is a professional piece of software and the assumption is that it would be used in a professional setting. Of course you can use SawStudio for what ever you want, in which ever way you want, but this piece of advice holds true for any piece of software that requires "REAL TIME" response, something which seems to me most people on this form just don't get...especially when using Windows 10.

My studio computers which are Windows 7(one desktop, two net books) are mainly dedicated to recording projects and are separate from my general computers. They are not connected to the internet(although they can be). The desktop does have some other programs on it(CAD, engineering design programs etc) but they don't hog any resources, and when not being used, they're shut off. I do occasionally mix a project on my general purpose computer which has internet to send the client rough mixes etc.