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davyped · Posts: 22

This is my first post here and I am waiting on my CEP program to arrive. I was just wanting to know if anyone else that uses their computer for other things as well as recording do so without incurring any problems while using CEP?
Edited by - davyped on 07/13/2001 11:58:07 PM

Edited by - davyped on 07/14/2001 03:12:19 AM

Jay Marble · Posts: 145

Well I run a one computer shop. Cool Edit/Office/Internet/ftp/etc. I don't have any realy problems. I guess my standard advice would be use only what you need. If you are using Cool Edit, shut down everything else. However I use Word and Cool Edit at the same time with no noticable effects.

You could clean out your system tray. To really do this go to Start-Run-msconfig-start-up. Experiment with turning all that stuff off.But I would leave your virus protection alone. It is amazing what runs in the background.

Also I would turn off all your computer's "System Sounds" Go to: My computer-Control Panel-Sounds. Select"No sounds". System sounds are often at odd sample rates and low bit rates. When they go off they can affect some soundcards(Like my Darla card).

clintfan · Location: USA Posts: 455

We are also a one-PC household, though a DAW may be in the future. When doing serious LP recording, I prepare by doing the following manual steps:

1. pull the LAN cable from the hub and reboot the PC. (if you use a LAN or DSL, there's one detail note on this, see the end)
2. at logon, escape out of normal network logons, so less stuff gets going.
3. once up, bring up MS FindFast (in the control panel) and select "Pause Indexing".
4. for a long session, bring up Display Settings and disable the screensaver.

After all this, it's pretty safe to record in CPE for any amount of time without worry of interruption.

When just using CEP to do post-processing of already-recorded audio (not a new recording), you don't have to do any of this extra nonsense! Just run CEP and do whatever you want. Now is when too much background processing can slow CEP down or make it jerky on playback, but it won't hurt your audio file. Extra memory can improve the slowdowns a little.

This backgound stuff is why Jay's point about the System Tray is so important. Almost every software package you put on your PC these days likes to stick stuff in the tray: I've seen PC's with 14 things running there. I think the package installers do this so their package will respond quickly when accessed by the user, making it look snappy. But since many of these packages are seldom IF EVER accessed, tray operation is often unnecessary.

If your tray is heavily populated, you should think about shrinking that. Decide what you really want there, then dink around with each item individually to get it out of the tray. Each is different, there's no standard way. Some are removed by right- or double- clicking on their tray icon, then hunt for an option you can select to not launch it in the tray. Others are removed by RUNning msconfig as Jay said, and going to the startup tab, un-checking things (but tread lightly there, change only 1 or 2 things at a time). If you're not sure about something, leave it there.

The PC I'm typing this on runs only 5 things in the tray, occasionally 6: Task Scheduler, Norton Antivirus, Volume Control, some required coporate software, and my soundcard agent. All other junk, like Netmeeting, AOL Instant Messenger, Simple Trax-- it's outta there!

(detail note on LAN: on Win98SE I found that bootup would hang unless the LAN saw an electrical connection. Meaning you can't pull the LAN out of the PC. So instead we use a cheap hub between the LAN card and the DSL modem. This lets me pull the LAN out of the DSL side, but leave the PC talking to the hub, thus satifying the boot cycle).

davyped · Posts: 22

Thanks for your input.