Audio editing benchmark software

Question

A while ago I used some software on my laptop to test the hardware limitations that might create bottlenecks in audio production, I've started using my desktop machine which should have more than enough power to process complex Ableton projects etc but they lag on my machine and tend to stutter and produces glitches that my equally (if not slightly weaker) laptop reproduces in awesome quality.

Looking through google and such I have not been able to find this software again anywhere and want to see if there is some driver etc that is holding my machine back, does anyone know of similar software or what I am even talking about...

Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't have a specific software recommendation, but I can give some advice on things that can cause this kind of problem.

Here are some things to investigate:

1. Make sure you have the right drivers for your audio I/O device
2. Use a fast hard drive - SSD if possible
3. If you're using a spinning-disk drive, defrag it periodically
4. A great way to get better disk performance is to split into two drives - one boot disk with your software and operating system, and a separate disk for recording
5. Make sure you're not running lots of other software in the background, especially anti-virus scanners, or other programs that do a lot of disk I/O. (Use Task Manager on Windows or Activity Monitor on Mac to find programs that are using a lot of RAM or CPU.)
6. Try recording at a lower sample rate or quality. Most people can't hear the difference between 44.1KHz and "HD" audio. CDs are 44.1KHz, 16-bit stereo.
7. Remove plug-ins from your mix.
8. Make sure you have enough memory - probably you want at least 4GB, but 8GB is better.
9. If you have a "latency" setting, try increasing it. This will introduce a delay on audio pass-through from an input, but will allow the software to use larger buffers to help prevent lost audio data.

Hope this helps! -Jake