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Certain devices, such as network cards
and WinModems, can cause conflicts
with the native handling of USB. Should
you experience such conflicts, the
offending device can usually be
temporarily disabled in the Device
Manager. Refer to your Windows
manual for detailed instructions on how
to resolve conflicts.
Assuming your computer has an IDE
hard disk (most do), enabling Direct
Memory Addressing (DMA) on will
improve performance. Some programs
(such as Cubase VST) allow you to
configure the DMA as enabled on install.
If you’ve not already done this, here’s
how to configure the DMA transfer
mode: On the Windows desktop, go to
the Start menu, Settings, Control Panel,
System. In the System Properties
window, select the Device Manager tab.
Click on the plus sign next to Disk
Drives, and highlight the IDE disk listing,
then click on the Properties button.
Check the DMA box under options. (see
illustration 3.03)
In addition, a number of simple hardware
modifications and enhancements can
substantially improve your computer’s
handling of audio, as well as your track
count and DSP capability:
Increase the amount of RAM in your
system. While most digital audio
software will function with a minimum of
32 MB, increasing your computer’s RAM
to 96, 128 or even 256 MB will markedly
improve performance.
Consider the addition of a dedicated
hard disk for audio; preferably one with
a high spindle rate (over 7200 RPM is
recommended for most audio
applications). Using different drives for
program and audio data speeds up the
seek time for the audio track data. (Note
that simply partitioning a large drive will
not have the same effect, as the
computer will still be accessing the
same physical drive.) For best results,
add a SCSI or Wide-SCSI drive and
SCSI controller card. SCSI (and
particularly Wide and UW-SCSI
protocol) are capable of considerably
higher data transfer speeds; you’ll notice
a dramatic increase in track count and in
the amount of signal processing plug-ins
your computer can handle. Note that
some of the recent UDMA-66 drives
have proven to be almost as fast (and
certainly cheaper); however, they are
still limited in the amount of physical
drives allowed and the bus length.
If you’re presently using a PCI-based
graphics card, and your motherboard
has an AGP slot, consider getting an
AGP-based graphics card. This will
decrease traffic on the PCI bus and
allow for faster screen redraws.
Special Note: For even more detail on
optimizing your PC for audio, please refer to
the PDF document PC_Optimization.pdf
included on the US-224 CD-ROM. This
document is also available on the TASCAM
website.
Illustration 3.03 - Enabling DMA on your IDE drives