However, Windows 10 approaches these things differently. Through the use of telemetry, Microsoft know a lot more about your system, and potentially have instant feedback on issues from millions of users, and so their potential ability to react to things is far greater than it has been previously. Microsoft want to cut through all this by keeping every copy of Windows 10 up-to-date, secure, stable and working.
The idea is that if something is installed that upsets your system graphics drivers are a common culprit you can uninstall it, run the Troubleshooter tool and prevent that update from being installed again. More details here. This will prevent Windows from downloading any updates unless told to do so. Microsoft knowing more about your system is, for some, a cause for concern.
Well, hidden in there or written in plain sight depending on your paranoia level! Taking an extreme view, it appears that Microsoft have every right to access anything you read, type or do and use it for nefarious ends. Cortana is designed to make personalised recommendations and so needs to use your data, for instance your email, calendar and browser history, to anticipate your needs. Cortana is completely opt-in ie. Similarly, if you want to tag photos with your location you need to give Microsoft permission to know your location; if you want to carry your Microsoft account across multiple devices you need to give Microsoft permission to access your browser history, favourites, network names and Wi-Fi passwords, and so on.
Most of these things can be turned off in the Windows 10 Privacy Settings if you really want. Many musicians prefer to keep their systems off the Internet most of the time, and set up for the single task of being a DAW. However, if being a DAW is just one of several jobs your computer is used for, then maintaining an up-to-date, fully connected, secure and integrated system is probably going to give you the best user experience. Further investigation revealed that file headers were being corrupted, and that the WAVs could be recovered using a hex editor a very messy solution!
Have we moved from an environment of workarounds and hopes for a fix in the next Service Pack to issues being resolved in a matter of days? They are using internal and Internet networks to deliver the installation files via a shared download, similar to peer-to-peer downloads, to improve the speed of delivery. These things may well improve the user experience but also seem rather rude and presumptuous.
They have also increased telemetry on Windows 7 and 8 via a few innocuous updates in order to gather information on how well the Windows 10 upgrade would go — though this is only for customers who have already opted into the Customer Experience Improvement Program CEIP. Again, most of these things can be disabled in Windows 10, and the updates to avoid if you wish to avoid them in Windows 7 and 8 are as follows: KB, KB, KB and KB One of the big advantages of Windows 10 is its ability to run across lots of different types of device.
From desktops to phones, laptops to Xbox, and Surface to Hololens, everything can run Windows 10 with the same Windows Store. Developers can compile one application and have it run on whichever devices they choose. This has great implications for mobility and getting hold of the software you need wherever you are.
Unfortunately, there are currently very few Universal apps of interest to the musician, but Microsoft are working to change this. This included a new multi-client MIDI API which will run on every device and allow multiple applications both Universal and conventional desktop-only ones to access it simultaneously.
Microsoft are also enabling developers to opt into a smaller range of buffers, depending on the audio hardware they are running. This means that music software using standard Windows drivers could, conceivably, get native latency levels low enough for music performance.
Windows 10 goes a long way to resolving this disparity, and should make developing Windows music apps a more attractive proposition. Another innovation is Audio Core Isolation, which directly tackles the biggest and most annoying cause of audio glitching: DPC latency.
In a nutshell, DPC latency is the time a device takes to interrupt the processor and get its business done. Some devices — commonly Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and network adaptors — can take too long to interrupt the processor or hold onto the processor longer than they have to, one result of which is a stream of audio not getting the full attention of the CPU and, consequently, glitches.
In Windows 10, Microsoft have created the ability to put all the audio processes onto a single core of the CPU and move those other devices to other cores, thus giving audio tasks the undivided attention of a core. Microsoft have put a lot of work into opening up the audio engine to make it easy for developers to create modern apps that can get creative with sound, samples and synthesis. Of course, most serious audio-PC users already use software and hardware with ASIO audio drivers, which means much of the above may initially seem uninteresting.
The work Microsoft have done on the audio engine, and that 15ms lower latency, mean that the virtual synths within Stagelight, when accessed on a touchscreen through the onboard sound in Windows 10, have suddenly become a lot more playable. Some manufacturers will have tested their software or hardware thoroughly, and will perhaps even have released updated drivers.
A few will have encountered problems and be working to address them Steinberg, for instance, encountered an issue with the Quicktime player used for video playback in Cubase Pro 8.
Yet others, particularly smaller developers, will not have had time to robustly test things, and you may have to take a punt. Tweaking Windows to optimise it for music-production use has in the past been essential, but is usually much less so now. Windows 10 is already a stable, performance-orientated platform and requires less tinkering than previous versions. There are still a handful of tweaks that can be considered good practice for getting the best out of an audio-focused computer, but most are really only required to prevent unexpected interruptions, or if you find things are not working properly.
Many applications like to keep a part of themselves running at all times, just in case they might be needed quickly. Common culprits are Bluetooth, wi-fi and networking software, Quicktime, Adobe updaters and graphics card utilities.
Although most services, when running, have no impact on the CPU, when they are activated via a call or notification they can cause unexpected glitches. Most can be disabled in the Task Manager available in the admin menu if you right-click on the Windows icon in the bottom left corner of the screen. The other place to check is the icons next to the clock; they may have options that allow you to turn them off. Apple Music Invite Organize entire music library by Premium one. Download the Spotify Windows Mac.
Windows Users' choice Free download music production software Free download music production software Most people looking for Free music production software downloaded: Steinberg Cubase LE. ALO Audio Editor. PreSonus Studio One. FL Studio Steinberg Cubase Studio. Cakewalk Audio Finder.
LPD8 Editor. MPC Essentials. How to make a good podcast. How to remove background noise in videos. How to use Apple Music on Mac.
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