OSX optimazations???

[DJSK]

Does anybody know of any tips or any online tutorials for making OSX run better with audio applications such as Live? I have seen tutorials on the net for WinXP and what not but I was wondering if some of the same things could be done with OSX to get it to run more efficiently.

[noisetonepause]

IME there's really not much you can do that has any measurable effect (which doesn't involve severely crippling the OS).

[Johnisfaster]

go into your system preferences and cllck on energy saver. then click options. set it to "highest" processor performance.

you might want to disable all your widgets too. do a google search to figure out how that works.

[nate_D]

i wondered this when i got my mac. the only thing i've done to optimize my macbook was to upgrade my RAM. osx is pretty straight forward. no need for asio4all

[glu]

Doesn't OSX look for updates in the middle of the night? You wouldn't want that to happen when you are doing that late night set.

[Oscar F]

Does anybody know of any tips or any online tutorials for making OSX run better with audio applications such as Live? I have seen tutorials on the net for WinXP and what not but I was wondering if some of the same things could be done with OSX to get it to run more efficiently.

My advice if on a notebook (ie: Mac Laptop) is dead simple.


1.Run all audio off an external hard drive = less heat and lower chance of CPU throttling due to heat dispersion in the notebook (though this holds true on any notebook be they PC or Mac based.


2.RAM RAM RAM - you wanna maximize OSX then run your machine on the highest amount of HIGH QUALITY RAM you can afford.



OSX runs pretty efficiently out of the Box (and this is coming out of the mouth of a general PC user) - trust me though the RAM will make a HUGE Difference.

[steff3]

these days one should stay away from altering the OS - the computers are fast enough and the OS provides routines to manage the load better than most users could do.

you should make sure the OSX is not automatically searching for updates (preference pane) and that there is no distant storage connected (iDisk) as this needs network access. Also when I have problems with performance I turn of the network (preference pane) which gives me a slightly better performance - so during bounces and finalizing this might be an option.

RAM, intelligent HD space management, are the really influences .....

oh, I also run the scripts from time to time and repair permissios from time to time (and always before and after updates and installs)

hope that helps

best

[leonard]

you could try turning off mdutil - i think thats the disk utility which spotlight uses to index etx. you'll notice i ts a liittle process which runs in the background chewing up memory and cpu. the tradeoff is that spotlight will stop working once it's off.

[Johnisfaster]

you could try turning off mdutil - i think thats the disk utility which spotlight uses to index etx. you'll notice i ts a liittle process which runs in the background chewing up memory and cpu. the tradeoff is that spotlight will stop working once it's off.

how might I turn that off? I'd like to.

[leonard]

this is courtesy of someone else, but..

go to terminal:

type sudo pico /etc/hostconfig

change the line:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-

to:
SPOTLIGHT=-NO-

save and close, type:
sudo mdutil -i off /

then:
sudo mdutil -E /

then restart, you shold be good to go.

[sqook]

this is courtesy of someone else, but..

go to terminal:

type sudo pico /etc/hostconfig

change the line:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-

to:
SPOTLIGHT=-NO-

save and close, type:
sudo mdutil -i off /

then:
sudo mdutil -E /

then restart, you shold be good to go.

Or better yet, http://d-t-f.sourceforge.net. Lets you turn off dashboard, too.

[leonard]

^^^
nice one..

[Homebelly]

I'm not sure how much ruth there is in this,, but i was told to turn the clock off if it is visible in the tool bar,,
The guy that told me this has done it to all of his studio macs,, i have done it to my G5 tower,, but i'm not sure if it does make much difference,,,

The external hard drive to write to is about the best advise you can take,, my MBP gets very hot after a couple of hours not using one reading and writing to the internal drive,,
Mmmm,, very warm nuts!!!

[sqook]

I'm not sure how much ruth there is in this,, but i was told to turn the clock off if it is visible in the tool bar,,
The guy that told me this has done it to all of his studio macs,, i have done it to my G5 tower,, but i'm not sure if it does make much difference,,,

That sounds extraordinarily superstitious. I'm sure that it can't hurt to do this, but the odds of the system clock using any more than 1% of CPU resources at any given time are very unlikely.

You could disable NTP (network time protocol) in OSX's system preferences, which probably result in slightly less CPU load, but again, the savings will likely be rather insignificant.

The external hard drive to write to is about the best advise you can take,, my MBP gets very hot after a couple of hours not using one reading and writing to the internal drive,,
Mmmm,, very warm nuts!!!

Yeah I use mine to make tea sometimes.

[forge]

I'm sure that it can't hurt to do this, but the odds of the system clock using any more than 1% of CPU resources at any given time are very unlikely.

I remember writing a clock program in basic on a 32k computer in about 1985

a digital watch wouldnt be anywhere near 32k

I think 1% of a modern CPU is WAY overestimating

maybe he's thinking of the "internet time" sync - but AFAIK they only link up about 1ce a week and that wouldnt need much resources