optimize OSX

special ed · Post by **special ed** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 8:19 am

i got some osx optimization tips from the sept. 04 issue of electronic musician magazine.

1. custom install just the essential system software and bsd subsystem (if osx is already installed you can do an archive and install, but be sure to transfer your plugins back into the library afterwards). this significantly reduces the disk space that the os takes up.

2. set up two accounts, a main one and one for music. you can then download diablotin from http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Diablotin.html it is something that is similar to the extensions manager in os9. you can manage fonts, menu items, sounds, screen savers, internet plugins, itunes plugins, preference panes, quicktime and startup items.you can disable things you dont use in your music account such as fonts.

3. get rid of the languages that you dont use on your computer with monolingual homepage.mac.com/jschrier to get them back you need to reinstall the system though.

4. get rid of the osx shadow effect with shadowkiller http://www.unsanity.com/products/free

5. download either process wizard http://www.lachoseinteractive.net or nicer http://www.resexcellence.com they are background utilities that allow you to adjust the processing priorities of running applications. nicer is a safer one, process wizard gives more control but can cause system crashes.

6. go to system preferences, in the desktop panel, set the desktop to low-to-medium- resolution and disable the change picture option. in the dock panel, set to minimize using scale effect, disable dock animation, and hide the dock. in the display panel, set color display to thousands of colors and choose the lowest resolution that comfortably fits your monitor.

its a very informative article, its hard to type everything it says, i highly recommend picking up the issue to anyone here that wants a better performance on osx,

milka · Post by **milka** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:36 pm

interesting tutorial...anyone really seen any performance gain on older Macs , PowerBooks like G3 500Mhz "Pismo" ?
any other OSX optimizing tips?

special ed · Post by **special ed** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 12:25 am

i got about 15 percent less cpu usage on my powerbook g4 500, and logic runs better as well.

mars · Post by **mars** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 1:33 am

special ed wrote:
6. in the display panel, set color display to thousands of colors and choose the lowest resolution that comfortably fits your monitor.

I have it on very good authority that OS X is optimized to use millions of colors and changing it may affect performance negativley.

Over at the DAW-Mac mailing list there was a whole thread effectively dissing this entire article.

psychonaut · Post by **psychonaut** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 2:43 am

http://www.osxaudio.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=6

special ed · Post by **special ed** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 5:39 am

I have it on very good authority that OS X is optimized to use millions of colors and changing it may affect performance negativley.

Over at the DAW-Mac mailing list there was a whole thread effectively dissing this entire article.

the color on thousands instead of millions helps the performance on the older machines i found. like mine a powerbook g4 500. im sure there are still plenty of users around here that dont have the most up to date machines.

the programs that allow the user to adjust application priorities have not given me much difference however.

there is always going to be people dissing something on the internet whether its cool or not. people even dis live. so that really has no validity. i just notice that there seem to be a number of posters around here, myself included that would like better performance with their macs, if at least one of these tips is helpful to someone, then its a good thing. me personally, i dont find every single one helpful to my setup, but i did manage to get a better performance with audio after reading the article. my g4 laptop is still not a g5 desktop, but an ephiphone is never going to be a gibson either, regardless of how you customize it.

milka · Post by **milka** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 1:34 pm

haven't read the Emusician article ...magazine not avaliable here in South of France :( anyone has link to the artical ...guess not yet?
But from the last post on MacOSX OSX Optimizing tread i have seen lots of controvertial posts about it....

Anyone has a clear step by step discription (or link to) - on how to squeeze the most CPU sycles out of my tired PowerBook G3 "Pismo" for use with Live and the rest of audio apps ?

thanks again for summarising all the spread info on many diff. treads in one.

peace-milka

plainclothes · Post by **plainclothes** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 2:29 pm

4. get rid of the osx shadow effect with shadowkiller http://www.unsanity.com/products/free

i have not tried shadowkiller, but be forewarned that clear dock and the de-metalizer brought 2 systems, mine and my girlfriend's quicksilver, to a snail's crawl. that was last year though, so i would be happy to hear if others here are not having problems recently with these.....also, their products were very difficult to remove.....

j.

milka · Post by **milka** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 10:44 pm

i already use WindowShade shareware that iliminates the shadows or let me customize the way shadows display.... but i am looking for more effective ways to reduce OR ged rid alltogether of the Jaguar 3D interface overload for my tired G3 500Mhz Powerbook.
The good old OS9 interface was soooo efficient, beautiful and soo light on CPU.....why wouldn't Apple make a customized appereance theme for users that love OS9 look and feel on their OSX Jaguars ? Even Microsoft thought about users of older underpowered Pentium systems when they released XP where you could castomize XP visual effects or change the GUI to Win 98 look ..
Is there a way to run Ableton Live on OSX as fast as it would run in OS9?
any ideas?

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Sun Sep 26, 2004 8:16 pm

There's a useful pdf available on the net by Falk Gaertner ---- seek that out!

milka · Post by **milka** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:17 pm

FORMAT wrote:There's a useful pdf available on the net by Falk Gaertner ---- seek that out!

thanks for the tip , but i 've already seen that PDF a while ago ...it is made for people with alot of time and patience ...to first be able to read it ..than to be able to folow all the neardy coding steps ...and than maybe have a gain in real time AUDIO performance as opposed to authors optimization for video :( ????

I am still looking for an "easy" OSX 10.3 optimization on PowerBook G3 for "absolute idiots or Unix-tech - challeneged musicians" anyone?

thanks alot in advance.

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:49 am

For those who are still interested, there are interesting topics (including the complete EM article) on other forums:

firstly, at the mighty sonikmatter (http://community.sonikmatter.com/emagic ... 7;t=002831) and
at http://www.osxaudio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11403

Lots of insightful info and heated debate!!!

milka · Post by **milka** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 9:54 pm

FORMAT wrote:For those who are still interested, there are interesting topics (including the complete EM article) on other forums:

firstly, at the mighty sonikmatter (http://community.sonikmatter.com/emagic ... 7;t=002831) and
at http://www.osxaudio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11403

Lots of insightful info and heated debate!!!

could not find the complete EM article.....:(
still have a hope i can squeeze some CPU sycles out of my Pismo

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 10:03 pm

milka wrote:
FORMAT wrote:For those who are still interested, there are interesting topics (including the complete EM article) on other forums:

firstly, at the mighty sonikmatter (http://community.sonikmatter.com/emagic ... 7;t=002831) and
at http://www.osxaudio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11403

Lots of insightful info and heated debate!!!
could not find the complete EM article.....
still have a hope i can squeeze some CPU sycles out of my Pismo

This is the post:

posted September 28, 2004 01:24 AM
OPTIMIZING YOUR MAC FOR AUDIO

This thread assumes that you have installed the OS and applications correctly.

System Maintenance

If you do not have a system maintenance utility, I would suggest that you get one. Two of the most popular are "Cocktail" and "Onyx" - both of which are available at versiontracker.com. OnyX is free, Cocktail is $25, I believe. Also if you do not have a disk repair utility, I would highly suggest getting one of those as well. Disk Warrior is the most popular.

First, run Cocktail or OnyX. Set them to run all "cron scripts" (a.k.a. maintenance scripts in OnyX) and delete caches (system cache, user cache, virtual memory files, internet caches).

Next use the Apple Disk Utility to Repair Disk Permissions. Applications -> Utilities ->Disk Utilitiy. (You can also do a more thorough job of this by booting up the OS X install CD and chose Disk Utility from the installer menu.)

Those items should be done at least once a week.

After those items, I would suggest about once a month, run a disk repair utility like Disk Warrior to optimize your disk directory.

System Optimization

Go to System Preferences.

Click on Appearance.

Select place scroll arrows - together. Select click in scroll bar to jump to here. I find this helps speed up workflow in Audio Apps.

Click on Desktop and Screen Saver.

If you're on an older Mac, select solid colors for desktop. I've been told also that the solid color is easier on your graphics card than using a picture.

If you want the desktop picture to change, have it set to change only once a day. This way they will only change when you log it and they won't change during some intense project where you need every once of CPU.

Set your screen saver for either 2 hrs (to protect your monitor just in case) or set it to never. I use a hot key to engage the screen saver when I know it is safe. Having the screen saver engage during a project is bad.
Click on Dock.

Apparently using the scale effect to minimize is easier on the CPU than the Genie effect. Also some people like to turn off 'automatically hide and show the dock' and use key commands to raise and lower the dock (command + option + D). This way if you are working towards the bottom of the screen, the dock will not accidentally come up.

Click on Security.

Make sure file vault is OFF. A few users have found that it is not friendly with Audio Apps. Make sure that 'log out after xx minutes of inactivity is NOT selected.

Click on displays.

I prefer to have my monitors set for higher resolutions. This way I can fit more on my screen (more tracks, more things in the project page tool bar, more things in the mixer, etc). If your computer is “very” old, setting the graphics to 'thousands of colors' instead of millions of colors may help a bit. But, in OS X, keep it at millions of colors.

Click on Energy Saver.

Set computer to NEVER go to sleep. It's bad news for the computer to go to sleep while an audio App. is running.

Make sure that 'spin down hard disks whenever possible' is DISABLED.

The setting 'put display to sleep if computer is inactive' I have set to 1 hr. That way my monitors will not burn if I have to step out of the studio for a while. This particular setting does not seem to have a major affect the CPU functions (unlike sleep or screen saver), so I don't find it dangerous if it is set on.

Make sure that the schedule is disabled, so that your computer does not shut down while you are recording your best take ever.

Set processor performance to 'highest'. This is especially important for G5 users as this is not the default setting.

Click on Sound.

Depending on how your monitoring system is set up, it may be a very good idea to disable 'play user interface sound FX' so that the sound FX don't unexpectedly blast through your studio monitors. The setting 'play feedback when volume keys are pressed' is the same idea.

Click on QuickTime.

Find the setting 'check for updates automatically' and disable it.

Click on Sharing.

Make sure file sharing is OFF.

Click on Acounts.

Make sure that file vault is OFF.

Also notice (in the startup items section) that if you have iCal installed that the iCal scheduler alarm application is set to run in the background with out you knowing it. This takes up CPU power. I suggest you remove that item unless it is absolutely necessary for your studio.

Click on Classic.

Enable the item 'warn before starting classic'. This way you won't have any surprises should you have OS 9 on your computer and accidentally open a OS 9 file.

Click on Date & Time.

Disable the setting to 'set date and time automatically'. This could cause extra activity to happen without your knowledge and interrupt your work.

Click on Software Update.

Disable the setting 'check for updates automatically'. This could also interrupt you at the most inopportune time.

DONE

Those settings should help you both get fast workflow for your Audio App. and keep your computer running smoothly so you don't have any unwanted interruptions that could cause you to lose work or lose system performance.

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