Dante PCIe-R Card
CONFIDENTIAL. Copyright © 2014 Audinate Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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1. Defragment the hard drive regularly. This will improve data access times and reduce the load on the
hard drive.
2. Disable any screen savers, antivirus software, Windows Firewall, and Windows Defender. Back-
ground tasks that kick in unexpectedly can interrupt audio. Also disable system sounds to prevent
them creeping into recordings. (Note: Disabling all firewall and antivirus software is not recom-
mended for computers with active Internet connections.)
3. If you need a paging file, increase the virtual memory (swap space). A rule of thumb is to set your vir-
tual memory to twice the size of your RAM, but there are other considerations. If you're sure you do
not need a paging file, switch it off entirely for all drives. Search for a good resource on swap space /
virtual memory / paging file optimization for more information.
4. Ensure your computer's power profile (Control Panel > Power Options) is set to High Performance
(or 'Adjust for best performance'), and disable theme effects, and window animations. This will
ensure your CPU speed is not restricted, and processing power is not wasted on moving unne-
cessary pixels around.
5. Configure the power profile to prevent sleep / hibernation and hard drive shut-down due to inactivity.
Surprise shut-downs cause catastrophic interruptions to recordings.
6. Make sure DMA (Direct Memory Access) is enabled on each IDE channel. DMA is the recom-
mended (fastest) disk access method for audio. To enable DMA, open the device manager (right-
click My Computer and select Manage > Device Manager). Then expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI con-
trollers, open the properties (right-click) for each channel, and ensure DMA is enabled in the
Advanced settings.
7. Remove all unnecessary fonts. Loading fonts uses resources.
8. Ensure all hard drives related to audio work are formatted as NTFS.
9. Ensure your BIOS and chipset drivers are up to date. Go to your chipset manufacturer's website for
more information.
10. Set processor scheduling to 'Background Services' (Control Panel > System > Advanced System
Settings > Advanced > Performance). This should improve audio driver performance.
11. Switch off automatic indexing (go to Start and type in 'indexing options' > press Enter > Modify).
Indexing requires processor power, which you require for audio.
12. Disable Wi-Fi. Computers that are trying to connect to unstable Wi-Fi networks are prone to CPU
spikes, which can interrupt audio.
13. Ensure your OS and all drivers are updated to the latest versions.
14. If you know what you're doing, use services.msc to set any unnecessary startup services to
'manual'. If you aren't sure about which services to change, skip this step, or check out Black Viper's
service configurations pages (
http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-win-
dows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/
).
15. DPC Latency Checker (
www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml
) is a free application that can
be used to analyse your computer's processing performance. Any significant number of DPC spikes
above 100µsec have the potential to interrupt audio when running with low buffer settings. As a rule
of thumb, a PC can be considered to be well-configured when the average DPC latency is below
100µsec. There should be minimal spikes beyond that level. Unfortunately, other hardware device
drivers are normally responsible for these spikes. The process for identifying and removing the
offending drivers is simply trial and error. As always, make sure you start off with the most up-to-date
device drivers for all of your hardware.
16. 'Flow Control' and 'Interrupt Moderation' can reduce the performance of your Ethernet interface and
cause packets to be delayed. This is often the cause of late audio measurements on the Latency
graph in Dante Controller for connections in and out of DVS. To configure Flow Control and Interrupt