Optimizing Your System For Audio - M-Audio Audiosport Quattro Mac User Manual

Optimizing Your System for Audio

Network cards and devices such as print monitors can cause interference with
USB audio, the resulting effect being clicks and pops in your audio performance.
As stated in the "Theory of Operation" section, the AudioSport Quattro requires
all of the USB bandwidth, so definitely do not have any active USB devices
attached when using the Quattro. If you experience clicks and pops in your audio
tracks, consider temporarily disabling network cards or modems.
Also, if your system board has an AGP graphics slot and you are using a PCI-
based graphics card, purchasing an AGP graphics card and utilizing the dedicated
AGP buss may improve performance both in audio and graphics. Additionally,
minimizing graphics use in your audio program, such as defeating waveform
displays while recording, can improve performance. It is also important that you
avoid running applications other than your music program while recording audio,
as recording and streaming digital audio is already rather processor intensive.
Here are some other things to consider:
• A hard drive that is dedicated to audio data is recommended. Withe the
operating system and programs on a separate drive, audio data will be
placed as close to the "front" of the drive, optimixing performance. Drives
with low seek times that run at a minimum of 7200 RPM are best.
• You can't be too rich or have too much RAM. It's a good idea to have at
least 128MB, while 256MB or more will greatly enhance performance.
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