[windows] My S4 Diary: Prepping for and setting up my S4
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[windows] My S4 Diary: Prepping for and setting up my S4 Posted on: 15.01.2011 by Len Lukawski I thought I would share my experiences as a new | |
| Len Lukawski 14.03.2011 |
Originally Posted by fullenglishpint
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| Tatum Ansaldo 14.03.2011 |
Originally Posted by bucky
The fact is, like an audio chain, your rig is only as strong as its weakest component and if after trying all the regular fixes it turns out that your laptop just isn't up to it, it must be shit. |
| Bridget Liner 14.03.2011 | lol.. it's probably safe to assume that most people who buy an S4 are pretty technical and also have a decent income. Other than the people who post a thread saying "it doesn't work" and ask questions not having read something like this thread I'm sure many really have tried everything. After a while if your oven doesn't work right and you've spent hours working on it but still can't cook dinner and have a freezer full of food you'll probably just go and buy a new one... which is why it seems people go out and buy Mac's. |
| Len Lukawski 14.03.2011 | I have been very surprised at how quickly people have been to walk away from their windows machines and run out and buy a Mac. The Mac has certainly shown significantly less issues than Windows but a $1200 solution is a very expensive solution. Very few people on this thread have posted usable information about their configuration and simply respond with, "I have done everything and more". I am going to bet that's rarely the case. For those with more money than patience, a MBP is the way to go. For those trying to make their Win system work - it can be done! Anyway, gotta go, I burned dinner last evening so I'm off to buy a new oven. |
| Torrie Blacker 14.03.2011 | Bucky. What I can say is "Plug and Play". I plugged the new MBP in on Friday evening . Not one glitch, pop, crackle, drop out. I cannot believe I went through 3~4 months of trying to get this thing to work on Vista. Whilst i appreciate the work smitten et. al. have done to get these things working for everyone, it just seems that my vista PC was along way from being able to use Traktor effectively. Anyone believeing the PC thing is just getting to hard, the new MBP hardware is finally comparable. Anyway, recorded a few hours of mixing and it was good not to have to worry about the PC issues. On a bright note with my extra time and renewed focus, I found the loop recorder on the main out. This thing rocks! |
| Bridget Liner 13.03.2011 | Let us know how it works out. I believe i'm going to be patient and see what happens with the new version of Traktor. |
| Torrie Blacker 11.03.2011 | I went through the majority of this trying to get my Toshiba to work with the S4. Still got glitches especially with effects. All started coming good then the damn thing started overheating after hours of use on Traktor. I gave up last week and ordered a MacBook Pro. Received it last evening so hopefully it works better. |
| Bridget Liner 11.03.2011 | One little thing that seems to have made the biggest difference was turning off the touchpad on my laptop. Also I was only turning off wifi, not actually disabling the device. Once I did those two things along with disabling the battery I seem to almost be there. |
| Hailey Westen 10.03.2011 |
Originally Posted by bucky
just make sure your always plugged it because when power goes low, you dont get a heads up to let you know, it will just switch off if the battery power is runs out |
| Bridget Liner 10.03.2011 | Take the battery out or just go into device manager and disable it? |
| Hailey Westen 10.03.2011 | have you disabled the battery ? thats the only things i gotta disable to run the S4 with out issues. i also un installed norton |
| Bridget Liner 10.03.2011 | Still having dropouts, didn't really make that much of a difference. I tried to run the Windows hotfix and said I didn't need it. I wonder if bumping my system up to 8gb of ram would help? Maybe upgrade to Windows 7 as well. I donno. It's definitely better but nowhere near perfect. Maybe I'll borrow a friends MBP i7 and see how it fairs and just go down that path. lol |
| Hailey Westen 10.03.2011 |
Originally Posted by bucky
try the S4 again if it does, ya never know |
| Bridget Liner 09.03.2011 | I just went and bought an audio dj 2 for after work, done messing around.. its just money. lol |
| Bridget Liner 09.03.2011 | I'm not even frustrated, I did enough research on the thing to expect these issues (but also enough research to know it's awesome once everything is sorted). The Windows hotfix is the one thing I believe I forgot about and will try toevening along with those other utilities you mentioned. I'll report back later toevening ! Thanks. |
| Hailey Westen 09.03.2011 |
Originally Posted by bucky
it should work without issues with another sound card something is conflicting with the sound card drivers... have you defragged, id recommend downloading the free full demo of TUNE UP UTILITIES 2011 to clean up your system and then unistall it as it is not needed and it can pull from your CPU. http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/ also try http://www.asio4all.com/ and have you done the windows hotfix ? http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/...214&kbln=en-us that should fix some of your problems... i had the very same issues as you but all is working great now. so i completely understand your frustration. but the thing is, i dont know how or why my system is working great now, I, like you did everything, and i was having massive CPU spikes to the point that everything distorted and froze up, then it would be fine again for another few minutes and then spikes again and again, it did my head in big time... then i tried a different soundcard (the cheap little numark DJ IO) and it worked great, had no issues with it, i was able to turn back on most features i turned off with out any issues with spikes or even drop outs. then after a few days i tried the S4 sound card again and it worked perfect, i still have to leave some things off like the batterly thing and a few others but the CPU barely even hits 10% now even with all decks and sample decks and loops and even when im going mad on the FX. it just works. HOW ? I really wish i could answer that, but i cant put my finger on it, i believe it must of been something to do with the ASIO4ALL drivers the numark sound card uses, i just wish i knew exactly how i got it all working, try the drivers and if you still cant get the S4 working without the dreaded spikes, id say go buy a cheap sound card something like the Audio DJ 2 or the numark DJ IO, hell it maybe another $100 but its far cheaper than buying a MACBOOK PRO or try another soundcard if you already own one, or try a mates if you can, or/and even try just using your computers sound card to see if the spikes still occur but you wont be able to cue the headphones but its just to test the CPU load... i dont know if this will help you or just confuse you even more, im just stating what worked for me... im sure you bought the S4 like me to be an all in one unit and dont want to spend more money on another sound card, you'll get it sorted, that im sure and hopefully with out spending any more money oh and im also a crappy VISTA user let us know if you do get it sorted. i hope you sort it out soon, because when you do, you'll have so much fun |
| Isabell Picardi 09.03.2011 |
Originally Posted by smittten
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| Bridget Liner 09.03.2011 | Figured I'd post here rather than creating a new thread.. I've followed all of the steps in the initial posting. I've installed the beta driver that NI sent me. I've run that script on the NI community s to make sure non essential services are all stopped. I've disabled everything in the startup folder of msconfig. I've disabled hardware in device manager. I have an HP laptop with Vista, 2.1ghz dual amd I believe and 4gb of ram. Prior to all of this I was constantly getting USB Data Errors as soon as an audio "glitch/dropout" would happen. Since I've done all of these things the usb data errors have drastically disappeared but now the buffer underruns skyrocket and I'm still getting a dropout at least once every couple of minutes. When the dropout happens I see the CPU usage skyrocket. This happens when I'm just letting two tracks play. I've found the best setting so far is with 512 sample rate and 4ms latency. I feel like I'm making progress but not quit there yet. Can anyone offer suggestions or something that I may be missing? |
| Len Lukawski 09.03.2011 | Do you have a recovery disk with your laptop? If not, do you have a recovery partition on your hard disk? |
| Isabell Picardi 10.03.2011 | I wouldn't say lazy, cause having one makes you look more professional for gigs. I'd buy one for that reason alone, except for the cost issue. I understand you don't have time to run through the whole process with me, but if you could answer one last question.... Every tutorial I've run into is for dual booting Win 7 with another operating system. In these tutorials they say, after you create the partition you need to install the additional OS on the partition. Now, my laptop came with the pre-loaded OS, am I shit out of luck for dual booting double Win7 cause I don't have an install disk? Is there some way around this problem that doesn't involve buying an OS I already own? I have a hard copy of 64bit Vista, but I'd rather stick with Win7 if I can manage it. *puppy dog eyes* Cheers mate -p |
| Len Lukawski 09.03.2011 | Partitioning is not a Windows concept its common to every operating system. Partitioning divides up the space on the disk and hence will always erase the data. This whole "get a macbook pro" thing is just an expensive and dare it say it, lazy solution. I don't have time to walk you through the entire dual boot install process but there are plenty of tutorials out there. |
| Isabell Picardi 09.03.2011 |
Originally Posted by smittten
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| Leontine Lyder 13.02.2011 | I just installed OSX Ideneb on my Acer Aspire 5732Z On windows 7 64 bit with all tweaks as recommended the highest setting I could do without drop outs was 44khz and 256 latency Now with OSX 96khz buffer 128 5.1ms OSX is just installed.. no updates done to traktor. just the first version straight from the installation disc |
| Lang Abriel 04.02.2011 | Ok, just got my 500gb hard drive....just put it in the laptop, installing first instance of win 7...gonna put 250 on the everyday use version and 250 on the dj version Don't believe I'll ever have 250gb of music so I should be save...only pushing 50gigs right now and the applications shouldn't be more than 10 gigs. Ill let you know how it goes and thanks for the command line a few pages back, i haven't checked this thread since I left that comment. |
| Mandy Lupone 02.02.2011 | Found out to do this myself:P |
| Mandy Lupone 02.02.2011 | Nice, planing on doing a clean install on my laptop toevening
or when i come home from vacation I get some randow pops and clitches, but its been almost 1 year since i formated the computer... Making 2 partitions for windows, but i already got a c drive (50gb) and a d drive 180 gb, can i "take" for exampel 40 gig from the d: drive without deleting the other files and create a new partition? I believe partiotion magic can do it, but do not have a win7 comp version of it:/ |
| Len Lukawski 02.02.2011 | Yes. No additional load. No drop outs etc. |
| Mandy Lupone 02.02.2011 | Tested with effects yet? |
| Len Lukawski 27.01.2011 | i don't have any extra hardware though I am sure someone is already believeing about sending me free kit to test! |
| Darren Teboe 27.01.2011 | Curious about something... Have you tried these latency tests with another (providing you have one) sound card instead of the S4's onboard one? |
| Len Lukawski 24.01.2011 | See, manners don't cost anything. Spanners cost vary by retailer. |
| Emanuel Kepics 24.01.2011 | yes ... thank you very much for the detailed and thorough reply ... much appreciated ... |
| Len Lukawski 24.01.2011 | That's a good idea. Oh, and you're welcome. |
| Emanuel Kepics 25.01.2011 |
Originally Posted by smittten
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| Len Lukawski 24.01.2011 |
Originally Posted by jeroentje
Keylock OFF: Keylock ON: |
| Len Lukawski 24.01.2011 | Full size, higher res screen shots can be found at [ame="http://www.flickr.com/photos/58365136@N04/sets/72157625896037018/"]Kontrol S4 and Windows Perfmon - a set on Flickr[/ame] This is the with the S4 physically disconnected: With the S4 Connected and powered up: Same state a minute (or so) later: This is where some cyclical spiking occurs although the spikes aren't that high in themselves. Now with Traktor on but idle: Same state a minute or so later: 3 track decks playing, 4 samples playing on sample deck: S4 Disconnected: no cyclical spiking S4 Connected, Traktor not running: cyclical spiking S4 Connected, Traktor running: cyclical spiking It would "seem" (I am not a coder, nor do I play one on TV) that the S4 driver is causing the spike - so surprises there. On my particular system the spiking does not appear to be serious nor is affecting the performance of Traktor. The machine I am using has some quirks of its own outside of Traktor. Right after this this test the machine was working much hard uploading photos to Flickr that running Traktor. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense but it is what I am seeing. The bigger issue is that it is unlikely that any two people are running the exact same hardware and software configuration so what might work for me may not for you. With Macs there are a finite number of models on the market, less upgrade options and generally a much more controlled environment to code against. I would be interested in seeing how other DJ apps consume Windows resources. Has anyone done a true apples-to-apples comparison? |
| Emanuel Kepics 22.01.2011 | How then, do you explain that the CPU spiking disappears as soon as the NI unit is disconnected from the computer? To me it seems very wrong .... without the unit connected my CPU performance reads about 5% max .... after reconnecting the NI unit the CPU load would spike to 50%+ (as soon as I engaged the NI drivers) and continue until I physically disconnected it. I'm fairly certain your system would not be spiking without the S4 connected ... out of curiosity would you care to test that? I've never seen this behaviour with any other hardware. It seems totally wrong ... and unique to NI hardware/drivers. Little wonder the system was prone to dropouts and glitches ... the CPU struggling even with the software sitting idle. |
| Len Lukawski 22.01.2011 | Let me run a test. I will post a screenshot when it's done. |
| Leontine Lyder 23.01.2011 | Smitten, what happens when you turn key lock on ? When I turn it on CPU load is much higher |
| Len Lukawski 22.01.2011 | The irony is that the performance monitor is a resource hog itself and most of the spikes are as associated with the pull from that. Outside of that, even if there are no applications running there may be services which are doing things including checking for/downloading/installing product updates, performing scans or executing other housekeeping tasks. We all install any software far too rapidly and generally click through the default install options. Saying OK to updates, sending anonymous usage information or agreeing to any option that forces the product to periodically check itself and call home is a bad thing. Running msconfig from the run box and looking at your startup items will give you an idea of what's loading up with Windows. These items won't show up in your Running Applications List but they will show up in the processes or services list. It's a total cat and mouse game. My advice to anyone looking to extract max performance from their Windows is system is this: Unless you REALLY need it, don't install it. |
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