OptForAudio

Utility to temporarily change Windows system settings for improved performance during real time audio generation.

I wrote this to do repetitive system housekeeping necessary to run IK Multimedia Amplitube on an old Dell laptop with significantly reduced audio dropouts and buffer underruns (at an ASIO buffer size of 64 samples).

It's a command line/console program that:

• Runs elevated
• Disables display power down (due more to convenience than to performance)
• Disables screensaver timeout (due more to convenience than to performance)
• Disables Wi-Fi interface
• Disables CPU throttling (see C States)
• Disables Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery (device ID ACPI\PNP0C0A\1)
• Launches a list of programs (but not elevated)
• Disables CPU affinity of cores 0 and 1 of launched programs (but not the util programs) (related to this advice for nvidia drivers)
• Waits for all of the programs to exit
• Restores all changes it made

Optional command-line params:

• -xDisplay prevent change to display power down
• -xScreensaver prevent change to screensaver timeout
• -xCpuThrottle prevent change to CPU throttling
• -xWifi prevent change to Wi-Fi interface
• -xCoreAffinity prevent change to CPU core affinity of launched programs
• -xAcpi prevent change to Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery
• -runUtils starts LatencyMon (if found at C:\Program Files\LatencyMon\LatMon.exe) and Rightmark PPM Panel (if found at C:\Program Files\RightMark\ppmpanel\ppmpanel.exe)

Additional reference:

• https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/causes-of-dpc-latency-and-how-to-fix-them/
• https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025279231-Optimizing-Your-Computer-for-Audio-Windows-10
• https://www.bluecataudio.com/Blog/tip-of-the-day/how-to-optimize-a-windows-laptop-for-low-latency-real-time-audio/