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Old 12-13-2011, 06:10 PM   #18
chucky5p
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Canada
Posts: 454
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Many great suggestions given in this thread. As a general rule, do not forget one of the most important factors in producing pop/click free audio; it’s the motherboard’s handling of DPC (Deferred Procedure Calls) You can buy the most expensive MB/PC and still end up with very poor audio performance (large latencies, clicks, etc) because of these DPC issues.

DPC affects all processing tasks on a computer, but while a gamer/CAD designer/Video editor will never notice DPC delays of say 3 ms , a DAW’s program buffers processing “real time” audio at low latencies definitely will, and you’ll end up with pop & clicks.

DPC delays are usually the result of bad firmware design from the MB manufacturer. On that subject, Asus and Gigabytes are often recommended, with a slight edge to Gigabytes. Sorry that I can't be more specific with MB model numbers since I’ve just recently started looking to upgrade my main PC and I still haven’t decided which MB I will get.

One thing to do if you shop around for a pre-build computer in stores such as Best Buy, is to bring on a USB stick a program to test DPC. Run the program while opening/closing windows, going on internet, etc. If the DPC consistently stays low, there's a very good chance this PC will work fine at low latencies.

DPC checker:
http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml
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