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Making Radio DJ run Faster and other PC Tips

Started by Hgary, May 31, 2013, 06:10:01 PM

Hgary

Getting the most out of RadioDJ and your PC.

If you are using a Windows based Operating System, I would use Windows 7 SP1 x64 Bit Home Premium or higher edition of Windows. 
Most of the hardware out there is x64 bit now and it is pretty inexpensive to building a deceit workstation or server for under $350 or less, just to run RadioDJ and MySQL database with a few hard drives of audio files.

I would get at least a dual core processor x64 either AMD or Intel processor.
The lower powered  APU's work fine, such as ATOM or E2 by AMD   series, both types offer low power consumption, especially important for those who are on a budget and long term cost of ownership , especially when the PC is used 24/7 , as in many radio stations are. 
Many of these PCs draw 10 to 30 watts of power. perhaps 50 watts with multiple hard drives.   You may pay a little more for the lower powered PC's but within a year, you'll be saving money in the long run.  See more info about TDP.

Get as much RAM as possible, increasing the RAM memory will increase the speed of everything you do.  If you are using  any x86 version (32 bit) your limiting yourself to 3 GB . 
Integrated Video Graphic cards, that are built into the motherboard, are really bad if your are running a system with low amount  of RAM. When you are running this type of configuration , the RAM is being shared with the rest of the computer., meaning your getting about 2.5 GB or less.  Now I am not saying you can't do this, just not with a x86 system,  Use a x64 Operating system with at least 4 GB, preferentially 6 or more.  Check your motherboard and processor  specifications first before upgrading to a x64 bit Operating System.   
DDR3 will outperform DD2  but it all depends on the processor and RAM Supported by the type of motherboard.

Keeping your Data safe and your Operating System safer, Creating Partitions and storing your data, audio files in separate partition/drives will increase performance of everything you do.
During the installation of Windows/ Linux, you can partition the Hard Drive before installing the O/S.
Optionally after installing Windows, there is a free hard drive partition program that will partition the drive, it is made by MiniTool .... they have a few versions, but the free one will work just fine, for a new installation of Windows 

http://partitionwizard.com/    Hard Drive Partition Software  http://partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html

This version will create a bootable CD which you can burn to disc and partition the drive before any O/S is installed, and is free.  Bootable CD Partition Software .

Warning if you going to do a fresh install of Windows, if you have multiple drives, disconnect the power or the cables first before installing.  Microsoft will give the 2nd drive first partition the drive letter of D and the 3rd drive first partition the letter E. before going back  to the 1st drive second partition the next letter, to avoid this confusion disconnect the power to all other drives first.

Confused yet, don't fret , just go to the Control panel and change the view to small icon view and select Administrative tools, Computer Management , Storage , Disk Management . Select your drive and partition and right mouse click to
Change Drive Letter and Path 
Click on Change and select from the list to the drive letter you want.
Now if the drive letter is taken then, you will need to redo the drive letters starting from the highest and change it to letter Y or something , temporarily, so all the letters are in order on one drive.
Then you can  change the other drives, typically you'll need to re letter  the optical drives first to a higher letter . Then go back to the fixed drives  then go back and put your optical drives back to the letter you want. 

More info can be found  about changing Drive letters in Windows  ... http://ccdsiu.blogspot.com/2012/11/change-drive-letters-in-windows-xp.html#.Uagv0hTD-Uk 

How big of a partition do I need, well depends on what your doing and how big your hard drive is.
Today 's modern Hard drives are 500 GB or more.

Windows makes a small partition of 100 MB labeled as System, you can't use it  so don't even ask.
Drive C is the Windows drive letter that will be used.  If your using a dedicated Box for RadioDJ and production then you won't need much, say 30 -50 GB

Next Partition Drive Z.  Why Z?? Those familiar with Linux will know about the Page file, The Page partition will do the same thing in windows, the size of this partition should be 3 to 4 times the maximum memory that the Motherboard can support.  Most MB can support 16 GB so 40 to 60 GB should be good,  remember, even if you don't have 16 GB now who's to say what your doing to have in a year or so from now.

I will show the easy way to keep things organized

Drive D: Database, you can make this 32769 . NTFS 30 GB  Store MySQL files here during install change drive letter from  file C:\Programfiles(x86)/MySQL to D:\Programfiles(x86)/MySQL
This should be enough space even for  at east 10 million  data records for RadioDJ or more.

Drive E: Work  - This is where you put all your daily work  commercials sweepers, etc
I would put a separate folder for each category.  Partition Size at least 32769 or 30 GB or more

Work :
   Commercials 
                Paid
                Sponsors
   Jungles
   News
      Sports
       Weather
      Sound Bites
   Promos
   Shows
      Morning show
          Sound Effects
   Station IDs
   Sweepers
   Syndicated Shows
      Weekdays
      Weekends

    Make a folder for each type of category this will keep things organized, and speed up the database.

Drive F is your Multimedia Drive
Partition Size can be the reminder of the space available   on a 500 GB drive you'll be left with over 330 GB which should be enough for over 50K music files even at 320 kbs of MP3s If you need more space then this then use a 1 TB drive or add a secondary drive just for your music library,

Keep all your music and videos in here. Organize them by Artist Name, and a sub folder CD Name for each release. 
This will keep your music selection easier to find and add when a new release is added to the library and to the dat6abase of MySQL. 
Having your hard drive in a few partitions is beneficial in 3 ways, 
First it is more secure to have your data and operating system separated, if the O/S goes down, you can still safely backup your data to another drive and use on another PC.
Second your PC will run faster, by accessing only the files it needs, it doesn't need to search through thousands of music files while performing a system task.
Third while doing routine maintenance of your system, like disc defrag, scan disk, virus checking, etc.,  the operations of these tasks will greatly be reduced, saving you time to do other things
.
Now lets go back  to the Z drive, for a moment,  Right mouse click on the Computer Icon from the desktop or from  the start menu and select Properties , look at the left top corner and see the 4th  selection, Advanced System Settings, click there.
Advance Tab from there under  Performance Settings
Advanced  (Middle Tab)
You will see Virtual memory .... Total Paging file size for all drives  #### MB 
a Box labeled Change click there
A new box appears with  check mark on top  Automatically manage paging file size for all drives 
Un check it
Down below you will see a list of all available hard drives.
Click on C drive  and down below check the NO Paging file.  And Set button
Click on Z drive and click  down below to System managed Size  click Set Button
Click OK
and close out, you may have to reboot your PC.   Reboot your PC  do it anyway.

I would have put in some screen shots but the bulletin board files size limit exceeded the 64K file size when I added the screenshots, sorry.

Go back and set your optical drives in your system to the next drive letter of your choice...
More Partitions or another drive for your backups for your broadcasts, if your a broadcasting in the US  on AM or  FM bands you are required to keep a copy of the on air broadcasts, so either setup another drive or partition for recording.
This could be drive G or H depends on your configuration of your system.
It may be better to buy a case for an optical drive and plug it in to the USB port when you need to burn DVD or Blu-Ray discs, no sense wasting power to a device when it is not being used 99% or more of the time, just be certain to direct the system sounds to the CUE sound card or you'll be getting sounds to the transmitter every time you make an error or plug in your drive.
After you made the partitions for Music and Videos you'll need to change the folder locations of these, if you don't you'll be manually searching for the files, this easy tutorial will show you how to change or  even add folder shortcut in the User profile section.
When you click on Music folder the default location is C:\Users\User Name\Music
We can change this to F:\Music or if you like to be more secure F:\User\User Name\Music
Click here  for more info on how to do this with most User file locations.

There are other things which can be done too, to increase performance, but it is for advanced users, that know more about the Windows O/S  like creating User Accounts to another partition, (drive letter D:) drive for the User Profiles. If you do this then all the other drives letters will be moved down one letter starting with D becomes E etc. 
Here is the link to get the program for Profile relocator, this program works well with Windows Vista,  7 and 8  http://software.bootblock.co.uk/?id=profilerelocator

To save even more energy, using a Green hard drive or SSD drive will cut down on the cost of ownership, and your monthly bills.  If you are going to be using a SSD use it as the Operating System drive only.
Using a LED Monitor is also a great idea, these can be as low as 1 watt  per inch of display.  They go for about $90 to $150 from a 19 to 23 inch display.   
Total Dissipated Power (TDP) is the rating of a CPU in Watts (Typically Used Max Power)    If you are using a Pentium 4 Processor to run your Radio Station with an old hard drive, you are wasting power and money.  Most Pen 4 processors use 74 watts or more, if it's your workstation for RadioDJ with at least 2 hard drives your burning over 100 watts per hour or 2.4 KW per day. That's  73.2 Kw per month even at 12 cents per KW that's $8.78 per month, not to mention that CRT monitor burning another hole, which easily be another $4, or more just in operating costs of one PC.

Here is a link to show typical TDP figures of most CPUs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_figures#Pentium_4

Running a modern APC running a cool 40 watts total power and with a LED Monitor can run say 60 watts total with 2 or 3 hard drives, can save you over 60% of your energy costs. 
You'll  be getting a bigger screen to do your work, and even have HD quality monitor for your eyes.
Another good idea, if you need to operate 2 PCs but don't need to use another set of Keyboards, mouse, and Monitor, there are some nice KVM Keyboard Mouse Video Switchers out there, that will allow you to share those devices,  and saving your desk space, when needed,  having a Server for the RadioDJ over the air, and the other PC to do production work, like editing video to audio, and audio editing, commercial production etc.
You can switch between PCs by pressing a button or pressing a switch I prefer to press a button or two to turning a switch, the switch type  I have used, seem to go bad within a few months of use.

I know that there is a lot of information here, and on the links I provided, but believe me, it will well worth doing, even if it takes you an hour or 2 to do all this work, one scan disk, or disk defrag will get your time back. You'll be able to Defrag just the partition you use the most, without having to not use the PC.

A Note about Music collections, reprinted from my last post, but I'll  repost it here since many it might have been missed.

Organize your music collection by artist name and perhaps by the CD name in a separate folder  like
Band Name 
10 years

Each Release has a separate folder  inside the band Name folder as well.
Release Name (CD)
 
      Division - 2008
      Feeding The Wolves -  2010
      Into The Half Moon -  2001
      Killing All That Holds You - 2004
      Minus The Machine - 2012
      The Autumn Effect - 2005

This keeps searching for records is easier to find for yourself.
The format I use is
Band name -  Track Number - Song Title - Year 

10 Years - 06 - Dancing With The Dead – 2012
The reason why I keep the track number ahead of the title of the song is to preserve the artist intention if you play the CD in it's entirely, there are a few artists who tell  a story like Rush, Pink Floyd, Evans Blue, etc.   I like to use this Mp3 Tagging program, it works great for me, and should for most users
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

When you go through your list of songs, it makes it faster and easier for you to locate thousands of files quickly.

MySQL is faster too... it doesn't need to read an entire directory of 99.99 % of things it doesn't need to read from,  In my collection if I type in 10 years, it only needs to search say 100 songs, and not 10K of them, or more.

A lot of these tips can be used on your home PC as well so don't hesitate , and think you can only use them only on your RadioDJ Machine.

Thanks for reading.

Hgary



Vanlen

Thanks hgary.  Very well laid out  and must have tips. I've already printed it out   :ok:

Cheers
Forest Green - Music in Nature's Frequency
www.forestgreenradio.ca

Hgary

Thanks ,  Hopoe it works really good for you.

If you followed my instructions from the beginning you'll be able to do this next trick to speed up your IE loading of pages and will keep your C Drive nice and clean.
Change the location of the IE Temp folder, to Z:\IE Temp folder
You can do this by creating a new folder in Z drive and then Open IE go to the gearbox of IE 10 or 9  (top right corner) and click on Internet Options
In the General Tab you will see Brower History
Click on Settings Box
Near Bottom , see Move  folder click there
Browse for folder, and select the Z Drive and the folder you just created.
you will need to click ok and will be need to select yes, and the PC will log off, so save everything before hand, and login again to your pc.
All IE Temp files will be located in the IE Temp folder of Z Drive.   You will not need to defrag your C drive as often now.

A little side note I use to test the read write speeds of hard drives,  after partitioning, in most instances I have seen 130% to over 300% increase in read speeds, and access times reduced. .
when compared to similar PCs  with similar Hardware according to PC Pitstop testing software.