I’m looking for a list of tweaks for a Dell XPS 15 9520 running Windows 11 Home:

12th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H (24MB Cache, up to 4.7 GHz, 14 cores)

NVIDIA(R) GeForce RTX(TM) 3050 Ti 4GB GDDR6 [40W]

32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 4800MHz

I’m using an RME Fireface UFX-II and Presonus Studio One 6.

A thread for this probably already exists, but I can’t seem to find it. Thanks in advance!

Do you have actual problems with performance, or audio drop outs?
If not, I’d be careful with tweaking per se, a lot of tips and tricks you find on the net are old and outdated.
Also, make sure you have a good, reliable baseline (e.g. a test project) that you can compare to after making changes.

I’d recommend reading Pete Brown’s blog:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windo...-guide-part-2/

No particular issues. I just know Windows 11 out of the box isn’t exactly optimized for audio. I also know these Dells come with a crapload of unnecessary stuff installed. I was just hoping for some advice on what can go and what can be disabled. Thanks for the link. Will check it out.

Here's my plan:

1. Update BIOS to latest version
2. Disable onboard audio in the BIOS if possible
3. Do a Windows 11 clean install
4. Ensure power setting is "High Performance"
5. Ensure Sleep setting is “Never”.
6. Set USB selective suspend to “Disabled”.
7. Ensure screensaver is set to “none”.
8. Turn automatic Windows updates off
9. Disable Cortana / Online speech recognition.
10. Uninstall any apps I don't use
11. Ensure no unnecessary apps are launching on startup.
12. Turn off unnecessary background apps.
13. Install my RME Drivers
14. Install PreSonus Studio One

I ONLY use this for recording. Not even for mixing. So I can really keep the apps to bare minimum... basically just Presonus Studio One. And a web browser for when I need to download OS, driver or software updates.

For the record, I did a bunch of recording over the weekend and did have one weird "hiccup" dropout in about an hour of audio. That was one dropout too much. I do want to do everything I can to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Thoughts?

Seems like a solid plan to me.
Not sure how much of a benefit 10.-12. will make, but if you make sure you can revert any changes there in case something breaks (e.g. system restore points), why not.
You might also want to test disabling core parking (e.g https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/).

Step 12.5....Macrium backup image to ext drive...at step 12.

Why? So that you can quickly get to step 12 in one step if you start over

I wouldn't personally do some of the stuff you mentioned, but the important thing is if you truly mean a "clean win11 install"....be sure it's indeed a clean install on a completely zapped c drive.

Curious as to what.

Here's what's I've done so far and why:

1. Updated BIOS to latest version. Once I have a stable system, I don't generally update the BIOS unless and until I have issues, but for a fresh install I figure this is a good first step.

2. Disabled camera and onboard audio in the BIOS. Possibly no benefit to this step, but I'm never going to use either, so they may as well be disabled.

3. Changed battery usage in the BIOS to "Primarily AC Use". I use this laptop plugged in to AC about 99% of the time. I saw that this option existed, so figured I may as well select it. There must be some benefit; probably to battery life.

4. Turned "Block Sleep" on in the BIOS. When this laptop is on, I want it on. When I'm done using it, I always turn it off. I was going to prevent the computer from sleeping in Windows to avoid possible shutdown during a session. Saw this option in the BIOS, though, so figured I may as well choose it.

5. Did a Windows 11 clean install from a removable USB drive. I followed the detailed instructions for this on the Microsoft support website. One thing that seems to be specific to Dell laptops (that may apply to others) is that, for some reason, they come with the BIOS set to "RAID On" for the internal drive. That doesn't seem to make any sense when there's only one drive and it screws up the installation. When the install gets to the "Where do you want to install Windows" stage, it doesn't see the laptop's internal drive. At this point, I went into the BIOS, changed "RAID On" to "AHCI/NVMe" and set the boot order to boot from my external USB drive. The install process then saw the internal drive. I deleted all partitions from the internal drive (i.e. Drive 0) other than the "Unallocated space" partition and installed there.

6. In System > Power & battery, set “Screen and sleep” to “On battery power, turn off my screen after 20 MINUTES” and “When plugged in, turn off my screen NEVER”.

7. Set “Power mode” to “Best performance”.

8. In Lock Screen, ensured screen saver was off.

9. In Settings > Privacy & security, made sure speech recognition was off

10. Uninstalled apps I won't be using and generally cleaned up the desktop appearance.

That's it so far. All ready for RME drivers and Studio One!

Look at the post 394 and 395.