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I'm now in a position where I have finished building my pc and I'm very happy with it. (Intel i7 8700k, 32gb DDR4, Nividia 1060 6gb). Over the years I've always come across audio stutter pops and crackles and yes, my eleven rack could be a cause despite what buffer size I use and I do intend on getting a Audient id14 or id22 (Black Friday soon). The other day I decided to get a 1tb ssd and put Windows 10 and all my programs on that including Cubase. My other drives (sshd) is used for holding my games and backups and general . Everything installed and working and I did notice a few niggles still with Cubase 10 (8.5 had it too) but its not fully finishesd yet. Anyway, I decided to sort my other stuff out and the last thing was to setup my steering wheel and forza 7. The fps was dropping from 60 to 30 to 40 back up to 60. Someone mentioned disabling Avast which I did and same again. Then someone said uninstall it. . I uninstalled it and boom, solid 60fps maxed out at 1440p. I'm sure you have guessed what I'm going to say... Maybe after all these years Avast was clogging my system up since that was the only free antivirus I have used expect AVG many years ago which is now owned by Avast. I have now installed bitdefender but not had chance to test Forza and Cubase. I know this was a issue a few years back but I'm surprised it still is an issue now or at least for me it was. I know I could use exceptions and what not but if its clogging the system up, it needs to go. Any free antivirus suggestions or stick with Bitdefender?

Comments

kmetal Sun, 11/17/2019 - 16:12

Windows built in virus scan works well for general purpose. When i got infected with some spyware phishing virus ( with software i paid for!) Norton was the only virus scan to detect and remove the threat. I had tried all major brands, no sucess till Norton. Norton has a free trial, which only requires an email address to activate. So you can just keep switching the email address when the 3 month trial is over, making it effectively free.

Virus scan and internet should be disabled when using your computer for daw work. Any virus scan is going to use resources and those little (or fairly large) spikes can cause issues.

Ive seen norton as low as 10$ per year, and it comes free with my comcast internet service now, tho i have purchased it in the past.

You've got to ask yourself if keeping your nice new pc, and priceless audio files safe, is worth a (comparatively) small fee for a top notch virus scan. It should not be expected that a free virus scan will be as powerful and up to date as a premium one.

Beyond that it depends what your doing. For just simple web browsing, streaming, uploading to youtube, and music software official site downloads, the free windows defender should be fine. Anything beyond that really should be done on another computer, and merits a top notch virus scan, especially using the music pc. With dual core laptops available for under 130$, cromebooks for 100$, and tablets as low as $40, i cant justify using a custom music pc for the internet.

jamie Lofts Sun, 11/17/2019 - 16:44

kmetal, post: 462695, member: 37533 wrote: Windows built in virus scan works well for general purpose. When i got infected with some spyware phishing virus ( with software i paid for!) Norton was the only virus scan to detect and remove the threat. I had tried all major brands, no sucess till Norton. Norton has a free trial, which only requires an email address to activate. So you can just keep switching the email address when the 3 month trial is over, making it effectively free.

Virus scan and internet should be disabled when using your computer for daw work. Any virus scan is going to use resources and those little (or fairly large) spikes can cause issues.

Ive seen norton as low as 10$ per year, and it comes free with my comcast internet service now, tho i have purchased it in the past.

You've got to ask yourself if keeping your nice new pc, and priceless audio files safe, is worth a (comparatively) small fee for a top notch virus scan. It should not be expected that a free virus scan will be as powerful and up to date as a premium one.

Beyond that it depends what your doing. For just simple web browsing, streaming, uploading to youtube, and music software official site downloads, the free windows defender should be fine. Anything beyond that really should be done on another computer, and merits a top notch virus scan, especially using the music pc. With dual core laptops available for under 130$, cromebooks for 100$, and tablets as low as $40, i cant justify using a custom music pc for the internet.

I used Norton many many years ago when Bioshock (2007) first came out. I know this because I had issues loading the game and 2k told me to use Avast and I just swapped between Avast and Avg over the years sticking mainly with Avast. In the past Norton was a hog but by today's standards? I have no idea. Very rare I do anything dodgy unless it's to watch one thing, TWD. I'll be honest and say I have 1 program which isn't official because of the cost (I will buy it eventually but it is £300 and no demo was available) apart from that, everything is legit. Never really bothered with Windows defender because it just seems to sit in the background doing... Something. I think I'm going to try a few free ones and see how the lag is on my system with audio and games and go with that. Its surprising over the years that not many people go to the Anti Virus being an issue with audio recording. I did hear that Bitdefender was better than Norton but I guess it's all a matter of opinion and what works well for you in certain situations.

kmetal Sun, 11/17/2019 - 16:53

I used avast in the 2007 era because of its reputation and free cost. I had no issues with CPU usage on a frail dual core laptop running norton while also running youtube and a daw. Its the only virus scan i know of that comes with a money back guarantee, and there is probably a good reason my ISP would contract with norton instead of all the others.

Either way only you can evaluate what your systems security is worth to you. I generally find you get what you pay for.

pcrecord Mon, 11/18/2019 - 11:44

Since my audio pc isn't used much for anything else, I kept windows defender, but once in a while I scan with CCleaner free and Malwarebytes free...

Norton was once very hard on ressources, now it's better..
We sold Kaspersky to many businesses (easy to remote manage)
Eset was one of the lightest I tried.

When working on a dense projects, many will deactivate the network or unplug the wire or disconnect the wifi, then deactivate the antivirus and other security softwares.

jamie Lofts Mon, 11/18/2019 - 22:45

pcrecord, post: 462710, member: 46460 wrote: Since my audio pc isn't used much for anything else, I kept windows defender, but once in a while I scan with CCleaner free and Malwarebytes free...

Norton was once very hard on ressources, now it's better..
We sold Kaspersky to many businesses (easy to remote manage)
Eset was one of the lightest I tried.

When working on a dense projects, many will deactivate the network or unplug the wire or disconnect the wifi, then deactivate the antivirus and other security softwares.

When I disabled Avast my system was still clogged until I uninstalled it. Maybe some of them differently to others? Eset is one programs that seems to get mentioned a lot along with Bitdefender. I took some time yesterday to test Bitdefender and Cubase 10 along with some buffer settings and wow. What a difference a da...... Virus protection makes. I'm now running a lower buffer with a lower latency (6-10ms seems to be fine). I tried a project using at least 10 guitar tracks 1 bass track along with a piano track and around 4 tracks for that orchestra feel and 1 vocal track. All this comes with delay, reverb etc. With Avast I press play and it would stutter and in some cases stop with a error message. With Bitdefender the project plays wonderfully with zero stutter. I ran it a few times and nothing. The only time I got stutter was when my buffer was down to 64. Buffer around 200 mark seems fine. The audio performance was hitting around 3/4. My less demanding projects were hitting just short of half way. I may even reconsidered keeping my Eleven Rack although I only use it for a audio processor.

pcrecord Tue, 11/19/2019 - 06:14

jamie Lofts, post: 462711, member: 51509 wrote: I took some time yesterday to test Bitdefender and Cubase 10 along with some buffer settings and wow. What a difference a da...... Virus protection makes. I'm now running a lower buffer with a lower latency (6-10ms seems to be fine).

Good to know !! (y)

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