Optimize your Mac or Windows system for audio/DJ-ing

An optimized system allows for better performance, stability and lower latency. If you're doing any kind of real-time audio, video, karaoke work it's a good idea to optimize your Mac or Windows machine.

Common optimizations

This refers to both Mac and Windows systems

• make sure your machine meets at least the minimum requirement to run FutureDecks
• make sure the laptop is ventilated and cool enough (it should not get hot, just warm) when you use FutureDecks; otherwise when the processor is very hot it automatically reduces it's speed and operates slower
• don't run unnecessary software (even in the background)
• disable High-Quality Time Stretching (Master Tempo) in FutureDecks if you have a slow machine

Mac OSX optimization

A Mac is already pretty optimized by Apple for audio so there is not much you can do:

• some MacBook Pros have two video cards. One of them is built into the processor and it's the slower one (but consumes very little battery) and the other one is of a discrete type and much faster (either ATI or NVidia). For best performance use the more powerful one. You can enable it by going to System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Graphics -> Higher Performance
• repair disk permissions (see [1])

Windows optimization

• disable WiFi if you don't need Internet while mixing (some WiFi drivers cause a lot of problems for low-latency audio)
• use the intended USB port type for the devices you are using. Example: if an audio device (soundcard) or controller uses USB2 try to connect it to a USB2 port (
• never connect a controller or audio device (soundcard) to an USB hub/extender, connect it only directly to the computer

• try to increase the audio latency from Preferences/Cfg (try increasing it several times until the problem goes away)
• change the USB port/socket that the controller is plugged into
• disconnect other devices that are connected to the USB ports
• stop all other software that are running (there may also be software running in the background installed by the laptop's manufacturer that's causing the problems)

• disable High-Quality Time Stretching (Master Tempo)
• make sure your laptop is not overheating (this will lead to the processor functions at much lower speed)
• if none of these work for you it just means your computer is simply not powerful enough for real-time audio. Please check the system requirements for FutureDecks.
• for advanced users: you can use DPC checker or RattV3 to check your system global latency