Here are some tips on optimizing your MacBook for live DJ performance. Some of these tips are Traktor Pro specific, but a lot of them are generic enough to be useful to others as well. I've tried to include references as much as possible. If you find these tips useful, feel free to publish or forward them. Obviously a link to http://nilicule.com would be appreciated, but I'll leave that up to you. Last update: 9th of June 2011 by nilicule ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - If possible, turn off wi-fi and bluetooth as they can interfere with the audio. Turn off Apple Talk (OS X System Prefs>Network). - Turn off infrared receiver. To turn this off, go to System Preferences, click on Security. In the General pane, make sure "Disable remote control infrared receiver" is checked. You may have to click on the lock icon in order to make changes in System Preferences. - Disable Dashboard to speed up the system significantly To disable dashboard, open Terminal, and then type this command, followed by the Return key: # defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES # killall Dock To enable dashboard, use the following commands: # defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO # killall Dock - Disable the Sudden Motion Sensor to avoid the harddrive heads parking them due to loud noise in a club. To disable Sudden Motion Sensor, use the following command and look for the sms setting. 1 = enabled # sudo pmset -g # sudo pmset -a sms 0 To enable Sudden Motion Sensor, use the following command # sudo pmset -a sms 1 - Optimize Energy Saver. This optimization will free up system resources as well as prevent the computer from going to sleep or standby mode which can cause audio dropouts. Click the 'Energy Saver' preference. Set the slider for 'Put the computer to sleep...' to 'Never'. Uncheck the box for 'Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible'. - Disable Time Machine - Disable screensaver - Disable Spaces in your System Preferences - Disable startup items to lessen the load on the machine. - Set your latency to 8,5ms in Traktor Preferences/Audio Setup. This is a value that generally should deliver good performance on a Macbook (Pro). Alternatively, set sampling to 48000Hz, 2.5ms latency, keylock set to scratch. - Use the correct USB port. Due to internal routing of the USB ports in many cases only a certain USB port is working properly for using an USB audio device on MacBook Pro's. You need to check in the Apple System Profiler (in Utilities) under Hardware->USB if your USB audio device shares a USB High-Speed Bus with another USB device or not. If necessary try another USB port on your computer. Finally the USB audio device should not share its USB High-Speed bus with any other device. In some cases it already helps to take the USB audio device away from the USB High-Speed Bus that is shared with the internal iSight camera. [1] - If you get crackles in your audio, then try to increase real time audio performance and prevent issues with speed stepping. [2] - Disable a core: install Xcode, go to /Developer/Extras/PreferencePanes, double-click on Processor.prefPane to install - In Traktor, turn off album art in the collection/playlist view References: [1] http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/263 [2] http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/765 http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=349739&Hilite=optimize+osx http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?p=583115 http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118753 http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=135358 http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123078 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1934