

Thankfully, I’ve pieced together an answer buried in a few online forums and can show you how to get High Performance on your laptop and regain access to the advanced power options. However, when making music we need to be able to make a couple of tweaks just to get glitch-free playback – without compromising system integrity in any way. All Microsoft is trying to do is to ensure that their products such as the Surface range can run properly within the limits of their thermal profiles boosting the power profiles can have a detrimental effect on battery life and the life of the internal components. We lost our ability to access those power settings and run more than a “Balanced” power profile.

Unfortunately, Microsoft stripped this functionality from Windows and the registry in the 2004 and 20H2 update. This was known as the “Connected Standby” or “CSEnabled” tweak. We’ve been using a registry tweak for quite some time that gives laptop users the ability to access the advanced power settings that Microsoft has removed. Microsoft Strips Registry Tweaks from Windows 10 This can be problematic for music production because it often results in glitches in audio when playing software instruments and CPU throttling when running projects. Microsoft focuses development for laptops and similar machines on power-saving, adjusting Windows to maximise battery life by minimising CPU usage. On laptops, hybrids and tablets it’s a different story. The first tweaks in this article are all you need for a smooth-running system for music production. On Windows desktops there have been no major problems with running low latency, glitch-free audio. But we’re not watching a movie, playing a game or checking our socials: We’re making music, so our needs are different.

High latency makes all these things run smoothly and that’s a good thing it gives the computer time to process everything and stream it perfectly to you. The majority of computer users are running browsers, email, social media, games, streaming, photo editing and lots of other common tasks and that’s where Microsoft puts their focus. Usually, it’s in areas where we are trying to force our computers into doing something that our non-musical colleagues are not: low latency audio. Windows 10 updates can sometimes bring trauma to us power users.
