best practices, computer audio, Windows Setup - March 3, 2020

How to set up Windows properly

With AudiophileOptimizer 3.00 we decided to create specific installation guide's for each supported operating system. This covers Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 & Windows Server 2019. The OS installation itself is a very easy task, still it made sense to create a general guideline how its done properly. Everything else important for great audio playback is done by our AudiophileOptimizer so you don't have to care for all the litte settings and fine-tunings, it's all done for you by AO within a few minutes.

Windows 10 is the most complicated OS to install and configure and als the worst sounding from all AO supported OS'es, it's great advantage is its price tough.. If you go the Windows 10 route don't forget to remove most of the bloat that comes with it by using our "Strip down Windows 10" feature of ServiceTool. This features removes and uninstalls dozens and dozens of uneeded software components from Windows 10 making it a bit more suitable for the task of high end audio reproduction.

All Server OS'es are much less complicated to install and configure than Windows 10, they don't come loaded with all that bloat but rather with nothing at all. Therefore there's not much to configure or consider during installation aside the decision if you want a graphical user interface or not.

Windows Server 2019 in GUI mode gives you about the same sound quality like Windows Serverr 2016 in Core mode, but without the hassle associated with core mode. So for most people in most cases Windows Server 2019 in GUI mode combined with AudiophileOptimizer 3.00 is the best way to go, giving extraordinary good sound quality and all the convenience you could ever want.

But before you actually start installing the operating system we highly recommend you to have a close look at our Best Practices guide. It covers many topics aside the OS installation like proper BIOS/UEFI configuration, driver installation, latency settings of your DAC/DDC and so forth. You can find the Computer Audio Best Practices Guide here: https://pdf.highend-audiopc.com/computer_audio_best_practices_guide.pdf

If you want to try out one of the AO 3.00 supported OS's you can download the Evaluation ISO's directly from Microsoft by using on of the following Links:

And these are the OS setup guides in PDF format for each Operating System compatible with AudiophileOptimizer 3.00:

Enjoy it,
AudioPhil