Cool Edit Pro: Cool Edit Pro Tips and Optimizations

Memory Usage

You can increase the speed of Cool Edit Pro by setting the wave cache to an appropriate level depending on the amount of RAM you have. As you reach higher wave cache settings, you start to get diminishing returns, so you should try various settings in the range given to see how they work for you. While in Cool Edit, Go to "options > Settings > System" to access the wave cache size option.

Hard Drive Usage

Cool Edit uses the Primary Temp Directory for its temp files when recording. You can set the location of this directory in Options > Settings > System. Make sure that it is located on the drive that you actually want to record to. Go to "My Computer" and find out the drive that has the most free space and set Cool Edit's Primary temp folder to this drive. It is a good idea to create a special folder just for Cool Edit's temp files. For example, in your "D" drive, you can create a folder named "ceptemp". So you will end up with a directory/folder like: "D:\ceptemp\". This way you are sure where Cool Edit puts it's temp files and you can manually delete them if you need. Set reserve free to 10 MB and no more than 100MB. This option sets aside the amount that Cool Edit can not access. This way you won't fill the whole hard drive with recorded audio files. You need to have some space left for MS Windows to use as virtual memory.

There is a speed advantage in placing the two temp directories on separate physical hard drives. If you have two hard drives, try placing the primary temp directory on the drive that does not have the program installed on it and the secondary on the program's drive. If you have 3, try to put each one on a different drive. If you have one hard drive with a different partition, setting the drive to different directories helps, but not as much as using different physical drives.

You should defragment your hard drive often when working on Audio files. Even if your hard drive is already 100% defragmented. If you are using Notron Utilities, select full defragmentation. Your hard drive can be 100% defragmented but still it may look very messy with lots of gaps (free space) between each file. So when you try to record on that drive, the HD has to jump all over to find free space to record into which may cause skipping and gaps in recording. When you run a full defrag with Norton Utilities or use Windows98's defragmenter, it actually moves all the files to the beginning or end of the disk and leaves the rest of the HD free for recording (Windows 95 defrag does not do this). This way, the hard drive does not have to jump all over to find free space to record into.

Buffer Settings

Changes in buffer settings, in both Options > Settings > System and Options > Settings > Multitrack will not help your speed performance. They are there so that you can tweak the interface with the sound card to eliminate clicks, pops, dropouts, and other distortions that can occur in recording or playback. Most sound cards work well with settings between 1 and 8 seconds and between 4 and 12 buffers.

Here are some buffer setting samples:

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