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8. Mac users can get rid of the cycling desktop background by heading to System Preferences>Desktop & Screen Saver and disabling the Change Picture option. Extra system resources can be freed up by closing unneeded Widgets in Dashboard and turning off the Dock's graphical effects in the System Preferences>Dock menu.

9. You may find that you get better disk performance if you use a hard drive other than the one your OS boots from to record and store audio. The idea behind this is that the secondary drive doesn't have to cope with all the demands of running the OS, leaving it free to read and write audio info at the highest speed possible.

10. If you're on a network, your computer could take a performance hit if it's being accessed a lot. Prevent this by unsharing any shared folders or disconnecting entirely.

11. If your CPU's close to maxing out there are a few things you can do to make your project's processor overhead a little lighter. If your sequencer enables you to change the global sample rate, try turning it down to a lower value. Just remember to turn it back up before you export your project as audio.

12. If you're using a lot of 24-bit samples you could economise on processor usage by bouncing them down to one or many 16-bit files. Again, this is only a temporary solution, as to get the best quality mixdown you'll have to use the 24-bit sounds, but in the meantime it'll save you a few CPU cycles.

13. Some instruments feature rendering options with which you can lower the quality of their output. This usually results in a slight reduction in sound quality and CPU usage, but if you're using a lot of instruments, the cumulative effect could be enough to give you a useful amount of processor breathing space.

14. If you're using a lot of effects on a channel, try bypassing each one individually to see if you actually notice any difference to the sound when it's turned off. If you can't tell the difference with or without the effect, bin it. You'll save processing power and make your mixer less cluttered at the same time.

15. Certain internet software can really cane your computer's processor, so if you do find CPU usage to be an issue, shut down every bit of extraneous software you can – ie, virus protection, file-sharing clients, media players, etc. PC users should shut down any non-essential System Tray items, and stop them from loading on start-up.

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