This tutorial have been made for optimisation of the Macintosh Operating system version 9 control panels and system extensions to optimise workload for digital audio workstation.

From the Apple Menu, choose the “Control Panels” pop-up, and click MEMORY Turn Virtual Memory OFF Be Sure RAM DISK is OFF.

From the Apple Menu, choose the “Control Panels” pop-up, and click ENERGY SAVER In the SLEEP SETUP page, set “Put the system to sleep” at NEVER. (It is also recommended that the SLEEP command not be used from the “Special” menu)

From the Apple Menu, click CHOOSER Click INACTIVE in next to the Appletalk option at the bottom right corner of the window.

From the Apple Menu, choose the “Control Panels” pop-up, and click APPEARANCE Click the FONTS tab inside the Appearance window. Disable the option “SMOOTH ALL FONTS”

From the Apple Menu, click “Apple System Profiler” Select the Second Tab at the top “Devices and Volumes” Under the PCI, Slot-1, AGP section, click the blue triangle to the left of “Display Card” to open the Video card info. write down the card Manufacturer

Trim your Extensions & Controls Panels to help performance and prevent possible extension conflicts; if you are a Newbie to OS 9, when in doubt, don't turn off an extension unless you are sure you don't need it, the amount of RAM saved is not worth the headache you are going to have if you inadvertently turned off something you need and don't realize it…if you want to experiment, you can use this guide first as a baseline and then pick “Duplicate Set” and try variations of your initial modified setup, that way, you can easily switch back if you make a mistake

From the Apple Menu, choose the “Control Panels” pop-up, and click EXTENSIONS MANAGER.. Click “Duplicate Set” at the bottom right corner of the Extensions Manager window. Name the duplicate set when prompted… something like “Recording Studio Mac” or your name as an Artist or Production Company

Sort First… it will make the below list much easier !

Click on the word “Package” at the top of the Package column to immediate sort the Control Panels and Extensions, this will immediately give you a bird's eye view of which packages belong together

Remove the X from

• DialAssist
• Modem
• Remote Access

Also, Remove the X from

• Location Manager
• Multiple Users (assuming you are the only user, you better be, don'y let anyone use your Music Mac)
• Software Update
• USB Printer Sharing (who likes to share anyway)
• Web Sharing

Remove the X from

• Airport AP
• Airport AP Support
• Airport Driver

Remove the X from

• OpenTpt Remote Access
• OpenTpt Serial Arbitrator
• Remote Only

Remove the X from

• Speech Recognition

Remove the X from

• Nomad II USB Driver
• Nomad MG USB Driver
• Nomad USB shim
• NomadJukeboxLib
• SoundSpace2Lib
• NomadJukeboxLib Driver
• USBRioDriver
• USBSoundSpace2 Driver

Remove the X from

• FBC Indexing Scheduler

Remove the X from

• Iomega Drive

Remove the X from

• Location Manager Extension
• Multi-User Startup
• Serial Tool
• Software Update Engine
• Software Update Scheduler
• Voice Verification
• VT102 Tool
• XMODEM Tool
• Web Sharing Extension
• Setup Assistant API
• Setup Assistant Launcher
• Setup Info Dispatcher
• Setup Internet Support
• Setup Modem Selector

Remove the X from

• All Extensions with “ATI” in them

Remove the X from

• All Extensions with “nVidia” in them

After an Initial Mac OS 9 Install navigate to the Extensions folder in the System Folder, select all the files (hold down Command/Apple and press 'A'), and label them with a color. This way, any third-party extensions added subsequently are easy to spot since they will appear with a different color to the original set and these colours will be visible in Extensions Manager!. Remember to load your mac up to 1 GB of RAM and allocate to the Host DAW Application as much as possible (Get info, Command-I on the Application, switch to “Memory” and set both memory values to 400,000 or more for your main Application if it hosts many plugins).

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