Are you ready to dig a little deeper and further optimize your Mac for live performance? Within the previous Mac optimizations article—Quick Mac Optimization for Live Performance—I walked you through a few basic system adjustments. This next article takes the Mac tweaks one step further by guiding you through advanced Mac optimizations and recommended application add-ons to help fine-tune your Mac for live performance.  

disable spotlight indexing

Have you ever seen the Spotlight magnifying glass icon with a pulsating dot in the middle? Did you notice your Mac running super sluggish while this was occurring? This is Spotlight creating a virtual index of all the files and folders in your system (i.e., indexing), allowing Spotlight to quickly search your drives. For everyday use, this is fine and not too much of a nuisance, but when using resource intensive audio applications, having Spotlight suddenly start indexing in the middle of your set can be disastrous.  

The easiest way to prevent indexing is to adjust your Spotlight Privacy settings. The only hitch, Spotlight will no longer be able to search the drives you make ‘private.’ If you’re a Spoltight addict, don’t worry, you can easily remove your drives from the Privacy list to restore searchability after your gig is over.

  • Open System Preferences by clicking the System Preferences icon on your dock.
  • Click on Spotlight.
  • Click on Privacy.
  • Click the + sign in the bottom left corner, click on the drive you want to make ‘private,’ and then click Choose. Repeat the above process for each drive you wish to add to the Privacy list.
  • To remove the drive, click on the drive icon listed and use the – key.

disable widgets

Do you use Dashboard Widgets on your Mac? Does anyone use these things? When Mac introduced Dashboard to OSX in 10.4, I gave the mini-apps called Widgets a try, but couldn’t find anything particularly useful for what I do. The Weather, World Clock, and Stickies Widgets are kind of cool, but that’s about as far as I delved.  

You might not know this, but those little Widgets, hiding out in Dashboard, eat-up your RAM, even if Dashboard itself is closed. The remedy is easy, open Dashboard and disable all Widgets except for one. OSX requires at least one Widget to be active, not sure why exactly, so leave something like Stickies running.

  • Open Dashboard by clicking the Dashboard icon on your Dock.
  • Click the + icon displayed at the bottom left corner of your screen.
  • Click the Manage Widgets button to open the Widgets manager window.
  • Uncheck all Widgets to disable them, leaving Stickies active.

disable infrared (IR) reception

Disabling IR reception is seldom mentioned in Mac optimization articles, but definitely worth doing. All it takes is some joker in the club to point an Apple remote at your Mac and click a button to bring your set to a grinding halt. If you’re using OSX 10.6.8 or earlier, an Apple remote click activates Front Row—a media center application for viewing videos, photos, music, etc.—and completely overrides all programs you’re using, yikes! Your best defense is to disable IR on your Mac.

  • Open System Preferences by clicking the System Preferences icon on your dock.
  • Click the lock icon to unlock it and enter your password.
  • Select ‘Disable remote control infrared receiver’ to disable IR reception. For OSX 10.7 and higher, click the Advanced tab to find this option.

disable automatic graphics switching

If you’re using a MacBook Pro (15” or 17”) built in 2010 or newer, your computer may have two graphics cards, one for normal use and one for high performance. By default your Mac is setup to automatically switch between the two. When using graphic intensive programs for DJing or visuals, it’s recommended to use the higher performance card. The problem is, by default, your Mac chooses which one to use and when to switch. If you're experiencing intermittent stutter, lag or performance issues, this could be partially to blame. Switch your Mac to the higher performance card and take the guess work out of it.

  • Open System Preferences by clicking the System Preferences icon on your dock.
  • Click on Energy Saver.
  • If using an older MacBook Pro, select the ‘Higher performance’ option.
  • For newer MacBook Pro’s, disable the ‘Automatic graphics switching’ option.
  • If prompted, click Log Out for the new settings to take effect.

disable time machine

I’m all for backing-up and doing it often. If you’ve never made a system backup or if it’s been more than a few months since your last backup, go do it now, I’ll wait.

Good job, now don’t you feel better? Like I said, I’m all for backing-up, but I’m not down with Time Machine wanting to backup my system while I’m DJing; not cool Time Machine! Time Machine is set to backup your files every hour, which in my opinion is a bit excessive, but I understand the importance of it. To keep Time Machine off my back, especially while DJing, I simply disable Time Machine by turning it off and when I’m ready to backup, I turn it back on. Easy breezy.

keep your computer cool with SMC fan control

Heat is one of the main contributors to premature hard drive death and overall system lethargy. Hard drives, computers and electronics, in general, do not like excessive heat. As heat increases, thermal impedance increases, greatly impacting processor and internal component performance. An easy way to ensure your computer doesn’t go into ‘meltdown mode’ is to keep it cool by using a laptop stand—to increase air ventilation—and installing an easy to use application called SMC Fan Control.

With SMC Fan Control, you can adjust the RPM speed of your cooling fan(s) within your Mac. Your Mac will automatically start the fan when your computer gets too hot, but once your Mac gets toasty in a hot club, it’s really hard to cool it down quickly. Using SMC Fan Control, I set the fan to a higher RPM (5000-6000 RPM) before I start performing. This helps keep my Mac cooler for longer—by increasing air flow earlier—instead of waiting until it’s scorching hot.

  • Once installed, launch SMC Fan Control from your Applications folder.
  • In your Apple Menu Bar, you’ll see the SMC display with the current temperature and fan RPM speed, click this to view a drop menu and then click Preferences.
  • Click the + sign to create a new Preset and call it something like ‘Live Performance.'
  • Grab the min. Speed slider and drag it to a higher RPM speed (i.e., between 5000-6000 RPM) and then click save.
  • To activate your preset, click the SMC display in the Apple Menu bar.
  • Go to ‘Active Setting’ and select your Live Performance preset.
  • When finished with your set, go to Active Setting and choose Default.

other useful apps for your mac

There are a lot of tweaky Mac apps floating around cyberspace these days and to cover them all would make for a monstrous article, so I’ll keep it simple and list a few that I’ve either used or have been recommended to use. I’m sure there’s a lot more to explore, so forgive me if I missed anything major.

  • Insomniax and Caffeine: Both apps have the same function, to prevent your Mac from going to sleep when the lid is closed. I don’t see why you’d ever purposely close the lid while performing, but if you do or worried that someone else will, these apps will keep your Mac running. Just be sure to turn it off after your gig.
  • Perian: Perian is a small plug-in app for Quicktime. Basically, it helps Quicktime decode a wider range of codecs and improves efficiency. If you’re using Serato Video or Mix Emergency, Perian is recommended.
  • OmniDiskSweeper: If you’re looking to clean out your Mac, this app is great. It categorizes the files on your drive in descending order by size and lets you delete them easily. It’s a great tool for finding weird stuff on your Mac that’s eating up your drive space. Be careful though, it gives you access to files you should never delete. Rule of thumb, if it’s not a picture, video or audio file and you’re not sure what the heck something is, do not delete it.

summing up

Performing live with a computer is serious business. If your computer isn’t properly optimized, it can have a major impact on your performance. If your computer goes down it’s game-over, so do yourself a favor, make sure your Mac is ready to rock a crowded, hot, sweaty club for hours and perform at least a few of the recommended optimizations.

*Featured photo by Romatz. Thanks to DJ Jos!