Old 11-09-2013, 08:30 AM   #1
Cestrian
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Default Reaper on Intel Atom / Tablet

Hi folks

Some of you may have noticed the Acer Iconia W3-810 (Intel Atom 1.8Ghz, 2 Gb RAM, eMMC HD) recently out - I have, because it's cheap and also (bar the Sony and Samsung UMPC's if you dont mind W7/XP ) the cheapest and most portable full windows tablet (on the UK high street anyway).

I have to go away with work for long periods and like many people have been waiting for something this size, in my case to use in the car, however, I do want to work on full projects from my desktop PC.

Excluding larger tablets (Surface, w700) with Core-i cpus, the only way I can figure to do this is to render stems (and load with fx-offline as I have a concurrent issue at the moment with RAM not being freed up after rendering/muting but that's another story.)

Then I could arrange the stems, dragging the midi below at the same time, and re-activate VST's (etc) on their own if I really need to change them.

There is some feedback on this forum and others about the Atom but I *think* from what I see online that the tablet versions of Atoms are lower power than the netbook cpu's of the past (thus the 8 hour battery life of the Acer).

I wondered if anyone has experience of this type of device with Reaper or other DAW yet. The most I would ask it to play back is one Sylenth1 and one Massive together, or one instance of Refx Nexus or one instance of Izotope Nectar plus 2-3 light overhead plugs like the Khaerjus Classic series.

One option is to go into the store with a portable install of Reaper but there are two issues there, first they'd have to let me and also I won't know if any dropouts are caused by streaming the stems over it's likely cheap internal USB hub (which might be better via its MicroSD or eMMC).

Any experiences or information gladly welcomed..
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Old 11-11-2013, 09:23 AM   #2
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No bother, I am obviously crazy to try it!

Will get on with screwing that Cray Supercomputer into my dashboard..
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Old 12-14-2013, 10:26 PM   #3
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I'm sorry you got no replies. I am looking for something similar. At one point I was considering the higher-end core-i cpu tablet but for the money I would get something that
  1. still has a fan
  2. costs as much as a new laptop
  3. doesn't perform as well as a tablet or a replacement laptop
These new Bay Trail options (transformer t100, dell venue pro 8, hp omni 10) have a quad-core cpu that can actually do some decent computing but they are fanless and have long battery life. They also usually have a usb port that can (hopefully) connect to my soundcard when necessary. As a runabout alternative to my large i7 laptop I think they could fit in very well.

Similar to you my plan is to swing by my local computer shop with a portable version of Reaper with test project installed on a usb drive (micro-usb adapter cable as well of course) and see how these options keep up for power and usability.

Has anyone else tried this?
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Old 12-14-2013, 11:40 PM   #4
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I can only sort of help you. I have a Toshiba Netbook with an Intel Atom CPU and was running Windoze XP at the time. REAPER itself ran fine, but VST's and real work slowed it way down. Other music software, such as FL Studio had worse problems.

I installed Ubuntu Studio 12.04 on it a few years ago. It's mucho better, but still not so good for music, graphics or anything very CPU intensive. It works great what it was designed for, to surf web sites, do word processing or run a little Python.
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Old 12-15-2013, 08:25 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gpunk_w View Post
I cant give you exact details right now (Had to repackage the thing for xmas hahah)
That got a laugh out of me. I recall an RC helicopter a few years ago that I could have said the exact same thing about.
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Old 01-20-2014, 10:00 PM   #6
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So I pulled the trigger about a month ago and bought an Asus Transformer T100. It has a quad core bay-trail processor, windows 8.1 32bit, 2gb of ram, micro-sd expansion and a usb3 port. I didn't post right away as I wanted to make sure I had something useful to add.

It has proven to be a very useful tool. I still have and use an i7 sony laptop for my main rig but this portable little thing is exactly what I needed in a carry-about without the (noisy) fans and shorter battery life I would have with a more robust replacement tablet like the surface 2. It runs reaper (x86) great and with the right theme the touchscreen is actually quite usable. Now adding reaper support for multiple touch points is the next big hope.

I use it with a focusrite 18i8 which I can remotely power off of my anker battery which is an older version of this.
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Old 03-03-2014, 09:28 AM   #7
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@Plush2: I've been looking into the Asus Transformer as well. I think it should be powerful enough to run Reaper and a few low-CPU VST instruments I could use for live playing.

I was wondering, is it possible to connect an USB audio interface and charge the T100 at the same time? It would be the perfect device if it could do that: a portable Windows capable device to run some simple VST-s.

I can't seem to find if it will charge and use an USB peripheral at the same time anywhere on the web.

**************
EDIT:
I found out it should be possible. I wasn't aware the USB-3 port is placed in the keyboard dock (I must've researched some other device earlier, because it is quite apparent on the T100) The micro-usb port can be used for charging the tablet and the big USB3.0 port for connecting an audio interface. I've found someone on a forum somewhere running a fair amount of VST plugin-instances on the T100, so I think it should be the perfect device for my needs! This Bay Trail Atom CPU seems a lot more powerful. I tried an old Atom netbook once and performance was horrible, so I dismissed Atom altogether, but I think this new generation works a whole lot better.

Last edited by Tije401; 03-04-2014 at 02:23 AM.
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Old 03-04-2014, 05:55 AM   #8
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Thanks for all the responses to the thread peeps, sorry I never came back to respond.

I bought the W3-810, and found it so fiddly as to actually make everything more difficult, even in the car, excepting the amazing battery life.

I never got round to testing Reaper as the device struggled with single tracked general multimedia - but for the price/OS/spec this is somewhat expected.

Were I to try again I'd go for the T100 mentioned above, or possibly a pimped out netbook.
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Old 03-29-2014, 01:45 AM   #9
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I have the new dell venue 8 pro. I can't speak about your device, but I will say this; as long as you realize its not going to be like an i7 on a 24 inch screen, it's pretty flippin awesome. The dell venue has the latest quad atom processor though, which I be live are known to be impressive for what they are.

I plan on writing a little thing about how reaper runs on it as soon as have some more time. I'm in the process of moving right now.
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Old 03-29-2014, 02:14 AM   #10
Tije401
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I have found a video where someone is using an Asus t100 (z3740 atom, same as your Dell venue pro) and Reaper as a DAW. Impressive stuff. I'm going for that one.

http://youtu.be/3d0lrxo-X7k
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Old 06-20-2014, 11:42 PM   #11
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Default Asus T100

Hi all,

Just an update that might be interesting for future readers.

I've got Reaper running on the Asus T100, recording 16 tracks simultaneously (24bit, 48Khz) through an Cymatic LR16 interface onto a Sandisk Cruzer Extreme USB flash drive (thumb drive). The thing is dead silent, records/stops instantly without dropouts or any problems. Worked a couple of sessions with it and it's working flawlessly. I even got a large screen attached to it through HDMI and using TouchOSC on an Ipad 2 for remote control. I must say I'm truly impressed by that little machine. It's a great portable (and affordable) DAW host. Great stuff! We have the Asus thingy set up fixed in our rehearsal space and I carry the thumb drive around to work on sessions on my Desktop PC @home.
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Old 11-18-2014, 04:57 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tije401 View Post
Hi all,

Just an update that might be interesting for future readers.

I've got Reaper running on the Asus T100, recording 16 tracks simultaneously (24bit, 48Khz) through an Cymatic LR16 interface onto a Sandisk Cruzer Extreme USB flash drive (thumb drive). The thing is dead silent, records/stops instantly without dropouts or any problems. Worked a couple of sessions with it and it's working flawlessly. I even got a large screen attached to it through HDMI and using TouchOSC on an Ipad 2 for remote control. I must say I'm truly impressed by that little machine. It's a great portable (and affordable) DAW host. Great stuff! We have the Asus thingy set up fixed in our rehearsal space and I carry the thumb drive around to work on sessions on my Desktop PC @home.

If you have a Cymatic LR16, what is the role of Reaper and the Asus tablet?

I'm wondering how the new batch of quad-core Celeron industrial computers will work. They are supposed to be very capable machines, and not only fanless, but not even ventilated. Lots of options: http://www.logicsupply.com/computers...ne/industrial/

My concern isn't so much with the capability of the computer itself, but with the USB3.0 I/O, in terms of whether it would really be suitable for an audio device like a Focusrite 18i20. It also would be extremely interesting to know how well a machine like this might perform as a synth.

I didn't think I would be the first one to try one of these...
I'm retiring my DAW (a Core2 duo built in 2007 with 22,000 hours of operation on it), and as long as it runs it will be a sample workstation. So now I'm considering going a "low power, fanless" direction since these machines are actually available.
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Old 11-19-2014, 01:44 AM   #13
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--If you have a Cymatic LR16, what is the role of Reaper and the Asus tablet?

I just use the LR16 it as a standard, 16ch in Asio interface. There are probably better solutions out there. My first intention was to use the LR16 in standalone mode and I have used it that way on some occassions, but it turned out it's just easier to use it as a interface (overdubbing guitars/vocals). Haven't used it for softsynths, only live tracking.

Here's a good article about using NUC/Bay Trail as a DAW:
http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/201...kh-worlds.html
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Old 02-23-2017, 02:17 PM   #14
james0tucson
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Default Update for current generation of Atom

I'm surprised this thread died off in 2014. Atom devices seem to have come a long way since then.
I'm going to be trying a MINIX Neo Z83-4 (Intel Atom X5-Z8300 Cherry Trail) with a Behringer U-PHORIA UMC204HD, in the spirit of my Zero Dollar Studio. (Yeah, I realize that neither of those devices are true Zero Dollar units but close enough.)

Any particular tests or specific VST/i's you'd like me to check?
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Old 02-24-2017, 03:22 AM   #15
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Personally, I haven't had the requirement to work away as much since I first posted, and so the emphasis on mobile working is less. However I still do it, sometimes just to get away from the house and stop annoying the Mrs with the beats!

Since then I've figured a few things. Firstly, rendering stems or any similar workaround only allows arrangement work and as such is a waste of effort in prepping the projects and moving them between machines. Having some of the synths live just confuses things. For me I need fully live VSTs or it's not viable.

I had a powerful Dell laptop for a while in combination with Dropbox. However this had problems too, certain sampling VST's would not load samples between machines even if the relative path in Dropbox is the same. Also the hours days or even weeks installing my whole VST setup wasn't worth it if I was going to have to do it again soon due to road damage, windows updates or clumsy Mrs damage..

Now I use Teamviewer and only work directly with the home DAW, with either an EEEbook e403 (in a cafe for example) or a Lenovo convertible (car). Android would be much better if there was a big enough device with OTG usb support and the Teamviewer android app supported mouse properly but what I have now works - as long as the PC at home is running and the wifi is reliable, which it isn't always, due to the large amount of stuff running off USB and my average DSL internet..
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Old 06-08-2017, 08:44 AM   #16
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Default Reaper on MINIX NEO Z83-4

Sure it will work! I'm getting it on the mail today, and I would install Reaper as well as Prop Reason Essentials 9.5 to utilize the newest VST addition there.
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