Old 03-26-2015, 03:28 PM   #1
ajaym
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Default Surface Pro 3 and Reaper

Well, I finally succumbed to gadget lust and picked up a Surface Pro 3 Core i5 with 8G RAM and 256G SSD. Put Reaper on there along with Komplete 9. I have a couple of Qunexus keyboards which are amazingly portable and the whole thing fits in a little backpack.

I have to say this is an amazing device and Reaper works incredibly well. The Realtek inbuilt audio is working at 5.3/7.3ms reported latency without crackles playing back a variety of Kontakt sample sets and various other synths such as Absynth, and being able to directly interact with the screen just totally changes the whole way I work.

A couple of things to be aware of; the headphone and speaker outputs are, unusually, separate so ASIO4ALL needs to be set to enable the second set of audio outs which are the headphones and you may want to disable the first set so that with headphones plugged in, the speakers are silent. Also set Reaper's audio outs to cover the second set of outputs or you will, as I did, spend a few minutes scratching your head as to where the audio has disappeared.

For some reason the standalone versions of Absynth etc. don't seem to be able to send to audio but Reaper works fine with them as plugins.

I found it helped to set Reaper's UI scaling to 1.2 to make the transport and other buttons a little larger and therefore easier to press. Another unexpected advantage is that, unlike most laptops, suspend and resume are almost instantaneous and - fantastic - audio and MIDI survive the process, which again generally is not my experience on most laptops, though this might be a Windows 8 improvement, of course - my other laptop is still running Win 7.

Even if you unplug the Qunexus keyboard and plug it back in with Reaper running, although it's not recognized when replugged, if you go into options/preferences and audio then back out, Reaper resets the device and all is good to go.

The SSD is very very fast, and I suspect you could record a large number of audio tracks without any issues. There is, of course, no line in and only 1 USB port but a small hub solves that problem.

Anyway, I do think this is a unique device and well worth having a look at if you want the ultimate portable DAW - not to mention the fantastic screen and the fact it weighs only 800g, about a quarter of my laptop.
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Old 03-26-2015, 04:08 PM   #2
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As a fellow Surface Pro 3 (same model) and qunexus owner I agree completely. Based on recent comments from a Microsoft employee on gearslutz (a thread about windows 10 and ilok specifically) it appears this device and others like it will only get better as they are listening to what we (audio users) want.

You should try out wasapi as an audio option for the internal soundcard. I find it gives similar latency without the hassles of selecting the device in ASIO4ALL. Instead you can just select the default device and it will switch between speakers and headphones. I also find that it's easier to leave my Focusrite ASIO settings the same this way as well.

I'll have to give the 1.2 resize of the UI a try.
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Old 03-26-2015, 04:47 PM   #3
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Sounds super cool. I can only imagine how fun things might be in a year or so.
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Old 03-27-2015, 06:33 AM   #4
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Thanks - I had not thought to try WASAPI, it'll be interesting to check that out.

I set up a test project with three tracks routed to Musiclabs RealStrat, RealLPC and RealRick (I utterly love these, they are expensive but well worth it) and the inbuilt audio can handle two out of three actively monitoring keyboard input, but starts to crackle with three unless I push latency out to around 20ms or so, which does start to feel slightly noticeable, but, hey, that's not bad for inbuilt sound devices. I would like an ultra-compact external USB audio device, but most of them are SO big - the smallest I've found so far is the Motu Microbook which is around 5" X 1.5" but something even smaller would be really nice. With the increasing use of Ultrabooks and tablets, I wonder when some manufacturer will produce an external audio interface with no controls - everything handled through software, and which is also a USB hub, since most of these devices only have one USB port. I'd kill for something like that.

I read the iLok thread and this just reminds me why I boycott any software that requires a dongle. Musiclab provide permanent license files as does Reaper so I can move this software around quickly and easily as I upgrade. Komplete's authorisation is also straightforward - so, frankly, I don't really understand why software vendors stick with this dreadful iLok/PACE stuff - it just needs to go away forever!.
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Old 03-27-2015, 03:44 PM   #5
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I am finding this a much more productive way to work, you just reach out and touch something like a fader or drag a clip. And unlike the Win 7 laptop, sporadic issues with MIDI devices going away have vanished. I don't know if this is a Win 8.1 improvement but Things Just Work on the Surface.

I have two Qunexus keyboards which I have plugged into a small hub. This seems to work glitch-free and is powering both keyboards from the Surface.

I need to set up some toolbars to allow split and other operations to be easily selected but Reaper is obviously very customisable in that area so I should be able to create a good set of toolbars for all the things that I want to do.

Because the new adjustable tilt stand allows you to tilt the screen all the way back, it makes a perfect control surface. I really can't recommend this device too much; it is an absolute revolution.
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Old 03-27-2015, 05:03 PM   #6
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I installed Reaper on my Surface Pro 3 (i7, 8GB, 500GB) but found the controls way too small, unusable for me. I did not think about scaling, will try it as soon as I can wrestle the Pro out of my kids hands

Will try wasapi too...

Thanks for the tips.
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Old 03-27-2015, 11:11 PM   #7
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I use REAPER on my SP3 i5 256GB and it is great.

If you use the pen and touch a lot, you should check out TouchKey Toolbar.

It lets you have a floating touch toolbar that you can customise so that the buttons change depending on the active application.

You can use the tool bar plus the pen at the same time, so you can hold the ALT button on the toolbar and then drag the end of a clip with the pen to stretch it.

I have one that I've set up for REAPER that looks like this.
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File Type: jpg Touch Key - REAPER.jpg (12.9 KB, 395 views)
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Old 03-28-2015, 05:03 AM   #8
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Not just with Reaper...

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Old 03-28-2015, 05:41 AM   #9
ajaym
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One thing worth mentioning; I did not purchase the optional typecover. I already own a Microsoft wedge mobile keyboard and wedge touch mouse and these connect via Bluetooth. The cost of both of these is around 80 pounds on Amazon UK compared to over 100 pounds for the type cover. In my opinion this is a much better solution because you get a proper mouse not a trackpad and the mouse has a touch surface which allows horizontal and vertical scrolling. Then in a studio situation you can put both the mouse and keyboard out of the way and just put the Surface on your music stand on your main keyboard. What I'd like to do now is scan in a bunch of my sheet music books because I could then just bring the music up on the Surface and swipe to change pages.

I'm so impressed with this device I am going to probably make it the central studio DAW instead of my Core-i7 laptop. It is just so much more immediate and intuitive and yet I can still hook it up to my 27 inch monitor and use a mouse and keyboard as well as the touchscreen. I did look at the core-i7 variant but I understand that this suffers from thermal power management issues and will throttle back under load, which largely negates any advantage. I think it is also only a dual core unit anyway.

The only thing of course is that 256G of disk storage is a little limiting. Currently with Komplete 9 fully installed and a couple of other products I still have around 80G free which is ok, but to manage storage I purchased a Sandisk 128G microsd card and this gives me a large area to archive things - the SD is slower than the primary hard drive but perfectly adequate and for 70 quid this seems the most elegant solution. I'm still amazed I can suspend the device and resume it and that everything just pops back to life. In all the years I've worked with computers and DAWs that's always been a real annoyance; you suspend with a Reaper project open and then resume and nothing works. I really don't know if this is a Windows 8 enhancement or something unique to the Surface, to be honest, but it is a really excellent improvement that really helps creativity when you have an idea and just want to get it down immediately.
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Old 03-28-2015, 03:30 PM   #10
plush2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by richlum View Post
I use REAPER on my SP3 i5 256GB and it is great.

If you use the pen and touch a lot, you should check out TouchKey Toolbar.

It lets you have a floating touch toolbar that you can customise so that the buttons change depending on the active application.

You can use the tool bar plus the pen at the same time, so you can hold the ALT button on the toolbar and then drag the end of a clip with the pen to stretch it.

I have one that I've set up for REAPER that looks like this.
Where does one find this TouchKey Toolbar?
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Old 03-28-2015, 09:00 PM   #11
richlum
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Quote:
Originally Posted by plush2 View Post
Where does one find this TouchKey Toolbar?
Probably easier to go to this thread as it gives fairly simple instructions on customising the toolbar.

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/thre...rnative.63098/

I downloaded the the toolbar template from post #2 and just modified the button images in MS Paint to suit what I wanted to use for REAPER.
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