Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Update on Surface Pro 2017 testing and annoying USB hubs”.
Hello, I’m Robin Vincent and welcome to this very quick surface session. I’Ve been trying to sort out a problem. I’Ve had with a service pro 2017 to the last. A few days. I’Ve been testing performance and polyphony within Native Instruments contact.
I want to play things straight away from the keyboard playing live, live performance, I’ve got a lovely, large, Alicia, Keys, Pio and some session strings Pro violins were coming in and it’s gorgeous and it’s beautiful and it’s wonderful and I love it and it’s great and lots Of people ask about playing live performance and playing intruments and using the surface pro 2017 as a source of virtual instruments and sounds in gigs in performance in concerts in that kind of thing, that’s what I’ve been testing out last couple days, but I hit this issue Like a little glitches, little very annoying background glitches just took me now and again I couldn’t seem to replicate it. I could do all sorts of performance on here smash the keys around and I couldn’t force the issue and then I would play a single note and bang there it was. It was very frustrating. I went through every single tweak in the thing I turn things off. I disabled things in the device manager went through the whole lot on off everything test: retest retest hours.
My fingers are killing me from all of the playing, but I couldn’t resolve it. I change audio interface same problem and then I changed to a different USB hub, because service pro only have the single USB socket inside. So if you’re running a MIDI keyboard on USB and an audio interface on USB, you need to use a hub.
So I changed to a powered hub. One I’ve got up here, plugged it in suddenly it was all fine, so maybe is to do with the hub. The hub I was using was this one, which is a passive hub unpowered you just plug it in and the surface powers it. I had both plugged into here, plug into the side and I’d be getting these britches. When I moved to the powered hub the glitches disappeared, so I thought it must be something to do with a passively powered hub. So I tried another order.
Interface same problem tried another order. Interface same have tried the surface dock, the lovely chunky, tube brick dock, and that seemed to be fine as well, which brought me again back to my hub. So the conclusion that I drew was a Patty pub.
It’S not going to be any good for the surface. Pro 2017 and that you’re going to have to use a powered hub now there seems to be some kind of sense in that begin, think I want a powered hub you’re going to smooth out that data flow. It’S just gon na you know it’s going to increase the stability of data going in and out of the computer, so that makes some kind of sense, so I’ve just spent, although making a real about this issue and demonstrating that with the passive hub, it clicks with A powered hub, it’s fine and that’s what I was going to share.
However, why can’t the end of that video making a video suddenly occur to me that we really need to try another USB to hub. Now sorry, I don’t have one, I don’t have one, but I do have well at least a quote. If I can get was this, which is a logic, king board, keyboard, which happens to have a USB hub built-in, so are they want to plug both the MIDI keyboard in one end and my audio interface in the other, and it played fine.
So suddenly, my entire theory, a powered USB hub, is the only way to go, was completely thrown out here. Caboose is impound, it’s just plugged in to here. That’S all, it does spoken, take its power from the socket and it works completely.
Fine you’re doing the face. Works completely fun, there’s no audio glitching, there’s no clicking, there’s no popping, there’s no problem as far as I can see. So what can I conclude? Well. All i can really conclude is that this is buggered this little USB hub, but i’ve had for years knocking around.
Probably trodden on it a number of times we’ve been on the draw pulled it out, so i thought it’d be simpler and i have been doing other testing with this and i haven’t noticed an issue. All i can say is that, with this plugged in I’m getting some clicks with the other hubs plugged in with a surface dock, I’ve been with the passively powered keyboard hub plugged in no clicks no problem, it works beautifully. So the lesson I can learn from this – but we can all learn from this – is that sometimes it’s just a faulty piece of gear that you can run around for hours, trying to sort out what the issue is trying to tweak trying to uncover to a/b things. To test and retest, and it’s just a flip and faulty cable, it’s like well hey my MIDI, cable here as well that I was using to connect this to the comics. That seems to be also faulty.
Sometimes it just doesn’t work and yeah. I lost another hour to try and troubleshoot that to find out that so waggle, the cable, then it does work. These are things we always must remember.
As music technologists as people into gear, you always to check your cables check your gear double-check, swap something out in order to sort out and troubleshoot it’s and pieces and issues. So, just to summarize, then add a bit of trouble of contact seems that my USB hub, that was a problem. I’M going to throw this away, no more problems great, so I’m going to get on with my performance testing.
I can now put this to one side and continue with working out what else is going on in contact, because it’s working beautifully. I can stack up all sorts of instrument, loads of strings in the session strings Pro and piano and other bits and pieces, and it’s handling it beautifully at amazingly low latency as well. Putting everything on the lowest latency and it’s performing great sounds that’s good news and I’m going to bring a full report of that very very soon. In my big four for months, video thing I should have that done next week with a bit of luck, so at some annoying excursion into areas which I didn’t hope to go but never mind. I’Ve learned something. I’Ve been reminded about how you need to always check your gear. So that’s good panic over.
Don’T worry, still working, really well more details to follow in the meantime go and make some tunes you .