Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Surface Pro 3 – 8 Month Review for Music Production”.
Hello welcome to surfaced sessions here in a fully sprung Norfolk countryside. In the same week that I was named, East Anglia’s, coolest techie. I get an invitation from Microsoft to a party in New York for the release of their new surface 3. The trip gave me the opportunity to meet members of the surface design team and to reflect on my experience of the surface pro 3 over the last 8 months. Is it any good, I don’t know how’s it been tell us about it.
How is it been? Well? I’Ve certainly put it through its paces. I’Ve demonstrated Pro Tools Cubase sonar, able to reason other things: I’ve multi-tracked I’ve, synthesized I’ve orchestrated. I composed I’ve jammed with it looped with it. I’Ve played live with it and I’ve controlled whole vast video arrays, with it I’ve plugged in audio interfaces. I’Ve plugged in since I’ve plugged in controllers I’ve even run it with an iPad and at no time has the surface mode.
Whinge complained. In fact. It’S sort of lapped it up without breaking a sweat, so yeah, I’m I’m pretty happy everything.
I’Ve talked about to now has been desktop software software – that’s not designed for touch. It’S not Maury touch enabled it’s not designed for sort of tablet, size use, and yet I found the combination of of touch of the pen of you, know mouse and keyboard track padding to be an absolute revelation. I’Ve sat with my hand on a mouse for most of my adult life and to break out of that paradigm is very releasing my posture, my my shoulders, my RSI infested muscles kind of all breathed the collective sigh of relief and embraced this new way of working.
I’M no longer frozen in place, I’m animated, I’m I’m engaged, I’m feeling sort of I’m feeling sort of creative and when I sit at a regular laptop now, I immediately feel constrained again. You know if you want to know what sort of drugs Microsoft we’re on when they dreamt up Windows 8. Well, this this is it yeah. I don’t mean to get all sort of gooey about it, but once you start using it day to day all the metro, laps start, making a lot more sense. What initially felt odd and rather sort of empty, now feels really clean and focused in my desktop machine.
Is a it’s a cacophony of a gazillion windows. Open all vying for attention will overlapping each other, whereas the surface is kind of an oasis of peace, calm and focused tranquility. It’S a bit like an iPad then well, I suppose, but without all this sort of the sluggy slowish nests and without not having any clue where any my files are aware, they’re going to go and and also not being able to run any real professional content creation. Software so other of those things yeah, it’s just like an iPad. A lot is made of the difference in numbers of apps available in the Apple and Windows Store, but the one killer, app that the surface has that the iPad doesn’t it’s the freaking desktop. I can run whatever software I like and when I’m using the digital pen it means I don’t have to worry about a mouse and keyboard. I don’t have to interrupt my workflow.
I can just get right on with using desktop software Metro, software Windows apps, whatever downloaded piece of rubbish I want to run, I can do it, cuz it’s a flippin PC and I can use a keyboard or mouse if for one. So where are the holes? Well, the first thing that became glaring obvious for me is when using the pen is that you need to have some kind of customizable toolbar when you’re working in tablet mode, you’ve sort of you sort of moved into the screen and you’re and you’re working away and You’Re kind of involved and engaged in it. The last thing you want to do is kind of pull away to use the keyboard. When you can, of course, you can use the attached keyboard, that’s fine! You can use the on-screen keyboard, but that jumps and takes up half the screen and it moves your windows about, and it just it interrupts that flow as you’re trying to engage or do with or connect with, with whatever it is you’re trying to do whatever. It is you’re trying to create, and so in order to not interrupt your workflow.
What you need is a little to the toolbar of buttons down one side so that I can press copy/paste. I can press start/stop record. I can bring up the mixer. I can bring up the project view.
I can bring up the the synth GUI, all from just a little touch of my thumb, so I’m not having to step away from what I’m doing and use a keyboard shortcut or a mouse. But I can remain in here engaged in what I’m doing, which is where the creative spaces, which is where I want to be. I can do this with a cool piece of software called toolbar creator and there’s some others out there as well. That I need to look into, but I’d really like to see embedded into the OS, now be part of a customizable on-screen keyboard that you can chop and change and move around.
Do what make you like with the other thing I’d like to see if the the swipey swipey workflow thing that I get on my Windows Phone? You know, rather than having a full keyboard going across this screen here, which I then have to type within a touch type kind of way. If I could just have a little one, that’s in the corner and then I could be going to type. How awesome would that be? I think that’s a thumbs-up awesomeness, that’s almost a double Fonzie of Awesomeness. That would be so yeah Microsoft. Do that do that? Secondly, CPU throttling now I haven’t really said any detail about this before, because it’s a sort of a thorny, tricky, sticky, gooey jammy sort of issue which I’m not sure Duty, does anybody any good, but the gist of it is that once you load up the CPU, It’S sort of maximum the surface then gets hot and it gets to a point.
There’S a threshold it’ll hit where the system has to cool down, and so the fans come on and then, after the little while the CPU will clock down or get throttled. If you see what I mean so that CPU steps down and the system then cools down and recovers and off you go now, if you’re a gamer and your plains have kind of high intensity, graphics, intensive game, then what you have experienced is that everything will be Running fine and then suddenly the frame rate will drop and it will start to stutter and the game becomes in our world in the pro audio world. If you’re loading up plug-in after plug-in after plug-in and keep on going, there’s going to come a point at which you’ve loaded that up so much of the heat is risen and the CPU is now starting to step down. And when that happens, you’re going to have to unload a whole load of plugins in order for the temperature to drop and the CPU usage to drop so that it can recover and come back up again with a desktop PC. When you load up low, the modes of plugins you’ll hit a point where the system will start to glitch, and then you just back off one or two plugins in the system, is restore to stability.
Again with the surface. That’S not what happens. You need to unload a whole bunch of plugins in order to get the temperature down so that we can start using the system again. So you know that’s not an ideal thing: it’s not a desktop system.
It’S a hybrid laptop! I spoke to some of the designers at the surface about this issue and basically, they said that they designed the surface to be the the best thing that they could within the constraints of the technology within constraints of the form factor of the cooling of the power Of the processor – and they did the best job they possibly could and it’s the CPU itself, which is designed to throttle when it gets too hot, and so that’s just what this sort of processor does, but bear in mind that this is exactly the same processor. That’S in the MacBook Air and it encounters exactly the same problems that people on the Mac just seem to kind of just get on with it. So in this sort of form factor of it’s, just not the cooling, to allow the processor to be completely maxed out. The CPU is excellent at coping with short bursts of power like if you’re, using Photoshop and you’re apply a filter and they go through when it does it really quickly and then comes back to normal usage again with the sort of things that we do when you Load up racks and racks of plugins that sort of constant always-on power is really not what this CPU is designed for. I’Ve only ever encountered throttling issues when running performance tests. Never when running music software or anything else for that matter, if you’re a hardcore gamer, then this is probably not the product for you, but I’ve paid many hours of Minecraft and Total War without any problems whatsoever.
So, in summary, can’t max out the CPU with plugins, but you can still do a shitload of stuff before you even get anywhere near that threshold. Thirdly, connectivity that single USB port, it’s a bit of a bummer, but you know with a passive hub. You can run two or three devices, including like an audio interface, a MIDI keyboard, that kind of thing and with a powered hub, you can add library, drives dongles and all sorts of stuff. The surface dock offers USB 2 ports and USB 3 ports on separate buses, which is which is awesome. But you do have to to dock the surface of a sort of a fixed angle which is not actually conducive towards working with it with a pen or anything like that. If they can only produce a little cable, that would run from the side port here into the dock, that I could then pull away and use this at any angle that I like. That would be an amazing thing now. The new Surface 3 has a second USB port on the side.
It’S the charging port, it’s a mini USB port, but apparently this can also be used as USB port on its own. If you so wish. Of course, what we’d like to see on the surface? Pray for is Thunderbolt, which would open us up to a whole realm of other devices, including firewire audio interfaces, which would be which would be pretty cool. Personally, I don’t think it’s very likely, but you never know so after 8 months of use, the surface pro 3 has been for me and almost perfect music making and creative tool.
It’S revolutionized, my live performance is transformed the way I work and it’s liberated me from the desktop mouse keyboard paradigm. I still use my desktop for big projects, but increasingly I find myself starting the creative process at the surface and then also ending it there with the live performance and I’ll talk about it, starting to take over my day-to-day operations, because it’s just so easy-to-use the surface. Three, which I have here is not the same deal.
It’S a it’s a venturi level system with entry level spec, but I’m going to be running a whole lot of tests on it to see exactly what it can do for music production. It’S still pretty cool, though, and are we posting my results in a couple of weeks? So where do we go from here? Well, I’m now going to be turning my attention towards software. That’S designed for touch! That’S designed more for our surface machines.
Here. I’Ve got to. I have to see how different sizes they are slightly smaller, one, big, big, big, big, big, big beam.
First, look these aren’t out until May, so this is a real, a real coup, so yeah touch design. Software has been sort of a thin on the ground. I mean we know about emulator.
We know about stage light. In fact, I’ve spent the last month writing a review on stage like while I’ve been off my feet with a bad back but they’re just about to release an update to the current version, and so I’m kind of holding off until I’ve had a really good go At that, but that will be coming along really soon, but then yeah there’s a me ratio, there’s also a new version of hollyhock. If you sign hollyhock, whatever the heck that is, we still haven’t got into it by that deserves a fair bit of scrutiny. I think there’s sonar platinum, of course, which was out before Christmas, but I’ve written a full review about for sound on sound magazine, which should be out sort of April May time. So I’m gon na wait for that to hit before I do anything further on sonar. So that’s all coming along, but I’ll leave you with a look at the very, very beautiful staff pad, which perfectly demonstrates why the surface should be your next mobile music.
Making pull up. So am I happy with it overall yeah, I’m happy with it so yeah. I do a lot more stuff. I will see you next time come and join us again, come and visit us if you’re after a computer for audio for desktop or laptop, come and see me and talk to me. If you have questions about using the surface or what to do I’m more than happy to talk about it, because I really like talking about this stuff so join us again visit the website.
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